2. Michelangelo and Julius II: 1505–13
He must have seen at once that he would be miserable with Julius, they were so much alike. Both had temper and temperament: the Pope imperious and fiery, the artist somber and proud. Both were Titans in spirit and aim, acknowledging no superior, admitting no compromise, passing from one grandiose project to another, stamping their personalities on their time, and laboring with such mad energy that when both were dead all Italy seemed exhausted and empty.
Julius, following the example long since set by the cardinals, wanted for his bones a mausoleum whose size and splendor should proclaim his greatness even to distant and forgetful posterity. He looked with envy upon the beautiful tomb that Andrea Sansovino had just carved for Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in Santa Maria del Popolo. Michael proposed a colossal monument twenty-seven feet in length and eighteen in width. Forty statues would adorn it: some symbolizing the redeemed Papal States; some personifying Painting, Architecture, Sculpture, Poetry, Philosophy, Theology—all made captive by the irresistible Pope; others depicting his major predecessors, as, for example, Moses; two would picture angels—one weeping at Julius’ removal from the earth, the other smiling at his entrance into heaven. At the top would be a handsome sarcophagus for the mortal papal remains. Along the surfaces of the monument would run bronze reliefs recounting the achievements of the Pope in war, government, and art. All this was to stand in the tribune of St. Peter’s. It was a design that would use many tons of marble, many thousands of ducats, many years of the sculptor’s life. Julius approved, gave Angelo two thousand ducats for the purchase of marble, and sent him off to Carrara instructed to pick the finest veins. While there Michael noted a hill overlooking the sea, and conceived the idea of carving the mount into a colossal human figure, which, lighted at the top, would serve as a beacon to distant mariners; but Julius’ tomb called him back to Rome. When the marble that he had bought arrived, and was piled up in a square by his lodgings near St. Peter’s, people marveled at its quantity and cost, and Julius rejoiced.
The drama became tragedy. Bramante, desiring money for the new St. Peter’s, looked askance at this titanic project; moreover he feared that Michelangelo would replace him as the Pope’s favorite artist; he used his influence to divert papal funds and passion from the proposed tomb. For his part Julius was planning war upon Perugia and Bologna (1506), and found Mars an expensive god; the tomb should wait for peace. Meanwhile Angelo had received no salary, had spent on marble all that Julius had advanced him, had paid out of his own pocket to furnish the house that the Pope had provided for him. He went to the Vatican on Holy Saturday, 1506, to ask for money; he was told to return on Monday; he did, and was told to return on Tuesday; like rebuffs met him on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; on Friday he was turned away with the blunt statement that the Pope did not wish to see him. He went home and wrote a letter to Julius:
Most Blessed Father: I have been turned out of the Palace today by your orders; wherefore I give you notice that from this time forward, if you want me, you must look for me elsewhere than at Rome.33
He gave instructions for the sale of the furniture he had bought, and took horse toward Florence. At Poggibonsi he was overtaken by couriers bearing a letter from the Pope, which commanded him to return at once to Rome. If we may accept his own account (and he was an unusually honest man) he sent back a reply that he would come only when the Pope agreed to fulfill the conditions of their understanding for the tomb. He continued to Florence.
