The Sistine Secrets (28 page)

How much more perilous to inscribe that message right over the pope’s gilded throne in his own royal chapel. No wonder Michelangelo blurred the text and made the scroll itself almost invisible. But he left enough there to allow us to grasp his meaning. The rest of the scroll is still hard to decipher. Its harsh criticism of the Church, though, is confirmed by the fact that even now, in the twenty-first century, the Vatican has made sure that this panel does not appear clearly featured in any authorized reproduction, nor is it ever pointed out or discussed in any official guidebook.

Ironically, Pope Julius II would sit below Jeremiah and his condemnation amid all his symbols of power and wealth, from the ground up: a marble platform, his royal court, his gilded throne, his precious rings, his velvet robes, his golden pastoral staff, his triple crown covered with jewels, and above his head, the
baldacchino,
the regal canopy of the papacy. That is why Michelangelo decided to set a series of his own symbols right over the canopy, to ensure that his message would always remain
above
the pope himself. As we will see, in addition to Jeremiah’s face, the two figures behind him, his gesture, and the alef-ayin scroll, there is even more to discover.

As we described in chapter 9, almost all the Jewish ancestors are portrayed as members of content, tranquil families; these are positive portraits of biblical Jews. There are only two exceptions, two very strange figures. One we have already discussed: the angry young Aminadab, wearing the yellow badge of shame forced on the Jews and making the devil’s horns pointing down toward the papal throne area. The second is the
Salmon-Booz-Obeth
lunette, which features a rage-filled old man yelling at a carved head atop the wooden staff he holds in his hand. The wooden head seems to be a portrait of the old man himself, pointy beard and all, mirroring his expression and seeming to yell right back in his face.

On the other side of the lunette is a beautiful young mother, gently covering her sleeping baby’s ears to block out the angry ranting coming from the old man. Out of all the portraits of the ancestors on the ceiling, this furious elder is the only one who is not realistically depicted. He is more like a caricature—and on purpose. He is a satirical swipe at another bearded old man, the one who would sit directly below, also known for his bad temper—
Il Papa Terribile,
Julius II. A quick comparison of the pronounced cheekbones in this figure and in Raphael’s much more flattering portrait of Julius will show that they are the same person. If Michelangelo had made the insult to the pope too obvious, it would have been the artist’s head on display instead—on the executioner’s block.

Right between the Boaz-Aminadab double jab at Julius is the name plate of Jeremiah,
Hieremias
in Latin. The other names of the sibyls and prophets are held up by cute little boys and putti. In this case, though, the name Hieremias is being held up in the manner of a strong man at the circus—by a muscular young
woman.
She is not very attractive, and her awkwardly exposed breasts are quite obvious—right above the papal throne. Julius, despite his priestly vow of chastity, was known to be a womanizer. In fact, while still a cardinal he had contracted syphilis from one of his trysts, and suffered from its symptoms throughout his papacy. Just like this young woman, Michelangelo is exposing everything here.

The papal throne area is the platform near the front of the Sistine, to the left of the altar area. It is under the fifteenth-century masterpiece fresco
Scenes from the Life of Moses,
by another gay Florentine artist linked with the de’ Medici family—Sandro Botticelli. One scene in this painting depicts the moment when Moses the shepherd realizes he is near the Divine Presence. The Almighty tells him to remove his shoes, that where he is standing is holy ground (Exodus 3:5). Moses is shown taking off his shoes before he can approach the Presence in the burning bush. All the other Jewish prophets painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling have bare feet, to show that they are in a holy place, the replica of Solomon’s Temple—with one exception. Jeremiah appears to be wearing dirty old boots. Dirty shoes over the head of the pope was an insult, but it also said that his conduct and his papacy, unless changed for the better, would eventually remove the holiness from this sanctuary. The artist was warning that the Divine Presence and its protection were getting ready to abandon the Vatican.

Exactly fifteen years after Michelangelo painted his prophetic warning, the Protestant Franks perpetrated the horrific, infamous sack of Rome in 1527, raping and murdering by the thousands. They seized and pillaged the Vatican, taking away all its bronze and gold that they could carry—just as Jeremiah and Michelangelo had predicted.

