Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

by Ross King

  He might have believed his mission to be divine, but Julius recognised that he needed some earthly help to castigate Alfonso and evict the French. With this in mind, he took advantage of his alliance with the Swiss Federation to form a military elite, the Swiss Guards, granting them their own costume — black berets, ceremonial swords and uniforms striped crimson and green. Julius had an almost religious faith in Swiss soldiers, the most feared infantrymen in Europe. During the previous century, the Swiss had revolutionised the use of the pike — which was now eighteen feet long — and formed themselves into disciplined and relentlessly effective battalions. Wearing almost no armour for the sake of speed and mobility, they would bunch together in tight units and then force themselves en masse against the enemy — a tactic that had so far proved virtually invincible. Julius had hired several thousand Swiss for his crusade against Perugia and Bologna in 1506. Though they saw little action other than tooting their trumpets as the Pope sailed on Lake Trasimeno, the success of the expedition seems to have led to his blind faith in their powers.

  The campaign against Ferrara began in July of 1510, even though the Swiss troops had yet to arrive from across the Alps. The height of summer was far from an ideal time to start a war. The scorching heat made long marches unpleasant, since suits of body armour weighed more than fifty pounds and had little or no ventilation. Even worse, summer was the season for plague, malaria and camp fevers, which traditionally claimed more soldiers than the enemy’s guns. Ominously, Ferrara was surrounded by a malaria-breeding swamp. Fighting Alfonso d’Este on his own ground was therefore dangerous for reasons other than the duke’s celebrated gunners.

  The campaign went auspiciously at first as the papal troops, led by Francesco Maria, made incursions into Alfonso’s lands to the east of Bologna. Alarmed by this turn of events, the duke offered to surrender all his lands in the Romagna so long as Julius made no attempt to take Ferrara itself. He even promised to pay the Pope’s expenses for the war. But Julius, scenting blood, was in no mood for negotiations, and Alfonso’s ambassador was ordered to leave Rome on pain of being thrown into the Tiber. This unlucky emissary was none other than Lodovico Ariosto, who had shuttled back and forth on the two-hundred-mile journey between Ferrara and Rome five times during the spring and summer. At the time he was trying to write his masterpiece, Orlando furioso, a 300,000-word poem about knights and chivalry in the days of Charlemagne.10 With curly dark hair, intense eyes, a thick beard and a prominent nose, Ariosto looked the part of a poet. He had also distinguished himself as a soldier, but not wishing to cross swords with the Pope he hurried back to Ferrara.

  Worse was still to come for Alfonso, for on 9 August he was excommunicated as a rebel against the Church. Little more than a week later, no doubt hoping to recapture the glory of his audacious campaign against Perugia and Bologna, the Pope decided to go into battle himself. As in 1506, all but the most geriatric cardinals were conscripted into service and ordered to rally in Viterbo, sixty miles north of Rome. Julius, meanwhile, went first to Ostia — led, as usual, by the Blessed Sacrament — to inspect his war fleet. From there, he sailed north to Civitavecchia on a Venetian galley before continuing the journey overland towards Bologna, which he reached three weeks later, on 22 September.

  36. Lodovico Ariosto.

  37. Frontispiece to Ariosto’s Orlando furioso.

  Far from worrying about the heat, the expedition was forced to contend with miserable weather. Paride de’ Grassi lamented that ‘the rain perseveringly accompanied us’.11 He also complained that, as the caravan toiled along in the mud, the people in the cities through which they passed — Ancona, Rimini, Forlì — ‘burst out laughing, instead of greeting the Pope as they ought to have done’.12 Nor did all of the cardinals obey orders, since a number of French prelates stayed loyal to Louis and took themselves instead to the enemy camp in Milan. But at least the splendid entry into Bologna, complete with the usual fanfare, echoed the victorious procession of 1506. Indeed, as Julius was greeted by the enthusiastic Bolognese it seemed that the Warrior Pope was on the verge of repeating his earlier triumphs.

