Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  I realize that I could no sooner forget your name than the food on which I live; indeed, I could more easily forget food, which unhappily nourishes only the body, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling each with such sweetness that I experience neither melancholy nor fear of death, as long as you are in my mind.

  Generations of biographers—beginning with Condivi himself—have turned a blind eye to Michelangelo’s obvious infatuation, denying that his letters conveyed anything more than an abstract, philosophical passion.I In the Renaissance, friendship between men was often couched in terms that strike modern readers as excessive. This was a world where women were largely confined to the home, the convent, or the whorehouse, and it is not surprising that men’s emotional as well as intellectual life tended to revolve around members of their own sex. Attachments could be intense without being erotic, and it was not regarded as improper to express affection in the most effusive terms. Neoplatonic philosophy, fashionable in the circles in which Michelangelo traveled, also encouraged confessions of love, since love was viewed as the universal force uniting all to all and whose most profound manifestation was the soul’s desire to reunite with God. “Thus, loving loyally,” Michelangelo concludes one sonnet, “I rise to God, and make death sweet by thee.”

  But it’s clear that Michelangelo’s feelings for Cavalieri went beyond mere friendship, that he was smitten by the handsome nobleman. The letter quoted above exists in three drafts, a clear indication that he struggled to find exactly the right words with which to convey the contents of an overflowing heart. When writing to his colleague Sebastiano del Piombo, he had thoughts only for the handsome nobleman, begging the painter to “commend me to him innumerable times, and when you write to me tell me something of him so that I can keep him always before me, since if he were to fade from my memory I think I would quickly die.”

  The conventions of the day permitted Michelangelo to give his true feelings a respectable gloss. Erotic passion could be passed off as something innocent or idealistic, a strategy so effective that it deceived generations of admirers who refused to accept that their hero was sexually attracted to men. Michelangelo himself took refuge in the fiction that his feelings for Cavalieri were above reproach, chiding the gossips who mistook his blameless admiration for lust:

  In your handsome face I see, my lord,

  that of which in this life I cannot clearly speak.

  The soul, still cloaked in flesh,

  is lifted heavenward towards God.

  And if the foolish, vulgar crowd

  tars others with the sins they themselves commit,

  it matters not. I cherish

  a love, a faith, a desire, pure and true.

  Whatever the “foolish, vulgar crowd” might say, he insisted that he was attracted only to the purity of Cavalieri’s soul. Conveniently enough, that purity manifested itself in a handsome face, since physical beauty was regarded as an outward sign of inner grace, the first step in an ascent from matter to spirit that led ultimately to God, as in this madrigal from the 1530s:

  My eyes are drawn to every lovely thing,

  my soul to its salvation

  rising heavenward,

  with no destination but beauty in its flight.

  From stars on high

  rains down a splendid light,

  infusing us with desire

  that on earth goes by the name of love.

  No better guide the ardent heart

  that loves and longs, than a comely face

  in whose eyes we see reflected heaven’s grace.

  Michelangelo’s protestations were as much an attempt to deceive himself as to deceive others. As a good Christian, he knew lust was sinful (particularly outside the bounds of holy matrimony); as a good Platonist, carnal desire was hardly any better, representing an unforgivable descent into the world of gross matter. But however hard he tried to convince himself he was motivated only by the purest thoughts, he was tormented by the knowledge that he fell short of this chilly ideal. Alongside poems trumpeting the glories of his newfound love are others seething with the anxiety of a troubled conscience. “Wild desire is not love—it kills the soul,” he wrote, as if from personal experience. Simultaneously lifted up and cast down by his illicit passion, he despaired of his own salvation.

