by Ross King
4 Or, at least, most art historians now agree that the scene shows Noah’s sacrifice, though both Condivi and Vasari claim the panel depicts the sacrifice of Cain and Abel described in Genesis 4:3–8. The confusion can be explained by the fact that Michelangelo painted his three scenes from the life of Noah in non-chronological order. As it portrays the earliest event, The Flood ought to have been the third scene from the door, occupying the space where The Sacrifice was eventually frescoed. But Michelangelo reversed the sequence of these two episodes so he could paint his panicked, drowning legions on a larger field, one that was 10′ x 20′ rather than the more modest 6′ x 10′ space devoted to The Sacrifice. Noah therefore ends up giving thanks for his deliverance from the deluge before it actually occurs, causing both Condivi and Vasari to conclude that the sacrifice in question was that of Cain and Abel, who, of course, preceded Noah. Vasari correctly identified the scene in his 1550 edition of The Life of Michelangelo, but deferred to Condivi’s judgement in the 1568 version.
5 Ernst Gombrich, ‘A Classical Quotation in Michelangelo’s Sacrifice of Noah’, Journal of the Warburg Institute (1937), p. 69.
6 For this reference, see Ernst Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, 2 vols (Munich: Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann, 1905), vol. 2, pp. 313ff.
7 Lutz Heusinger writes that by this time, the autumn of 1509, Michelangelo had completed ‘the first three big frescoes with all the adjoining parts’. See Mancinelli and Heusinger, The Sistine Chapel, p. 14. For the total number of giornate that this work entailed, see Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop, Appendix Two, pp. 366–7.
8 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 1, p. 54.
9 Ibid., p. 48.
10 Ibid., p. 53.
11 Ibid., p. 54.
12 Ibid.
13 For a translation, see Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo, pp. 5–6.
14 Quoted in Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop, p. 2.
15 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 2, p. 669.
16 Merrifield, The Art of Fresco Painting, pp. 112–3.
17 Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, p. 58.
18 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 2, p. 669.
17: THE GOLDEN AGE
1 For the story of Cardiere, see Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, pp. 17–18.
2 Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, in Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, 3 vols, trans. Allan Gilbert (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1965), vol. 1, p. 311.
3 Ottavia Niccoli, ‘High and Low Prophetic Culture in Rome at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century’, in Reeves, ed., Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period, p. 206.
4 Ibid., p. 207.
5 For these comparisons, see de Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 2, p. 57.
6 Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, p. 107.
7 Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. W.F. Jackson Knight (London: Penguin, 1956), p. 146.
8 For Egidio’s understanding of the sibyls, see O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform, p. 55.
9 See Edgar Wind, ‘Michelangelo’s Prophets and Sibyls’, Proceedings of the British Academy 51 (1965), p. 83, n. 2.
10 Virgil, The Eclogues and The Georgics, trans. C. Day Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), Eclogue 4, lines 6–7.
11 See O’Malley, ‘Fulfilment of the Christian Golden Age under Pope Julius II’, pp. 265–338.
12 Quoted in O’Malley, Rome and the Renaissance: Studies in Culture and Religion, p. 337.
13 On the idea of the golden age in the Renaissance, see Ernst Gombrich, ‘Renaissance and Golden Age’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961), pp. 306–9; O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform, pp. 17, 50,103–4; and Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1969).
14 Paul Barolsky has argued this line, claiming that the failing eyesight of sibyls such as Cumaea and Persica reveals how ‘Michelangelo has slyly brought out the imperfection of the Seers’ physical vision in order to magnify, antithetically, the grandeur of their spiritual vision’. See Barolsky, ‘Looking Closely at Michelangelo’s Seers’, Source: Notes in the History of Art (Summer 1997), p. 31.
15 For the relevant passage in Dante, see The Divine Comedy, 3 vols, trans. John D. Sinclair (London: The Bodley Head, 1948), vol. 1, Inferno, canto 25, line 2.
16 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 2, p. 743.
17 Francesco Albertini, Opusculum de mirabilis novae et veteris urbis Romae, in Peter Murray, ed., Five Early Guides to Rome and Florence (Farnborough, Hants: Gregg International Publishers, 1972).
