The Sistine Secrets (31 page)

We should mention one other major event in the artist’s life during this period. He fell in love. Oh, he had been in love many times before, with beautiful youths, models, singers, and apprentices. He was strongly attracted to much younger men, both for their muscular beauty and for their passion and enthusiasm for life. It seems that in some cases this love was physical and reciprocated, in other cases not. His preferences were certainly common knowledge in certain circles back then, but Michelangelo was still very cautious, especially after seeing how men who loved men had been punished under the fanatical reign of Savonarola and the Inquisition. Even the great Leonardo da Vinci had been forced to flee Florence the second time he was accused of being a “sodomite.” Still, Buonarroti had written love poems to his favorite youths, and his contemporaries recorded that he produced great art, sketches, and poems when his love was requited and went into unproductive rages and depressions when he felt rejected.

In the spring of 1532, the great artist was in the thrall of one of the worst depressive periods of his life. The project for the San Lorenzo façade had fallen to pieces (literally, the huge central marble columns had smashed to bits in transport), he had been betrayed by his adopted family, he was by now a social outcast in his hometown, his dreams of a new golden age of Florence had been dashed, and the plan for the giant della Rovere tomb inside St. Peter’s—a project that Michelangelo had come to consider more his own monument than that of Julius II—had been canceled. He was being sued by the surviving relatives of Julius to finish the late pope’s tomb, even though it would not be allowed inside the Vatican. His birth family was continually draining his money—to set up his incompetent brothers in businesses and then to bail them out when they failed, to settle their legal affairs, to restore lost family properties, to pay for their weddings, and on and on. His family never showed gratitude but only resented him for his success while demanding more and more money. In 1528 his brother Buonarroto died, followed three years later by Michelangelo’s father, Ludovico (at the age of eighty-seven, remarkable for that era), leaving the artist with many unresolved emotions and the feeling of being ever more isolated.

Even his physical health was at an all-time low. He was laboring on the de’ Medici Chapel, a project to glorify the very family that had betrayed him and had sought to have him killed. To finish the sacristy and move on to more agreeable commissions and patrons, he was yet again pushing himself beyond all human limits. This habit of working around the clock alone without eating or sleeping sufficiently might have worked for him when he was in his twenties and thirties, but now that he was in his fifties, it was taking its toll. Word traveled all the way to the Vatican that he had become skin and bones and was having vision problems, dizzy spells, and migraine headaches. The pope was so concerned for Michelangelo’s life that he ordered him to stop working on the sacristy and come to Rome at once to resolve once and for all the nagging question of Pope Julius’s tomb. The stubborn genius begrudgingly took a break from his labors, went to Rome, and there cleaned himself up to present himself at the papal court. This was in the spring of 1532. It would also be the spring of Michelangelo’s life.

In the social whirl of the Apostolic Palace under Clement VII de’ Medici, one figure instantly stood out to the artist’s keen eye for male beauty, a young nobleman from an ancient Roman patrician family whose name was on everyone’s lips that season: Tommaso dei Cavalieri. Strikingly handsome with the physique of an athlete, Tommaso was the epitome of the cultured gentleman. He was also passionately fascinated by art and architecture, dabbling in both fields when he could. He liked to dress in nostalgic outfits, including doublets made of shot silk and a golden belt with ancient coins on it. To Michelangelo, this twenty-three-year-old courtier seemed to have stepped out of his most romantic dreams. For the lonely fifty-seven-year-old artist, it was not simply love at first sight, but a lightning bolt from heaven. To find a young man who was his ideal of masculine charm and who also shared his creative passions was a revelation. For the young Tommaso, to receive so much attention from the world’s most famous artist and architect also seemed like a dream come true. Soon, the great maestro was behaving like a love-sick schoolboy: writing love notes and romantic sonnets, making sketches and drawings as gifts for his beloved.

Historians and other scholars have produced reams of speculation about whether Michelangelo and Tommaso ever physically consummated their mutual feelings. Most doubt it, but quite frankly, it does not matter nor is it even our business. What is important is that, while in the depths of his despair, Michelangelo found love, passion, and renewed inspiration. In fact, he was finally truly understanding his old tutor Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonic theory of love, whereby the total, unselfish love for another soul—in this case, another male—would transport him ever closer to God. In one of his torrent of love poems to Cavalieri, Buonarroti wrote:

I see, through your beautiful eyes, a sweet Light that I

Can’t see through mine, with sight so poor….

Though without feathers, with your wings I fly

And with your mind I am borne to Heaven more and more.

Almost all of his poems to Tommaso reflect these deep feelings of sexual and spiritual awakening. Buonarroti went right back to Florence and not only finished up the huge de’ Medici Chapel project, but also carved another masterpiece, his
Victory.
It does not seem to have related to any of his commissions, so the artist must have carved it for his own pleasure.

According to many experts, the enigmatic
Victory
statue is a hidden romantic double portrait. The handsome youth is taken to be the young Tommaso, who, armed with nothing but his beauty, has taken prisoner the older man beneath him—none other than the great maestro himself, finally mastered not by Power, not by Art, but by Love. Buonarroti himself supports this interpretation, with a double meaning hidden in a love poem written at this time:

If conquered and suppressed is the way I must be bless’d,

It is no marvel that, nude and alone

With a well-armed cavalier, as his captive, do I rest.

