Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  But for all its imperfections, the New Sacristy remains a compelling space, a unique blend of sculptural and architectural elements. Disquieting, deracinated, and deliquescent, it bears the scars and registers the dislocations of the difficult times in which it was created, chronicling both the death throes of the republic and the difficult birth of a new era. It is no coincidence that the two dukes laid to rest in Michelangelo’s splendid tombs are the very men to whom Machiavelli dedicated The Prince, the notorious “handbook of tyrants” that marks the beginning of the modern age. Like that revolutionary text, the New Sacristy is the product of an age of anxiety, one that not only marked the death of the medieval commune and the rise of nation-states proclaiming the divine right of kings, but that witnessed the most profound challenge to the moral authority of the Holy Church in its fifteen-hundred-year history. While Pope Leo was erecting monuments to his family’s magnificence, an Augustinian monk was inciting a rebellion against the authority of Rome that would soon tear the continent apart.

  • • •

  Disillusioned and increasingly isolated at home, Michelangelo now spent as much time in Rome as he did in Florence, struggling to bring the unhappy saga of Julius’s tomb to a close. Despite frequent attempts by the della Rovere to have him evicted, he had managed to hold on to his house in the Macel de ’ Corvi, which was tended in his absence by his loyal friend Sellaio and where work on the tomb continued even in his absence.

  One last bond would have to be severed before Michelangelo turned his back completely on his native land. He had relocated to Florence in 1517 in order to carry out the commission for the façade of San Lorenzo, but also to be near his father. For good or ill, their lives were profoundly entangled as each dedicated himself in his own way to upholding the honor of the Buonarroti name. In the summer of 1531, Lodovico died at the age of eighty-seven. Coming soon after the death of Buonarroto, his passing was yet another blow at a time when Michelangelo had little else in his life to look forward to. “Already burdened with a heavy heart,” he began a poem from this time,

  I still thought I’d relieve the weight of woe

  through tears and sobbing, or at least in part.

  But fate, abounding, filled to overflow

  grief’s source and stream, now welling unconfined

  with another death—no worse pain here below!

  That death your own, dear father. Now in mind

  two deaths, their claims distinct . . .

  fraternal, filial, separate though entwined.

  Oppressed by his losses, Michelangelo was growing increasingly disengaged from his projects at San Lorenzo, working only fitfully and delegating much of the execution to various assistants. In the end, even the pope appeared to lose, if not interest, at least focus. Clement had never been one to pursue a goal with single-minded purpose, and with numerous statues still only half completed and many others not even begun, his imagination was fired by a new project. In September 1533, while en route to Marseilles (where he was to bless the marriage of his great-niece Catherine to Henry, younger son of Francis of France), he invited Michelangelo to meet him in the village of San Miniato al Tedesco. There, Sebastiano del Piombo informed him, Clement would propose “something that [you] would never dream of.”

  Michelangelo was certainly tempted by the prospect of a grand new undertaking, one untainted by compromises and marred by painful memories, but his decision to leave Florence and move back to Rome was inspired as much by personal as by professional considerations. During a recent stay in the southern capital, the fifty-seven-year-old artist had met someone and fallen in love. Now the Eternal City seemed ripe with promise, while his native land appeared ever more drab. “I see that I am yours,” he wrote to the object of his affection, “. . . and drawn by the lure of your beauty I reach you, as a fish on the hook is pulled in by the line.”

  Increasingly alienated at home, Michelangelo felt the tug of a new life awaiting him in Rome. In September 1534, he informed a Florentine friend, “I am leaving tomorrow morning and going to Pescia and then to Rome. . . . I shall not return here any more.” Making his way toward the Porta San Piero Gattolino on a late-summer morning, Michelangelo gazed on the streets and squares of Florence for the last time. Throughout the remainder of his long life he would continue to call himself a Florentine, but the love he felt for this once-vibrant city had faded, replaced at least for the moment by a fiercer passion that quickened his pulse and made him look to the future with a mix of hope and dread.

