My dear Giorgio,
I cannot write easily, but I shall say something in answer to your letter. You know that Urbino is dead. I owe the greatest thanks to God, but my loss is heavy and my sorrow is boundless. I owe God many thanks, for while when he was alive Urbino showed me how to live and in his death he taught me how to the, not with grief but with desire. I kept him with me for twenty-six years, and I found him a rare and faithful friend; and now that I had made him rich and expected him to be the support and comfort of my old age, he has been taken from me; nor have I any hope left, save to see him in Paradise. God has given me a token of this through the happy death that Urbino made. Even more than dying it grieved him to leave me in this treacherous world with so many troubles, although the better part of me has gone with him. All I have left, indeed, is my infinite distress. I commend myself to you.
In the time of Paul IV Michelangelo was employed on many parts of the fortifications of Rome; in this connexion he also served Salvestro Peruzzi, whom, as said elsewhere, the Pope had commissioned to make the great gate of Castel Sant’Angelo, which is today half-ruined. Michelangelo busied himself with distributing the statues for that work, and examining and correcting the models of the sculptors. At that time the French army approached Rome, leading Michelangelo to fear that he would come to a violent end along with the city. Antonio Franzese of Casteldurante, whom Urbino had left to serve him after he died, determined to flee from Rome, and Michelangelo himself went secretly to the mountains of Spoleto, where he stayed in various hermitages. About then Vasari wrote to him, sending a little work which the Florentine citizen, Carlo Lenzoni, had left at his death to Cosimo Bartoli who was to have it printed and dedicated to Michelangelo. When he received the book from Vasari, Michelangelo wrote as follows:
My dear friend Giorgio,
I have received from you the little book by Cosimo and I am sending with this an acknowledgement which I beg you to give to him with my regards.
During the past few days, although it cost me a great deal of effort and money, I have been happily visiting the hermits in the mountains of spoleto, and as a result I returned only half-heartedly to Rome, for indeed peace is to be found only in those woods. I have no more to tell you; I am glad you are well and happy, and I commend myself to you. 18 September 1556.1
Michelangelo used to work every day, for recreation, on the block of stone with four figures that we have already mentioned; and at this time he broke it into pieces. He did this either because it was hard and full of emery and the chisel often struck sparks from it, or perhaps because his judgement was so severe that he was never content with anything he did. That this was the case can be proved by the fact that there are few finished statues to be seen of all that he made in the prime of his manhood, and that those he did finish completely were executed when he was young, such as the Bacchus, the Pietà in St Peter’s, the giant David at Florence, and the Christ in the Minerva. It would be impossible to add to these or take away a single grain without ruining them. The others, with the exception of Duke Giuliano and Duke Lorenzo, the Night, the Dawn, the Moses, with the other two, which altogether do not amount to eleven, the others, I say, and there were many of them, were all left unfinished. For Michelangelo used to say that if he had had to be satisfied with what he did, then he would have sent out very few statues, or rather none at all. This was because he had so developed his art and judgement that when on revealing one of his figures he saw the slightest error he would abandon it and run to start working on another block, trusting that it would not happen again. He would often say that this was why he had finished so few statues or pictures. Anyhow, he gave the broken Pietà to Francesco Bandini. At that time on the introduction of Francesco Bandini and Donato Giannotti, the Florentine sculptor, Tiberio Calcagni, struck up a close friendship with Michelangelo. And then one day when he was at his house, after they had discussed things together for a long time, Tiberio asked Michelangelo why he had broken the Pietà (which was in the house) and had wasted all his marvellous efforts. Michelangelo answered that the reason for this was the importunity of his servant Urbino who had nagged him every day to finish it; and as well as this a piece had broken off from the arm of the Madonna. And these things, he said, as well as other mishaps including his finding a crack in the marble, had made him so hate the work that he had lost patience and broken it; and he would have smashed it completely had not his servant Antonio persuaded him to give it to someone just as it was. After he heard this, Tiberio spoke to Bandini, who was anxious to have something by Michelangelo, and Bandini then persuaded him to promise two hundred gold crowns to Antonio, if he would beg Michelangelo to allow Tiberio, using Michelangelo’s models, to finish the statue for Bandini. This would mean that Michelangelo’s labours would not have been thrown away, he said. Michelangelo was happy with this arrangement, and he gave the block to them as a gift. It was immediately carried off and subsequently put together by Tiberio who added God knows how many new pieces. All the same, it still stayed unfinished because of the death of Bandini, of Michelangelo, and of Tiberio. Today it is in the possession of Francesco’s son, Pierantonio Bandini, in his villa at Montecavallo.
