Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  Julius’s death came at the height of his popularity. The once-intimidating Papa Terribile was now universally admired, even beloved. Paride de Grassis marveled: “I have lived forty years in this city, but never yet have I seen such a vast throng at the funeral of any former Pope. . . . Many even to whom the death of Julius might have been supposed welcome for various reasons burst into tears, declaring that this Pope had delivered them and Italy and Christendom from the yoke of French barbarians.”

  Michelangelo left no record of how he felt at the pope ’s passing, but he was certainly distressed by the news. Theirs had been a complicated relationship, marked by frequent quarrels, but also by mutual respect. The artist recognized in the pope a kindred spirit, a man whose egotism provided the perfect vehicle through which to carry out his own grandiose schemes. Though he often tried to slip off the rope he claimed the pope had placed around his neck, even he had to admit that the pontiff’s stubborn refusal to allow him to pursue his own course had coaxed from him perhaps his greatest work.

  For any artist, the loss of a patron, even one as mercurial and overbearing as Julius, generally meant a period of uncertainty as he was forced to find new projects and new sources of funding. In this instance, however, the disruption was minimized by the fact that Julius had tied up Michelangelo’s services beyond the grave. The pope had set aside 10,000 ducats in his will to complete the long-neglected tomb, and on May 6, 1513, Michelangelo signed a contract with his heirs—Cardinal Santiquattro (Lorenzo Pucci) and Cardinal Aginensis (Grossi della Rovere)—for a redesigned monument to be erected not beneath the dome of the new St. Peter’s as originally envisioned but in the Sistine Chapel. Though the new plan called for a wall monument rather than the free-standing structure contemplated eight years earlier, it matched the original project in terms of size and in the richness of the sculptural program. (The contract still called for Michelangelo to create at least forty sculptures for the monument; the choice of the Sistine Chapel was logical, since Julius’s uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, was already buried there.) To facilitate his work on the project, Julius and his heirs considerately provided Michelangelo with a new house, located across the Tiber, near Trajan’s Column.

  Michelangelo’s new accommodations in the Macel de ’ Corvi (the Alley of the Ravens), though not an elegant palace of the kind Raphael was currently building himself on the Via Giulia, was a distinct improvement over the dirty, crowded studio on the Piazza Rusticucci. A document from 1516 describes it as “[a] house of several stories, with reception rooms, bedrooms, grounds, a vegetable garden, wells and other buildings.” Spacious but austere, with high ceilings and a grand staircase, it more than met Michelangelo’s simple needs. Behind the house was a large yard where chickens scrabbled among the marble blocks. Here his servants grew beans, peas, and lettuce to supplement his frugal diet. The property also contained a few outbuildings that were soon converted into bedrooms for the various servants and assistants who made up Michelangelo’s household.

  Even with these improvements, life at the Michelangelo residence was far from luxurious. When he asked his father to find him a new garzone (boy) in Florence, he advised Lodovico to seek out “the son of poor but honest people, who is used to roughing it and would be prepared to come here to serve me and do all the things connected with the house, such as the shopping and running errands when necessary. . . .” In return for this menial labor, Michelangelo promised that “in his spare time [he] would be able to learn. If you find anyone,” he concludes with a typical dig at the local population, “let me know, because here only rascals are to be found.”

  When on March 11, 1513, the new pope was announced, Michelangelo’s prospects for glory in the Roman capital seemed assured. Michelangelo had known the man who now took the title Leo X for over two decades, since those happy years when they were both teenagers in the Palazzo Medici. For the latest occupant of St. Peter’s throne was none other than Giovanni de ’ Medici, Lorenzo’s bookish and pleasure-loving second son. Most assumed that this personal connection would allow the artist unprecedented access to the man who controlled the purse strings, a particularly enticing prospect since at the youthful age of thirty-seven—eight months younger than Michelangelo himself—the cultivated Leo seemed poised to usher in an age of unprecedented splendor.