18 Erasmi Epistolae, Opus Epistolarum des. Erasmi Roterdami, 10 vols, ed. P.S. Allen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910), vol. 1, p. 450.
19 Quoted in Albert Hyma, The Life of Desiderius Erasmus (Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1972), p. 68.
20 Virgil, The Aeneid, p. 149.
21 Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989), p. 71.
22 Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, trans. Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), canto 25, line 15.
23 Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, p. 144.
24 Ibid., p. 168.
18: THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS
1 Erasmus, The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, p. 146.
2 Ibid., p. 172.
3 The text of Casali’s sermon is printed in John O’Malley, ‘The Vatican Library and the School of Athens: A Text of Battista Casali, 1508’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (1977), pp. 279–87.
4 Ibid., p. 287.
5 The dating of the four wall frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, as well as their order of painting, are subjects of much debate and little consensus. Most critics believe that The Dispute of the Sacrament was painted first and The School of Athens second (or possibly third). However, Matthias Winner has argued that The School of Athens was actually the first of the four frescoes to be painted; see ‘Il giudizio di Vasari sulle prime tre Stanze di Raffaello in Vaticano’, in Giorgio Muratore, ed., Raffaello in Vaticano, pp. 179–93. This thesis was repeated by Bram Kempers in ‘Staatssymbolick in Rafaels Stanza della Segnatura’, Incontri: Rivista di Studi Italo-Nederlandesi (1986–7), pp. 3–48. However, another scholar asserts that The School of Athens was the last to be painted: Cecil Gould, ‘The Chronology of Raphael’s Stanze: A Revision’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 117 (November 1991), pp. 171–81.
6 As it is completely undocumented, Bramante’s involvement in designing The School of Athens is a matter of debate. The foremost Bramante scholar of the twentieth century, Arnaldo Bruschi, finds the collaboration ‘not unlikely’ (Bramante, p. 196). However, another scholar, Ralph Lieberman, is more sceptical. He claims Vasari’s suggestion of a collaboration should be questioned on a number of counts, since the attribution of the design to Bramante ‘seems to be based more on vague analogy between church and painting than on any real knowledge that Bramante helped Raphael with the fresco’ (‘The Architectural Background’, in Marcia B. Hall, ed., Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’, p. 71). Lieberman claims, first of all, that the architectural design in the painting may have been based as much on the Basilica of Maxentius as on Bramante’s plans for St Peter’s. Second, the design in the painting is unbuildable, a fact that would seem to militate against the participation of Bramante, an experienced architect. It does not seem likely, Lieberman writes, ‘that at this stage of his life, had he drawn the architecture of the fresco after pondering church crossings for several years, he would have designed so unconvincing and irrational a passage as the one we now see’ (ibid., p. 73). Various attempts have been made to reconstruct the building portrayed in The School of Athens. See, for an example, Emma Mandelli, ‘La realtà della architettura “picta” negli affreschi delle Stanze Vaticane’,
in Gianfranco Spagnesi, Mario Fondelli and Emma Mandelli, Raffaello, l’architettura ‘picta’: Percezione e realtà (Rome: Monografica Editrice, 1984), pp. 155–79.
7 This borrowing has been noted by Gombrich in ‘Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura and the Nature of its Symbolism’, pp. 98–9.
8 A.P. Oppé, Raphael, ed. Charles Mitchell (London: Elek Books, 1970), p. 80.
9 The only philosopher portrayed completely on his own in the initial version of The School of Athens was Diogenes, a notorious eccentric who lived in a barrel and treated Alexander the Great to insolent replies. Because of his shameless disregard for social conventions, Diogenes was known by the people of Athens as Kyon (‘dog’). Raphael shows him sprawled on the marble steps in a carefree state of undress.
10 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, p. 747.
11 This figure has sometimes been identified as Pietro Perugino. However, no less an authority than Bernard Berenson identifies Perugino’s self-portrait in The Giving of the Keys to St Peter, indicating a figure whose hair, complexion and features are altogether different from those of the figure portrayed by Raphael in The School of Athens, thus making Perugino an unlikely candidate for the role. See Berenson, Italian Painters of the Renaissance, vol. 2, p. 93.