  As he set out onto the road for Rome, Michelangelo bade farewell to his native land with few regrets. There was nothing to hold him there any longer; at journey’s end he thought he saw the faint light of a new dawn. Or, as he himself put it in a poem written to his new love:

  Heaven’s only where you are; else, total dark.

  * * *

  I. At the time Michelangelo accepted the commission to sculpt the David, the government’s most implacable enemy had been Lorenzo’s oldest son, Piero. His death in 1503 had left Giovanni head of the family. Though more cautious and certainly more intelligent than his older brother, the cardinal was equally committed to restoring the Medici to Florence.

  II. This was the citizen militia, created by Niccolò Machiavelli, that had paraded so proudly across the Piazza della Signoria in February 1505. (See chapter 3.) The militia was a key part of the Second Chancellor’s policy to make Florence less dependent on foreign mercenaries.

  III. Among the paintings for which Michelangelo supplied the basic designs were a Pietà for the Basilica of S. Francesco in Viterbo, a Flagellation for S. Pietro in Montorio in Rome, and a Raising of Lazarus painted for Cardinal Giulio de ’ Medici. This last altarpiece was made in direct competition with Raphael’s Transfiguration. Michelangelo, who at the time was in Florence, was kept abreast of the situation by his friend Sellaio: “[T]hree days ago I wrote you how Sebastiano has undertaken to paint that panel [of Lazarus]. . . . Now it seems to me that Raphael is turning the world upside down to see that he doesn’t do it, so as to avoid comparisons. Sebastiano remains suspicious of him . . . [but] he has the spirit that will do it in a way that he will remain in the field of combat.” (Goffen, 247.) In the end, while Sebastiano’s painting was considered very fine, Raphael’s was an undisputed masterpiece.

  IV. It is this second version that is now on display in the church, so named because it stood on the site of an ancient temple to the goddess Minerva. Though hailed by his contemporaries as a masterpiece, The Risen Christ is now probably the least appreciated of Michelangelo’s sculptures. To modern eyes it appears insipid, with none of the tension or grandeur normally associated with his work. Harried as always, Michelangelo permitted his assistant Pietro Urbano to finish the sculpture, but then he bungled it so badly that Michelangelo was forced to correct his work.

  V. These two works and the series of unfinished sculptures now in the Accademia in Florence are variously called slaves or captives, demonstrating their iconographic ambiguity. Whatever title one assigns to them, their bondage is clearly meant to be seen as a metaphysical condition.

  VI. Michelangelo originally intended the Moses to be paired with a statue of St. Paul. This plan, like so many others, was scrapped in favor of the current arrangement, in which he is flanked by statues of Rachel and Leah, symbols of faith and charity or, conversely, the contemplative and active life.

  VII. Signed in July 1516, the contract called for twenty-two sculptures instead of the forty originally envisioned. At the same time, Michelangelo was allowed nine years to complete the work, an acknowledgment that the original seven-year deadline had been unrealistic.

  VIII. The palle were the red balls on the Medici crest.

  IX. A letter from the papal treasurer dated October 1516 urges Michelangelo and his partner to set up a secret meeting with the pope to forestall the commission going to a rival. That rival, though unnamed, was almost certainly Raphael, whose cause was championed by Cardinal Bi
bbiena. (See Carteggio, I, 204–5, no. clxii.)

  X. Visitors to Florence today can still see the partially completed gallery running along the southern facet of the dome. Michelangelo proposed an alternate design, but it was never built.

  XI. It is unclear what role Michelangelo played in this ill-advised decision. The evidence suggests that he was initially opposed, but then accepted the situation—particularly after his relations with the stoneworkers of Carrara soured. He later said of the workers of Carrara that “as they had not fulfilled the contracts and previous orders for the marbles for the said work [on S. Lorenzo], and as the Carrerese were bent upon balking me, I went to have the said marbles quarried at Seravezza, a mountain near Pietra Santa in Florentine territory.” (Letters, I, no. 144, March 1520, 129–30.) In the end, after endless delays and disruption, Michelangelo was forced to return to Carrara, which ultimately supplied most of his raw material.

