Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  For long periods between 1515 and 1521, Michelangelo was in Carrara and the quarries of Pietrasanta supervising the excavation of marble for the various projects he had undertaken. Pietrasanta, in particular, cost him valuable time as months were consumed building a road to facilitate the transport of stone from the still-undeveloped site. “[T]he scarpellini from here have no understanding of marble,” he grumbled, “and as soon as they saw their lack of success, they went with God. . . . For this reason I had to stay there from time to time, to set them to work, and to show them the lines of the marbles and what things to avoid, which marbles are the poor ones, and even how to quarry, because in things of this kind I am skilled.”

  Even with this hands-on approach, however, disaster could not always be averted. In 1514 he accepted a commission to carve a statue of The Risen Christ for the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. After working for many months, Michelangelo discovered a dark vein running right across Jesus’s face, forcing him to discard the flawed work and begin anew.IV

  From the “vexations, annoyances, and travails” of these years, Michelangelo did manage to produce at least three splendid works: the two “slaves”V now in the Louvre, and the magnificent Moses that now forms the centerpiece of the greatly reduced version of Julius’s tomb that was eventually installed in San Pietro in Vincoli. In the two slaves, Michelangelo continues his exploration of the expressive possibilities of the nude male body. The Rebellious Slave displays the exaggerated contraposto that Michelangelo deployed so effectively to reveal inner conflict. His arms bound behind his back, his shoulders hunched, he is a universal symbol of Man at odds with the world. The so-called Dying Slave (he actually appears to be swooning rather than dying, either through sheer exhaustion or in the aftermath of sexual ecstasy) recalls both the Bacchus and the dead Christ from the St. Peter’s Pietà, figures embodying voluptuous passivity or the loss of spiritual vigor that occurs when we yield to our carnal nature. It is impossible to determine exactly what symbolic function Michelangelo intended by placing these nude figures on a papal tomb. Like the ignudi of the Sistine Ceiling, they may well enshrine in a very general sense the Neoplatonic conception of the soul trapped in its fleshy prison, but, as in that earlier case, we shouldn’t push the analogy too far. Their message is clear enough, and need not be subjected to an overdetermined scholarly autopsy.

  The Moses is the one certifiable masterpiece from these frustrating years, and one of the few sculptures Michelangelo brought to a high degree of finish. Indeed, Moses is so powerful that he overwhelms the tomb of which he is a part.VI Julius’s cenotaph is a sad remnant of the grand monument originally planned, but the Moses remains a commanding presence in the church. So great is the charisma of this Old Testament prophet that, according to Vasari, even the skeptical Jews of Rome were moved every Sabbath to make a pilgrimage to the church “like flocks of starlings, to visit and adore that statue; for they will be adoring a thing not human but divine.”

  It is doubtful whether a large number of Roman Jews actually overcame their abhorrence for graven images to bend their knees before this powerful effigy, but Moses’ immense spiritual authority makes the story compelling, if not plausible. No one has ever managed to convey such restless dynamism and smoldering power in a seated figure. Moses is a close cousin to the prophets and sibyls from the Sistine Ceiling, a man, as they are, possessed by the unsettling spirit of the Lord. His left leg drawn back, his torso thrust slightly forward as if he is about to rise, his pose most closely resembles that of Joel. But while bald Joel, intently studying the scroll he ’s unwinding, has the scholar’s slightly musty air, Moses possesses all the pent-up energy of a racer at the starting block. Repeating a trick he deployed so effectively in the David, Michelangelo shows the figure riveted by something outside our field of vision. In each case, that which activates the pose and gives meaning to the figure—an approaching threat or the immanence of the Lord—is only implied. We cannot perceive it directly, but can still measure its awesome power through the figure before us who registers the invisible presence with every fiber of his being.

  Michelangelo, Moses, Julius Tomb, San Pietro in Vincoli, 1513–16. Scala/Art Resource, NY

  Unlike David—and more in keeping with the figures of the Sistine Ceiling—Moses experiences God as a kind of psychic disruption. He is not the poised young hero but someone staggered by the enormity of what he is witnessing. His eyes blaze. Distractedly, he tugs at the strands of his cascading beard with one hand while clutching his stomach with the other as if his epiphany manifests itself as physical pain. Powerful as he is, he is not in control of the situation. The awe that grips him has bypassed sense, bypassed reason itself; he is filled with a divine madness.