Now he resumed work on the immense cartoon for The Battle of Pisa. He chose as his subject no actual warfare, but the moment when the soldiers, who had been swimming in the Arno, were suddenly called to action. Michael was not concerned with battles; he wanted to study and portray the nude male form in every position; here was his chance. He showed some men emerging from the river, others running to their weapons, others struggling to pull up stockings on wet legs, others leaping or riding on horseback, others hurriedly adjusting their armor, some running stark naked to the fight. There was no landscape background; Michelangelo never cared for landscape, or for anything in nature except the human form. When the cartoon was finished it was put alongside Leonardo’s in the Hall of the Pope in Santa Maria Novella. There the rival sketches became a school for a hundred artists—Andrea del Sarto, Alonso Berruguete, Raphael, Iacopo Sansovino, Perino del Vaga, and a hundred more. Cellini, who copied Michelangelo’s cartoon about 1513, described it with youthful enthusiasm as “so splendid in action that nothing survives of ancient or modern art which touches the same point of lofty excellence. Though the divine Michel Agnolo in later life finished that great [Sistine] Chapel, he never rose halfway to the same pitch of power.”34
We cannot say as much. The picture was never painted, the cartoon is lost, and only minor fragments survive of the many copies made. While Angelo was working on the sketch Pope Julius sent message after message to the Florentine Signory, commanding them to send him back to Rome. Soderini, loving the artist and fearing for his safety in Rome, temporized. After the third letter from the Pope he begged Angelo to obey, saying that his obstinacy endangered the peaceful relations between Florence and the papacy. Michael demanded a safe-conduct, to be signed by the Cardinal of Volterra. During the delay Julius captured Bologna (November, 1506). Now he sent to Florence a peremptory order that Michelangelo should come to Bologna for an important commission. Armed with a letter from Soderini to Julius, which begged the Pope to “show him love and treat him gently,” Michael went once more over the snows of the Apennines. Julius received him with a heavy frown, ordered from the room a bishop who presumed to rebuke the artist for disobedience, gave Angelo a grumbling pardon, and a characteristic assignment. “I wish you to make my statue on a large scale in bronze. I mean to place it on the façade of San Petronio.”35 Michael was glad to get back to sculpture, though not confident of his ability to cast successfully a sitting figure fourteen feet in height. Julius provided a thousand ducats for the work; Angelo reported later that he had spent all but four ducats on materials, so that he had for himself only that reward for two years of labor in Bologna. The task was as heartbreaking as that which Cellini described for casting the Loggia Perseus. “I work night and day,” the sculptor wrote to his brother Buonarroto; “if I had to begin the whole thing over again I do not think I could survive it.”36 In February, 1508, the statue was raised to its place above the main portal of the cathedral. In March Michael returned to Florence, probably praying that he might never see Julius again. Three years later, as we have seen, the statue was melted into cannon.
Almost at once the Pope sent for him. Angelo went back to Rome, and was chagrined to find that Julius wanted him not to carve the great tomb but to paint the ceiling of the chapel of Sixtus IV. He hesitated to face the problems of perspective and foreshortening in painting a ceiling sixty-eight feet above the floor; he protested again that he was a sculptor, not a painter; in vain he recommended Raphael as a better man for the work. Julius commanded and coaxed, pledging a fee of 3000 ducats ($37,500?); Michael feared the Pope and needed the money. Still murmuring, “This is not my trade,” he undertook the arduous and uncongenial task. He sent to Florence for five assistants trained in design; tore down the clumsy scaffolding that Bramante had raised, erected his own, and set to work measuring and charting the ten thousand square feet of the ceiling, planning the general design, making cartoons for each separate space, including spandrels, pendentives, and lunettes; in all there were to be 343 figures. Many preliminary studies were made, some from living models. When the final form of a cartoon was finished it was carried carefully up the scaffolding and was applied, face outward, to the freshly plastered surface of its corresponding place; the lines of the composition were then pricked through the drawing into the plaster, the cartoon was removed, and the sculptor began to paint.