  21

  Bologna Redux

  THE POPE’S DECISION to lead his troops into battle came at a most inopportune moment as far as Michelangelo was concerned. Julius’s departure from Rome meant that the first half of the vault could not be unveiled and, worse still, that a promised payment of a thousand ducats – the sum Michelangelo expected to receive for completing the first half – was not forthcoming. It had been a year since the Pope had paid Michelangelo, who was anxious to receive his wages. ‘The five hundred ducats I have earned in accordance with the agreement are due to me,’ he complained in a letter to Lodovico early in September, ‘and as much again which the Pope has to give to me to put the rest of the work in hand. But he has gone away and left me no instructions, so that I find myself without any money and do not know what I ought to do.’1

  Michelangelo soon had other worries, for he learned that Buonarroto was seriously ill. He instructed his father to withdraw funds from his bank account in Florence so that his brother had enough money for doctors and medicine. Then as the days passed and Buonarroto’s condition failed to improve, and as neither instructions nor money arrived from the Pope, Michelangelo decided to take matters into his own hands. In the middle of September, he left his assistants at work in the studio, climbed on a horse and, for the first time in more than two years, took the road north to Florence.

  Arriving at the house in via Ghibellina, Michelangelo found Lodovico preparing to take up a six-month posting as podestà, or criminal magistrate, in San Casciano, a small town ten miles south of Florence. The post was not without prestige, since the podestà had the power of convicting criminals and passing sentence on them. Lodovico would also be responsible for the town’s security, holding the keys to its gates and, if necessary, leading its militia into battle. He therefore felt the need to make a good impression in San Casciano. Obviously it would not do for a podestà to cook his own meals, sweep the floor, wash the pots and pans, bake his bread and perform various other humiliating tasks of the sort that he was always complaining about in Florence. Inspired by Michelangelo’s offer to pay for Buonarroto’s care, he took himself off to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova and withdrew 250 ducats from his son’s account — more than enough to outfit himself in an appropriate style.fn1

  This misappropriation of funds was a shock for Michelangelo, already short of money to finish the fresco. Worse still, the ducats could not be put back, as Lodovico had spent almost all of them.

  ‘I took it in the hope of being able to replace it before your return to Florence,’ Lodovico later wrote apologetically to his son. ‘I said to myself, seeing your last letter, “Michelangelo won’t return for six or eight months from now and in that time I shall have returned from San Casciano.” I will sell everything and will do everything to replace what I took.’2

  Buonarroto’s condition soon improved, and Michelangelo therefore saw little reason to linger in Florence. He departed for Bologna, where he arrived on 22 September, the same day as the Pope. The trip to Bologna — not a city that lingered fondly in Michelangelo’s memory — turned out to be equally frustrating, for he found the Pope in poor health and an even worse temper. The strenuous journey through the Apennines had taken its toll on Julius, and as soon as he arrived in the city he fell ill with a fever. This malady had been predicted by the court astrologers, though it was hardly a risky forecast since Julius was sixty-seven years old and already suffered from gout, syphilis and the after-effects of malaria.

  It was not malaria, however, that felled Julius in Bologna, but a tertian fever, the disease that had killed Pope Alexander VI. Besides his fever, the Pope was also suffering from haemorrhoids. His physicians no doubt provided him with little relief. Haemorrhoids were treated with celandine, also known as pilewort, a plant considered efficacious in curing piles for no other reason than because its roots looked like distended rectal veins
. Such were the hopeful delusions of medical science. Julius’s defiance of his physicians and a naturally strong constitution were probably the only things keeping him alive. An intractable patient, he ate foods forbidden to him and threatened to hang his servants if they dared tell the doctors.

  Neither the Pope’s health nor his mood was improved by the disastrous news that his Swiss soldiers had neglected to turn up for the fight. After half-heartedly crossing the Alps they had turned back unexpectedly soon after reaching the southern end of Lake Como. This defection was a terrible blow to Julius, leaving him vulnerable to a French attack, which now seemed inevitable. At Tours, Louis XII had convoked various French bishops, prelates and other influential men, all of whom assured him that he could in all good conscience make war against the Pope. Thus emboldened, the French army, led by the viceroy of Milan, Maréchal Chaumont, advanced on Bologna, while behind it, clamouring for revenge, were the Bentivogli. The Pope, delirious with fever, vowed that he would swallow poison rather than fall into the clutches of his enemies.