12 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 2, p. 31.
13 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, p. 723.
14 For these findings, see Arnold Nesselrath, Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ (Vatican City: Edizioni Musei Vaticani, 1996), p. 24.
15 This cartoon is now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. For Raphael’s cartoon for The School of Athens and his working technique in the Stanza della Segnatura, see Eve Borsook, ‘Technical Innovation and the Development of Raphael’s Style in Rome’, Canadian Art Review 12 (1985), pp. 127–35.
16 A cartoon, now lost, was also prepared for the top half of the fresco, showing the architectural features. See Nesselrath, Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’, pp. 15–16.
17 See Oskar Fischel, ‘Raphael’s Auxiliary Cartoons’, Burlington Magazine (October 1937), p. 167; and Borsook, ‘Technical Innovation and the Development of Raphael’s Style in Rome’, pp. 130–1.
18 Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop, p. 249.
19 Enthusiasm for Raphael’s abilities to display ranges of emotion eventually reached such a peak that in 1809 two English engravers, George Cooke and T.L. Busby, published a book, The Cartoons of Raphael d’Urbino, in which they included an ‘Index of Passions’ identifying specific figures with their precise emotional states.
19: FORBIDDEN FRUIT
1 Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, p. 326.
2 Wallace, ‘Michelangelo’s Assistants in the Sistine Chapel’, p. 208.
3 De Nobilitate et Praecellentia Foeminei Sexus, quoted in Gilbert, Michelangelo On and Off the Ceiling (New York: George Braziller, 1994), p. 96.
4 Much recent work has been done on Edenic sexuality. See, for example, Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (London: SCM, 1992); John A. Phillips, Eve. The History of an Idea (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984); Jean Delumeau, The History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition (New York: Continuum, 1995); and Leo Steinberg, ‘Eve’s Idle Hand’, Art Journal (Winter 1975–6), pp. 130–5. It did not take modern scholars, however, to come up with sexual interpretations of the Fall. These were accepted even before the time of Christ. The Qumrun community’s Serek ha-’Edâh (Rule of the Congregation) translated the Hebrew ‘knowledge of good and evil’ as ‘sexual maturity’. The Qumrun sect of Jews lived in the Judaean Desert, along the north-west shore of the Dead Sea, between 150 BC and AD 70. Later, writers such as Philo Judaeus and Clement of Alexandria identified the serpent with sexual desire and evil thoughts. More recently, scholars have shown that the serpent was a phallic symbol in the fertility cults flourishing in Canaan at the time when the oldest version of the Fall in the Pentateuch (known as the Yahwist tradition) was composed in the ninth or tenth century BC.
5 Steinberg, ‘Eve’s Idle Hand’, p. 135.
6 Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, p. 146, n. 128. This advice is given in a marginal note in Condivi’s manuscript.
7 Ibid., p. 24.
8 See Maria Piatto’s caption for the scene on p. 91 of de Vecchi and Murphy, eds, The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration.
9 See Michel Foucault, The Uses of Pleasure: A History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1987); and Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), especially pp. 11ff.
10 The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, 6 vols, ed. and trans, by members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975–99), vol. 4, p. 35.
11 James Beck speculates that Michelangelo’s ‘sexual experiences, whether hetero-or homosexual, were minimal – and possibly non-existent’. The Three Worlds of Michelangelo (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), p. 143.
12 Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo, p. 145.
13 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
14 See Giovanni Papini, Vita di Michelangelo nella vita del suo tempo (Milan: Garzanti, 1949), p. 498.
15 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 1, p. xlviii.
16 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 1, p. 737.
17 Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans, p. 5.
18 Ibid., pp. 111–14. A century later, an inventory at Fontainebleau also described the Mona Lisa as the portrait of a courtesan (ibid., p. 114).
19 For relations between Raphael and Imperia, see Georgina Masson, Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1975), p. 37.
20: THE BARBAROUS MULTITUDES
1 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 1, p. 54.
