The Sistine Secrets (16 page)

The preparation for the new cathedral was sucking up all the funds in the Vatican. This led to Buonarroti’s third and most unpleasant surprise. One day, while within earshot of the pope, he heard a jeweler visit His Holiness, trying to sell him some new rings studded with gems. Julius declaimed, loudly enough for Michelangelo to hear him clearly: “Not a single coin more for any more stones—neither the small kind nor the large kind.” Michelangelo understood that to mean that his funding for the tomb project was suddenly cut off completely. Outraged, he stormed out of the papal chambers. The long roller-coaster ride that the artist would later call “the tragedy of the tomb” had just begun.

Even though the practice of astrology was taboo for the Catholic Church, Pope Julius’s private astrologer advised him when to lay the cornerstone for the new cathedral—April 18, 1506. Michelangelo left Rome the day before—furious at his project being upstaged, and probably to avoid having to see Bramante’s day of glory as well. He went back home to Florence to sulk. He toyed with the idea of returning to his commission to carve the Twelve Apostles for the Florentine cathedral, or even to accept the invitation of the Sultan of Turkey to build the world’s longest bridge, to connect East and West.

The pope sent him messages, asking him to return to work. Michelangelo replied through friends that he was fine in Florence, and that if His Holiness did indeed intend to have him carve his tomb, he would do it better, more efficiently, more economically, and with more love if he were to stay in Florence. He wrote almost paranoically to one friend that if he, Michelangelo, were to go back to Rome “the first tomb that would have to be made would be mine, before that of the pope.” Soon thereafter, though,
Il Papa Terribile
strapped on a sword and went off to reconquer lost papal states—territories under the Vatican’s military control that had paid it hefty tributes in gold and supplies. He desperately needed the renewed influx of gold to finance his construction and artistic projects. First he retook the rebellious mountaintop city of Perugia without a shot, and then marched on the center of secession from the Vatican’s sway—Bologna. The frightened populace swung open the gates of the city and gave the pope a triumphal welcome worthy of any emperor. This is when Julius truly started to believe his own propaganda that he was the new savior of Christendom. The victorious “Warrior Pope” commanded Buonarroti to present himself at Bologna at once. The words
or else
were not mentioned—they didn’t need to be.

Michelangelo, comforted by assurances from mutual contacts that the pope would do him no harm, went to the pontiff’s headquarters in Bologna and presented himself on his knees to plead forgiveness. Julius grumbled: “You should have come to Us, but you waited for Us to come to you.” One bishop, standing next to Julius, said: “Your Holiness should not recall his errors, since he erred through ignorance. Outside of their craft, all artists are just like this.” The pope, enraged, screamed at the unfortunate bishop: “YOU are the ignorant one, not him. Now get out of here and go to the Devil.” The dumbstruck bishop did not move fast enough and Julius beat him and ran him out of the room, thus taking out all his pent-up anger on the cleric and not on the sculptor.

Julius forgave Michelangelo for his flight—but on one condition. First the artist had to make a colossal bronze statue of Julius II as the triumphant Warrior Pope with sword in hand, to be erected over the door of the Cathedral of Bologna as a reminder to the rebellious Bolognesi of who was the real boss. Michelangelo protested that this was not his field—once again he was being forced to create in a medium that he had neither studied nor practiced. Julius, at the peak of his glory and power, did not take no for an answer. So, an unhappy Michelangelo had to move back to one of his least-favorite places, Bologna, in order to struggle with one of his least-favorite art forms. Bronze-casting was extremely difficult, risky, and time-consuming. Now he was charged with the task of creating what would be the largest bronze statue cast since the fall of the Roman Empire.

