The Sistine Secrets

by Benjamin Blech

  Even in his first stab at creative writing, Michelangelo at twenty-seven is utilizing a kind of code. The lines, in a Tuscan dialect that reads just as he probably would have pronounced it, say:

  David with his slingshot

  And I with my bow—

  Michelangelo

  Broken is the tall column and the gree(n)…

  An arco—in the second line’s word chollarcho—meant an archer’s weapon, or a violinist’s bow, but Buonarroti was neither an archer nor a musician. The last line is a quote from a well-known poem by Petrarch that begins, “Broken is the high column, and the green laurel [in Italian, laura] has fallen,” Petrarch’s ode of grief at the death of his beloved Laura. Michelangelo had learned Petrarch during his sojourn in Bologna, but why quote him here? And what does Petrarch’s mourning for his lady love have to do with the David?

  The modern biographer of Michelangelo, Howard Hibbard, solves the puzzle by citing Charles Seymour’s explanation of the “arco.” A stonecutter or sculptor in the Renaissance would use a running drill to make the eyes and other fine holes in the marble. A running drill is a thin, pointed rod that spins into the stone thanks to a stringed bow that rotates it at a high speed, much like the bow used by Boy and Girl Scouts to make a fire in the wild. This is undoubtedly the kind of drill that Michelangelo would have used to create David’s unforgettable eyes. Michelangelo is giving himself a sort of “pep talk,” claiming that just as David, armed only with a sling, defeated his enemy, he (Michelangelo) would defeat all his foes with his talent. The “tall column” is the high block of scarred marble that his rivals could not conquer; but he, the ugly, broken-nosed Buonarroti, would show them all by “breaking” (taming or overcoming) the tall stone and winning the green laurel wreath of Victory.

  And triumph he did. The David that he produced is nothing short of miraculous. It also broke with all traditional images. Instead of showing Goliath’s defeat, Michelangelo chose to depict the young shepherd boy at the exact moment of decision. His look is of concern but also of conviction. He is stark naked and unarmed except for a sling and pebbles. Goliath is nowhere to be seen. David is caught, as if in a snapshot, at the instant in which his faith in the Almighty is about to lead him into a battle that will change his life and the life of his people. He is in the act of turning toward the giant Philistine, which also allowed the sculptor to show off his deep knowledge of the male anatomy.

  Particularly shocking to viewers at the time—and, in fact, to many visitors to the Accademia in Florence to this day—was Michelangelo’s addition of bushy pubic hair to David. In the Greco-Roman world, heroes were always displayed as hairless and with diminished genitalia, as a sign of their dignity and purity of spirit. Michelangelo was accentuating David’s crotch and calling attention to the fact that he was giving him a normal endowment. Perhaps this was an act of revenge against Savonarola’s puritanical reign of terror; perhaps it was to show the newly regained power of a cosmopolitan Florence. It definitely demonstrates Michelangelo’s love of the nude male. Indeed, the whole statue is a paean to the beauty of the masculine body.

  Of course, this brings up the question: if he was so enamored of Jewish teaching, why didn’t Michelangelo give his David an authentic circumcised organ? There are several theories. The simplest explanation is that he quite likely had never seen a circumcised penis and did not want to portray anything that would probably be incorrect. More important, since the Inquisition was still going strong he did not want to be accused of the crime called Judaizing—propagating the Jewish faith and traditions. Furthermore, the commission expected the David to represent the city of Florence, not the only recently returned Jewish community.

  David did indeed symbolize Florence. Michelangelo designed him to go high up on the buttress facing toward Rome, as a silent sentinel watching over Florence and warning the Roman Church not even to think of threatening its newfound freedom. He made the hands, feet, and head oversized in order to show strength, especially when viewed from below on ground level.

  Not commonly known is the remarkable secret about the eyes of David. Michelangelo drilled them extra deep and slightly too far apart. Yes, the great David is walleyed—but it was done on purpose, a brilliant way to make his gaze seem to go on into infinity. The extra depth of the eyes was also meant to catch the rays of the sun at just the right angle on that buttress perch, in order to make the statue seem truly alive, a sort of Hollywood special effect.

