Michelangelo

by Miles J. Unger

  The function of art, according to men like Cardinal Paleotti, was to speak plain truths to plain people, to instruct them in the basic tenets of their faith rather than confuse them with elaborate allegories. One like-minded critic complained that “if ten people contemplated [these paintings], they would make ten comments, and not one would correspond to the others.”

  The problem was not simply that artists like Michelangelo refused to take instruction. Like the heretics, they placed themselves outside the authority of the Holy Church, obeying only their own idiosyncratic muse. Such independence of thought was the hallmark of the Protestants, who similarly rejected any guide but their own individual conscience. At least one critic drew an explicit link between Michelangelo’s eccentric iconography and the errors of the northern schismatics. In 1549, when a copy of Michelangelo’s Pietà was installed in Florence, an appalled citizen complained: “In the same month they unveiled in Sto. Spirito a Pietà, which was sent by a Florentine to the said church, and they say that it derives from that inventor of obscenities, Michelangelo Buonarroto, who is concerned only with art, not with piety. All the modern painters and sculptors, pursuing Lutheran whims, now paint and carve nothing for our holy churches but figures that undermine faith and devotion.” It is unlikely that Luther and his iconoclast sympathizers would have discovered much to their liking in The Last Judgment, but in the eyes of conservative Catholics, Michelangelo’s deeply personal approach to religious iconography was dangerous, perhaps even heretical.

  V. THE BREECHES MAKER

  As long as Paul III lived, Michelangelo could withstand the worst abuse his critics could launch in his direction, secure in the knowledge that his powerful patron would protect him. Ignoring the uproar over The Last Judgment, Paul demonstrated his continued devotion by asking him to paint the walls of his private chapel. The Conversion of Saul (c. 1542–45) and The Crucifixion of St. Peter (c. 1546–50) are the last two paintings from the hand of the elderly master, but they show no diminution in technical skill or boldness of conception. As always, Michelangelo develops the narrative almost exclusively in terms of the human body, stripping away every extraneous element in order to focus attention on the decisive moment. In each, Michelangelo demonstrates his unique ability to render psychic states and spiritual truths simply by the motion of bodies in space.

  In The Conversion of Saul, Christ’s sudden appearance in the sky is explosive, scattering everyone in the vicinity as effectively as a bomb blast. “Suddenly, while he was traveling to Damascus and just before he reached the city,” reads the relevant passage in Acts, “there came a light from heaven all around him. He fell to the ground, and then he heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ . . . The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless, for though they heard the voice they could see no one. Saul got up from the ground, but even with his eyes wide open he could see nothing at all. . . .” For an artist, the image of a man struck blind by the searing light of truth is particularly compelling, and Michelangelo invests the scene with dramatic intensity, as if he identified with the holy man’s predicament. This self-identification is emphasized by the fact that Michelangelo has once again departed from the biblical text to depict the saint as an old man with a flattened nose and a forked gray beard, much like the one that he himself wore. The stricken holy man is another of those covert self-portraits he so commonly inserts into his work. Like the warrior Saul, transformed by his vision into the Apostle Paul, Michelangelo has left behind the world of mere appearance in order to grapple with those eternal truths not available to sense alone.

  Michelangelo, The Conversion of Saul, 1542–45. Scala/Art Resource, NY

  Normally The Conversion of Saul would be paired with the scene of St. Peter receiving the keys to the Church from Christ, and there is some indication that this was the scheme Michelangelo initially contemplated. But he ultimately decided against this traditional coupling, presenting instead the more violent Crucifixion of Peter. Not only does this make for a far more dramatic contrast, but it seems in keeping with the militant spirit of the age. At a time when the Church was under siege, the complacent figure who would normally be shown receiving the keys from Jesus seemed a far less effective standard-bearer than the combative martyr for his faith that Michelangelo conjures. In the process he solves brilliantly the major compositional difficulty of depicting this upside-down crucifixion, showing the soldiers straining to raise the cross while an agonized Peter twists his head around to fix us in his accusatory stare.

  Neither fresco generated anything like the controversy that greeted The Last Judgment. In part, this was because they were located in a much less prominent setting and were never as widely known. Engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi and a host of others disseminated images of The Last Judgment far and wide, while the Pauline frescoes were to be enjoyed only by the pope and his immediate staff, sophisticated men who would not easily be confused by Michelangelo’s eccentricities. Perhaps, too, the artist had learned his lesson. Though he still refused to be bound by the strictures of narrow-minded clerics, this time he made sure not to offend their delicate sensibilities. In marked contrast to The Last Judgment, all the figures in the Conversion of Saul and the Crucifixion of Peter are modestly clothed.

  Pope Paul himself did not live to see the completion of the final works he had commissioned from his favorite artist. He died on November 10, 1549, with the artist standing vigil at his bedside. For Michelangelo, the loss was both personal and professional. “In reply to your last letter,” he wrote to his nephew, “it is true that the death of the Pope has been a great sorrow to me and a loss no less, because I received many benefits from His Holiness and hoped to receive still more. But it has pleased God that it should be thus and we must be resigned. He died a beautiful death and was conscious to the last.”

