Michelangelo And The Sistine Chapel Read online

  More than three hundred of Michelangelo’s letters to and from his father and siblings survive. They are overwhelmingly concerned with practicalities, mostly financial — the purchase of property, the banking of sums of money. Michelangelo’s own letters testify to his sense of family duty and his considerable generosity, but they are constantly punctuated by complaints and lamentations. He lives wearied by gargantuan labours, he protests, again and again, and all for no thanks. A typical example is the letter he wrote to his father from Rome in October 1512, just after he had completed the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in which he concludes: ‘all this I have done in order to help you, though you have never either recognised or believed it — God help you.’5

  The most extraordinary thing about Michelangelo’s letters to his family is the fact that he never once discusses his art with them in any moral or intellectual sense. It is ever-present in the background, as the cause of his exhaustion and source of whatever help he can give them. But that is all. Michelangelo may have felt that his family could never really understand who he was or what he was trying to accomplish. This may be another of the subtexts behind the story of the wet nurse and the miraculous capacities with which her milk had endowed the artist. Hellmut Wohl succinctly expresses this aspect of the story’s secret meaning in his analysis of Condivi’s Life of Michelangelo: ‘As a sculptor, he implies, he was not the child of his father and mother, but of his wet nurse; he had been reborn, set apart from his natural heritage, and invested with a creative power that was his alone.’

  All this may help to explain Michelangelo’s extraordinary drive, his almost monastic dedication to work, his readiness to take on projects of such magnitude as to seem virtually unachievable — and, most of the time, actually to carry them off. He was motivated, in part, by a deep desire to prove his family wrong. It was an important part of his life’s work to convince even the most sceptical that art could indeed be the noblest of professions.

  Where did Michelangelo acquire his deep-seated belief in the nobility and intellectual seriousness of art? Largely from Florence and the traditions he encountered there. Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Donatello and Ghiberti, the founders of early Renaissance style, had not only furnished the city with copious examples of their ingenuity and talent. They had also effected the beginnings of a sea-change in attitudes to art and artists across the entire Italian peninsula. By the second half of the fifteenth century, the role of the artist itself had undergone a profound metamorphosis. The most gifted painters, sculptors and architects — men such as Piero della Francesca, who wrote a treatise on mathematics, or Leonardo da Vinci, who became expert in numerous branches of scientific knowledge — were no longer content to be regarded as mere craftsmen. They were intellectuals, possessors of special skills and forms of knowledge often so arcane they liked to refer to them as ‘secrets’ — men capable of mastering the complexities of human anatomy, or making the detailed calculations necessary to create the illusions of perspective.

  The new skills and ambitions of artists were in turn recognised and encouraged by a new breed of patron. The princes who ruled the city-states of Renaissance Italy — the Sforza in Milan, the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Este in Ferrara — had themselves undergone a sea-change. Having emerged from the ranks of merchants and mercenaries, their horizons had been suddenly broadened by an intellectual revolution that took place in their midst. They too had learned to value different forms of learning, in particular to share that interest in the classical past proselytised by the men hired to educate them. Their teachers were drawn increasingly from the ranks of humanist scholars, followers of Petrarch, united by a fascination for what he had called ‘the pure radiance of the past’. The princely patrons of Renaissance Italy themselves became intrigued by the past and consumed by the ambition to rival the glory of antiquity.