  Cavalieri was flattered by the great man’s attentions, but he doesn’t seem to have fully reciprocated Michelangelo’s feelings. He was fond of the artist and awed by his genius, but his letters are reverent rather than romantic. “I do not deem myself worthy that a man of your eminence should deign to write to me,” he replied to Michelangelo’s confession of love. “I think, nay rather, I am certain that the cause of the affection you bear me is this—that being a man supreme in art yourself—or rather the epitome of art itself—you are constrained to love those who are the followers and lovers of art, among whom, according to my capacity, I yield to few. I promise you truly that the love I bear you in exchange is equal or perhaps greater than I ever bore any man, neither have I ever desired any friendship more than I do yours. And if not in other things, at least in this I possess excellent judgment. . . .” Rather than respond to the artist’s erotic overtures, Cavalieri deliberately misconstrues the nature of his feelings in order to place them on a more cerebral plane.

  Michelangelo, for his part, seems to have accepted the terms of their relationship as Cavalieri defined them, though he remained jealous and obsessed, pestering mutual friends until they reassured him of Cavalieri’s continued devotion. “[A]s far as I can see he has no less affection for you than you have for him,” his agent in Rome, Bartolommeo Angiolini, responded to one such query. On another occasion Angiolini insisted: “Your Messer Tommaso is very grateful in the recognition that he has been so favored by God as to have acquired such a friendship with a man as endowed as you are. . . .”

  What brought them together in the first place was Cavalieri’s interest in art. Like many a young gentleman, Cavalieri hoped to round out his education by learning to draw, a skill that, as Castiglione observed in The Courtier, “may appear mechanical and hardly suitable to a gentleman” but is, in fact, “a worthy and beneficial art.” The depth of Michelangelo’s infatuation can be gauged by the fact that when he sent Cavalieri a number of elaborate and finely wrought works on paper, his normal self-confidence deserted him. “[I] should confess myself disgraced before heaven and earth,” he wrote, “if from your letter I had not seen and believed that your lordship would willingly accept some of my drawings. . . . And if you really esteem my works in your heart as you profess to do in your letter, I shall count that work much more fortunate than excellent, should I happen, as I desire, to execute one that might please you.”

  The drawings Michelangelo created for Cavalieri, like the poems he wrote during these years, conceal an erotic flirtation beneath a high-minded Platonic discourse. They include The Rape of Ganymede, The Punishment of Tityus, and a strange work known as the Bacchanal of Children. The story of Ganymede, a beautiful youth abducted by Jupiter in the form of an eagle, has obvious homoerotic overtones, but the myth was also given a more cerebral interpretation by philosophers who reimagined the gods’ misdeeds as intellectual allegories. According to Cristoforo Landino, a leading Florentine Neoplatonist, Jupiter’s lust was (like Michelangelo’s) not carnal but intellectual: “Ganymede, then, would signify the mens humana, beloved by Jupiter, that is: the Supreme Being. His companions would stand for the other faculties of the soul . . . the vegetal and sensorial.” Likewise, the story of Tityus, whose liver was gnawed by a giant vulture to punish an attempted rape, was generally viewed as a cautionary tale about the dangers of succumbing to carnal desire. More peculiar is the red-chalk drawing known as the Bacchanal of Children, an orgiastic scene of mischievous putti that may also serve as an allegory of the flesh unconstrained by reason.

  Executed in black or red chalk on paper, the pieces Michelangelo made for Cavalieri are “presentation” drawings, not studies or
sketches for other works but highly finished works of art in their own right.II That even ephemeral works from great masters like Raphael or Michelangelo were now avidly sought by collectors is one more sign of the growing cult of the artist. In fact, the greater intimacy of the drawing meant that in some ways it was more highly prized than the grand public work, since it was closer to the source of inspiration and bore the traces of the master’s hand. Such was the market for authentic creations that even preparatory sketches—once discarded after they had served their purpose—were now coveted by connoisseurs.

