In many ways, the Sistine Ceiling was a more powerful, and certainly more enduring, tribute both to papal authority and to the man who currently occupied the Throne of St. Peter than the bronze statue destroyed in Bologna. Not only was the entire program a magisterial affirmation of Christian doctrine—with a particular emphasis on the Church as the sole instrument of salvation—but Michelangelo had liberally garlanded the ceiling with acorns and oak-leaf clusters of the della Rovere family crest. For the most part, these bits of foliage sprout up around the various ignudi; these nudes, in turn, support the bronze medallions that depict stories from the Books of the Maccabees, linking the ancient tale of the Jews’ struggle for religious liberty to Julius’s own campaigns to drive the barbarians from the peninsula. Thus interwoven with lofty themes of Creation and Salvation are more prosaic reminders of earthly power.
It is not surprising that Michelangelo would allow blatant propaganda to intrude on his sacred narrative; his artistic courage was always more pronounced than the political or physical variety. In any case, his feelings for his patron were ambivalent. A sonnet of 1511 includes a not-so-subtle rebuke of his master (referred to slyly as an “arid tree”), but the feelings he expresses are those of a disappointed suitor rather than a principled opponent:
You have succumbed to rumors
and rewarded those who are the real villains.XXVI
It is I who have been your faithful servant from days of old,
as close to you as rays are to the sun,
though you mourn not as my years slip by,
I please you less the more I slave.
Once, I hoped to rise through your ascent,
believing that the scale of justice and the sword of power
would triumph, not these idle chatterers.
But heaven is granted to he who seeks
no reward here on earth,
and leaves to others to harvest fruit from an arid tree.
If only, he implies, Julius did not listen to the slanders of his enemies, all would be well. He has no wish to condemn him; in fact, he craves his love and attention. If this poem reflects jealousy and hurt feelings, another poem from the same years rails bitterly at the corruption of the city Julius ruled, where “[c]halices [are] hammered into sword and helmet!/ Christ’s blood sold, slopped in palmfuls.” But unlike Savonarola, who made similar charges using much the same language, Michelangelo was not willing to risk his career or his life in pursuit of a losing cause.
Over the years many of his defenders, hoping to absolve him of the charge that he prostituted his art for personal gain, have detected various obscene gestures or hidden jokes at Julius’s expense in the ceiling, but none of these scenarios is persuasive.XXVII Michelangelo was tormented by the knowledge that his art was predicated on an unholy alliance between Mars and Mammon that could perhaps be embellished, but not redeemed, by the grandeur of his work.
On October 1, 1512, Michelangelo informed his father that he ’d completed the ceiling. Though his mood is hardly ebullient, one can detect a certain relief concealed beneath all the usual gripes. “I finished painting the chapel,” he reported to Lodovico: “the Pope is well satisfied, but nothing else goes as I anticipated. It is the fault of the times, which conspire against our art.” The unveiling took place on October 31, 1512, the ninth anniversary of Julius’s election. The pope ’s master of ceremonies, Paride de Grassis, notes with little excitement, “our chapel was opened, the painting being finished.” Condivi’s description suggests a rather more memorable occasion. “It was seen with great satisfaction by the Pope (who had that very day visited the chapel),” he wrote, “and all Rome crowded to admire it.” He follows with a description of an incident that, while possibly apocryphal, is nonetheless revealing:
[The ceiling] lacked the retouches a secco of ultramarine and of gold in certain places, which would have made it appear more rich. Julius, his fervor having abated, wished that Michel Angelo should supply them; but he considering the business it would be to reerect the scaffolding, replied that there was nothing important wanting. “It should be touched with gold,” replied the Pope. Michael Angelo said to him familiarly, as he had a way of doing with His Holiness: “I do not see that men wear gold.” The Pope again said: “It will seem poor.” “Those who are painted here were poor also,” Michel Angelo replied.
Here, in a sense, is Michelangelo’s own answer to the conundrum posed by serving lords whose wealth and power were built on morally questionable foundations. While the pope himself can only perceive externals, the artist traffics in deeper truths. He is an adept of an exalted form of alchemy that turns gold into spiritual capital.
* * *
I. As the Cardinal di San Pietro in Vincoli (ad Vincula, in Latin), he is often referred to in contemporary documents as Vincula.
II. Contemporaries and historians have been almost equally divided on Pope Julius. Some viewed him as the most able of the Renaissance popes, while others condemned him as the epitome of the corrupt prelate. Erasmus wrote a scathing satire of the pope titled “Julius Excluded from Heaven,” in which the pope argues (unsuccessfully) for admission to Paradise.
III. Often he made the link explicit. After one military triumph, the pope had coins struck with the words “Ivlivs Caesar Pont II” (Julius Caesar Pope II) and rode through an arch inscribed with Caesar’s famous boast, “Veni, vidi, vici.”
IV. Michelangelo offered multiple versions of these events, each of which differs in minor details. In addition to letters written at the time, he wrote at least two others describing in detail the “tragedy” of the tomb, one dated December 1523 and another in October–November 1542. (See Letters, vols. I and II.) Condivi’s account was based on these recollections. But all of these accounts should be taken with a grain of salt since they were made to justify and explain his actions to the heirs of Julius who were suing him for his failure to fulfill the contracts he ’d signed regarding the tomb.
V. It was torn down on December 30, 1511, following Bologna’s successful rebellion against Julius. Adding insult to injury, part of the bronze was used to cast a cannon for Julius’s enemy, Duke Alfonso d’Este. The cannon, christened by the duke with the ironic name La Giulia, was soon used to fire on papal troops.
VI. Even though Michelangelo was responsible for the design, he no doubt sought the approval of the pope and/or his close advisors. This was his modus operandi when it came to designing Julius’s tomb, and how he approached the equally complex task of designing the tombs for the Medici dukes. After a considerable back-and-forth between Michelangelo and Cardinal Giulio de ’ Medici’s secretary, Domenico Buoninsegni, the latter writes: “Nevertheless, [the Cardinal] says you know better than he does, and he leaves it to you.” (Quoted in de Tolnay, Medici Tombs, p. 34. For full quotation see chapter 5.) One can assume a similar dynamic in the case of the Sistine Ceiling.
VII. The pivotal work is the famous scene by Perugino, Christ Giving the Keys of the Church to St. Peter, which illustrates the line from the Gospel of Matthew: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church” (Matthew 16:18). This line provides the scriptural justification for papal authority. Peter was believed to be the first Bishop of Rome, and his successors considered themselves his heirs, entitled to claim the mantle of authority bestowed upon the first Apostle by Christ himself. A tradition held that the cardinal who occupied the cubicle beneath this fresco during the conclave had the best chance of being named pope. Though it did not always work out, Giuliano della Rovere did occupy the lucky cubicle in the conclave of 1503. (See Chambers, “Papal Conclaves and Prophetic Mystery in the Sistine Chapel,” p. 324.)
VIII. The nine “openings” alternate between larger and smaller scenes. The four larger openings contain the great panoramic vistas of the ceiling, The Deluge, The Temptation and Fall, The Creation of Adam, and The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Planets. The five bays containing the smaller panels have a pictorial richness all their own, since
they include the medallions and the ignudi who support them. These bays are also flanked by the sibyls and prophets, while the other four are flanked by the pendentives depicting the ancestors of Christ.
IX. The subject of the medallions has been debated at length. Some believe they are meant to represent the Ten Commandments. A more plausible explanation is that they were drawn from illustrations to a popular illustrated Bible of the time, the Biblia vulgare istoriata, by Niccolò Malermi. Five of the scenes come from the Books of the Maccabees, chronicling the revolt of Judah Maccabee and his brothers against the ruling Seleucid Dynasty. In the Rome of Julius, this history would be seen as a reference to the pope ’s righteous struggle against the foreign occupiers.
X. This sense that the Sistine Chapel contains the entire history of the world was given even greater relevance in 1535–41 when Michelangelo painted his Last Judgment on the altar wall. (See chapter 6.)
XI. Michelangelo had originally been offered 3,000 ducats to paint the Apostles; he was promised 6,000 ducats when the project expanded. How much he actually received is debatable, since funds for the ceiling were confused with funds for the Julius Tomb. Michelangelo engaged in a decades-long battle with Julius’s heirs for the fees to which he felt entitled. (See Letters, I, apps. 9 and 11, for a full discussion of the issues.)
XII. Of the almost 1,000 drawings he made for the ceiling, only about 70 survive. These include both rough sketches and more detailed studies. Among the most famous is a drawing of a young boy in red chalk that was the basis for the Libyan Sibyl, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Even Michelangelo’s female subjects were based on studies of the male nude. It is likely that he used various shop boys as models.
XIII. Michelangelo drove his assistants hard and there was a great deal of turnover. Jacopo di Sandro was one of the first to leave. Michelangelo warned his father to “turn a deaf ear” to his slanders, since “he has been complaining about me here, [and] I suppose he will also complain in Florence.” (Letters, I, no. 45, p. 48.) Michelangelo was joined in the summer of 1508 by Giovanni Michi, and by the sculptor Pietro Urbano. In 1509, Granacci and Bugiardini left and were replaced by Giovanni Trignoli and Bernardino Zacchetti.
XIV. In buon fresco, colors are applied to wet plaster, but less skilled craftsmen often touched up their works a secco (in dry). A secco applications are less durable and often flake off. Much of the controversy surrounding the restoration of the Sistine Ceiling in the 1980s revolved around whether Michelangelo used only the technique of buon fresco as Vasari claimed or whether he retouched it a secco. Most scholars agreed that any a secco elements were added by later restorers and could be safely removed.
XV. The scene of The Flood, one of the most intricate on the entire ceiling, took a total of twenty-nine giornate (not including the twelve Michelangelo destroyed after deeming them unsatisfactory). As Michelangelo gained in confidence, he covered larger sections in fewer days. The Creation of Eve, for example, required only three giornate, while God Separating the Light from the Dark needed only one.
XVI. The title, given to the room in the seventeenth century, means the room of the signature, presumably because the pope signed important documents there. In Julius’s time it more likely housed his private library.
XVII. In July 1510 he wrote to his brother Buonarroto: “Here I’m working as usual and will have finished my painting by the end of next week, that is to say, the part I began, and when I have uncovered it, I think I shall receive payment and will try to get leave to come home for a month.” (Letters, I, no. 52, p. 54.) Unfortunately, Julius’s military campaigns intervened and Michelangelo spent a frustrating year trying to extract the funds to begin the second half. The official unveiling of the first half did not occur until August 1511. Paride de Grassis marked the occasion with a laconic entry in his journal: Julius, he noted, attended the vespers services “either to see the new paintings, recently revealed in the chapel or because his devotions led him to.” (Quoted in George Bull, Michelangelo: A Biography, p. 96.)
XVIII. During his stay in Bologna, Michelangelo had had another opportunity to study the reliefs of Jacopo della Quercia on the doors of San Petronio. The rugged muscularity of these figures continued to impress him. Another source for these more animated forms was the recently discovered Laocoön, a sculpture unearthed in a Roman vineyard in 1506. Michelangelo himself was present on that January morning, sent by Julius to confirm that it was indeed the masterpiece described in Pliny’s Natural History. The statue depicts the horrifying death of the priest Laocoön and his two young sons, strangled by serpents sent by the god Apollo to punish him for his impiety. Far more violent than the Apollo Belvedere, the torqued, agonized forms offered a new expressive vocabulary. Two of the nudes accompanying The Sacrifice of Noah, for example, are taken almost directly from the Laocoön, but removed from their original context, their twisting poses express spiritual doubt or a religious epiphany, each of which disturbs the soul in some way.
XIX. The Christian and Neoplatonic interpretations are complementary rather than contradictory. As manifestations of the soul and the intellect, these genii play a role similar to angels in the Christian faith. De Tolnay identifies five separate grades of genii in the Sistine Ceiling. In this scheme the ignudi are the genii of the rational soul; the small figures behind the prophets and sibyls represent the genii of natural intellect, and the putti below as the genii of bodily nature. No doubt there is something to this analysis, but such elaborate intellectual constructs go too far, I believe, in assuming that Michelangelo was an intellectual rather than an artist seeking forms that made intuitive sense. Benedetto Varchi, who delivered Michelangelo’s funeral oration, demonstrates the ways in which pagan and Christian meanings were fused: “Every man is accompanied by his two daimons—and these two daimons are those which the ancients called genii, given to each man at his birth, and which we Christians call angels, two of which are given to every one of us. . . . And these two daimons, genii, or angels, can be understood as the two contrary souls that are in us; the spiritual which is immortal and celestial, and the sensual which is terrestrial.” (Quoted in de Tolnay, The Sistine Ceiling, p. 48.)
XX. An incident that occurred while Michelangelo was working on the Medici tombs (see chapter 5) throws light on this subject, revealing how easily a mythological motif could be repurposed for use in a religious context. Originally, the lantern of the dome was to have been decorated with a fresco, the subject (significantly) to be chosen by the artist himself. Sebastiano del Piombo suggested perhaps a figure of Ganymede—the beautiful boy abducted by Zeus in the form of an eagle—joking that if he put a halo on him, everyone would interpret the scene as St. John of the Apocalypse ascending to heaven, a far more appropriate image for a Christian tomb.
XXI. Unfortunately, the twenty-first-century visitor enters the chapel from the opposite end, undermining Michelangelo’s intended narrative.
XXII. It is surely no coincidence that, together, tree, serpent, and angel make the shape of a cross, reminding us of the connection between the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, whose timber was used for the Cross upon which Jesus died, according to mystical interpretations. As St. Ambrose put it, “death through the tree, life through the Cross.” (Quoted in Dotson, I, p. 242.)
XXIII. He bought his first property, a small farm in Pozzolatico, for 600 ducats in 1505. In 1508 he bought three buildings in Florence itself, two on the Via Ghibellina and one on the Via Santa Maria, which is now the museum known as the Casa Buonarroti. In October 1511 he proposed spending an additional 1,400 ducats, and in May and June of 1512 he purchased two additional properties in Florence, the first near Santa Croce, the second in the parish of Santo Stefano. These were not the actions of someone on the verge of poverty. In 1515, Pope Leo X bestowed an additional honor on the family, naming them Conti Palatini, Counts Palatine, thus confirming Michelangelo’s belief in his noble pedigree.
XXIV.�
�The reason this scene occupies the pivotal central panel, rather than the more obvious Temptation and Expulsion, can perhaps be explained by a passage from St. Augustine: “For at the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even then Christ and His Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is ‘built up.’ ” (City of God, xxii, 17, pp. 839–40.)
XXV. His victory was secured with the help of 18,000 Swiss pikemen. In gratitude for their service, Julius named them “Protectors of the Liberty of the Church,” and established the Swiss Guard as papal bodyguards, a role they maintain to this day.
XXVI. Likely a reference to Bramante, or possibly Raphael.
XXVII. For instance, one of the putti standing over the shoulder of Zechariah is supposedly making the obscene “sign of the fig” in the direction of the della Rovere coat of arms.
V
The Dead
The night was mine, the dark time; fate had sworn from my look at birth, in cradle, that’s my due.
—Michelangelo, sonnet
Michelangelo, Medici Tombs, New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, 1520–34. Scala/Art Resource, NY
I. RETURN OF THE MEDICI
Ten days after officiating at the unveiling of the Sistine Ceiling, Julius took to his bed with a high fever. The sixty-nine-year-old pontiff no longer possessed those reserves of vital energy that so often in the past had allowed him to rally after the doctors had given up hope. Even before the pope ’s final descent, the Venetian ambassador reported that “negotiations are already beginning for the choice of his successor.” Julius lingered for another two months before breathing his last on the night of February 21, 1513.
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