  Michelangelo experienced this new world at first hand during his formative years, when he came into direct contact with the circle of the Medici, the principal family of Florence. At its head was Lorenzo de’ Medici, otherwise known as Il Magnifico, ‘The Magnificent One’, who gave much encouragement to the artist in his early years. Vasari tells the story behind their first meeting, which took place when Michelangelo was no more than fifteen years old, in convincingly circumstantial detail:

  At that time the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici kept the sculptor Bertoldo in his garden on the Piazza San Marco, not so much as custodian or guardian of the many beautiful antiques that he had collected and gathered together at great expense in that place, as because, desiring very earnestly to create a school of excellent painters and sculptors, he wished that these should have as their chief and guide the above-named Bertoldo, who was a disciple of Donato [Donatello] . Bertoldo, although he was so old that he was not able to work, was nevertheless a well-practised master and in much repute . . . Now Lorenzo, who bore a very great love to painting and to sculpture, was grieved that there were not to be found in his time sculptors noble and famous enough to equal the many painters of the highest merit and reputation, and he determined, as I have said, to found a school. To this end he besought Domenico Ghirlandaio that, if he had among the young men in his workshop any that were inclined to sculpture, he might send them to his garden, where he wished to train and form them in such a manner as might do honour to himself, to Domenico, and to the whole city. Whereupon there were given to him by Domenico as the best of his young men, among others, Michelangelo and Francesco Granacci . . .6

  Some modern scholars have unaccountably chosen to regard Lorenzo’s sculpture garden as a fiction. But it certainly existed. It contained an avenue of cypresses and a loggia, as well as Lorenzo’s collection of classical statuary. Vasari goes so far as to call it an art academy, in which case it would have been one of the first such institutions, although his actual description makes it sound a little more informal than that — a place where young men could study sculpture in their own time and make their first attempts in the medium, sporadically supervised by Bertoldo, the ageing tutorcum-custodian. Lorenzo the Magnificent had a habit of turning up unannounced to inspect the progress of his young protégés.7 According to both of Michelangelo’s biographers, he took to Michelangelo more or less instantly.

  Condivi tells the story of how Michelangelo decided to make his own copy of one of Lorenzo’s classical statues:

  One day, he was examining among these works the Head of a Faun, already old in appearance, with a long beard and laughing countenance, though the mouth, on account of its antiquity, could hardly be distinguished or recognised for what it was; and, as he liked it inordinately, he decided to copy it in marble . . . He set about copying the Faun with such care and study that in a few days he perfected it, supplying from his imagination all that was lacking in the ancient work, that is, the open mouth as of a man laughing, so that the cavity of the mouth and all the teeth could be seen. In the midst of this, the Magnificent, coming to see what point his works had reached, found the boy engaged in polishing the head and, approaching quite near, he was much amazed, considering first the excellence of the work and then the boy’s age; and, although he did praise the work, nonetheless he joked with him as with a child and said, ‘Oh, you have made the Faun old and left him all his teeth. Don’t you know that old men of that age are always missing a few?’8

  As soon as Lorenzo had left, Michelangelo got to work on the statue, removing an upper tooth from its mouth and drilling a hole in the gum to make it look as though it had come out by the root:

  ‘. . . the following day he awaited the Magnificent with eager longing. When he had come and noted the boy’s goodness and simplicity, he laughed at him very much; but then, when he weighed in his mind the perfection of the thing and the age of the boy, he, who was the father of virtù, resolved to help and encourage such great genius and to take him into his household; and, learning from him whose son he was, he said: ‘Inform your father that I would like to speak to him.’9

  Michelangelo’s father does not emerge wit
h much credit from the rest of Condivi’s account. When Lodovico hears that he has been summoned, he suspects that he is being manipulated by Michelangelo. He protests that he will never suffer his son to become a mere stonemason, and refuses to listen when it is explained to him ‘how great a difference there was between a sculptor and a stonemason’. However, he cannot refuse to meet Lorenzo the Magnificent, who is so much his social superior. Lorenzo asks him ‘whether he would be willing to let him have his son for his own’, in exchange for which he promises to grant him ‘the greatest favour in my power’. Lodovico agrees but, like some hapless character in a fairy story, immediately fails to take advantage of his fortunate situation. Offered, as if by magic, anything he might wish for, he asks for a minor job in the customs office. Lorenzo claps him on the shoulder and smiles at his naïveté, commenting, ‘You will always be poor.’10

  The contrast between Lodovico’s lack of ambition and his son’s strength of purpose could hardly be greater. Concealed within this parable of a father who foolishly fails to understand the nature of his son’s genius, then even more foolishly fails to profit by it, lies a message from Michelangelo to his contemporaries. Lodovico, who cannot grasp the difference between a sculptor and a mere stonemason, represents all of those who would doubt the true dignity of the artist’s vocation. His objections, rooted in snobbery, are made to seem all the more absurd by the fact that it is a member of the noble house of the Medici who refutes them.