  Michelangelo’s designs for his statue were undone by his talent. The city officials decided that the statue was too beautiful to be merely a part of twinned decorations high up on the cathedral. So, a special commission was formed to select a special place of honor for Florence’s new symbol. One of the experts called upon was none other than Leonardo da Vinci. The committee concluded that it had to go on a pedestal in front of the entrance to the city hall, where a well-known copy stands today. This was a great honor for Buonarroti, but the end of all his special effects hidden in the statue, meant to take advantage of its original location. Even today, when viewed inside the Accademia, the hands, feet, and eyes all seem strange and disproportionate to the puzzled viewers who are unaware of Michelangelo’s intent, which could only be realized where the David was supposed to be placed.

  Ironically, even before it was unveiled in 1504, the statue had its share of troubles. According to his biographer Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was just putting some last touches on the statue when the Gonfaloniere Piero Soderini came inside the enclosure of the scaffolding for a private preview. To the headstrong artist, it didn’t matter if a person was the head of government or even a pope—he just wanted to be left alone with his artwork. Soderini viewed his commission with the presumption of one who knows nothing about the subject he is critiquing, and then announced to Michelangelo that something had to be done about the nose—it was too thick. (He might have meant that it looked too Jewish. Michelangelo’s David, like his Jesus in the Vatican Pietà, has decidedly Semitic features.) Michelangelo calmly took his hammer and chisel in his left hand and climbed the ladder up to the colossal statue’s face. As he ascended, he gathered marble chips and dust in his right hand, out of Soderini’s view. When he reached David’s nose, he hammered loudly on the chisel, without touching the statue’s surface at all, while letting a flurry of chips and dust rain down on the ruler’s head below. He then came back down to join Soderini, who proudly declared: “Ah, that did it—now you have brought it to life.” Michelangelo and his friends laughed about this (in private) for a long time.

  The other trouble was far more serious. As the David was slowly being transported in a special conveyance to its place of honor, the statue was stoned and attacked by unknown assailants. Were they upset by its nudity or its Jewish theme? We will never know. We do know that in later political upheavals, the David was knocked off its perch and its right arm broken. Fortunately, another artist and supporter of Michelangelo salvaged the pieces and had the statue repaired when social order was restored. Finally, in 1873 it was decided that the David would be safer indoors, and a copy was set in its place.

  A PAINTING?

  The period in which Michelangelo carved the David was an extremely productive time for him. Although that statue alone would have kept any other artist fully occupied, Buonarroti still found time to carve four statues of saints to fulfill his contract with the Cathedral of Siena, plus a Madonna for the Church of Notre-Dame in Bruges, Belgium. All five pieces seem to have been partly done by assistants and are quite austere, straight up-and-down, and unemotional for a Michelangelo work. The definite Buonarroti touches are the heavily pleated clothes and the fact that all the figures are carrying a book. We shall see this proof of Michelangelo’s love of learning in the Prophets and Sibyls section of the Sistine as well.

  He also did something quite out of character for him at the time—a painting.

  Michelangelo—who would become one of the most famous painters who ever lived, thanks to the Sistine fresc
oes—actually hated the art form. He only appreciated the three-dimensional arts of metal-casting, sculpture, and architecture, and regarded daubing colors on a flat surface as both boring and inferior. He often signed his business letters “Michelangelo, ischultore”—Michelangelo, sculptor.

  Why, then, did he accept a commission for a painting in the midst of so much other work? Quite simply, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse: the commission came from two of the most powerful families in Florence—the Doni and the Strozzi, the longtime rivals of the de’ Medicis. If anyone, especially an artist, wanted to stay in Florence and pursue a successful career, he did not want to incur the anger of either of these clans.