The
cavaliere,
or noble knight, who has captured Michelangelo is, of course, the young Cavalieri. Throughout these lines, we find the following paired letters in the original Italian, at either the beginning or the end of the phrases:
t-o, m-a,
and
s-o
—for Tommaso.

What is interesting to note is that in the new sacristy, at the very same time, Michelangelo was finishing up the memorial statue to Giuliano de’ Medici. Historians all agree that the face on the statue bears no resemblance to Giuliano’s. What they do not mention is that it is almost identical to the face of
Victory.
Obviously, the love-struck artist could not stop thinking of Tommaso.

In 1534, as soon as he had finished his obligations in Florence, Michelangelo packed his belongings and moved to a city that he hated—Rome—to be near the man he loved. He wrote in letters and poems at this time that he felt like the phoenix. According to legend, this mythical bird, upon growing very ancient, burns up in a fire and is reborn young and anew from the ashes. Thanks to his flames of passion for Tommaso, he felt young and powerful again, ready to take on both Rome and the Vatican and even figuratively spit in their face, if need be. Right at this time, he wrote to his beloved:

I am more precious to myself than ever before,

Now, with you in my heart, I am worth much more,

Like sculpted lines added to a bare marble block

Bring so much more value to the original rock….

Against water, against fire, I can endure;

With the sign of your love shining bright I can give the blind sight,

And with my spit each venom I can cure.

Michelangelo would need all this newly rekindled energy very soon. Not only was his life’s road leading him back to Rome, it would soon lead him into the Sistine Chapel again.

Chapter Fifteen

SECRETS OF
THE LAST JUDGMENT

What spirit is so empty and blind,
that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot
is more noble than the shoe,
and skin more beautiful than the garment with
which it is clothed?

—MICHELANGELO

B
ACK IN ROME, Michelangelo was immediately given another herculean task. Pope Clement VII, Buonarroti’s own childhood “brother” Giulio de’ Medici, summoned him to the Apostolic Palace and gave him a daunting commission. Clement wanted to make sure that his family had their original Michelangelo monuments in Rome as well as in Florence. He craved something in Rome that would rival the great masterpiece ensuring the memory of the hated Pope Julius. So, he commanded the astonished artist to redo the entire front wall of the Sistine Chapel.

This wall above the altar was already covered in precious masterpieces of fresco, including panels from Michelangelo’s own ceiling project from twenty-two years earlier. In the middle, between two large windows, was an irreplaceable fresco of the Virgin Mary ascending into heaven, with Pope Sixtus IV, the founder of the Sistine, kneeling at her side. This scene, painted by Pinturicchio, was the key to the entire original concept of the chapel in the fifteenth century, since it was dedicated to Mary and used by the papal court every Ascension Day (August 15, nowadays more of an Italian national cultural holiday when everyone heads out of town). Above the Virgin and Sixtus were some of the original popes painted by Botticelli’s Florentine team in the fifteenth century, along with their two first panels in the Moses and Jesus cycles, also one-of-a-kind artworks in their own right.

Clement did not want the sly, subversive artist to do another Jewish-themed painting in the Church’s most important chapel. After all, this pope was a de’ Medici; he knew how Michelangelo had been taught in Florence and was onto his Neoplatonic tricks—or so he thought. Clement decreed that the front wall be a monumental version of the
Giudizio Universale,
the Last Judgment. In the Christian tradition, this is when Jesus returns to earth to discern between right and wrong, good and evil, and to judge all souls accordingly. The souls judged righteous will ascend to heaven, while the evil ones will be damned to eternal punishment in hell. For once, Michelangelo agreed to a theme without even putting up an argument. He was tired of fighting for the soul of the Church. He was disgusted by the hedonistic heirs of the intellectual, cultured Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was more than happy with the idea of Christ coming back to judge both the Vatican and the de’ Medicis.

Michelangelo agreed to undertake the task, but on one condition. He told Clement that, to do justice to the important cosmic theme of the painting, he would need to block up the front windows and remodel the entire front wall first. Clement eagerly agreed. In this way, his commissioned artwork would be all the more impressive, since it would take up one huge, uninterrupted mass of wall. Shortly after the contract was signed, Clement went off to his own final judgment, dying at fifty-six years of age. He was succeeded by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who took the papal name Paul III.

The Farnese family was still another clan of wealthy nobles whose behavior was anything but noble. Paul III had been ordained a cardinal only because his gorgeous sister Julia had been the favorite concubine of Pope Alexander VI, the “poisoner pope” from the decadent Borgia family. Now that Paul was pope, it was the Farnese family’s turn to enjoy the papacy and the Vatican’s coffers of gold. His enormous palace, under construction while he was still a cardinal, would now be finished off with new designs for the façade, upper courtyard, and garden by Michelangelo himself.
*

Pope Paul told Michelangelo also to go right ahead with
The Last Judgment
fresco on the Sistine’s altar wall. Now, he thought, instead of a lasting tribute to the de’ Medicis, it would glorify the Farnese family forever. However, without a suspicious Florentine like Clement to keep an eye on him, Michelangelo once again succeeded in permeating his fresco with many levels of hidden messages. Today, most visitors to the Sistine have no idea who Clement VII or Paul III were, but they come from all over the world because of Michelangelo Buonarroti.
The Last Judgment
has become a permanent testament to the artist’s talent and philosophy.