  The Battle of the Centaurs

  The moment when Lorenzo il Magnifico took him into his household was always regarded by Michelangelo as a milestone in his life. According to both Vasari and Condivi, Lorenzo treated the artist as if he were one of his own sons. Michelangelo ate at Lorenzo’s table and benefited from conversations with the many leading humanist authors who were part of the Medici circle. He is said to have been inspired to create one of his earliest works, a bas-relief on the classical theme of The Battle of the Centaurs (above), by the poet Angelo Poliziano. The work in question, which was not a commission but was created for the artist’s own satisfaction, remained in the hands of his heirs for centuries and can still be seen in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence. This study in writhing, intertwined human bodies is a testament to Michelangelo’s extraordinary abilities with a chisel, at the age of just sixteen or seventeen. It is also evidence of his volatility of temperament and his deep sensuality.

  It has often been asserted that the artist fell under the sway of Neo-Platonic philosophy while in the Medici household. But there is no strong evidence for this. There is no supposedly Neo-Platonic reference, in his work either as an artist or as a poet, that cannot be more straightforwardly explained as an expression of Christian belief. The most clearly identifiable legacies of his early exposure to humanist scholarship were a fascination with the art of antiquity and a strongly independent cast of mind — a determination to approach every subject that he drew, painted or sculpted as if he were the first artist ever to treat it.

  There has been much speculation about which particular humanist texts Michelangelo might have read in his youth. Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man has been cited so often, in relation to Michelangelo, as to suggest that it must have been a key influence on him, one of his intellectual touchstones. But there is no sign that he ever read it and no reason to think it ever mattered to him.

  Humanist thought exerted its strongest influence on him through no particular, individual text, but through its radically new sense of what a text actually is. This amounted, also, to a whole new way of thinking. During the Middle Ages, classical texts ranging from the works of Cicero to those of Galen had been regarded as ‘authorities’, bundles of statements and beliefs hallowed by tradition and therefore to be taken on trust. The humanists revolutionised this attitude. They came to believe that every classical text was to be treated on its own merits, analysed on first principles, and evaluated accordingly. For Michelangelo’s contemporary, the celebrated scholar Desiderio Erasmus, the project of re-reading the past became connected with the need for spiritual reform across all Christendom. For too long had Scripture been the property of the Church. For too long had theologians been allowed to barnacle the words of the Old and New Testaments with their own complex interpretations and exegeses. It was time to recover God’s message in its purity — and to contemplate that message, as if for the first time, in a state of spiritual innocence and nakedness.

  The same approach drives Michelangelo’s particular form of originality, which is not to be explained as some mysterious emanation of genius but as a phenomenon deeply rooted in the intellectual history of his time. He has a strong and inalienable belief in his own right to read and interpret the Bible, to find and express the messages that he feels God has put there for the enlightenment of mankind. This is not to say that he is so arrogant as to set at naught the interpretations of the Church fathers, nor indeed of the theologians of his own time. But he does not take their authority at face value. He has the same independence of mind as a Christian humanist and it is this — just as much as his brilliance of imagination and abilities with a paintbrush — that makes the paintings of the Sistine Chapel ceiling so powerful and unique.