  To celebrate a marriage uniting the two families, Michelangelo was hired to paint a Holy Family. There was a fifteenth-century Holy Family painting in the de’ Medici palace where he had grown up, done by Luca Signorelli, one of the original fresco painters of the Sistine. It was round and had nude boys in the background. Buonarroti’s prodigious visual memory served him well, and he made a similar round painting with nudes in the background. However, it was impossible for him to be a mere imitator. What he created is a controversial work that still puzzles, inspires, and offends to this day.

  Here, in this painting, we can already see the Michelangelo that we know from the Sistine ceiling: the bright, almost metallic clothing; the muscular, masculine woman—a Virgin Mary who looks like a pagan sibyl who has been pumping iron; males who are more naked than nude, in affectionate, playful, almost erotic poses; a Neoplatonic balancing act of pagan boys in the background; an infant John the Baptist who looks more like a mythological faun than a Christian icon; a Jewish Joseph in the middle ground handing baby Jesus to Mary in the foreground—or taking him from her, depending literally on your point of view. Michelangelo is up to new tricks. He intertwines Mary’s and Joseph’s limbs in such a stylized, unnatural manner that at first glance it is almost impossible to distinguish whose limb is whose. Even in the frame, which many experts believe he designed, there is a circle of Hebrew prophets, Greco-Roman sibyls, and Jesus. Above all, there is the feeling that we are seeing painted sculpture, and not merely flat figures. It is almost as if fate has the artist unwittingly preparing for his work in the Sistine Chapel.

  And sure enough, as if on cue, a call came forth from the Vatican. There had been a new pope on the throne since 1503, none other than the dour nephew of Sixtus IV—Giuliano della Rovere, now crowned as Pope Julius II. He desired that the artist Buonarroti return at once to Rome, for a most important project. Neither ruler nor rebel was yet aware of what destiny had in store for them.

  Chapter Six

  AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT

  A true artist paints with his brains and not with his hands.

  —MICHELANGELO

  DURING THE RENAISSANCE, the popes were very much like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt in at least three ways. As soon as a pharaoh ascended the throne, the nation’s calendar would be turned back to the year one, the new ruler would immediately start planning his own glorious tomb (such as a pyramid), and plans would be laid for his mummification after death. The same was true for a pope. Even to this day, when a new pope is elected, the Vatican begins counting papal years. On papal monuments all over Rome, one can find the two dates of A.D. (anno Domini—in the year of the Lord) and A.P. (anno papalis—in the year of the pope). Popes were also mummified. Following an ancient Kabbalistic belief that the bodies of the tzaddikim (truly righteous souls) do not decompose in the grave, the Church declared the same to be true for Catholic saints. The Vatican was anxious to preserve the bodies of deceased pontiffs in case of future sainthood, and since the art of embalming had not yet been sufficiently developed (this did not happen until the early twentieth century), all popes were mummified, following the arcane process of ancient Egypt. Finally, every pope who lasted long enough on the throne spent an enormous amount of time and money planning his impressive final resting place.

  “IL PAPA TERRIBILE”

  For the new pope, Julius II, planning his final resting place became a major obsession. He was not the type to be satisfied with a mere sarcophagus or wall decoration, no matter how fancily constructed. This was a man with an eye on eternity and an ego that knew no limits. He had already become accustomed to power as a member of his uncle Sixtus IV’s corrupt papal court. As Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, he was one of the scheming nepoti (nephews, in archaic Italian) for whom the word nepotism was coined. When the Borgias took over the Vatican, Pope Alexander VI had stripped him of all power within the Vatican and had even tried to poison him. Giuliano had been forced to flee to Avignon for the duration of the Borgia reign of terror. When Alexander VI died in 1503, his son Cesare Borgia did not want to relinquish the family’s grip on the Vatican. Only personal illness, frantic diplomacy, bribery, and group pressure from all the cardinals convinced him to leave Rome. During the conclave, or top-secret election of the next pope, Giuliano rigged the voting—for long-range political motives—to crown not himself, but Pius III, himself the nephew of another pope. Pius III was quite ill, with one very gouty foot already in the grave. Giuliano della Rovere had him declare war on the Borgias, in order to frighten the rest of their minions out of Rome. It probably worked, but Pius lasted only twenty-six days on the throne. It was either the gout or, more likely, one last departing henchman of the former pope whose poison sped the suffering new pontiff to his reward. With the dirty work done, Giuliano spread enough bribes, threats, and promises around the College of Cardinals to win the next conclave without opposition. He is one of the few popes in history to have been elected within twenty-four hours on the first ballot. He was crowned at the age of sixty on October 31, 1503. His raging ego and violent temper soon earned him the nickname of Il Papa Terribile—the frightening pope.