To return to Michelangelo: it was now necessary for him to find another block of marble, so that he could continue using his chisel every day; so he found a far smaller block containing a Pietà already roughed out and of a very different arrangement.
Meanwhile, there had entered into the service of Paul IV the architect Pirro Ligorio, who was also concerned with the building of St Peter’s. Michelangelo was being harassed once again, and they were going about every day saying that he was in his second childhood. Angered by all this, he would willingly have returned to Florence, and when he delayed he was again pressed to do so by Giorgio Vasari in his letters to him. But Michelangelo knew that he was too old, for he had now reached the age of eighty-one. So when at that time he wrote to Vasari by his courier, sending him various religious sonnets, he said to him that he was at the end of his life, that he must take care where he directed his thoughts, that by reading what he wrote Vasari would see he was at his last hour and that the image of death was engraved on his every thought. In one of his letters he said:
God wishes it, Vasari, that I should continue to live in misery for some years. I know that you will tell me that I am a foolish old man to want to write sonnets, but since there are many who say that I am in my second childhood I have wanted to act accordingly. I see from your letter how much you love me, and be sure of this, that I would be glad to lay these tired bones beside those of my father, as you beg me to do. But if I left here I would cause the utter ruin of the building of St Peter’s, and this would be a great disgrace and sin. But when the building has been so far advanced that it can never be changed, then I hope to do all you ask, if I am not sinning by keeping frustrated certain gluttons who can’t wait for me to leave.
Accompanying this letter was the following sonnet, written in his own hand:
Now hath my life across a stormy sea,
Like a frail bark, reached that wide port where all
Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall
Of good and evil for eternity.
Now know I well how that fond phantasy
Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
Of earthly art is vain; how criminal
Is that which all men seek unwillingly.
Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed,
What are they when the double death is nigh?
The one I know for sure, the other dread.
Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.1
From this it was seen that Michelangelo was gradually drawing away from the world towards God and casting from himself the cares of art, persecuted as he was by those malignant artists and influenced by some of those who were in charge of the building of St
Peter’s and who would have liked, as he used to say, to come to blows. On Duke Cosimo’s orders, Vasari replied briefly to Michelangelo’s letter, encouraging him to return to his home, and sending him a sonnet with rhymes corresponding to those Michelangelo himself had used.
Michelangelo would gladly have left Rome, but he had grown so old and feeble that despite his resolve (which I shall mention later) his flesh betrayed his spirit. Now it happened that in June 1557, in the construction of the vault over the chapel of the king (which was in travertine and for which Michelangelo had made a model) an error occurred because Michelangelo was unable to go along and supervise as often as he used to.1 What happened was that the master builder shaped the whole vault on one curve, struck from a single centre instead of from several. Writing as a friend and confidant of Vasari’s, Michelangelo sent him the plans, with these words at the foot of two of them:
The curve marked on the drawing in red was taken by the master builder as the shape of the whole vault, so that when it became a semicircle at the apex of the vault he realized he had made an error in the shape of the curve as a whole, as shown here on the drawing in black. With this error, the vault has progressed to the point where it is necessary to remove a large number of stones since it is built of travertine instead of the usual brick. The diameter of the arch, excluding the surrounding cornice, is twenty-two spans. The mistake arose (even though I made an exact model, as I always do) because in my old age I have not been able to go there all that often. So whereas I expected that the vault would be finished by now, it will take all winter. If people could the of shame and grief I would be dead by now. Please explain to the duke why I am not in Florence.