For over four years—from May, 1508, to October, 1512—Angelo worked on the Sistine ceiling. Not continuously; there were interruptions of uncer
tain length, as when he went to Bologna to besiege Julius for more funds. And not alone: he had helpers to grind the colors, prepare the plaster, perhaps to draw or paint some minor features; parts of the frescoes reveal inferior hands. But the five artists whom he had summoned to Rome were soon dismissed; Angelo’s style of conception, design, and coloring was so different from theirs and the traditions of Florence that he found them more hindrance than aid. Besides, he did not know how to get along with others, and it was one of his consolations, up there on the scaffold, that he was alone; there he could think, in pain but in peace; there he could exemplify Leonardo’s saying: “If you are alone you will be wholly your own.” To the technical difficulties Julius added himself by his impatience to have the great work completed and displayed. Picture the old Pope mounting the frail frame, drawn up to the platform by the artist, expressing admiration, always asking, “When will it be finished?” The reply was a lesson in integrity: “When I shall have done all that I believe required to satisfy art.”37 To which Julius retorted angrily: “Do you want me to hurl you from this scaffold?”38 Yielding later to the papal impatience, Angelo took down the scaffolding before all final touches had been applied. Then Julius thought that a little gold should be added here and there, but the weary artist persuaded him that gold trimmings would hardly become the Prophets or the Apostles. When for the last time Michael descended from the scaffold he was exhausted, emaciated, prematurely old. A story says that his eyes, long accustomed to the subdued illumination of the chapel, could hardly bear the light of the sun;39 and another story that he found it now easier to read by looking upward than by holding the page beneath his eyes.40
The original plan of Julius for the ceiling had been merely a series of Apostles; Michelangelo prevailed upon him to allow an ampler and nobler scheme. He divided the convex vault into over a hundred panels by picturing columns and moldings between them; and he enhanced the tridimensional illusion with lusty youthful figures upholding the cornices or seated on capitals. In the major panels, running along the crest of the ceiling, Angelo painted episodes from Genesis: the initial act of creation separates light from darkness; the sun, moon, and planets come into being at the command of the Creator—a majestic figure stern of face, powerful of body, with beard and robes flying in the air; the Almighty, even finer in form and feature than in the previous panel, extends His right arm to create Adam, while with the left arm He holds a very pretty angel—this panel is Michelangelo’s pictorial masterpiece; God, now a much older and patriarchal deity, evokes Eve from Adam’s rib; Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree, and are expelled from Eden; Noah and his sons prepare a sacrificial offering to God; the flood rises; Noah celebrates with too much wine. All in these panels is Old Testament, all is Hebraic; Michelangelo belongs to the prophets pronouncing doom, not to the evangelists expounding the gospel of love.
In the spandrels of alternate arches Angelo painted magnificent figures of Daniel, Isaiah, Zecharia, Joel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Jonah. In the other spandrels he pictured the pagan oracles that were believed to have foretold Christ: the graceful Libyan Sibyl, holding an open book of the future; the dark, unhappy, powerful Cumaean Sibyl; the studious Persian; the Delphic and Erythrean Sibyls; these too are such paintings as rival the sculptures of Pheidias; indeed, all these figures suggest sculpture; and Michelangelo, conscripted into an alien art, transforms it into his own. In the large triangle at one end of the ceiling, and in two others at the other end, the artist still stayed in the Old Testament, with the raising of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the victory of David over Goliath, the hanging of Haman, the beheading of Holofernes by Judith. Finally, as if by concession and afterthought, in the lunettes and arched recesses above the windows, Angelo painted scenes expounding the genealogy of Mary and Christ.
No one of these pictures quite equals Raphael’s School of Athens in conception, drawing, color, and technique; but taken all together, they constitute the greatest achievement of any man in the history of painting. The total effect of repeated and careful contemplation is far greater than in the case of the Stanze. There we feel a happy perfection of artistry, and an urbane union of pagan and Christian thought. Here we do not merely perceive technical accomplishment—in the perspective, the foreshortenings, the unrivaled variety of attitudes; we feel the sweep and breath of genius, almost as creative as in the wind-swept figure of the Almighty raising Adam out of the earth.
Here again Michelangelo has given his ruling passion free rein; and though the place was the chapel of the popes, the theme and object of his art was the human body. Like the Greeks, he cared less for the face and its expression than for the whole physical frame. On the Sistine ceiling are half a hundred male, a few female, nudes. There are no landscapes, no vegetation except in picturing the creation of plants, no decorative arabesques; as in Signorelli’s frescoes at Orvieto, the body of man becomes the sole means of decoration as well as of representation. Signorelli was the one painter, as Iacopo della Quercia was the one sculptor, from whom Michelangelo cared to learn. Every little space left free in the ceiling by the general pictorial plan is occupied by a nude figure, not so much beautiful as athletic and strong. There is no sexual suggestion in them, only the persistent display of the human body as the highest embodiment of energy, vitality, life. Though some timid souls protested against this profusion of nudity in the house of God, Julius made no recorded objection; he was a man as broad as his hatreds, and he recognized great art when he saw it. Perhaps he understood that he had immortalized himself not by the wars that he had won, but by giving the strange and incalculable divinity fretting in Angelo freedom to disport itself on the papal chapel vault.