  If Leo shared Julius’s taste for art, he differed from his predecessor in almost every other respect. Julius’s tumultuous reign had ended triumphantly, but the cardinals were exhausted from nearly a decade of conflagration. The ambassador of the Holy Roman emperor described the new pontiff as “a lamb rather than . . . a fierce lion . . . a promoter of peace rather than of war,” while his Swiss counterpart opined: “It was the best choice which could have been made, for Giovanni de ’ Medici inclines to peace, and is as gentle and temperate as Julius II was violent and harsh.”

  Where Julius was a man of volcanic temper and restless ambition, the plump, indolent Leo seemed content to enjoy the trappings of office while harboring no greater aspiration for the Church than that it should supply him and his family with wealth and prestige. Upon his election he reportedly said to his brother: “As God has seen fit to grant us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” His goodwill toward Michelangelo in particular appeared to be confirmed when, instead of scaling back the opulent projects of his predecessor as most popes were inclined to do in order to spend more lavishly on themselves, Leo increased the funds devoted to Julius’s tomb by 6,500 ducats.

  But despite a superficial cordiality, Michelangelo’s relations with the new pontiff were strained. Indeed, even before Cardinal Giovanni’s elevation, there were signs of tension between the two former housemates. It is possible that Leo’s ambivalence stemmed from the time Michelangelo lived under the Medici roof, provoked by jealousy as the intruder vied for his father’s attention. If Giovanni harbored any resentment toward Michelangelo from these early days, his feelings could not have been improved by the artist’s eagerness to serve the regime that had been responsible for his family’s expulsion. With Leo pope and the Medici once more in the ascendant, questions of loyalty and betrayal had come to the fore.

  Leo’s elevation had been preceded by a sudden upswing in the fortunes of the Medici family, one that would prove awkward for those Florentines, like Michelangelo himself, who had worked for the previous regime. Though Florence had fielded only a token force during the Battle of Ravenna, the City of the Baptist emerged as the biggest loser in that bloody melee. It had been the long-standing policy of the Soderini regime to back the French in their contest with the pope, even going so far as to sponsor (albeit reluctantly) the council of the schismatic bishops King Louis convened in Pisa. Their halfhearted efforts, however, only managed to earn them the scorn of their French allies while simultaneously stoking Julius’s rage. When the French were forced to abandon the Italian peninsula, Florence was left to face the pope ’s retribution alone.

  Among the immediate beneficiaries of the new Italian order were Giovanni and Giuliano de ’ Medici, who for the last decade and a half had been scheming to return to their native land.I Dipping into the fabled Medici wealth, Cardinal Giovanni hired a mercenary army under the Spanish captain Ramón de Cordona and, with the pope ’s blessing, set out to reconquer his native city. Laying siege to Prato, a town twelve miles north of Florence that served as their principal defensive bastion, on August 29, 1512, Spanish cannons managed to open a narrow breach in the walls. The inexperienced defenders panicked, abandoning the civilians to the tender mercies of ill-disciplined and ill-fed troops.II The sack that followed was appalling, stinging the conscience of civilized Europeans. Even the cynical Machiavelli called the massacre at Prato “a pitiable spectacle of calamity.” Cardinal de ’ Medici was less troubled, remarking blandly that “although it has given me pain, [it] will at least have the good effect of serving as an example and a terror to the [Florentines.]”

  Horrified by the destruction of their neighbor, Florence surrendered to Cordona and his M
edici backers. Over the course of the next few months, the Medici brothers reasserted control over the city of their birth, dismissing the former leaders—including both Soderini, who fled to Rome, and Machiavelli, who was briefly imprisoned and tortured—and replacing them with trusted henchmen. The hard work of purging and rebuilding had barely begun when Cardinal Giovanni learned of Julius’s death. Leaving the government of Florence in Giuliano’s hands, he hurried back to the Vatican in time to participate in the conclave from which he would eventually emerge triumphant.

  Despite the fact that he was in the midst of the final, furious campaign to complete the Sistine Ceiling, Michelangelo’s thoughts turned to his family during these troubled days. Describing what had happened to his native city as an “evil plight,” he urged his father and brothers “to withdraw to some place where you would be safe, abandoning your possessions and everything else, since a man’s life is of more value by far than his possessions.” As always, abstract political considerations took a backseat to more prosaic concerns. What would count more with the new pope, happy memories of the years they spent together in Il Magnifico’s palazzo, or the fact that he had been a valued client of the regime that expelled his family?