Then on another of the drawings, showing the plan of the building, Michelangelo wrote:
Giorgio,
So that you can understand the problem of the vaulting better, note the way it rises from ground level and was of necessity divided into three over the lower windows, separated by pilasters, as you see; and they go up pyramidally in the centre, towards the apex of the vault, as do the ends and sides of it. It has to be struck from an infinite number of centres, which keep changing and alter from point to point so that it is impossible to lay down a fixed rule, and the circles and rectangles created by the movements of the planes towards the centre have to be increased and diminished in so many directions at once that it is difficult to find the right way of doing it. All the same they had the model (which I always make) and they ought not to have committed so gross an error as to try and make one single curve of vaulting do for all three vault shells. This was why, to our great shame and loss, it has to be reconstructed, and a great number of stones have been removed. The vault with its ornaments and sections is entirely of travertine, like the lower part of the chapel, and this is something rarely seen in Rome.
When he saw all the obstacles, Duke Cosimo excused Michelangelo from returning to Florence, telling him that his peace of mind and the continuation of St Peter’s were of greater importance to him than anything else in the world, and that he was not to worry. In the same letter that I quoted above, Michelangelo asked Vasari to thank the duke for him from the bottom of his heart for all his kindness, and he added: ‘God grant that I may be able to serve him with this body of mine.’
For, he went on, his memory and understanding had gone to wait for him elsewhere. (The date of this letter was August 1557.) So Michelangelo was shown that the duke had more regard for his life and honour than for his presence, much as he wanted him at his side. All these things, and many others there is no call to repeat, I learned from letters Michelangelo wrote himself.
In St Peter’s Michelangelo had carried forward a great part of the frieze, with its interior windows and paired columns on the outside following the huge round cornice on which the cupola has to be placed. But now little was being done. So bearing in mind his state of health, Michelangelo’s closest friends urged him in view of the delay in raising the cupola at least to make a model for it. These were men such as the cardinal of Carpi, Donato Giannotti, Francesco Bandini, Tommaso Cavalieri, and Lottino. Michelangelo let several months go by without making up his mind, but at length he started work and little by little constructed a small model in clay, from which, along with his plans and sections, it would later be possible to make a larger model in wood. He then began to work on the wooden model, which he had constructed in little more than a year by Giovanni Franzese, who put into it great effort and enthusiasm; and he made it so that its small proportions, measured by the old Roman span, corresponded perfectly and exactly to those of the cupola itself. The model was diligently built with columns, bases, capitals, doors, windows, cornices, projections, and every minor detail, as was called for in work of this kind: and certainly in Christian countries, or rather throughout the whole world, there is no grander or more richly ornamented edifice to be found.1
Michelangelo completed the model to the immense satisfaction of all his friends and all Rome besides; and he thus settled and established the form of the building. Subsequently, Paul IV died and was succeeded by Pius IV, who while causing the building of the little palace in the wood of the Belvedere to be continued by Pietro Ligorio (who remained architect to the palace) made many generous offers to Michelangelo. He also confirmed in Michelangelo’s favour the motu proprio concerning the building of St Peter’s which he had originally received from Paul III and had renewed by Julius III and Paul IV. He restored to him part of the revenues and allowances taken away by Paul IV, and employed him in many of his building projects. And during his pontificate he had the work on St Peter’s pushed forward very vigorously. Michelangelo notably served the Pope in making a design for the tomb of his brother, the marquis of Marignano, which Cavaliere Leone Leoni of Arezzo, a first-class sculptor and a great friend of Michelangelo’s, was commissioned to erect in the cathedral of Milan. (And it will be described in the appropriate place.) At that time Leone made a very lifelike portrait of Michelangelo on a medal, on the reverse of which, out of compliments to him, he showed a blind man led by a dog, with the following legend: DOCEBO INIQUOS VIAS TUAS, ET IMPII AD TE CONVERTENTUR.1 This so pleased Michelangelo that he presented Leone with several of his drawings and with a model in wax of Hercules crushing Antaeus.