  Ironically, the same impulse that made a fetish of anything touched by the master’s hand also encouraged the proliferation of reproductions that were far removed from the original. Printmakers like Marcantonio Raimondi could now earn a comfortable living making engravings of works by stars like Raphael and Michelangelo. The wide dissemination of these reproductions meant that artists who might otherwise have no opportunity to study the originals could fall under the spell of the great masters. Even biographers were aided by the new technology. Instead of providing a detailed description of The Last Judgment, for instance, Condivi contents himself with the remark: “The composition is careful and well thought out, but lengthy to describe: perhaps it is unnecessary, as so many engravings and such a variety of drawings of it have been dispersed everywhere.” Like the mass media in modern times, engravings by Raimondi and a host of lesser practitioners promoted a cult of celebrity through endless repetition.

  • • •

  Michelangelo’s residence in Rome was made tolerable by the happy prospect of being near Cavalieri, but in most other ways the move seemed inauspicious. Rome had still not recovered from the horrific sack seven years earlier; much of the city lay in ruins, its artistic riches plundered and the survivors still reeling from the months of rape and murder inflicted by imperial forces. The scars from that annus horribilis were both physical and emotional. They were visible to even the casual visitor in gutted churches and desolate neighborhoods, but also more subtly inscribed on the traumatized faces of the survivors, where a gloomy fatalism had replaced the rambunctious swagger of old. For Michelangelo, the city held its own ghosts. As he was preparing to return, Bartolommeo Angiolini informed him that his house on the Macel de ’ Corvi, though it had survived intact, was down to bare walls, the garden rank and overgrown. Hoping to make the prospect seem less gloomy, Angiolini promised to buy some new furniture, adding that “the hens and master cock are in fine feather, and the cats complain greatly over your absence.”

  Most of all, the uncompleted tomb of Pope Julius continued to haunt him, as the della Rovere pressured him to abide by the terms of the latest contract. “I desire to be rid of this obligation more than to live,” Michelangelo cried out in despair.

  Adding to his uncertainty, it appeared that the new commission Clement had promised him was little more than the fevered dream of a dying man. By the time Michelangelo arrived in Rome on September 23, 1534, the pope was at death’s door, prematurely aged by the disasters of his reign. The people of Rome blamed his vacillating and ineffectual policies for the catastrophe, and his constant double-dealing meant that he was trusted by neither the emperor nor the king of France. Within forty-eight hours of Michelangelo’s arrival, Pope Clement was dead, depriving the artist of his most powerful sponsor and exposing him to retribution from the della Rovere heirs.

  Once again, however, Michelangelo was fortunate in the selection of the new pope. As it turned out, Clement’s successor was another friend of his youth—Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, scion of a powerful Roman family who had spent his formative years as a guest at the Palazzo Medici. There, under Il Magnifico’s patronage, he had enjoyed the company of the leading philosophers and poets of the day, along with that of a young Florentine sculptor notable for his brooding intensity and rough manners.

  Titian, Pope Paul III, c. 1545. Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY

  Paul III, as Alessandro Farnese was now known, had most of the faults and some of the virtues of the typical Renaissance pope. He owed his rapid ascent less to personal merit than to the fact that his sister, the beautiful Giulia, was the favored mistress of Pope Alexander VI, and during his decades as a prince of the Church, Alessandro seemed determined to live up to the low standards set by his patron. Like the Borgia pope, he openly acknowledged his many children, appointing his sons to the College of Cardinals and generally treating the Church as an instrument for promoting the fortunes of the Farnese family. On the plus side, he was an intelligent and cultured man who believed that part of his responsibility as pope was to promote the fortunes of the ancient capital.