  While the pope ’s death was a severe blow to Michelangelo, his compatriots greeted his passing with less than universal mourning. Upon ascending the throne fifteen years earlier, Paul had carried with him the hopes of the reformers. At first he lived up to expectations, steering ably between the French and imperial factions and demonstrating his commitment to reuniting the Christian flock. Under his aegis, the General Council that assembled in the imperial city of Trent in 1547 pushed for reconciliation with the schismatic Lutherans but, like much else in his reign, a promising beginning was squandered as the pope got bogged down in petty quarrels. Like many of his predecessors, Paul was a notorious nepotist bent on furthering the interests of his children and grandchildren at the expense of the Church. For his oldest son, Pier Luigi, he carved out the Duchy of Parma from papal lands, a move that alienated the Emperor Charles since the newly created duke maintained his hold on power with the aid of French troops. Following Pier Luigi’s assassination at the hands of imperial thugs, Paul took his revenge by removing the Council from the German-controlled city of Trent to Bologna in the Papal States, all but guaranteeing a permanent rift in Europe, since the Protestants were unwilling to attend any sessions held in the heart of the enemy camp.

  Despite these missteps, Paul’s generally tolerant attitude toward religious dissent might yet have paid dividends. He approved the founding of the Jesuits—soon to grow into the militant arm of the Counter-Reformation Church—and established the Roman Inquisition, but his reign was characterized by moderation. “In principle,” said Cardinal Girolamo Seripando, referring to the notorious institution, “this tribunal was moderate and merciful, true to the nature of Paul III . . . later, however . . . especially because of the hardness of Caraffa, this tribunal acquired a renown such that it was said nowhere on earth were so awful and horrible verdicts pronounced.”

  Michelangelo was among the beneficiaries of Paul’s easygoing attitude, as the pope rebuffed the critics of The Last Judgment by heaping more honors on his aged shoulders. Once Paul passed from the scene, however, the forces of reaction gained ground. Tolerance gave way to fanaticism, pleas for reconciliation to calls for holy
war. Though Michelangelo himself was never threatened with the torture that awaited those with less prestige, his work did not enjoy the same protections. Aretino was among those calling for the destruction of The Last Judgment, urging the pope to emulate Gregory the Great by “removing from Rome all the prideful statues of idols, rather than hinder the good in their devotion to the humble images of the saints.”

  The likelihood that Michelangelo’s masterpiece might be destroyed increased in 1555 with the accession of Cardinal Caraffa as Pope Paul IV. The most prominent of the hardliners and the man responsible for the Roman Inquisition’s brutal reputation, the new pope took a dim view of any work of art that did not set out official Church doctrine in clear terms that even the unlettered might understand. He was particularly offended by the monumental work on the altar wall of his own chapel that seemed to embody the lax, lascivious approach he deplored, saying, “it was not right that in St. Peter’s there should be such a wicked exhibition of nakedness and buffooneries.”

  Despite old age and ill health, Michelangelo reacted to this latest attempt to censor him with his usual pugnaciousness. “[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,” Vasari recalled, “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.’ ”

  Though Michelangelo refused to be cowed by the puritanical ideology now being pushed by the Vatican, he was unable to protect the integrity of his work from overzealous censors. In 1563, the hard-liners at the revived Council of Trent prevailed, setting out strict new rules for works of art and purging anything deemed to smack of pagan idolatry or obscenity. The following year they singled out the most notorious example, insisting that the most offensive parts of The Last Judgment be covered up. Fortunately, the man hired to do the job was a friend and ally of Michelangelo, Daniele da Volterra, who tried to minimize the damage he was charged with inflicting. Beginning in 1565, Daniele began adding loincloths and robes to many of the most prominent figures, a thankless task for which he was ridiculed with the nickname Il Braghetone (the Breeches Maker).

  By the time Daniele finally began his work, Michelangelo was one year in the grave and thus spared the indignity of watching his masterpiece bowdlerized and the disappointment of seeing the values for which he had fought so hard all his life in retreat. The idea that art was merely an instrument to promote the prevailing ideology had triumphed, if only temporarily, over the notion that art should serve only its own imperatives. Time and again throughout history we have watched as this battle is waged anew, as periods of liberality are followed by retrenchment, as those in power label those who fail to hew to the party line as subversives. We see it in our own age when totalitarian regimes draft writers and painters into the cause of the state, and in somewhat milder form when government officials seek to cut off funding for any work they label indecent. To all who value the independence of the artistic conscience, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment stands as a monument to freedom.

  • • •

  By the time of his confrontation with Pope Paul IV, Michelangelo had already put down his brushes for good. The Crucifixion of Peter, completed in 1550, was his final work in a medium he had never really embraced but in which he created some of his greatest masterpieces. “[H]e used to tell me,” Vasari said, “the[se paintings] cost him much fatigue, for the reason that painting, and particularly working in fresco, is no art for men who have passed a certain age.” His career as a painter had lasted more than sixty years, from the moment he first entered Ghirlandaio’s studio, grinding pigments and performing other menial tasks. Though he later claimed to have learned nothing from this master, it is no coincidence that the greatest fresco painter of his generation had learned his trade with the most prolific practitioner of the previous era.