  Perhaps no other work captures Michelangelo’s famous terribilità as well as the Moses. Over the course of his long career, the sweetness of the Pietà and the self-possession of the David seem like aberrations, islands of calm in an otherwise tempestuous ocean. Moses may not be Michelangelo’s greatest achievement, but it is perhaps his most characteristic, an expression of his conviction that the universe is governed by forces beyond our comprehension and beyond our capacity to control. While Pico celebrates Man’s power to shape his destiny, Michelangelo views life as a constant struggle with those forces, both good and evil, that mock our puny efforts to master them. In each case, Man is cast as the hero of his own narrative, but for Michelangelo the story has no happy ending, not least of all because each one of us is divided against himself. At his sunniest he never achieved the harmonious balance that characterizes masterpieces like Raphael’s School of Athens and that bespeak a bland confidence that reason will ultimately triumph. Michelangelo is capable of expressing joy, even ecstasy, but almost never serenity. In his quieter moments, Michelangelo strikes an elegiac tone; when he activates his figures, they seethe and rumble, tremble in the throes of divine inspiration or lock themselves in a futile struggle against Fate. Even David, for all his cool, is a man of violence, a warrior against the forces of darkness that besiege the citadel of light.

  The four larger-than-life statues Michelangelo carved between 1513 and 1516 represent a more than respectable output, particularly given the high quality of the work and the fact that so much of his time was spent in the quarries as foreman for a crew of stonecutters. But since the revised contract for Julius’s tomb called for more than forty statues to be completed within a seven-year period, the pace was clearly insufficient. It was obvious that even to come close to meeting the deadline would require a large team of qualified sculptors, but Michelangelo was still incapable of delegating anything but the most pedestrian tasks.

  He was already far behind schedule when a sudden change in the political landscape threw the fate of the entire project into confusion. Leo had begun his reign on the best of terms with Julius’s heirs, demonstrating his benevolence by increasing the funds allotted to his predecessor’s tomb. But by 1516 relations with the della Rovere clan had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Outraged by Francesco Maria della Rovere ’s refusal to provide him the military assistance he ’d requested, Leo excommunicated the duke and replaced him as lord of Urbino with his own nephew Lorenzo.

  It was in this context that yet another contract was drawn up between Michelangelo and Julius’s heirs. Tacitly acknowledging the family’s diminished position, this third iteration called for a drastically downsized monument.VII The new contract states that it was the della Rovere themselves who requested the changes, but it is clear that the decision to settle for less was forced upon them not only by the sudden loss of the pope ’s favor but also by Michelangelo’s failure to deliver what he ’d promised.

  Even before the breach with Duke Francesco, Pope Leo had begun to wonder whether Michelangelo’s genius might not be put to better use. Like all Renaissance popes, he was concerned with his legacy as a munificent patron of the arts, and commissioning nothing from the greatest master of the age would leave a gaping hole in his résumé.
In a letter dated June 16, 1515, Michelangelo told his brother Buonarroto: “I must make a great effort here this summer to finish the work [on the tomb] as soon as possible, because afterwards I anticipate having to enter the service of the pope.”

  II. SAN LORENZO

  The offhand remark of Michelangelo to his brother signals another momentous shift in Michelangelo’s career, a career that moved back and forth between the geographic poles of Florence and Rome, and that was spent in the service of one or the other of the great patrons of Italy. For the next decade and a half, the city of his birth rather than the gaudy, rowdy capital of the Church will be the focus of his efforts, and the Medici rather than the della Rovere will demand his loyalty and claim the fruits of his labor.

  The solution to the problem of how best to employ Michelangelo’s unique talents occurred to Leo sometime after visiting his native city late in the fall of 1515. This homecoming was not only a personal triumph for a man who’d spent most of his adult life in exile, but an opportunity to reassert Medici authority over the city that had once rejected him. Welcoming him back, Leo’s compatriots put on a spectacular show, though it was less a spontaneous outpouring of enthusiasm for the first native-born pope than it was a carefully choreographed production of the Medici propaganda machine. The city Pope Leo entered on November 30, 1515, was anxious to demonstrate its loyalty and to banish the signs of a decades-long decline. Buonarroto provided his brother with a vivid description of the celebration:

  [H]is entrance was greeted with a great show of devotion, a great clamor of people shouting “Palle,”VIII so loud that the world seemed to spin round. . . . Before the pope came his escort of guards, and then his grooms who were carrying him under a rich canopy of brocade borne by cardinals, and about his throne came the Signoria. There was no respite even once for three days from the sounds of bells and firing. There was also a beautiful show of triumphal arches, with a good ten of them in several places and of an obelisk at the end of the bridge of Santa Trinità. . . . As these were festivities, the poor in turn have received alms and a great deal of money was being thrown all the time from the door of the Hall of the Pope.

  Raphael, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici (Clement VII) and Luigi de’ Rossi, c. 1518. Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY

  Another observer was appalled at the excess, estimating that over 2,000 men were employed for more than a month at a cost of 70,000 florins, “all for things of no duration,” though he consoled himself with the thought that “the money that was scattered in this way added to the earning of the poor workmen.”

  One of the most important stops on this sentimental journey was the Church of San Lorenzo. Located just behind their palace on the Via Larga, this ancient shrine was the focus of Medici piety and patronage. The current building had been commissioned from Brunelleschi in 1419 by Leo’s great-great-grandfather, Giovanni de ’ Bicci, founder of the branch of the family that had dominated Florentine politics for most of the past hundred years. It was here that Leo’s ancestors were buried, beginning with Giovanni himself, along with his wife, Piccarda, in the Old Sacristy, and their son Cosimo, pater patriae (father of his country), interred in a crypt beneath the transept. Also buried at San Lorenzo were the pope ’s own father, Lorenzo Il Magnifico, and Lorenzo’s younger brother, Giuliano, assassinated in 1478 during the Pazzi Conspiracy. Their bodies were currently held in the Old Sacristy, but only until a new chapel could be built to receive their remains on a permanent basis.

  For Leo, lavishing patronage on the family shrine was a sign that, as in the time of Cosimo and his own father, the people of Florence could expect to enjoy the fruits of Medici largesse. “Pope Leo X,” writes Vasari, “being no less splendid than Julius in mind and spirit, had a desire to leave in his native city . . . in memory of himself and of a divine craftsman who was his fellow citizen, such marvels as only a mighty Prince like himself could undertake.” The most obvious place to start was with San Lorenzo’s shabby façade, an unadorned expanse of rough-hewn sandstone at odds with the elegance of the interior. Shortly after paying his respects to his forebears, Leo decided to organize a competition for a new façade on this important public square that would proclaim the Medici’s indispensable role in the religious and civic life of the city.

  Among those submitting designs for the prestigious commission were Michelangelo’s old ally Giuliano da Sangallo, his brother Antonio, Baccio d’Agnolo (the architect in charge of overseeing the ongoing work on the Duomo), Jacopo Sansovino (a protégé of Bramante), and Raphael of Urbino. Raphael’s presence on this list is not as surprising as it might at first appear. Even though Raphael was known primarily as a painter, Leo had appointed him magister operae after Bramante ’s death. In the Renaissance, architecture was not yet monopolized by professionals. (Both Brunelleschi and Bramante were artists before rising to fame as architects.) As would prove to be the case with Michelangelo himself, the skills Raphael acquired as an artist—skills that fell under the general heading of disegno (design) and that all had their origin in the foundational discipline of drawing—qualified him in the minds of his contemporaries to construct even large-scale buildings.

  Whatever his qualifications, the mere mention of Raphael’s name in connection with this plum commission—in Michelangelo’s own backyard, no less!—seemed calculated to goad the proud Florentine into action. Michelangelo insisted that he never sought the commission, which would have been a clear violation of the agreement he had just signed with Julius’s heirs, but agreed only reluctantly to participate at the insistence of the pope. According to Vasari and Condivi, both of whom repeated what Michelangelo told them, he had to be dragged “weeping” to the project. “Michael Angelo,” wrote Condivi, “made all the resistance that he could, saying that he was bound to Cardinal Santi Quattro and to Aginensis, and could not fail them. But the Pope, who was determined in this matter, replied: ‘Leave me to deal with them.’ So he sent for both of them and made them release Michael Angelo, much to the sorrow of both himself and the Cardinals. . . .”

  Michelangelo implied much the same thing in a letter of 1520 when, venting his frustrations after the project had been canceled, he laid responsibility squarely at the feet of the pope: “When, in fifteen hundred and sixteen, I was in Carrara pursuing my own affairs, that is procuring marble to transport to Rome for the Tomb of Pope Julius, Pope Leo sent for me regarding the façade of San Lorenzo that he wished to build in Florence. . . . I left Carrara and proceeded to Rome, where I executed a design for the said work. . . .”

  The evidence, however, paints a somewhat less flattering picture. Though no single document proves Michelangelo sought the commission for the façade, it appears that he was at the very least a willing coconspirator.IX For one thing, Michelangelo’s passion for Julius’s tomb seems to have cooled. In August 1516—that is, only one month after signing the new contract—his friend Sellaio wrote him a letter urging him to redouble his efforts “in order to give lie to those who say you have gone off and will never bring it to conclusion.” The explanation for Michelangelo’s apathy is simple: while the reduced version of the tomb no doubt relieved some of the stress, it also sapped his enthusiasm. He ’d reneged on his commitments in Florence to take on a project that would be a “mirror to all Italy,” but in its newly reconfigured form the tomb would be only a shadow of his dreams.

  On October 7, 1516, Pope Leo announced that the commission had been awarded jointly to Michelangelo and Baccio d’Agnolo, an architect with years of experience as capomaestro in charge of work on the Duomo and the Palazzo della Signoria. This arrangement apparently did not satisfy Michelangelo, since on November 3 Domenico Buoninsegni—the papal treasurer—wrote a letter to reassure Michelangelo that he would have to carve only the principal figures, the rest being executed by others based on his models. But Buoninsegni seems to have misunderstood the cause of Michelangelo’s anger. He was not upset, as the treasurer seemed to think, bec
ause the proposal placed excessive demands on him, but because he was expected to collaborate with someone he regarded with contempt. Given Michelangelo’s inexperience as a builder, having a seasoned architect on hand seemed a reasonable precaution, but what seemed sensible to his patron appeared to the artist to demonstrate how little faith they placed in his abilities. Michelangelo evidently threatened to quit the project over the issue, since on November 21 Domenico Buoninsegni wrote in exasperation: “Now, from your last letter, I see that you’ve changed your mind, saying that you no longer wish to come [to Rome]. And considering what you have said before, I see so many alterations that if I don’t go crazy it will be a wonder. . . . I am determined now not to involve myself in these matters, since I don’t know what I have to gain except shame and criticism.”

  It was precisely because he dreaded this kind of confrontation that Pope Leo had taken so long to hire Michelangelo in the first place. Fortunately, the nearly two hundred miles between Rome and Florence provided a useful buffer. Leo further insulated himself by leaving the detailed management of the project in the hands of both his treasurer, Buoninsegni, and his cousin, Cardinal Giulio de ’ Medici.

  Cardinal Giulio, the illegitimate son of Il Magnifico’s brother, had been raised in the Medici palace after his father was killed in the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, and so, like the pope himself, had known Michelangelo from the days of his youth. An intelligent, cultivated man, he was more tactful than his cousin, understanding that a kind word or a small courtesy could go a long way toward soothing the artist’s easily bruised ego. “The cardinal doesn’t put faith in anyone or believe anyone who speaks ill of you,” Sellaio reassured him, “even if there are a number of them, and great men, and he makes jokes of them. But it is necessary that you make liars of them. . . . And comfort yourself and be cheerful, to complete this work and serve such a man who wishes you well as a brother.” Michelangelo, for his part, appreciated his kindness, declaring “I’m always ready to risk life and limb, if need be, for the Cardinal de ’ Medici.”