The Sistine Secrets (15 page)

And sure enough, as if on cue, a call came forth from the Vatican. There had been a new pope on the throne since 1503, none other than the dour nephew of Sixtus IV—Giuliano della Rovere, now crowned as Pope Julius II. He desired that the artist Buonarroti return at once to Rome, for a most important project. Neither ruler nor rebel was yet aware of what destiny had in store for them.

Chapter Six

AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT

A true artist paints with his brains and not with his hands.

—MICHELANGELO

D
URING THE RENAISSANCE, the popes were very much like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt in at least three ways. As soon as a pharaoh ascended the throne, the nation’s calendar would be turned back to the year one, the new ruler would immediately start planning his own glorious tomb (such as a pyramid), and plans would be laid for his mummification after death. The same was true for a pope. Even to this day, when a new pope is elected, the Vatican begins counting papal years. On papal monuments all over Rome, one can find the two dates of A.D. (
anno Domini
—in the year of the Lord) and A.P. (
anno papalis
—in the year of the pope). Popes were also
mummified.
Following an ancient Kabbalistic belief that the bodies of the
tzaddikim
(truly righteous souls) do not decompose in the grave, the Church declared the same to be true for Catholic saints. The Vatican was anxious to preserve the bodies of deceased pontiffs in case of future sainthood, and since the art of embalming had not yet been sufficiently developed (this did not happen until the early twentieth century), all popes were mummified, following the arcane process of ancient Egypt. Finally, every pope who lasted long enough on the throne spent an enormous amount of time and money planning his impressive final resting place.

“
IL PAPA TERRIBILE
”

For the new pope, Julius II, planning his final resting place became a major obsession. He was not the type to be satisfied with a mere sarcophagus or wall decoration, no matter how fancily constructed. This was a man with an eye on eternity and an ego that knew no limits. He had already become accustomed to power as a member of his uncle Sixtus IV’s corrupt papal court. As Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, he was one of the scheming
nepoti
(nephews, in archaic Italian) for whom the word
nepotism
was coined. When the Borgias took over the Vatican, Pope Alexander VI had stripped him of all power within the Vatican and had even tried to poison him. Giuliano had been forced to flee to Avignon for the duration of the Borgia reign of terror. When Alexander VI died in 1503, his son Cesare Borgia did not want to relinquish the family’s grip on the Vatican. Only personal illness, frantic diplomacy, bribery, and group pressure from all the cardinals convinced him to leave Rome. During the conclave, or top-secret election of the next pope, Giuliano rigged the voting—for long-range political motives—to crown not himself, but Pius III, himself the nephew of another pope. Pius III was quite ill, with one very gouty foot already in the grave. Giuliano della Rovere had him declare war on the Borgias, in order to frighten the rest of their minions out of Rome. It probably worked, but Pius lasted only twenty-six days on the throne. It was either the gout or, more likely, one last departing henchman of the former pope whose poison sped the suffering new pontiff to his reward. With the dirty work done, Giuliano spread enough bribes, threats, and promises around the College of Cardinals to win the next conclave without opposition. He is one of the few popes in history to have been elected within twenty-four hours on the first ballot. He was crowned at the age of sixty on October 31, 1503. His raging ego and violent temper soon earned him the nickname of
Il Papa Terribile
—the frightening pope.

As the new Pontifex Maximus Julius II della Rovere, he quickly picked up where his uncle Sixtus IV had left off in 1484. He appointed Donato Bramante, a talented painter and architect from Urbino (on the eastern coast of Italy), as the official papal architect. Bramante was given a long list of projects, with the objective of transforming Rome into the new Christian
caput mundi,
head of the world. The Apostolic Palace was enlarged, seemingly endless hallways were added, an elegant private spiral staircase was constructed for the pope’s private use, a new riverside street (Via Giulia) was carved through the city, and on and on. What proved to be of greatest historic interest, however, were two other special projects inside the Vatican walls—projects that would affect Michelangelo for the rest of his life.