  Lorenzo il Magnifico died two years after inviting Michelangelo to live with him. Within a few years the Medici had been expelled from the city, and the garden in which the artist created some of his earliest sculptures had been looted and destroyed. But Michelangelo had been spotted. In Lorenzo’s informal academy, his horizons had been broadened far beyond the teachings of Maestro Francesco of Urbino, whose school he had once sporadically attended. He had been taught the rudiments of sculpture. He had shown such prodigious talent that it was already evident, to anyone who had seen him work, that he was destined for great things. He had taken the first steps along a path that would lead him, circuitously, to the door of the Sistine Chapel.

  After the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, Vasari says, Michelangelo returned to live in the house of his father, ‘in infinite sorrow’. Lorenzo’s son, Piero de’ Medici, showed a friendly interest in the young sculptor. He sought his advice when purchasing works of antique art. One winter, he is said to have asked Michelangelo to create a statue from snow in the courtyard of the Medici palace. It was ‘very beautiful’,11 say both biographers, with tantalising vagueness. At around the same time, according to Vasari, he carved a wooden crucifixion for the church of Santo Spirito, ‘to please the Prior, who placed rooms at his disposal, in which he was constantly flaying dead bodies, in order to study the secrets of anatomy’.12 Vasari adds that Piero ‘honoured Michelangelo on account of his talents in such a manner that his father, beginning to see that he was esteemed among the great, clothed him much more honourably than he had been wont to do’.13 Condivi says the same, adding that Lodovico ‘was by this time more friendly to his son’.14 The doubting father had at last learned the error of his ways.

  During his early career, Michelangelo was to be singled out by one discerning patron after another until the pope himself, Julius II, would take him for his own and monopolise all his efforts and energies. The artist’s many stories about his youth make it clear that he saw the hand of fate behind this chain of worldly events. Before he was ever chosen by the Medici, or the pope, he had been chosen by God. It is important to recognise that Michelangelo did not believe this in any metaphorical way. In his mind, it was actually true. He felt that he had been given his gifts by God, and charged with serving the purposes of divine will. This is why, when he painted the Sistine Chapel, he depicted the Old Testament prophets with such sympathy and such a strong sense of identification. He felt that he had been called, just as they had, to spread the word of God.

  The artist’s belief that God was actively present in his life is implicit in both biographies but particularly strong in Condivi’s text. For example, when the author tells the tale of how the young Michelangelo escaped harm when the population of Florence rose up against the Medici, it is clearly a para
ble of supernatural intervention. Condivi relates that the artist was friends with a member of Piero’s retinue, a musician named Cardiere. One day Cardiere confided to Michelangelo that he had been granted a vision: ‘Lorenzo de’ Medici had appeared to him with a black robe, all in rags over his nakedness, and had commanded him to tell his son that he would shortly be driven from his house, never to return again.’15

  At this point in the story, the artist urges Cardiere to tell Piero himself about the ill-omened apparition. When Cardiere does so he is laughed down as a superstitious fool by Piero and his retinue. But Michelangelo, who trusts in the apparition of Lorenzo as surely as Hamlet trusts in the ghost of his father, flees Florence for the safety of Venice and then Bologna. Once there, he is given refuge in the house of Giovanni Francesco Aldovrandi, a prominent nobleman of the city who would later become a favourite of Pope Julius II.

  Aldovrandi, like Lorenzo before him, instantly recognises the artist’s intelligence and talent. Like Lorenzo he takes on the role of the true father, the noble father that Michelangelo’s own nobility had deserved. ‘He was delighted with his intelligence, and every evening he had him read from Dante or Petrarch and sometimes from Boccaccio, until he fell asleep.’ This idyll is interrupted when Michelangelo learns that there has been a popular uprising in Florence. ‘At this point,’ says Condivi, ‘the Medici family with all their followers, who had been driven out of Florence, came on to Bologna ... thus Cardiere’s vision or diabolical delusion or divine prediction or powerful imagination, whatever it was, came true. This is truly remarkable and worth recording, and I have related it just as I heard it from Michelangelo himself.’16