  XII. The quarrel was not resolved until October 1518, when Leo personally intervened, sending a papal brief to the marquis ordering him to cooperate with Michelangelo. Declaring his own innocence in the matter, Malaspina blamed everything on the artist, declaring “he always wants to fight with everyone and create difficulties.” (Quoted in Hirst, Michelangelo: The Achievement of Fame, 322, n. 105.)

  XIII. Michelangelo’s comments were occasioned by Buonarroto’s complaint that he’d had to advance some of his own money to pay the wages of a stoneworker named Michele. As Michelangelo pointed out, the money Buonarroto claimed was his originally came from his brother. (See Letters, I, no. 92, July 30, 1513, 87–88.) As for repaying the loan, Michelangelo had reason to be concerned. A year earlier, a friend had advised him against lending the money, expressing doubts about both his brothers’ business sense and about market conditions.

  XIV. The two had begun as friends. When Michelangelo left for Florence, Buoninsegni took the artist’s place as a member of a Florentine expatriate dining club to which he belonged, and when the artist purchased some fabric for his own use, he asked Buoninsegni to handle the transaction for him. Whatever caused the rift, it appears to have been bitter and permanent. A few years later the two were still at loggerheads. Giovan Francesco Fattucci, a chaplain of the Duomo and Michelangelo’s representative in Rome, wrote in 1525: “Domenico Buoninsegni and Bernardo Niccolini are the ones who are prolonging the work and delaying the marbles in order to provoke you.” (Letters, I, app. 14, p. 271.)

  XV. There was an eight-year-old boy, Alessandro, rumored to be Lorenzo’s illegitimate son. For a time there was talk of Giulio leaving the Church to start a family, but he was too important an advisor to his cousin to seriously consider this option. Lorenzo had a daughter, Catherine, who would go on to marry Henry II, king of France, thus merging the blood of Florentine bankers with Gallic royalty. The Medici who in the next generation would rule Florence as dukes were descended from Cosimo’s brother, the same branch of the family to which Michelangelo’s patron, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, belonged.

  XVI. Giuliano received the title Duke of Nemours from the French king after marrying Filiberta, daughter of the Duke of Savoy. Lorenzo was invested with the title Duke of Urbino by Pope Leo. Significantly, neither title gave them any claim to rule in Florence itself, which was still nominally a republic.

  XVII. The term Mannerism was coined only in the nineteenth century, though contemporaries—including Vasari—often used the term maniera to indicate an artist’s sense of style or manner. Significantly, sixteenth-century writers did acknowledge a period of decadence that set in following the great achievements of Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. The younger generation’s debt to Michelangelo was recognized, but many (including Vasari) deplored the lengths to which painters like Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, and Parmigianino carried tendencies already present in the late work of the master. The term Mannerism, now often dismissed as a doomed effort to slap a simplistic label on divergent artistic tendencies, sought to ascribe positive values to art once dismissed as strange or misguided. See, for example, Vasari’s criticism of Pontormo’s “bizarre and fantastic brain [that] was never content with anything.” (Lives, II, 359.)

  XVIII. In 1514, Pope Leo had given him a minor commission to design the façade of a small chapel in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, and around 1516, while he was working on the façade of San Lorenzo, he designed a small gallery on the interior. Around the same time, he received another minor commission for some ground-floor windows on the Palazzo Medici.

  XIX. In this departure from Brunelleschi, he may have been inspired by the Sacristy of the Church of Santo Spirito, designed in 1489 by his old friend Giuliano da Sangallo, which also includes a third story.

  XX. One of the doors actually serves as the entrance to the chapel, and two open onto small sacristies near the choir. The other five are merely decorative. While another artist faced with this arrangement would likely have made all the doors—real and false—appear usable, Michelangelo has treated them all as merely decorative.

  XXI. Michelangelo was less than thrilled with this market for his castoffs. While in Florence, he ordered Sellaio (much to the latter’s dismay) to burn all the cartoons for the Sistine Ceiling to prevent them from getting into the hands of collectors.