  Fortunately for Julius, the French did not immediately begin their assault. The heavy rains that fell in September continued throughout October, forcing the French troops to pull back when their camp became a quagmire and the muddy roads prevented their provisions from arriving. They beat a retreat to Castelfranco d’Emilia, fifteen miles to the north-west of Bologna, plundering all the way.

  The Pope was overjoyed by this unexpected turn of events. Even his fever seemed to subside, and when he heard the people of Bologna chanting his name beneath his balcony, he was able to totter to the window and shakily offer his blessing. The Bolognese roared their allegiance, vowing to fight the enemies with him. ‘Now,’ he murmured as his aides carried him back to bed, ‘we have conquered the French.’3

  Michelangelo spent less than a week in Bologna, departing before the end of September. His long and hazardous trip was not without its rewards, however. He returned to Rome with the gift of a block of cheese from a friend in Florence, the sculptor Michelangelo Tanagli. Better still, a month after his visit, at the end of October, he received from the Pope’s coffers the five hundred ducats due to him for completing the first half of the ceiling. It was his third instalment, bringing his total earnings to 1,500 ducats, or half of what he was expecting to be paid. Most of this payment he sent to Buonarroto for deposit in Santa Maria Nuova, thereby plugging the hole left by Lodovico.

  But still he was unsatisfied. He felt he was owed another five hundred ducats according to the contract composed by Cardinal Alidosi, and he was determined to have this money before starting work on the second half of the vault. In the middle of December he therefore braved the bad roads and dire weather for a second time in order to plead his case before the Pope. Besides demanding the additional five hundred ducats, he intended to present Julius with a document declaring his right to use the house and studio behind Santa Caterina rent-free.4

  Arriving in Bologna in the dead of winter, Michelangelo must have been as dumbfounded as everyone else by the changed appearance of the Pope. After his fever returned in the autumn, Julius had been taken to convalesce in the house of a friend, Giulio Malvezzi. It was here, at the start of November, that an odd phenomenon had been noted: His Holiness was growing a beard. The cardinals and ambassadors were wide-eyed with disbelief. A Pope with a beard — no one had ever seen such a thing. The envoy from Mantua wrote that the unshaven pontiff looked like a bear; another astounded spectator compared him to a hermit.5 By the middle of November, his white whiskers were an inch or two in length, and in December, when Michelangelo arrived, Julius was wearing a full beard.

  Beards were not uncommon among courtiers and artists of the day. Baldassare Castiglione wore one, as did both Michelangelo and Leonardo. Even one of the doges of Venice, the aptly named Agostino Barbarigo, who died in 1501, had sported one. But Julius was going against papal tradition — and even against canon law — by growing his facial hair. In 1031, the Council of Limoges had concluded after much deliberation that St Peter, the first pope, had shaved his chin, and his successors were therefore expected to follow his clean-shaven example. Priests were not allowed to wear beards for another reason. A moustache, it was reasoned, would interfere with drinking from the chalice, and drops of consecrated wine might stay on it — an undignified fate for the blood of Christ.

  Though Erasmus later mischievously claimed in Julius Excluded from Heaven that the Pope grew the long white beard ‘as a disguise’,6 in order to evade capture by the French, he was in fact emulating his imperial namesake, Julius Caesar, who grew a beard in 54 BC after learning of a massacre of his forces by the Gauls, swearing not to shave until the deaths of his men had been avenged. Julius repeated the vow: a Bolognese chronicler wrote that the Pope wore his beard ‘for revenge’, refusing to shave it off until he could ‘thrash’ Louis XII and drive him from Italy.7

  Michelangelo therefore found Julius cultivating his whiskers in the house of Giulio Malvezzi as he slowly regained his strength. He was entertained in his sickroom by Donato Bramante, who read passages to him from Dante. Also present to raise the Pope’s spirits was Egidio da Viterbo, who was soon to deliver a sermon comparing Julius’s new beard to that of the high priest Aaron, the brother of Moses.