He set up a workshop and brought in Florentine colleagues and friends experienced in bronze work. Michelangelo was so obsessed with finishing this job and getting out of town that he barely ate a meal and literally slept in his clothes many nights, often just caving in from exhaustion. Once again, destiny was carving his life to prepare him for another herculean, unfamiliar task. This is exactly how he would later tackle the frescoing of the Sistine. Casting the gigantic bronze statue involved a lot of trial and expensive errors. While he was desperately struggling with this task, the plague broke out in Bologna. Michelangelo complained in a letter about the crowded living conditions, the rain, the hellish heat, and the overpriced wine that was “as bad as it can be, just like everything else here.” It was also at about this time that he began complaining of swollen, aching feet and back pains. It could not have been the royal (or papal) disease of gout, since he ate irregularly and very simply. Michelangelo once said: “I feast on wine and bread, and feasts they are.” According to a recent report in
Kidney International,
¹
this painful retaining of water and lower-back pain could very well have been the early symptoms of kidney problems. This previously unknown ailment of Michelangelo’s bears noting because it will make a surprising appearance on the Sistine ceiling.

After more than a year of sweat, frustration, and expensive mistakes, Michelangelo successfully cast the huge statue, finishing it in February 1508. He joyfully returned home to Florence to take care of family business and to get back to his beloved sculpting. His joy would be of extremely short duration.

THE CANOPY OF HEAVEN—AND HELL

The ambitious pope had already discussed the Sistine ceiling with Michelangelo in 1506, probably while they were together in Bologna. No doubt Julius, an art lover, had heard of the huge success of the twin cartoons for the city hall frescoes in Florence. It is very likely that his summons to Michelangelo was also a way for the jealous Roman pontiff to sabotage the Florentine fresco project. We do know that Michelangelo never went back to that job.
*

Julius, probably on the strength of the reviews for Buonarroti’s cartoon for the fourteen-hundred-square-foot wall fresco in Florence, got it into his head that the artist would have no problem with a
ceiling
fresco that would eventually cover more than
twelve thousand
square feet. Bramante, the papal art and architecture adviser, made a show of protesting that Michelangelo would not be up to the job. This only prodded Michelangelo’s friends in the Vatican to redouble their efforts to convince the pope that the Florentine was the perfect man for the job. Of course, with Michelangelo trapped for years up at the ceiling (which before his work on the Sistine was considered anything but a prestigious commission), he would not be able to upstage Bramante with the tomb sculptures or second-guess his cathedral plans. Whether it was a scheme or not, Bramante soon gave his approval and Julius and his advisers eagerly began telling Michelangelo what to put up on the ceiling.

Besides Bramante, the pope’s two closest advisers were Cardinal Francesco Alidosi and a preacher named Egidio da Viterbo. Although Egidio had studied a bit of Kabbalah, he was anything but a humanistic Neoplatonist. He was a raging anti-Semite who believed only in the supremacy of the One True Church. Alidosi and Egidio were the pope’s chosen theologians, and Egidio was known to preach for hours, retelling the story of the creation and the universe as leading in a direct line up through the damnation of the Jews to the coronation of Pope Julius II. There was even a third person to deal with, as far as anything that took place in the Sistine Chapel. He was the official Inquisitor of Heresies, a fanatical Dominican friar named Giovanni Rafanelli, who had the right even to interrupt priests in the middle of their sermons if he found any of their statements not 100 percent in line with the Vatican. A critical reason, therefore, that many of Michelangelo’s messages in the frescoes had to be so subtle was that they had to get past the scrutiny of these three ecclesiastical censors.

Julius, following recommendations from Alidosi and Egidio, presented Michelangelo with a full plan for the ceiling project. Over the front door should most likely be Jesus, to bless the entrance of the pope and his retinue. In the twelve triangles around the edge of the ceiling would go the apostles. In the middle, to keep things neat and simple, and to avoid competition with the fifteenth-century masterpieces on the lower walls, would be a figureless geometrical pattern composed of diamonds and rectangles, such as was to be found in the remains of many palaces from Imperial Rome. The pope’s fawning adviser Egidio da Viterbo wanted the entire ceiling to proclaim that His Holiness Julius II had been specially ordained by God to rule the world. According to some accounts, even when Michelangelo obtained permission from the pope for a design including images from the Jewish Bible, Egidio proposed a disconcerting list of suggested scenes from the Old Testament—mostly from the book of Kings—and the Apocrypha. Most of them were violent and all shared the concept of divine authority being established either by grace or by heavenly revenge. This intrusion into Michelangelo’s design would have distorted the whole feeling of the project, diverting it from the artist’s personal spiritual vision to yet one more glorification of the della Rovere popes. Obviously, this scheme did not sit well with Michelangelo.