  Michelangelo retired from the field with few regrets. “It is not my art,” he would often declare, and his dismissive treatment of his first master suggests his antipathy to the medium upon which at least half his reputation as the world’s greatest artist rested. But it was not only his career as a painter that was over. Michelangelo was now seventy-five, far exceeding the average life span of Renaissance men and women. Over these years he had outlived nine popes, having worked closely with five of them. And while his mind was as sharp as ever, his energy was flagging. “I am old, as you know,” he wrote to his nephew Lionardo in 1549, “and so each hour might be my last.” In addition to an overall loss of vigor, he was afflicted with kidney stones and had difficulty urinating. He continued to carve in stone, but only for his own pleasure, refusing any public commissions, offers of which continued to come in from the great lords of Europe.

  He was ever more preoccupied with thoughts of death, second-guessing his chosen path and agonizing over his own salvation. As he prepared to meet his Maker, the pride he once took in worldly success has been exposed as vain illusion. “I’ve reached the end of my life ’s journey,” he wrote in one of his final poems,

  in a fragile boat swept along on stormy seas

  to the port where all debark. I bear

  a log of every deed, both foul and fair.

  So long I’ve clung to fantasies,

  made of my art an idol and a king.

  But now I’ve come to know my error,

  sad emptiness of Man’s desire.

  Glad thoughts of love, what good are they

  when my death approaches twice?

  Of one I’m certain, the other looms.

  My soul, no longer soothed to sculpt or paint,

  now turns to that love divine

  whose arms, stretched out upon the Cross,

  open wide for my embrace.

  But despite physical exhaustion and bouts of melancholy, Michelangelo still burned with creative fire. As an artist, he reminded a correspondent, he worked with his mind and not his hands, so that despite his diminished physical power, he still had much to contribute. Indeed, there was one project to which he could lend his talent, one that demanded little from the hands but more than any one mind could possibly deliver: the greatest building project of the age and one of the most ambitious of all time. It was a project that was to consume the remainder of his years, and one that satisfied both his earthly ambition and nourished the deepest longings of his soul.

  * * *

  I. Michelangelo’s admirers went to great lengths to protect his reputation from the whiff of scandal. His great-nephew, also named Michelangelo, “corrected” many of the poems and letters, reversing the sex of the recipient, causing scholars to posit a more respectable, but totally implausible, love affair between the artist and the Marchesa of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna.

  II. Other works included in this portfolio are various versions of the Fall of Phaeton, and two other mythological scenes whose meaning has yet to be fully explained—Archers Shooting at a Herm and The Dream of Human Life—as well as a picture of Cleopatra being bitten by the asp.

  III. In the end, Michelangelo carved only three statues for Julius’s tomb, the magnificent Moses and Rachel and Leah. By now he was so sick of the project that he was willing to relinquish control, assigning three additional figures to Raffaello da Montelupo. His assistant Francesco Urbino and Giovanni de ’ Marchesi carved many of the architectural elements. The tomb as it exists today in San Pietro in Vincoli reflects little of Michelangelo’s original conception, though the Moses alone makes it worth a visit. The della Rovere seemed to recognize that the monument they had worked so hard to create was insufficient, since they ultimately decided to leave Julius’s remains in the Sistine Chapel.

  IV. The scudo was a new coin minted by the papacy that replaced, and was roughly equal in value to, the gold ducat. Half of the salary was supposed to com
e from the receipts from a ferry over the Po at Piacenza, but Michelangelo had great difficulty collecting what had been promised from the local lord.

  V. It is this position as piombatore—from the Italian word for “lead,” from which the seals were made—that gave Sebastiano Luciani the name by which he is generally remembered.

  VI. In 1547 the pope created a new position of guardian and cleaner of the frescoes of the Sistine and Pauline chapels, “to clean well and keep clean the pictures of the vault from dust and other defilements and to preserve them from smoke of the lights which ascend in both chapels during the performance of the divine offices.” (See George Bull, Michelangelo: A Biography, 339.) The first man to hold the position was Michelangelo’s assistant Urbino.

  VII. Like most of Michelangelo’s disciples, however, Mini was more loyal than able. His attempt to set up as an independent master was an abject failure, and he died only a few years after leaving for France.

  VIII. Many of the brighter notes we see in The Last Judgment are found in the garments—for instance, the lime green of St. Catherine ’s robe—added by later artists to cover up the scandalous nudity.

  IX. Michelangelo knew the frescoes well, and even incorporated a few of Signorelli’s figures in his own composition, particularly in the lower right where the damned are being dragged away by various demons. Vasari notes Michelangelo’s debt to his predecessor: “I do not marvel that the works of Luca were ever very highly extolled by Michelangelo, nor that in certain parts of his divine Judgment . . . he should have availed himself in some measure of the inventions of Luca. . . .” (Lives, I, 612.)

  X. Michelangelo defies tradition by having Christ damn with his right hand while saving with his left, which also gestures to the wound on his side, indicating the sacrifice through which mankind was redeemed.