  XXII. An apocryphal story claims that Michelangelo defined a good sculpture as one that could be rolled down a hill without breaking. (See Panofsky, “The Neoplatonic Movement and Michelangelo,” Studies in Iconology, 172.)

  XXIII. This figure soon came to be known as Il Penseroso, the thoughtful one. Rodin’s Thinker is largely a reinterpretation of Michelangelo’s famous statue.

  XXIV. He develops this theme in a poetic exchange with Gian Battista Strozzi. Strozzi wrote:

  The Night you see so sweetly sunk in sleep

  was quarried by an angel from this stone:

  To say she sleeps is just to say she lives.

  Disturb her, if you don’t believe, and speak . . .

  To which Michelangelo had the figure reply:

  Sleep’s dear to me, but dearer my stone being

  while injury and shame go on and on.

  It is my luck neither to hear or see.

  And so do not disturb me. Oh, speak low. [Quoted in Hughes, p. 200.]

  Better to be dead, he seems to say, than to face the corruption of the world around him.

  XXV. The four figures were likely the four symbolic “times of day” for the lids of the sarcophagi. The meaning of the pagan river deities has never been fully sorted out, though it is likely that Michelangelo intended some kind of fusion of Christian and Neoplatonic ideas. They were likely meant to represent the four rivers of Hades mentioned by Dante in The Inferno—Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus—and intended as symbols of the soul’s journey through the afterlife. These rivers were also associated by the Neoplatonist Cristoforo Landino with “all those evils which spring from a single source: matter.” (Quoted in Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, p. 204.)

  XXVI. Ippolito, only sixteen at the time, was the illegitimate son of Giuliano, while Alessandro, a year older, was said to be the illegitimate son of Lorenzo. Some believed he was actually the illegitimate son of Pope Clement himself.

  XXVII. From the end of the thirteenth century, Hercules had been on the official seal of Florence, with the inscription “The club of Hercules subdues the depravity of Florence.” (de Tolnay, Medici Tombs, 98.)

  XXVIII. Buonarroto was the only brother to marry. He had four children by his wife, Bartolomea, including Francesca (1517–37), Lionardo (1519–99), Cassandra (dates unknown), and Simone (1521–30). Michelangelo’s extensive correspondence with Lionardo provides our best insights into the artist’s personal life during his final decades, including his obsessive interest in safeguarding the honor of the Buonarroti name.

  XXIX. According to an anonymous chronicle of the time, the Anonimo Magliabecchiano, Corsini bore a particular grudge against Michelangelo because one of the cadavers he had d
issected while he was working on the Battle of Cascina turned out to have been a relative of Corsini.

  XXX. One source of his anger was Michelangelo’s refusal to help design the fortress near the western walls of the city. This fortress, now called the Fortezza da Basso, was intended to ensure the permanent submission of the city to Medici rule.

  Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1536–41. © Ultreya / Takashi Okamura

  VI

  The End of Time

  [C]ertain persons had informed him that Pope Paul IV was minded to make him alter the façade of the chapel where the Last Judgment is, because, he said, those figures showed their nakedness too shamelessly. When, therefore, the mind of the Pope was made known to Michelangelo, he answered: “Tell the Pope that it is no great affair, and that it can be altered with ease. Let him put the world right, and every picture will be put right in a moment.”

  —Vasari, Lives

  I. BELOVED

  The object of Michelangelo’s newfound passion was a twenty-three-year-old Roman nobleman named Tommaso de ’ Cavalieri, a man of striking good looks, great charm, and impeccable manners. The two had met in the spring or summer of 1532, during one of the artist’s extended stays in Rome. Michelangelo’s attraction to the young man was immediate and intense, eliciting a torrent of breathless letters and poetry that more closely resembled a schoolboy crush than the mature reflections of a fifty-seven-year-old man. Forced to return to Florence to continue his work at San Lorenzo, Michelangelo was despondent: “[I]f I yearn day and night without intermission to be in Rome, it is only in order to return again to life, which I cannot enjoy without [my] soul.” Anguished by the miles that separated them, he poured out his heart to the man who seemed to him not only a vessel of beauty but a paragon of virtue: