Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  Even with such a tactful master, however, Michelangelo bridled at any hint of interference. “If Your Holiness wishes me to accomplish anything,” he pleaded with the new pope in January 1524, “I beg you not to have authorities set over me in my own trade, but to have faith in me and give me a free hand. Your Holiness will see what I shall accomplish and the account I shall give of myself.” For the most part, Clement gave Michelangelo the room he needed, trusting sufficiently in his genius to take a hands-off approach. The artist, responding favorably to his gentle guidance, kept his master apprised of his intentions. Between Michelangelo and Clement there were none of those titanic clashes of will that marked even his most fruitful collaborations with Julius, or the chilly reserve that characterized his relations with Pope Leo.

  We can follow the evolution of this collaboration in a series of letters exchanged between Michelangelo, the (then) cardinal, and Giulio’s agent, Domenico Buoninsegni, during the planning stage of the Medici tombs. Perhaps surprisingly, even the most basic issues—such as how many tombs the chapel was to contain and who, exactly, was expected to occupy the various sarcophagi—were not determined in advance, but worked out in letters between Giulio in Rome and the artist in Florence. A number of sketches by Michelangelo survive showing him trying out various formulations that he then ran by his patron. Giulio’s responses indicate a sensitive and well-informed critic, probing for the weak points in the design while ultimately deferring to the artist’s judgment.

  From the beginning Michelangelo conceived of the architecture and sculpture as elements of an integrated system. His figures are not simply framed by the structural elements in the traditional manner. Instead, the two together form the bones and sinews of a living organism, responding to the same stresses, animated by a single will. Michelangelo, in effect, has turned his initial conception of a freestanding tomb inside out, so that the sculptural plasticity of the centralized monument is now transferred to the four walls of the chapel. In the process, the normally planar forms of the built environment have taken on the expressive physicality of Michelangelo’s sculpture, characterized by cavities and tumescences, stresses and fractures.

  For all its stunning originality, the Sacristy as it exists today feels oddly unbalanced. The most glaring absence is the missing double tomb Michelangelo planned for the wall opposite the altar. Instead of the elaborate figure-draped sarcophagi, surmounted by effigies of the deceased—these, in turn, to be integrated into an ornate architectural environment of niches and tabernacles—we are left with three isolated sculptures plunked down on a plain rectangular box against a bare wall. The three statues depict the two Medici patron saints, Cosmas and Damian—these executed by Fra Giovanni Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo, each working from drawings by the master—and an unfinished Madonna and Child, largely by Michelangelo’s own hand. The two saints are workmanlike but uninspired, while the Virgin and Child seem forlorn in their barren surroundings.

  No doubt the unsettling effect would have decreased had these figures been integrated into the tomb as intended, but the sense of emotional isolation, even alienation, seems to inhere in the figure of the Virgin herself. Indeed, from his very first treatment of this subject in the Virgin of the Stairs, Michelangelo’s Madonnas are characterized by emotional distance. The version in the Medici tombs, in which the infant twists his body to reach for his mother’s breast, shows Michelangelo’s usual mastery of anatomical form, but the mother’s estrangement from her child is particularly disturbing, as if her sorrow at his eventual death prevents her from responding to or even acknowledging the squirming infant in her lap.

  The negative impact of this insufficient figure is exaggerated, since she is intended to be the focal point of the chapel. All eyes (or at least those of the two commanding figures of the captains, as well as the paired saints to either side) turn to her. This makes sense since the Chapel is dedicated to the Virgin, invoked during Mass on behalf of the dead, but all this attention gives the whole chapel a weirdly off-kilter feel. Like one of those broken pediments Michelangelo employs to such expressive effect in both the tabernacles and on the sarcophagi, the Medici tomb projects weakness where we expect the greatest strength. We come to the Mother of God seeking solace but leave empty-handed.

  Perhaps it is only an accident of history, but this emotional void at the heart of the chapel seems strangely apt. A monument to the dead, the New Sacristy is an extended essay in absence. Blank doors, empty niches and tabernacles, blind windows all abound as if we are Alice in Wonderland stranded in an unfamiliar place, not knowing how we got here and having no obvious means of egress. That which is not present overwhelms that which is. It is a room as mysterious and unknowable as death itself.

  This same deracinated mood prevails when we turn to the tombs of the two dukes. Though far more faithful to Michelangelo’s conception than the double tomb of the Magnifici, these, too, are only partially realized. In each, the deceased is represented as a figure seated within a rectangular niche, dressed in armor to signal his earthly role as a commander of the papal armies. The armor deliberately evokes the pompous militarism of imperial Rome, though, characteristically, Michelangelo offers his own eccentric variations on the ancient model. The empty niches on either side were originally meant to contain nude allegorical figures, though, as with the ignudi on the Sistine Ceiling, their exact symbolic function is unknown.

  It is often said that Michelangelo conceived of his sculptures as confined within the block.XXII Unlike statues made by his successors—younger contemporaries like Giambologna and Cellini, and the great Baroque sculptor Bernini—his figures don’t appear to reach into the space around them, but instead to reinforce the cubic integrity of the column from which they emerged. Much of their dynamic tension comes from the feeling of critical mass, of roiling energies building up under extreme pressure. Each seems to struggle against limits; none is truly freed from the constricting matrix out of which it was born.

  In the Medici Chapel, however, Michelangelo goes further than any artist before him in integrating the figure into the surrounding space. Viewed in isolation, each sculpture is self-contained. But, crucially, none of these figures can be understood without reference to the other residents of the shrine; each responds to his neighbors, either as synchronous or opposing elements in a linked pair. Both Giuliano and Lorenzo gaze at the Madonna on the far wall, while she averts her eyes, apparently troubled by the role she will be asked to play in the divine mystery of her son’s sacrifice.

  The two captains themselves form a complementary pair, representing alternate paths to approaching the sacred. Giuliano responds with a kind of quickening, a divinely inspired arousal. He seems to have just awakened from a dream. He turns toward the Virgin and Child like David (to whom he bears more than a passing resemblance) responding to the giant’s ominous tread. His heavy arms suggest a recent slumber, but his face is alert, atremble with the immanence of the divine.

  While Giuliano is outwardly directed, his nephew turns in on himself, brooding on the sacred tableau before him. He is slumped in his chair, his face lost in shadow beneath the projecting brim of his helmet. While Giuliano is stirred from his trance by the vision of the Virgin and her child, the more introspective Lorenzo meditates on the nature of his own soul.XXIII In his left hand Giuliano holds two coins as if making an offering, his generosity a reproach to Lorenzo, who hoards his gold in the money box he keeps on his knee.

  On the lids of the sarcophagi, Michelangelo has replaced the traditional effigy of the deceased with pairs of allegorical figures that, collectively, embody the ceaseless flow of time: on the tomb of Giuliano, Michelangelo has carved both Night and Day; on the tomb of Lorenzo, Dawn and Dusk. Like the complementary figures of the two captains, these figures are conceived as contrasting pairs. Duality is raised to the status of a universal principle: male cleaves to female; light is separated from dark; life is inevitably followed by death.

  The organizing principle of paired oppo
sites extends to the poses themselves. As Night (female) twists one way, her companion Day (male) twists the other, like separated strands of DNA that together contain the essence of life. The poses of Dawn and Dusk more closely mirror each other, but the subtle departures from symmetry—Dawn’s far arm is bent, while Dusk’s is held straight; her left foot is tucked behind her knee, while his is locked painfully in front; her limbs are heavy with sleep, while his are tightly clenched; she possesses the sinuous grace of youth, while he exhibits the ravages of hoary age—offer a set of themes and variations carried out on progressively smaller scales.