  As the new Pontifex Maximus Julius II della Rovere, he quickly picked up where his uncle Sixtus IV had left off in 1484. He appointed Donato Bramante, a talented painter and architect from Urbino (on the eastern coast of Italy), as the official papal architect. Bramante was given a long list of projects, with the objective of transforming Rome into the new Christian caput mundi, head of the world. The Apostolic Palace was enlarged, seemingly endless hallways were added, an elegant private spiral staircase was constructed for the pope’s private use, a new riverside street (Via Giulia) was carved through the city, and on and on. What proved to be of greatest historic interest, however, were two other special projects inside the Vatican walls—projects that would affect Michelangelo for the rest of his life.

  One was the repair of the Sistine Chapel. The heavy building, set on ancient graveyard soil, had settled and was threatening to collapse. Bramante quickly buttressed the southern wall, thus saving the chapel. However, the massive ceiling had a huge crack running through it. Bricks and mortar were inserted as a sort of architectural bandage, but the repairs left an ugly white scar that ruined the starry canopy of the della Roveres’ royal chapel. Julius began considering who would be the right person to redo the ceiling of his uncle’s chapel.

  The other project dwarfed all others—the plan for Julius II’s tomb. A megalomaniac and micromanager, Julius wanted to make sure that his final resting place would outshine that of any other pope in history. He actually envisioned a gigantic pyramidal structure, covered with more than forty large statues on all four sides, with two angels carrying him on a bier at the top of the heap of marble. His over-the-top design was so enormous that it would not fit inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Anyone else would have scaled down his plans, but not Julius. He decreed that Bramante demolish the old basilica and build an entirely new one fit for Julius’s new Catholic empire, and large enough to contain his massive tomb—in the center, right under the dome, where normally the main altar should be. Bramante’s ruthless destruction of the old sanctuary (including the tombs of many earlier popes) earned him the nickname of Bramante er Ruinante (the wrecker) in Rome.

  Before selecting the right artist for the new Sistine c
eiling, Julius already had in mind the perfect sculptor for his tomb: Michelangelo of Florence. Julius had for a while been Bishop of Bologna before fleeing Italy, and had seen firsthand the beautiful works that Michelangelo had carved in rapid succession for the cathedral there. He, of course, had also seen the Bacchus and the Pietà in Rome. Despite his many personal and spiritual failings, Julius had one strong point that would earn him eternal recognition: an eye for artistic talent. His ego, his feeling of competing with Florence, his need to make Rome an imperial capital again, all contributed to his one lasting achievement—he moved the center of the Renaissance from Florence to Rome. All that was missing from his “collection” was the world’s greatest sculptor, and what Julius wanted, Julius got.

  For Michelangelo, the invitation from the Vatican could not have come at a better time. While he had been finishing the David, painting the Doni Holy Family, and overseeing all the other sculptures coming out of his workshop, the Gonfaloniere Soderini and the city council had gotten another bright idea—a public showdown between the two top artists in Florence. Leonardo da Vinci and the much younger Michelangelo had often made it clear that they had no respect for each other’s craft. Leonardo disparaged the new trend for portraying overly muscular male nudes—he said it was like looking at “sacks filled with nuts”—and unfavorably compared the messy, noisy workshop of a sculptor where everything and everyone was covered in marble chips, dust, and sweat with the quiet, clean, orderly studio of a painter “where one can listen to fine music” while working. Michelangelo, on the other hand, made no effort to disguise his dislike for the two-dimensional “falsity” of painting.