  The Pope had been frustrated, throughout his illness, by the lack of progress in the push against Ferrara. Getting to grips with the situation, a council of war held in the papal bedchamber in December concluded that the best way forward was to attack Mirandola, a fortified town twenty-five miles west of Ferrara. Mirandola, like Ferrara, was under French protection, mainly because the widow of the Count of Mirandola, Francesca Pico, was the illegitimate daughter of Giangiacomo Trivulzio, an Italian commander in the French army. Both the doctors and the cardinals blanched when Julius announced his intention to lead the assault himself. The scenario did not look plausible, however, since his fever was as bad as ever and the weather unseasonably cold.

  Though ill and preoccupied with these affairs, the Pope consented to release another payment to Michelangelo. The artist then returned to Florence for Christmas, where he learned how the family home had been burgled and Sigismondo’s clothes stolen. Two weeks later, he was back in his workshop in Rome.

  The Pope’s military expedition and the foul weather at the end of 1510 also inconvenienced a pair of German monks who had come to Rome on business. Following a long journey across the Alps, the two of them arrived at the convent of Santa Maria del Popolo, near Rome’s north gate, sometime in December, only to discover that the General of their Order, Egidio da Viterbo, was in Bologna with the Pope.

  Under Egidio’s direction, the Order of the Augustinian Hermits was undergoing a reform intended to make the monks adopt a stricter discipline. Under these reforms, Augustinian monks would be forced to stay within their cloisters, wear identical habits, surrender all personal possessions and shun contact with women. Egidio and other ‘Observants’ were carrying forward these reforms in the face of opposition from ‘Conventuals’ within the Order who favoured a more relaxed discipline and had no desire for such strict rules.

  One of the nests of dissent was the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. In the autumn of 1510, two monks with Conventualist sympathies were therefore chosen to make the 1,300-mile round trip to Rome to lodge an appeal with Egidio. The older of the monks, though fluent in Italian and an experienced traveller, was prevented by the rules of the Order from making even a short journey on his own. He was therefore given as a socius itinerarius, or travelling companion, a 27-year-old monk from the Erfurt monastery named Martin Luther, the witty and spirited son of a miner. This was Luther’s one and only trip to Rome. Arriving within sight of the Porta del Popolo in December 1510, he threw himself on the ground and shouted, ‘Blessed be thou, holy Rome!’8 His enthusiasm would be short-lived.

  During the four weeks it took to receive Egidio’s reply to the appeal, Luther explored Rome armed with the Mirabilia urbis romae, the guidebook for pilgrims. Few pi
lgrims to Rome can have been as devout — or as energetic. He visited all seven of the pilgrimage churches, starting with San Paolo fuori le Mura and finishing at St Peter’s, or what there was of it. He descended into the catacombs beneath the streets to stare at the bones of forty-six popes and 80,000 Christian martyrs crammed into their narrow a isles. In the Lateran Palace, he ascended the Scala Santa, the Holy Staircase miraculously transported from the home of Pontius Pilate. He crawled up the twenty-eight steps, saying a paternoster and then kissing each, hoping thereby to release from Purgatory the soul of his dead grandfather. He saw so many other opportunities to do good deeds for the souls of the dead that, as he later remarked, he began to regret that his parents were still alive.

  38. Martin Luther.

  Yet Luther grew steadily more disillusioned with the city. He could not help but notice that the priests were woefully ignorant. Many did not know the right way to hear a confession, while others performed Mass in ‘slapdash fashion’, he wrote, ‘as if they were doing a juggling act’.9 Even worse, some of them were completely irreligious, professing not to believe in such basics as the immortality of the soul. The Italian priests actually dared to poke fun at the piety of German pilgrims, and their name for a fool was, scandalously, a ‘good Christian’.

  The city of Rome itself was, in Luther’s view, a dump. Rubbish covered the banks of the Tiber, into which the cloaca maxima, an open sewer, drained the waste tipped from windows. Rubble seemed to be scattered everywhere, and the façades of many churches suffered the indignity of being draped with animal hides placed there by tanners. So unhealthy was the air that when Luther made the mistake of sleeping beside an open window he suffered an attack of what he diagnosed, erroneously, as malaria. He cured himself of the affliction by eating pomegranates.