Michelangelo And The Sistine Chapel Read online

  The brotherly relationship soon turned sour. In the spring of 1506 Julius II cancelled the commission for the tomb. His reasons for doing so are impossible to establish with absolute certainty. Perhaps he simply thought better of it. Even a man of his pride and ambition may have baulked, on sober reflection, at the idea of such an immense and permanent magnification of his own hubris. But other priorities had also come to the fore. He was involved in costly military campaigns and he had committed himself to a huge new architectural project, the rebuilding of St Peter’s itself.

  Michelangelo always believed that Bramante, Julius II’s favourite architect, had played a devious part in the whole affair. In Michelangelo’s version of the story, it was Bramante who had manipulated the pope into redirecting his energies towards the new St Peter’s; and it was Bramante, acting out of naked selfinterest, who had persuaded the pope that his money would be better spent on architecture than on the myriad sculptures of his multi-storied tomb. At his most paranoid, Michelangelo even believed that Bramante seeded the idea that he would be best employed painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling — part of a dastardly plot to make a fool of him by exposing his inadequacies as a painter of frescoes.

  The truth is that Michelangelo himself may have been indirectly responsible for the pope’s change of heart. The tomb that he had designed for Julius II was intended, from the outset, to be housed in the old basilica of St Peter’s. But the plan for the monument was so grandiose that it could never have been accommodated within the relatively modest dimensions of that building. The pope may well have decided to enlarge St Peter’s, in the first place, to make room for his own memorial — and then have grown so absorbed by Bramante’s plan for the new building, and so aware of the enormous costs that it would involve, that he decided to shelve the tomb indefinitely.

  Michelangelo only discovered what was going on by eavesdropping on one of the pope’s conversations at mealtime. He told the story in a letter to his friend, the Florentine architect Giuliano da Sangallo. ‘At table on Holy Saturday,’ he wrote, ‘I heard the pope say to a jeweller and to the master of ceremonies, to whom he was talking, that he did not wish to spend one baiocco more either on small stones or large ones.’40 Michelangelo was alarmed at the remark, which he correctly took to imply that Julius II was no longer prepared to spend large sums on the marble for his tomb. He was also anxious because he had just parted with a considerable amount of his own money to pay off some of the workmen who had brought the marble from Carrara, in the expectation that he would be promptly reimbursed by the papal treasury. During the next few days, his worst fears were confirmed. Time after time he requested an audience with Julius II to settle the matter of his expenses, but on each occasion he was refused entry by the papal equerry. Again and again came the same answer: ‘Forgive me, but I have orders not to admit you.’ Finally, concluding that all was lost — that he would never get his money, that he had wasted eight months in the mountains of Carrara, that the project to which he had hoped to devote his life had been summarily terminated — the artist flew into a rage.

  ‘Michelangelo,’ writes Condivi,

  to whom up to then no portiere had ever been drawn or door closed, seeing himself thus discarded, was angered by this turn of events and answered, ‘And you may tell the pope from now on, if he wants me, he can look for me elsewhere.’ So when he returned home he gave orders to two servants that he had that, when they had sold all the household furniture and collected the money, they were to follow him to Florence. He rode post and at two in the morning he reached Poggibonsi, a fortified town in the domain of Florence, some eighteen or twenty miles from the city. Here, being in a safe place, he alighted. Shortly afterwards, five couriers arrived from Julius, with orders to bring him back wherever they should find him. But they had come upon him in a place where they could do him no violence and, as Michelangelo threatened to have them killed if they attempted anything, they resorted to entreaties; these being of no avail, they did get him to agree that at least he would answer the pope’s letter, which they had presented to him, and that he would write specifically that they had caught up with him in Florence, in order for the pope to understand that they had not been able to bring him back against his will. The tenor of the pope’s letter was this: that, as soon as Michelangelo had seen the present letter, he was to return forthwith to Rome, under pain of his disfavour. To which Michelangelo answered briefly that he would never go back; that in return for his good and faithful service he did not deserve to be driven from the pope’s presence like a villain; and that, since His Holiness no longer wished to pursue the tomb, he was freed from his obligation and did not wish to commit himself to anything else. When he had dated the letter as we said and dismissed the couriers, he went on to Florence . . . 41

  The precise contents of the pope’s letter are not known, but it may have contained the first of many demands that Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The subject had certainly been raised before Michelangelo stormed out of Rome — it is discussed in his correspondence of 150642 — but it may only have inflamed the artist’s anger and sense of injustice. He had wanted to create a monument the like of which the world had never seen. As far as he was concerned, offering him the consolation prize of a mere fresco cycle was adding insult to injury.