  Like Clement—but unlike their fellow housemate in the Palazzo Medici, Giovanni (Pope Leo)—Paul’s appreciation for Michelangelo’s genius was more than enough to overcome any qualms the pope might have about dealing with the artist’s prickly personality. In fact, the problem was not that the new pope failed to appreciate Michelangelo sufficiently, but that he was so eager to monopolize his services that the artist was unable to meet his other obligations. “In the year 1533 [sic] came the death of Pope Clement,” Vasari recounts,

  whereupon the work of the library and sacristy in Florence, which had remained unfinished in spite of all the efforts made to finish it, was stopped. Then, at length, Michelangelo thought to be truly free and able to give his attention to finishing the tomb of Julius II. But Paul III, not long after his election, had him summoned to his presence, and, besides paying him compliments and making him offers, requested him to enter his service and remain near his person. Michelangelo refused, saying that he was not able to do it, being bound by contract to the Duke of Urbino until the tomb of Julius should be finished. The Pope flew into a rage and said: “I have had this desire for thirty years, and now that I am Pope do you think I shall not satisfy it? I shall tear up the contract, for I am determined to have you serve me, come what may.”

  According to Vasari, Michelangelo was so upset by the pope ’s reaction that he fled Rome in order to continue working on the tomb in peace. But that seems to be another invention of Michelangelo, who always blamed other people for his failure to deliver on his promises. The truth is, he had made too many compromises and suffered too many indignities for the project to hold his interest any longer. Julius’s heirs had not only harassed him mercilessly, but had accused him of taking their ducats under false pretenses and lending out his income at interest. “[T]hose who have robbed me of my youth, my honor, and my possessions, call me a thief!” he raged. And, in truth, the charges were unfair. In his own mind, and in his own way, Michelangelo was entirely scrupulous: “Painting and sculpture, hard work and fair dealing have been my ruin and things go continually from bad to worse. It would have been better had I been put to making matches in my youth, than to be in such a fret!”

  The charge that he was a swindler hurt him deeply and made him ever more determined to get out from under the burden. By informing Paul that he would have to put his dreams on hold until the demands of the della Rovere had been met, Michelangelo provoked the pope into taking dramatic action. On September 1, 1535, Paul III issued a motu proprio (personal decree) naming Michelangelo “supreme architect, sculptor and painter of our Apostolic Palace . . . and a member of our household with each and all the favors, prerogatives, honors, duties and preferences that are enjoyed and can be or are accustomed to be enjoyed by all our familiars.”

  Although the final (much reduced) contract for Julius’s tomb wasn’t signed until almost a decade later, Paul’s intervention temporarily relieved the pressure from a project that, he claimed, had consumed the whole of his youth.III In return for his services, the pope agreed to pay Michelangelo an annual salary of 1,200 scudi,IV a sum more than adequate to ward off any financial worries that might distract the artist from the great plans the pope had in store for him.

  As long as Michelangelo served him and no one else, Paul was an indulgent master, forgiving his eccentricities
and allowing him a free hand in executing commissions as he thought best. Michelangelo, in turn, showed his appreciation by token gifts of pears and Trebbiano wine. The warmth and informality of their relationship is recorded by Francisco de Holanda, a young painter who had been sent to Rome by the king of Portugal to improve his craft. “Sometimes,” Michelangelo told his young colleague, “I may tell you, my important duties have given me so much license that when, as I am talking to the Pope, I put this old felt hat nonchalantly on my head, and talk to him very frankly, but even for that he does not kill me; on the contrary, he has given me a livelihood.”

  Though Pope Paul was an indulgent master, Michelangelo resented anyone hovering over him while he worked. “[E]ven his Holiness annoys and wearies me,” he confessed to Holanda, “when at times he talks to me and asks me somewhat roughly why do I not come to see him, for I believe that I serve him better in not going when he asks me, little needing me, when I wish to work for him in my house; and I tell him that, as Michel Angelo, I serve him more thus than by standing before him all day, as others do.”

  Paul insisted on his prerogatives in important matters, but he was shrewd enough to know how far a small act of kindness could go in setting Michelangelo’s suspicious mind at ease. Shortly after his accession, he made a pilgrimage to the artist’s house on the Macel de ’ Corvi, accompanied by an entourage of ten cardinals. In a city where the coin of papal favor was a currency more valuable than gold, such a public display of favor went a long way toward restoring the credit he ’d lost over Julius’s tomb.