  Even before Giovanni’s election, Michelangelo was desperate to proclaim his loyalty to the new bosses of Florence. “[T]here are rumors going about that I’ve spoken against the Medici,” he wrote to his father in October of 1512:

  I have never spoken out against them on any matter, except for that which was discussed by everyone, that is what happened in Prato, about which the very stones would have cried out had they been able. Afterwards, many other things were said here that I simply repeated. “If it’s true that they behaved this way then they behaved badly.” Not that I believed that they had, and let us pray to God they did not. A month earlier, someone with whom I was friends spoke very ill of them, but I said that it was wrong to speak like that and that he should no longer address me thus. So I want Buonarroto to see if he can quietly discover who said that I had slandered the Medici . . . and if it came from someone who claims to be my friend, I can guard myself against him.

  The letter is typical of Michelangelo: disingenuous, timid, and self-serving. It is almost certain that, despite his protestations, he had spoken ill of the Medici, as had many among the Florentine expatriates in Rome. But Michelangelo was never one to stand on principle if a principled stance would compromise his physical safety or interfere with his art.

  In fact, Michelangelo did have cause to worry. Leo’s attitude toward Michelangelo was complicated, colored not only by their past history but by their incompatible temperaments. No doubt Leo made a certain allowance for the foibles of men of genius, as Julius had before him, but he clearly found Raphael more to his taste, generally favoring the Umbrian over the Florentine in awarding lucrative contracts. While Leo kept Raphael’s large workshop humming with new commissions, he held Michelangelo at arm’s length, content to see that he was gainfully employed on Julius’s tomb but offering little in the way of new work. Indeed, Leo seems to have regarded the companion of his youth with a mixture of admiration and dread. On the one hand, he acknowledged their past association, and even claimed to have fond memories of their time in the Palazzo Medici. “I know the high regard the Pope has for you,” recorded the painter Sebastiano del Piombo. “When he speaks of you it is almost with tears in his eyes, because as he told me, you two were raised together, and he shows that he knows you well and loves you.” But, despite their former intimacy, or perhaps because of it, Leo remained wary. His conflicted feelings are captured in a letter to Michelangelo from Sebastiano, written shortly after Raphael’s death, when Sebastiano was hoping to take over the commission to paint the Vatican apartments. Telling the pope that with Michelangelo’s guidance he would rise to the task, Leo replied: “I do not doubt this, as you have all learned from him.” Sebastiano continued:

  And, between you and me, His Holiness told me: “Look at Raphael’s works, how as soon as he saw those of Michelangelo he abandoned the style he ’d learned from Perugino and tried as much as he could to follow those of Michelangelo. But he is terrible, as you see. It is impossible to work with him.” I responded to His Holiness that your terribilità harms no one, and that you seem terrible because of your passion for the great work you’ve undertaken. . . .

  This reference to Michelangelo’s terribilità offers a tantalizing glimpse into the ways in which the artist’s difficult personality fed into the mythology of his genius. Michelangelo’s foul temper is turned into a virtue by his friend, held up as a sign of his dedication to his art. Nothing shows the transformation of the artisan into the artist more clearly than this. “[Y]ou frighten everyone, even popes,” Leo marveled, as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Who would put up with divalike displays from a mere craftsman? Insubordination, an unwillingness to follow rules laid down by others, is the hallmark of an original mind, and originality, rather than technical proficiency, the mark of a true artist. In fact, an artist of Michelangelo’s stature has by now escaped almost completely his master’s control. He is like some wild and magnificent beast who can be managed but never tamed. While some patrons continued to act like the tyrants of old, many preferred to coddle the fragile psyches of their most valuable servants.

  Fortunately for Leo, he could still purchase genius on the cheap, at least in terms of the cost to his peace of mind. Raphael was every bit as accomplished as Michelangelo and, if not quite as imaginative, he came without all the baggage toted around by the mercurial Florentine. Leo took full advantage of the genial painter, employing him to decorate his apartments and, on Bramante ’s death in 1514, appointing him magister operae in charge of rebuilding St. Peter’s.