The project seemed like a series of insurmountable challenges:

• It would be the largest fresco on earth—there would be more than twelve thousand square feet to cover.
  
• He had never frescoed before.
  
• His competition would be staring him in the face every day—the
  Moses
  and
  Jesus
  wall panels, world-class masterpieces created by the top fresco artists in the world—including his own first maestro, Ghirlandaio. When and
  if
  he ever finished the ceiling, his beginner’s work would be compared with these.
  
• The chapel was in constant use, more than twenty times per month. The scaffolding could not be of the traditional kind, which would require too much wood and thus block up the chapel and render it unusable for years.
  
• The pope’s rigid and unimaginative concept for the ceiling stood against everything Michelangelo believed in, both as a spiritual seeker and as an artist.
  
• The pope’s advisers would be trying to catch him at any changes or “heresies” that he might insert in the work.
  
• The pope and Bramante had given him a large number of Roman assistants to help with the plaster and paint—but Michelangelo knew very well that their other job would be to spy on his work.
  

First, Michelangelo spoke privately with the pope, pleading with him that as an artist it was his duty to say that His Holiness’s design for the ceiling would be “a poor thing.” According to Michelangelo’s version of the story, the pope merely shrugged and told him to do it as he pleased. More likely, the artist must have played up to Julius’s ego, promising him a handsome portrait to rule over the whole chapel, just as his sculpted tomb would have his image reigning over the whole cathedral. As we can see today in the Raphael Rooms, Julius never tired of seeing his portrait everywhere he went—he appears on almost every wall that was painted while he was pope.

Michelangelo then summarily fired his Roman staff of assistants. He next sent for five longtime friends, all artists with experience in fresco work, to come in from Florence for the duration of the project. Some would later on be replaced, but Buonarroti hired only Florentine helpers with tightly closed lips, so that none of the Roman spies could find out what he was
really
putting up on the Sistine ceiling.

For the scaffolding that would allow usage of the chapel, the papal architect Bramante took charge. He first proposed hanging scaffolding, suspended from ropes that would be anchored through big holes in the ceiling. Michelangelo convinced the pope that these holes would ruin both the ceiling and the design. Bramante then put forward another solution, an impressive-looking scaffolding with very few poles touching the floor. It collapsed before being used for even one day. All Bramante had succeeded in doing was embarrassing himself in front of the pope. Michelangelo, who had already spent much time studying Roman architecture in the ruins, proposed a revolutionary “flying bow bridge” scaffold. It was based on the principles of the Roman arch, whose weight presses out against the sides it is spanning. This ingenious structure could be inserted in just a few small holes made in the side walls, since all its pressure would flow there, and none down to the floor. It would also allow Michelangelo to fresco the ceiling a whole strip at a time, moving to the next strip as soon as one was finished, and thus progressing across the length of the chapel. He got approval to construct it, and it was an instant success, allowing the papal court to have its regular processions under it without any obstruction.

On the underside of his flying arch bridge, Michelangelo affixed a thick drop cloth, presumably to prevent any paint or plaster from dripping on the papal processions (or on the fifteenth-century masterworks on the lower walls). A far more important reason, of course, was to prevent any snooping eyes from seeing what he was putting on the ceiling.

While all this was going on, the rebellious artist was busy day and night developing his very personal design for the frescoes. Normally, the decoration of a ceiling was a perfunctory job for an artist. Giving this commission to someone of Michelangelo’s status was vaguely insulting, and surely Bramante was aware of that. Buonarroti wanted to turn this situation around to his own advantage and create not just another pretty decoration for a chapel, but a testament to his own talent instead. He also wanted to register his disgust at all the hypocrisy and abuses of power that he witnessed daily inside the Vatican of the Renaissance, but to express it in such a way that he would escape being jailed or executed in the process.