  A straightforward explanation of Michelangelo’s allegorical scheme is provided by Condivi, who sums it up as “Time, that consumes all things.” Exploring an idea he first touched on in the Sistine Ceiling, Michelangelo treats time as an oscillation of opposites, beginning “In the Beginning” when God set history in motion by dividing the light from the dark. Or, as he puts it in a sonnet from the 1530s:

  He who made me, and out of nothing,

  time not existing until someone ’s there,

  dividing one into two, the sun on high,

  the moon far closer.

  As we are born into time, so will time destroy us. Mortality is the price we pay for participating in Creation, the progression of our lives measured by the circling of the heavenly bodies.

  Michelangelo provided a rare commentary on his own work in a poem he wrote at the same time he was carving his statues:

  Day and Night speak, and here is what they say—We have

  with our quick steps guided to his death Duke Giuliano,

  and it is only right that he should wreak vengeance on us.

  His vengeance is this: that having died himself, in death

  he has taken the light with him, and with his closed eyes, no longer shining

  here on earth, he has shut ours.

  Had he lived, what would he have made of us?

  Here, following Condivi’s formulation, we have the image of time as the thief, the devourer, a traditional theme for a funerary monument. Day gives way to night, light to dark in steady alternation, a ravening heartbeat, that parcels out our dwindling years.

  But this is not the final word. “Cease in a moment both time and hours,” Michelangelo wrote in a sonnet of 1533, “both day and sun in its ancient path. . . .” Death conquers Time; Life will ultimately triumph over Death. Christ’s sacrifice stops the wheel’s rotation, ensuring that our souls outlast our corruptible bodies and we enter the realm of eternity. The artist too performs a kind of sacrament, conferring immortality on those he depicts, long after flesh has turned to dust. He becomes an adept of spiritual mysteries, mediator between this world and the next.

  Like an Egyptian priest preparing the pharaoh’s body to sail forever in the barque of the Sun, Michelangelo, in preparing Lorenzo and Giuliano for eternity, has been forced to discard much gross matter along the way. Much that was peculiar to them in life, all that is corruptible, particular, distinctive—all that does not conform to the ideal—is tossed aside in favor of abstract universals. This process was noted by contemporaries who were acquainted with the two dukes and complained that the statues bore no resemblance to their earthly counterparts. Responding to the criticism, Michelangelo explained that he “did not model either Duke Lorenzo or Lord Giuliano as nature had made them, but gave to them a grandeur, proportion, a decorum, grace, and splendor that seemed to him would elicit greater praise, saying that a thousand years hence no one would know that they appeared different, so that people would gaze upon their images in admiration and be awestruck.”

  But who were future generations supposed to shower with praise? The two captains, admittedly mediocre men who had accomplished little in their brief lives, or the artist who gave them such a spectacular send-off? It is characteristic that even as he carved the figures, Michelangelo was already thinking in terms of millennia—that is, of his own immortality rather than that of the two Medici dukes, who were destined to be forgotten shortly after they were interred. Indeed, the New Sacristy is a deeply autobiographical work, the first of his masterpieces that truly seems to embody his own melancholy spirit. The darkness that was always present now comes to the surface, drawn forth by the nature of the commission and by the troubled times through which he was living.XXIV

  Indeed, the years during which he worked on the Medici tombs were marked by political turmoil and personal disappointment. For all his fame, he was oppressed by a sense of failure as he saw his various endeavors fall short of his dreams. A perfectionist, he was rarely pleased with what had been accomplished, dwelling instead on what might have been. His constant carping alienated even those who shared his goals. Battista Figiovanni, Prior of San Lorenzo, described him with more than a hint of sarcasm as “the unique Michelangelo Simoni with whom Job would have lost patience after a day.”

  For Michelangelo the constant quarreling took its toll. “[N]o one has ever had dealings with me, I mean workmen, for whom I have not wholeheartedly done my best,” Michelangelo told his friend Piero Gondi in 1524. “Yet because they say they find me in some way strange and obsessed, which harms no one but myself, they presume to speak ill of me and to abuse me; which is the reward of all honest men.”