  Eventually, after months of sulking in his Florentine refuge, the artist was prevailed upon to make his peace with the pope. Julius II had suppressed the rebellious fiefdom of Bologna, bringing it once more under papal rule, and Michelangelo sought him out there. The pope rebuked the recalcitrant artist but then forgave him, sealing the new pact between them with a commission for a monumental sculpture in bronze. The work in question was to be a great statue of Julius II, three times the size of life. It was to be erected on the façade of the church of San Petronio, in the centre of Bologna, to remind the people of the city that their first loyalty should always be to the pope. Julius II specified that he should be shown holding a sword, rather than a book. Michelangelo, who seems to have approved of the idea, replied by explaining his own conception of the statue’s role: ‘It is threatening this populace, Holy Father, if they are not prudent.’43

  The commission turned out to be a poisoned chalice. The artist spent the best part of two years in Bologna, living four to a room with his assistants as he struggled with the difficulty of casting such a large work in bronze. After several abortive attempts, he succeeded in making the work, but within three years it was destroyed when the people of Bologna — brazenly defying the statue’s warning to be ‘prudent’ — rebelled against the ineffective rule of the papal legate, Cardinal Alidosi. The bronze was melted down and turned into a cannon, ‘La Giulia’, mockingly named after the pope. After paying the wages of his assistants and covering the cost of materials, Michelangelo was left with the grand total of four and a half ducats for all his efforts.

  In February 1508, with little to show for the last three years of his life, Michelangelo returned to Florence. He may have hoped that the pope would leave him alone, but if so the hope was short-lived. In early spring he was summoned again to Rome. Once more, the pope urged him to undertake the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Once more the artist resisted. But in the end he had no alternative but to swallow his disappointment about the tomb and do the pope’s bidding. ‘He went on refusing to such an extent, that the pope almost lost his temper,’ writes Condivi. ‘But when he saw that the pope was determined, he embarked on that work which is to be seen today in the papal palace to the admiration and amazement of the world, and which brought him so great a reputation that it set him above all envy.’

  The chapel in which Michelangelo worked for the best part of four years is a simple rectangular building with heavily fortified walls. It was designed by a Florentine architect named Baccio Pontelli during the pontificate of Julius II’s uncle, Sixtus IV. Work began in 1477 and the building was finished by 1481, which suggests that its completion was viewed as a matter of considerable urgency
by the papacy. The Sistine Chapel immediately became the principal place of worship for the capella papalis, or Papal Chapel, a corporate body consisting of the pope and about two hundred senior officials, drawn not only from the ranks of the Church hierarchy but also from the laity — it included cardinals, the generals of the monastic and mendicant orders, visiting archbishops and bishops, as well as qualifying members of the papal household such as the sacristan, the major domo, chamberlains, secretaries, notaries and auditors.44

  Sistine Chapel exterior

  As well as serving as a place of worship, the chapel also housed the cardinals during the conclave in which every new pope was elected. A conclave lasted several days and nights, during which the cardinals would camp in the Sistine Chapel in temporary cells erected for the purpose. Two rows of wooden-framed cubicles were divided by a narrow passage. Each cubicle or cell was covered in coloured cloth, purple for those cardinals created by the recently deceased pope, green for the rest. According to a contemporary eyewitness, when all the preparations for a conclave had been made the Sistine Chapel resembled a hospital ward — a ‘dormitorio di hospitale’ — albeit one of a very splendid kind.45

  The shape and size of the building mirrored its importance. Its dimensions are those of Solomon’s Temple, as they are described in the Book of Kings. Its length is twice its height and three times its width. The surfaces of Solomon’s Temple were covered in cedar and gold, but the Sistine Chapel was intended from the outset to be decorated with paintings. As soon as the building was ready Sixtus IV had commissioned leading artists of the time, including Perugino, Signorelli and Botticelli, to paint two continuous fresco cycles on its walls. On one of the chapel’s long walls, they painted scenes from the life of Christ; on the other, scenes from the life of Moses. The meaning of this parallelism is underscored by inscriptions on the cornice declaring that Moses, to whom God gave the Ten Commandments, ‘is the bearer of the Old Law’, while Christ is ‘the bearer of the new Law’.46

  The pictures illustrated a commonplace of Christian theology, one that underpinned the authority of the Church itself. They insisted that the era of Mosaic law, or tempus legis, had been inevitably succeeded in God’s plan by the era of Christ’s unwritten law, which was the era of grace, or tempus gratiae. Directly above these frescoes, flanking the windows of the chapel, are depictions of the early popes. Arranged in chronological order, with each pope made to resemble a painted statue standing in a niche, they stress the continuity and legitimacy of the papal succession.

  When Michelangelo was summoned by Julius II, the figurative paintings of the chapel stopped there. The shallow barrel vault of the ceiling was decorated with a rudimentary vision of heaven, an ultramarine sky with stars of gold that had been contributed by a minor artist called Piermatteo d’Amelia. But that was all.

  The first scheme suggested to Michelangelo by the pope was surprisingly modest. It consisted principally of twelve depictions of the Apostles, to be painted on the twelve pendentives that run down between the six round-headed windows on each side of the chapel. Julius II, an enthusiastic connoisseur of the art of antiquity, also wanted Michelangelo to replace Piermatteo’s starry sky with a modern version of the decorated ceilings that had been discovered in the recently excavated Golden House of the emperor Nero. The relatively undemanding nature of the proposal may only have strengthened Michelangelo’s reluctance to carry it out. Twelve figures and a ceiling decorated with fashionably antique motifs, grotteschi and the like – this was hardly a fitting recompense for the loss of the commission for the great tomb.