LAST TOUCHES

The reaction is almost always the same.

First-time visitors to the Vatican look up to the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Their eyes are drawn to the largest and most imposing figure in all the frescoes. They stare in wonderment. Often they literally gasp. What Michelangelo achieved in the portrait of Jonah that he planned as his final statement, the work he put off until the very end of his long, grueling project, is a masterpiece in purely artistic terms. However, for those who know of his genius for conveying the most profound messages in the seemingly simple strokes of his brush, the Jonah painting is a veritable gold mine. More than just a great painting, it is a powerful summary of Michelangelo’s feelings as he brought to a close the project that he never wanted, for a pope who put him through a personal, physical, and artistic hell for almost a decade.

Knowing this, we have to ask: out of all the prophets and famous heroes in the Bible—why Jonah? Michelangelo saved the most prestigious spot, right above the altar, for him. He allowed Jonah the most space of any figure. And then he literally made him “stand out” in a way that viewers still have difficulty believing is merely two-dimensional.

The story has it that as Michelangelo was nearing the end of his work on the ceiling, his old rival Bramante (the architect who got him into this mess in the first place) went into the chapel to take a look at the almost-completed fresco. “
Va bene,
all right, you can paint,” he begrudgingly conceded to Michelangelo, “but a
real
painter would impress the viewer with trompe l’oeuil figures.” Michelangelo had indeed used trompe l’oeuil throughout the ceiling, in the faux architectural-design elements such as the vaulted ribs and the square white pedestals that seem to be three-dimensional seats for the
ignudi;
however, he had not yet done this with his human images. Now, after four years of on-the-job practice, he was more than up to the challenge. As an ultimate demonstration of his artistic power—a talent that those who sought to denigrate him claimed Michelangelo was unable to transfer from his
true
profession as a sculptor—Michelangelo saved for last his most magnificent example of three-dimensional painting. Jonah seems to be actually dangling his legs out of the wall and over the altar, while his shoulders and head seem to be leaning back through the roof of the Sistine into the open sky beyond. It is incomparable technique. It resoundingly refuted Michelangelo’s critics. But again, why did Michelangelo choose Jonah as his paradigm “stand-out” figure?

It was striking enough, and surely disturbing to the pope who commissioned him, that of all the prophets chosen to be spotlighted by Michelangelo, not one of the seven—Zechariah, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Jonah—was a New Testament hero. But even among Hebrew Scripture personalities, Jonah hardly seems worthy of such illustrious company. His book is short, all of four short chapters totaling forty-eight sentences. In the Christian Bible, the book of Jonah is found in the section called “The Minor Prophets.” In the Jewish version, Jonah isn’t even given the courtesy of a book of his own; he is simply lumped in with eleven others in the work known as Trey Assar, “The Twelve.”

Yet for Michelangelo, Jonah is the final and most eloquent spokesman of the Sistine Temple
because Michelangelo saw in Jonah his alter ego—a reluctant prophet forced by divine will into a mission he wanted at all costs to avoid.

• Jonah is the very image of the unwilling prophet forced to accept a task against his own wishes. Just as Michelangelo was perfectly content to sculpt his statues under the de’ Medicis of Florence, Jonah was content to live in Israel under the corrupt rule of Jeroboam, who according to the Talmud was the most evil and idolatrous of all the kings of Israel. (To this day in wine shops, one of the largest sizes—and thus the most decadent—of wine bottles is the jeroboam.)
  
• Jonah is called upon by the Almighty to go to the wicked city of Nineveh (located in what is modern Iraq) and to prophesy to its corrupt pagan ruler and inhabitants. Michelangelo was called upon to give up both sculpting and his beloved city of Florence to remain at the Vatican for several years doing something that he disdained—painting.
  
• Jonah tries to escape from his calling by boarding a ship going in another direction, but he is pursued by God and ends up being swallowed by a giant fish for three days. Michelangelo attempted several times to flee from the pope’s onerous commission but ended up being forced to paint the ceiling of the Sistine for more than four years of physical and emotional torture.
  