  Not only did he feel ill used by his colleagues, but betrayed by his own body, which was no longer capable of withstanding the demands he made on it. He frequently complained of being old and tired, but he rarely wallowed in paralyzing despondency, at least not for long. Like many with a melancholy disposition, Michelangelo embraced his condition, using it to fuel his creativity:

  The night was mine, the dark time; fate had sworn

  from my look at birth, in cradle, that’s my due.

  And like the one who’ll plagiarize his nature,

  soul growing glummer with night’s darkening gloom,

  I grieve for my dismal days, so little worth.

  If life is torment, then death offers release. “O night, though black, the sweetest time,” he writes in a sonnet of the 1530s,

  to peace converting all our toil . . .

  O shadow of death, that closeth

  every anguish of the soul, all pain of heart,

  for every ill a blessed remedy.

  As his own outlook on life grew increasingly glum, death seemed to offer release. In the shrine to the Medici dead, Michelangelo offers his fellow travelers on this dismal journey a final consolation: Time, devourer of our mortal flesh, source of corruption, can win only a temporary victory; sloughing off “this mortal coil,” our souls will rise, pure and free, wrapped in the chill embrace of eternity.

  V. SACK AND SIEGE

  Michelangelo was not the only one to greet the election of Pope Clement with a sigh of relief. Giulio de ’ Medici was a capable man, less self-indulgent than his cousin, and more attuned to the sensibilities of the Italian people than his dour predecessor. Taking the reins of the Florentine Republic after the death of Lorenzo in 1520, he had demonstrated far greater tact than his arrogant nephew. “[H]e abstained from pleasures and was assiduous in his duties,” wrote Guicciardini, “so that there was no one who did not expect from him the greatest and most extraordinary achievements.” But the optimism that accompanied his elevation quickly dissipated. The diplomatic skills that won him the respect of his compatriots failed him on the larger stage of European geopolitics. Caught between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Francis of France, Clement behaved erratically, throwing himself into the arms of one suitor or the other with a promiscuity that earned him the contempt of both. Treaties were signed one day only to be torn up the next; diplomacy was reduced to duplicity. One observer summed up Clement’s tenure this way: “A papacy made up of greetings, considerations and speeches, of more, of then, of but, of yes, of perhaps, of yet, of many words without meaning.”

  Though Michelangelo was too wrapped up in his own concerns to dwell on the deteriorating political situation, the storm brewing was so massive that he was inev
itably caught up in its fury. In October 1525, Michelangelo indicated that “the four figures are not yet finished, and there ’s still much to do,” adding that “the four RiversXXV are not yet started because there are no marbles. . . .” Eight months later he was able to report substantial progress: “I’m working as hard as I can, and within fifteen days I’ll begin the other captain [Giuliano]; then, the only important things left will be the four rivers.” But by December of 1526, work on the chapel and the adjacent library had stalled. “[T]he times are unfavorable to this art of mine,” he grumbled, and wondered aloud “whether I have any further expectation of my salary.”

  This disruption was part of a much larger crisis engulfing the papacy and, indeed, the whole of Europe. In March 1526 the emperor and the king of France signed the Treaty of Madrid, by the terms of which King Francis was released from captivity in return for an agreement that he would renounce his claims in Italy. Machiavelli, for one, saw this as a recipe for disaster. “There will be war in Italy, and soon,” the former Second Chancellor concluded gloomily, proving himself as able a prophet as he was a political philosopher.

  Clement, fishing in troubled waters, soon persuaded King Francis to renege on his commitments, pointing out they had been made under duress. Then, in concert with Florence, Milan, and Venice, the two men formed the League of Cognac for the purpose of driving the imperial forces from Italian soil. Unfortunately, this motley alliance proved no match for Charles’s army, which included among their number many German landsknechte, formidable fighters whose martial ardor was increased by the fact that many of them were followers of Martin Luther and filled with a visceral hatred for the man they regarded as the Antichrist in Rome.