We have no other portraits of Michelangelo save two paintings, one by Bugiardini and the other by Jacopo del Conte, and a bronze relief by Daniele Ricciarello; but many copies have been made of Leone’s portrait, and indeed I myself have seen a vast number both in Italy and abroad.
That same year Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, Duke Cosimo’s son, went to Rome to receive the cardinal’s hat from Pius IV and, as his friend and servant, Vasari thought that he should accompany him. He went with him very happily and stayed in Rome for about a month to enjoy the company of his dear friend Michelangelo, whom he visited constantly. On the orders of his Excellency, Vasari brought with him the model in wood for the ducal palace in Florence, along with the designs for the new apartments which he himself had built and decorated. Michelangelo wanted to see these models and designs since, being an old man, he could not see the works themselves. The paintings were extensive, varied, and full of diverse inventions and fantasies, showing the castration of Uranus and stories of Saturn, Ops, Ceres, Jove, Juno, and Hercules; each apartment was devoted to histories, in numerous compartments, concerning one of these gods. Similarly, the lower rooms and halls were adorned with stories of all the heroes of the Medici family, starting with Cosimo the Elder and continuing with Lorenzo, Leo X, Clement VII, the Lord Giovanni, Duke Alessandro, and Duke Cosimo. Along with episodes from their lives were shown their portraits with those of their children and of many of the famous people of ancient times, distinguished in affairs of state or warfare or literature, all taken from life. Vasari wrote a dialogue concerning these pictures in which he explained the histories and the meaning of the inventions and the relationship between the fables in the upper rooms and the histories in the lower apartments; and this was read by Annibale
Caro to Michelangelo, who derived great pleasure from it. When Vasari has more time, he intends to publish this dialogue.1
In this connexion, when Vasari wanted to start work on the Great Hall he decided that the ceiling should be raised, since it was so low that it stunted the room and robbed it of light. But the duke refused permission, not because he was worried about the cost (as later became clear) but because of the danger of raising the posts by as much as twenty-six feet. However, his Excellency then judiciously decided that Michelangelo should be asked for his opinion. Michelangelo therefore was shown the model for the hall in its original condition and then as it would appear with the beams renovated and with a new design for the ceiling and walls, and with the drawings for all the various scenes that were to be painted there. After he had studied all this, and also examined the method to be used for raising the posts and the roof and the steps to be taken to execute all the work swiftly, Michelangelo became a partisan rather than a judge; and when Vasari returned to Florence he carried a letter to the duke in which Michelangelo urged him to carry on with the enterprise which, he added, was truly worthy of him. The same year Duke Cosimo visited Rome with his consort, Duchess Leonora, and immediately he arrived Michelangelo went to see him. After he had welcomed him very affectionately, out of respect for his great talents the duke made Michelangelo sit by his side, and then with much familiarity his Excellency discussed with him all the paintings and sculptures he had commissioned at Florence and what he intended to do for the future, and notably the Great Hall. Michelangelo once again encouraged and reassured him about that project, and said that his love for Cosimo made him regret that he was not young enough to serve him himself. During their conversation his Excellency remarked that he had discovered the way to work porphyry; and seeing Michelangelo’s disbelief, he later (as I mention in the first chapter of my technical section) sent him a head of Christ executed by the sculptor Francesco del Tadda, which astonished him.1 Michelangelo, to the duke’s great satisfaction, visited him several times while he was in Rome, and he also went to see his son, the most illustrious Don Francesco de’ Medici, when he visited Rome a little later. He was delighted with Don Francesco, who treated him with great affection and reverence and always held his cap in his hand when talking to him, out of respect for so distinguished a man; and he wrote to Vasari saying that it grieved him that he was weak and indisposed since he would like to have done something for him; instead, he was going about trying to buy some beautiful antique to send to him in Florence.
Lives of the Artists Page 44