One was the repair of the Sistine Chapel. The heavy building, set on ancient graveyard soil, had settled and was threatening to collapse. Bramante quickly buttressed the southern wall, thus saving the chapel. However, the massive ceiling had a huge crack running through it. Bricks and mortar were inserted as a sort of architectural bandage, but the repairs left an ugly white scar that ruined the starry canopy of the della Roveres’ royal chapel. Julius began considering who would be the right person to redo the ceiling of his uncle’s chapel.

The other project dwarfed all others—the plan for Julius II’s tomb. A megalomaniac and micromanager, Julius wanted to make sure that his final resting place would outshine that of any other pope in history. He actually envisioned a gigantic pyramidal structure, covered with more than forty large statues on all four sides, with two angels carrying him on a bier at the top of the heap of marble. His over-the-top design was so enormous that it would not fit inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Anyone else would have scaled down his plans, but not Julius. He decreed that Bramante
demolish
the old basilica and build an entirely new one fit for Julius’s new Catholic empire, and large enough to contain his massive tomb—in the center, right under the dome, where normally the main altar should be. Bramante’s ruthless destruction of the old sanctuary (including the tombs of many earlier popes) earned him the nickname of
Bramante er Ruinante
(the wrecker) in Rome.

Before selecting the right artist for the new Sistine ceiling, Julius already had in mind the perfect sculptor for his tomb: Michelangelo of Florence. Julius had for a while been Bishop of Bologna before fleeing Italy, and had seen firsthand the beautiful works that Michelangelo had carved in rapid succession for the cathedral there. He, of course, had also seen the
Bacchus
and the
Pietà
in Rome. Despite his many personal and spiritual failings, Julius had one strong point that would earn him eternal recognition: an eye for artistic talent. His ego, his feeling of competing with Florence, his need to make Rome an imperial capital again, all contributed to his one lasting achievement—he moved the center of the Renaissance from Florence to Rome. All that was missing from his “collection” was the world’s greatest sculptor, and what Julius wanted, Julius
got.

For Michelangelo, the invitation from the Vatican could not have come at a better time. While he had been finishing the
David,
painting the Doni Holy Family, and overseeing all the other sculptures coming out of his workshop, the Gonfaloniere Soderini and the city council had gotten another bright idea—a public showdown between the two top artists in Florence. Leonardo da Vinci and the much younger Michelangelo had often made it clear that they had no respect for each other’s craft. Leonardo disparaged the new trend for portraying overly muscular male nudes—he said it was like looking at “sacks filled with nuts”—and unfavorably compared the messy, noisy workshop of a sculptor where everything and everyone was covered in marble chips, dust, and sweat with the quiet, clean, orderly studio of a painter “where one can listen to fine music” while working. Michelangelo, on the other hand, made no effort to disguise his dislike for the two-dimensional “falsity” of painting.

So in 1503 Soderini decided to commission both of them simultaneously to paint two giant fresco murals, side by side, in the Great Hall of the Palazzo della Signoria (the city hall). In order to glorify the new independent form of government, the theme would be Florence’s victories in two historic battles: Leonardo would tackle the battle of Anghiari, while Michelangelo would do the battle of Cascina. It looked as if it would be a fascinating duel: Leonardo was renowned as a painter, and Michelangelo (thanks to his
Battle of the Centaurs
and the
David
) was known for portraying male warriors. It took them over a year just to prepare their concepts and designs. Each fresco was to be more than 1,400 square feet. In 1504 gigantic sheets of paper (a very expensive commodity in the sixteenth century) were bought and prepared for the full-sized
cartoni,
or “cartoons,” the charcoal drawings used for transferring the outlines of the figures onto the fresh plaster of the fresco. Both artists got carried away by their special interests: Leonardo concentrated on the anatomy of the horses in the battle, while Michelangelo—as you might have guessed—filled his scene with muscular male nudes in every possible position.