  By his own account, Michelangelo eventually plucked up his courage and told the pope exactly what he thought of his plan. It was, he said, ‘a poor thing’. Unless he were allowed to do something much more ambitious, he would be wasting his own time and the pope’s money. According to Michelangelo, Julius II capitulated, saying that the artist could do as he liked. Whether or not it happened exactly like that, it seems that Michelangelo was given considerable licence to reconceive the programme of paintings for the ceiling. Just as he had transformed a misshapen block of Carrara marble into the monumental David, so would he transform the pope’s inchoate proposal into one of the most ambitious works of painting ever seen.

  The new programme was far more complicated and far more extensive than the initial proposal. Michelangelo instantly did away with the idea of an essentially abstract decoration of the vault. Instead, it was to be decorated with nine depictions of stories from the Book of Genesis. The twelve Apostles in the pendentives were to be replaced by figures of the prophets and the sibyls who had told of the coming of Christ. Michelangelo also wanted to paint the arches above the windows with scenes showing Christ’s ancestors. The artists employed by Sixtus IV had painted the lives of Christ and Moses, the eras of grace and of law. The theme of Michelangelo’s new programme was the very first era of history, from God’s creation of the world to the time of Noah. This was the era before that of Moses, known as ante legem, before the law. All in all, his scheme would both transform the chapel and complete it — turning the space into a total narrative of all human history as it was understood in Christian terms.

  Michelangelo may have exaggerated when he said that the pope had given him licence to do as he liked. But like many of his other exaggerations and distortions, it may express something he felt to be morally if not literally true. The ceiling was his. He thought of it. He created it. It is very unlikely that he was actually given carte blanche in deciding the subject matter to be represented in the major chapel of the Vatican. The chances are that his proposals were at the very least vetted by Julius II and by one or more of the theologians in his circle. Yet the whole scheme bears the stamp of Michelangelo’s powerfully idiosyncratic artistic personality. This is not just a matter of its scale, with 175 separate pictorial units replacing the mere twelve originally proposed. Its form, too, could only have been conceived by Michelangelo. He unified the many different parts of his scheme by arranging all of its images within the framework of a vast imaginary architectural structure. It resembles a classical temple, but most of all it resembles Michelangelo’s earlier design for the project he had cherished above all others — that of the abandoned tomb for Julius II.47

  Having persuaded the pope to agree to the new scheme, Michelangelo finally committed himself to the project. He hired a group of assistants from Florence, although he later told Condivi and Vasari that he soon became so dissatisfied with their standards of timekeeping and work that he locked them out of the chapel altogether, painting alone and ‘without even the assistance of someone to grind his colours for him’. This cannot be strictly true, because even an artist as independent as Michelangelo cannot have dispensed with the services of a colour-grinder and a plasterer, whose job it would have been to prepare the intonaco, the layer of wet plaster on which each day’s painting was to be done. This is another of Michelangelo’s eloquent half-truths — his way of letting posterity know that he delegated little of the actual painting of the vault to anyone else, which was certainly the case.

  Michelangelo was also responsible for the ingenious design of the scaffolding necessary for the work. He devised a structure which in Vasari’s description was ‘erected on supports which kept clear of the walls’ — a wooden platform resting on joists wedged into a series of holes cut into the walls above the chapel windows, which allowed the building to remain in use during the years that Michelangelo spent painting the vault. The platform was half the vault’s length, so halfway through the work it was moved from one end of the chapel to the other. According to Vasari, Michelangelo’s economical design replaced an earlier, unsuccessful structure, supported by ropes, that had been cobbled together by the pope’s architect Bramante. In this way, Vasari says, he ‘enabled a poor carpenter, who rebuilt the scaffolding, to dispense with so many of the ropes that when Michelangelo gave him what was left over he sold them and made enough money for a dowry for his daughter’.

  Contrary to
legend, Michelangelo did not paint the vault of the chapel lying down. There was room between platform and ceiling for the artist to stand, and that was how he worked, although such was the angle at which he had to crane his neck that he suffered constantly from cramps, spasms and headaches. He wrote a comical poem about the experience, which he dedicated to a friend, a man called Giovanni (John) who lived in Pistoia, but about whom nothing else is known; and he embellished it with a tiny caricature of a painter — himself — reaching upwards to the ceiling with his brush (see p. ii).

  I’ve got myself a goitre from this strain,

  As water gives the cats in Lombardy

  Or maybe it is in some other country;

  My belly’s pushed by force beneath my chin.

  My beard toward Heaven, I feel the back of my brain

  Upon my neck, I grow the breast of a Harpy;

  My brush, above my face continually,

  Makes it a splendid floor by dripping down.

  My loins have penetrated to my paunch,

  My rump’s a crupper, as a counterweight,

  And pointless the unseeing steps I go.

  In front of me my skin is being stretched

  While it folds up behind and forms a knot,

  And I am bending like a Syrian bow.

  And judgement, hence, must grow,

  Borne in the mind, peculiar and untrue;

  You cannot shoot well when the gun’s askew.

  John, come to the rescue

  Of my dead painting now, and of my honour;