• Both Jonah and Michelangelo cried and prayed to heaven for their liberation “out of the depths.” Jonah, once he is saved from the belly of the beast, fulfills his obligation by going to Nineveh and preaching to its citizens to repent. Amazingly, after only one day, the entire city—from the king to the lowest pauper—dress in sackcloth and ashes, fast and seek atonement. All of Nineveh forsakes the worship of idols. Jonah, upset that the repentance of Nineveh might discredit the truth of his warning, sulks outside the city. Michelangelo, despondent that he had not met with the same success in his efforts to purify the Church from its hedonistic excesses, sulked in the Sistine, intent on finishing the ceiling project and escaping the chapel as soon as possible.
  

And still there is more.

Michelangelo had a precedent for putting so much emphasis on Jonah and saving the message of this prophet for the very end of his work. It was a precedent that Michelangelo had almost certainly learned about as he studied the teachings of the Talmudic rabbis in the secret school of the de’ Medicis. Because Michelangelo’s focus on Jonah is
what the Jews have been doing for centuries, to this very day, on their holiest day of the year—Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, concludes a ten-day period of penitence that begins with Rosh Hashanah, the “Head of the Year.” The Talmud explains that on the first of these ten days God “writes” his decree for the coming year for every individual—who will live, who will die; who will be blessed, who will be cursed; who will be well, who will suffer. But the decree is not sealed until the conclusion of Yom Kippur. Repentance may still alter a harsh judgment. So these ten days are also known as the Days of Awe, each one bringing closer the moment when there is no longer any escape possible from the heavenly verdict.

As the sun begins to set on the Day of Atonement, the Jewish prayer book offers the image of the closing of the heavenly gates. The prayers change from the request to “write us down for a good year” to “seal us for a good year.” And it is just before the gates close that Jewish tradition requires the recitation of one specific Scripture. It is the four chapters of Jonah, read in every synagogue around the world as the concluding message of the day.
The prophet the Jews chose to close the prayers of their holiest day is the very same prophet Michelangelo selected as his farewell spokesman for the Sistine.

To understand the reasons for the choice of Jonah by Jewish tradition is to grasp what must have motivated Michelangelo as well.

The Talmudic rabbis felt that the story of Jonah is the quintessential message for the day on which Jews are most concerned to make their peace with God. It is a story that reminds us that God judges the whole world—not only Jews but the people of Nineveh and all the other nations as well. It emphasizes the truth that those who follow God have an obligation to help the wicked turn from their evil ways. No one can flee from this obligation without suffering the consequence of divine wrath. No one can hide from God no matter where he or she goes, even hidden in the belly of a whale at the bottom of the sea. We may never give up hope that the wicked, no matter how far gone, can be moved to change their ways. Repentance is always possible. And, most important, repentance is always accepted by God, even at the very last moment before imminent destruction. God doesn’t desire the destruction of evildoers as much as he wants them to change their ways—and then to offer them his forgiveness.

Imagine how much these ideas must have meant to Michelangelo. Jonah was the one biblical prophet sent to preach to the gentiles. That, Michelangelo understood, became his mission as well. Try as he might, he, too, just like Jonah, could not flee his appointed task. Michelangelo was deeply troubled by the corruption of the Church and its leaders. He could not bear to see how the lust for luxury and wealth dominated papal policy, and felt that the Church was in need of serious repentance and change. For many in Michelangelo’s era, this was considered an impossible dream. Martin Luther and other like thinkers finally gave up entirely on reforming the Church and started their own forms of Christianity instead. After all, they thought, how could one realistically hope that a system so deeply sunk in sin would ever alter its course? Yet, the Bible tells us it happened once. Nineveh, a huge wicked city, repented at the very moment before its destruction. Jonah learned the all-important lesson:
we dare not give up on sinners—it’s never too late to save them.

And so Michelangelo closed his sermon on the Sistine ceiling with the prophet who discovered that, in spite of his doubts and forebodings, his message was taken to heart by those who heard him—and he thereby saved an entire people. Perhaps, Michelangelo prayed, the Church—just like the people of Nineveh—might listen to him as well.