  For Michelangelo, Leo’s preference for Raphael actually offered much-needed breathing room. He had his hands full with the tomb and, despite his jealousy of the younger man, had little desire to compete with him on his own turf. Still, he was reluctant to cede the field entirely. Stung by popular opinion in Rome “[that] judged that in the whole field of painting Raffaello was, if not more excellent than Michelagnolo, at least his equal,” he fought back through devious means. “[H]e took [del Piombo] under his protection,” Vasari related, “thinking that, if he were to assist Sebastiano in design, he would be able by this means, without working himself, to confound those who held such an opinion, remaining under cover of a third person as judge to decide which of them was the best.”

  In Sebastiano del Piombo, Michelangelo had found the ideal champion to carry out his proxy war. Not only did he possess the skill to meet the Umbrian master on the field of battle, but with his pugnacious personality he was eager to mix it up. A former pupil of the great Giorgione, Sebastiano had a Venetian’s love of color and feel for the subtleties of light and atmosphere, but he lacked the strong foundation of drawing (disegno) that was the hallmark of the Florentine tradition. With Michelangelo making up this deficit by supplying him with cartoons, Sebastiano’s other gifts would allow him to challenge, and perhaps even best, Raphael at his own game.III

  Sebastiano took to the task with relish. If possible, he loathed Raphael more than Michelangelo himself, accusing him (on scant evidence) of “steal[ing] at least three ducats daily from the pope out of the workmen’s wages and out of gildings” in his role as the pope ’s magister operae. On another occasion the Venetian urged Michelangelo to “[c]arry out your vendettas and mine in one fell swoop,” superfluous advice to someone who clung as tightly as he did to his grudges.

  For all Raphael’s affability, the rivalry was not entirely one-sided; a fierce ambition burned beneath the bland façade. Lodovico Dolce, in his Dialogue on Painting (The Aretino), describes how Raphael met this tag-team challenge. “I remember that when Sebastiano was being pushed by Michelangelo into competition with Raphael,” he wrote, putting words in the mouth of the famed playwright who was the principal speaker in his dialogue, “Raphael used to say to me, ‘Oh, how delighted I
am, Messer Pietro, that Michelangelo helps this new rival, making drawings for him with his own hand; because from the repute that his pictures do not stand up to the paragone with mine, Michelangelo will see quite clearly that I do not conquer Sebastiano (because there would be little praise to me to defeat one who does not know how to draw) but Michelangelo himself, who (and rightly) is held to be the Idea of disegno.”

  While Raphael continued his unbroken string of triumphs—the paintings of the Stanza dell’ Incendio in the pope ’s Belvedere apartments, the magnificent Galatea for Agostino Chigi, the pope ’s banker, and, perhaps most galling of all for Michelangelo, ten cartoons for tapestries to be hung in the Sistine Chapel, just below his own fresco—Michelangelo struggled to make headway on the tomb for Pope Julius. While painting the ceiling he had thought of nothing else but returning to this project, but now that he could devote himself wholeheartedly to his “true profession,” progress was not what he (or his patrons) might have hoped for.

  Part of the problem was his relentless perfectionism. At one point, when faced with a choice between assigning portions of the tomb to other masters or being hauled before a judge for breach of contract, he still had to be talked into the sensible course of action by Sebastiano. “All the world will know that what is done from now on will not have been by your hand,” the Venetian reassured him, “and you will bear no responsibility for it, come what may, as you are too well known, and you are resplendent like the sun. Neither honor nor glory can be taken from you; just consider who you are, and think that no one is making war on you except yourself.” Hiding the bitter pill of criticism (“no one is making war on you except yourself”) beneath a dollop of flattery (“you are resplendent like the sun”), Sebastiano ultimately persuaded Michelangelo to yield to the inevitable, but he had difficulty relinquishing any meaningful control. Michelangelo consistently bit off more than he could chew and then failed to delegate even menial tasks to subordinates.