2 Not all critics agree on Michelangelo’s actual progress by this point. Most notably, Creighton Gilbert has argued that Michelangelo completed the whole of the vault (with the exception of the lunettes) by the summer of 1510 (see ‘On the Absolute Dates of the Parts of the Sistine Ceiling’, p. 174). Gilbert’s thesis is predicated on the assumption that the lunettes formed a separate, later campaign. (On this topic, see note 4 in Chapter 13.) His argument is criticised by Paul Joannides, who finds this incredibly rapid timescale ‘difficult to credit’ (‘On the Chronology of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling’, pp. 250–2).
3 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 1, pp. 54–5.
4 See Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art (London: John Murray, 1949), p. 26.
5 De Tolnay, Michelangelo, vol. 2, pp. 72, 76. This particular medallion, The Death of Absalom, was painted late in the campaign, meaning that, if de Tolnay is correct, Bastiano was present for virtually the whole of the project.
6 Quoted in Welch, Art in Renaissance Italy, p. 137.
7 II Maccabees 2:22, in The Apocrypha, Revised Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895).
8 Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, 58 vols (Venice: F. Visentini, 1878–1903), vol. 10, col. 369.
9 Ibid.
10 Orlando furioso was first published in forty cantos in 1516; a second edition, also of forty cantos, followed in 1521; the definitive edition of forty-six cantos, however, did not appear until 1532.
11 Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, p. 333.
12 Ibid.
21: BOLOGNA REDUX
1 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 1, p. 55.
2 Quoted in Linda Murray, Michelangelo: His Life, Work and Times (London: Thames & Hudson, 1984), p. 63.
3 Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, p. 338.
4 This document is published in Hirst, ‘Michelangelo in 1505’, Appendix B, p. 766.
5 For an account of Julius’s beard and its implications, see Mark J. Zucker, ‘Raphael and the Beard of Pope Julius II’, Art Bulletin 59 (1977), pp. 524–33.
6 Era
smus, Julius Excluded from Heaven, in The Praise of Folly and Other Writings, p. 148.
7 Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, p. 339 n.
8 Quoted in Heinrich Boehmer, Martin Luther (London: Thames & Hudson, 1957), p. 61.
9 Ibid., p. 67.
10 Ibid., p. 75.
22: THE WORLD’S GAME
1 Quoted in Shaw, Julius II, p. 269.
2 The Letters of Michelangelo, vol. 1, p. 148.
3 The British Museum now holds a chalk drawing that for many years was considered a study for Adam’s head. However, it has since been identified as one of Michelangelo’s drawings for Sebastiano del Piombo’s Raising of Lazarus. See Ludwig Goldscheider, Michelangelo: Drawings (London: Phaidon Press, 1951), p. 34.
4 On this problem, see Michael Hirst, ‘Observations on Drawings for the Sistine Ceiling’, in de Vecchi and Murphy, eds, The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration, pp. 8–9.
5 Quoted in Shaw, Julius II, p. 270.
6 Francesco Guicciardini, The History of Italy, ed. and trans. Sidney Alexander (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969), p. 212. Guicciardini’s disapproving account was written in the 1530s.
7 Quoted in Klaczko, Rome and the Renaissance, p. 229.
8 Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, p. 341.
9 Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, p. 664. Bramante may have been familiar with Leonardo’s numerous plans for weapons such as steam-powered cannons, exploding cannonballs, machine guns and rapid-fire crossbows.
10 Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 6, p. 341.
11 Shaw, Julius II, p. 271.
12 Cecil Gould points out that it is reasonable to suppose ‘that work in the Stanza della Segnatura would have been at a standstill during the ten months of the Pope’s absence’ (‘The Chronology of Raphael’s Stanze’, p. 176). Work need not have come to a ‘standstill’, but it almost certainly must have slowed, if only because of Raphael’s work on other commissions.
13 The name Farnesina dates from only 1580, when the villa was acquired by Alessandro Farnese, the ‘Great Cardinal’. The architectural design of the Villa Farnesina is sometimes attributed to Raphael himself. See, for example, Oppé, Raphael, p. 61. Few other scholars accept this attribution, especially since work on the villa may have begun as early as 1506, before Raphael had based himself in Rome.