Julius died four months after the completion of the Sistine ceiling. Michelangelo was then nearing his thirty-eighth birthday. He had placed himself at the head of all Italian sculptors by his David and Pietà; by this ceiling he had equaled or surpassed Raphael in painting; there seemed no other world left for him to conquer. Surely even he hardly dreamed that he had over half a century yet to live, that his most famous painting, his most mature sculpture, were yet to be done. He mourned the passing of the great Pope, and wondered whether Leo would have as sure an instinct as Julius for the noble in art. He retired to his lodgings, and bided his time.
CHAPTER XVIII
Leo X
1513–21
I. THE BOY CARDINAL
THE Pope that gave his name to one of the most brilliant and immoral ages in the history of Rome owed his ecclesiastical career to the political strategy of his father. Lorenzo de’ Medici had been almost destroyed by Sixtus IV; he hoped that the power of his family, and the security of his progeny in Florence, would be helped by having a Medici sitting in the college of cardinals, in the inner circles of the Church. He destined his second son for the ecclesiastical state almost from Giovanni’s infancy. At seven (1482) the boy was given the tonsure; soon he was dowered with benefices in commendam: i.e., he was made absentee beneficiary of church properties, and received their surplus revenue. At the age of eight he was given the abbacy of Font Douce in France; at nine the rich abbey of Passignano, at eleven the historic abbey of Monte Cassino; before his election to the papacy Giovanni had collected sixteen such benefices.1 At eight he was appointed protonotary apostolic; at fourteen he was made a cardinal.*
The young prelate was provided with all the education available to a millionaire’s son. He grew up amid scholars, poets, statesmen, and philosophers; he was tutored by Marsilio Ficino; he learned Greek from Demetrius Chalcondyles, philosophy from Bernardo da Bibbiena, who became one of his cardinals. From the collections of art, and the conversations about art, in or around his father’s palace he imbibed that taste for the beautiful which was almost a religion to him in his mature years. From his father, perhaps, he learned the profuse and sometimes reckless generosity, and the gay, almost epicurean, manner of life, which were to distinguish his cardinalate and his pontificate, with far-reaching results to the Christian world. At thirte
en he entered the university that his father had re-established at Pisa; there, for three years, he studied philosophy and theology, canon and civil law. When, at sixteen, he was allowed openly to join the college of cardinals in Rome, Lorenzo sent him off (March 12, 1492) with one of the most interesting letters in history:
You, and all of us who are interested in your welfare, ought to esteem ourselves highly favored by Providence, not only for the many honors and benefits bestowed on our house, but more particularly for having conferred upon us, in your person, the greatest dignity we have ever enjoyed. This favor, in itself so important, is rendered still more so by the circumstances with which it is accompanied, and especially by the consideration of your youth and of our situation in the world. The first thing that I would therefore suggest to you is, that you ought to be grateful to God, and continually to recollect that it is not through your merits, your prudence, or your solicitude, that this event has taken place, but through His favor, which you can only repay by a pious, chaste, and exemplary life; and that your obligations to the performance of these duties are so much the greater, as in your early years you have given some reasonable expectation that your riper age may produce such fruits…. Endeavor, therefore, to alleviate the burden of your early dignity by the regularity of your life, and by your perseverance in those studies which are suitable to your profession. It gave me great satisfaction to learn that in the course of the past year you had frequently, of your own accord, gone to communion and confession; nor do I conceive that there is any better way of obtaining the favor of heaven than by habituating yourself to a performance of these and similar duties….