The Florentine public didn’t care. When the full-sized preparatory cartoons were displayed, the entire city went into ecstasy over both works. This was the sign that the repressive days of Savonarola were really and truly gone for good, that Art and Beauty had come back home at last.

Now came the part that Buonarroti had been dreading—actually having to
paint
the fresco. He knew that he was out of his element. He had never executed a fresco painting in his entire life, and now he was up against the top painter in the world.

It was just at this point that the new pope called for him to
sculpt
—and Michelangelo used this as his excuse never even to start the fresco process. He made a hasty return to Rome, leaving behind the
Battle
cartoon and several other commissions, never to be carried out.

Pope Julius II, if nothing else, was an extremely decisive man. He and Michelangelo were two sides of the same coin: egotistic, stubborn, and determined to have things their way. Perhaps because of this, they understood each other better than most others could. This allowed them to settle on the tomb design and all the details in record time. Within a month, Michelangelo had a contract in hand and the funding to send for the first shipment of marble to be quarried from Carrara and brought to Rome. He went to Carrara himself to supervise personally the selection and cutting of the blocks, a process that took more than eight months. When he returned to Rome to await the arrival by boat of these precious stones, three surprises were in store for him.

The first was a happy one. In early 1506 a peasant had been fixing up his vineyard near the Colosseum when he accidentally opened up a hole in the ground. There, he discovered a large statue of humans being slaughtered by giant serpents. Word reached the Vatican almost immediately. Experts were sent for, including Michelangelo. The statue was identified as the long-lost
Laocoön,
the most beloved statue in pagan Rome, thought destroyed by the barbarian hordes in the fifth century. It was originally commissioned by the victorious Greeks after they destroyed Troy. It shows the moment of death of Laocoön, the high priest of Troy, being killed by supernatural snakes sent by the Greek gods to prevent him and his sons from warning the Trojans not to bring the famous Trojan horse inside the city walls. Laocoön is best known for his warning: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” After the serpents killed him and his sons, the Trojans did indeed bring the giant wooden horse into their city. When the hidden Greek soldiers came out of its hollow belly that night, it spelled the end of both Troy and the Trojans. Later, when the victorious Roman legions brought a close to the Greek Empire, they brought home the
Laocoön
as one of their favorite war trophies.

The pope paid the lucky farmer a fortune for the piece, which was then cleaned up and paraded around the city before being set in a place of honor in the pope’s octagonal courtyard, where it still sits today. The instant popularity of this one statue convinced the pope to open up his private collection to the public, thus starting the Vatican Museums, today the most important art collection in the world. The top jewel in the crown of this collection is the Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo was entranced by this ancient masterpiece, the result of three top Greek sculptors working as a team on the island of Rhodes. Out of his esteem for this piece, he inserted the bodies of the two dying sons of Laocoön as nudes on the Sistine ceiling, and the torso of Laocoön himself as the torso of the Almighty in the first
Creation
panel. Besides the statue’s impressive musculature, Michelangelo must have loved it for the story of the Trojan horse, a “peace offering” with a vengeful surprise hidden inside. He must have been aware of what his fellow Florentines had gotten away with in the fifteenth-century wall frescoes for the Sistine—in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s supposed “peace offering” to Pope Sixtus IV that was in reality filled with insults to the pope, his family, and Rome—a lesson that would find powerful echoes very soon in his own work.

The second surprise awaiting Michelangelo was Bramante, the pope’s head architect and close confidant. To accommodate Julius’s mountainous funeral monument, Bramante had begun his work of razing the original basilica and beginning the construction of the largest church in the world. This proved to be a gargantuan task that was overwhelming all other projects, including the pope’s own tomb—which was the reason for the new church construction in the first place. Bramante had definitively distracted the pope from Michelangelo’s project. From then on, the two of them would behave like two students vying for their teacher’s attention, trying to win back and maintain the pope’s focus and his favor.