Travelogue 1205 – 27 August
Civil Acts

We have a poster on our wall from the last trip to Florence. It’s a sketch of Brunelleschi’s dome. It’s a reminder of the place. It’s a reminder of the spirit of the time. And it’s a reminder of the invigorating pace of civilization, once it’s been inspired.

I was listening to Heather Cox Richardson reading from Illinois Governor Pritzger’s statement after Trump threatened to send National Guard units into Chicago. It’s a momentous time, and a time of change. It’s not too unlike some of the periods in Florentine history, when the republic fought monarchs, when the republic fought itself. Perhaps America is not so exceptional after all.

Somehow men and women find the energy to stand against the chaos. I admire them. I might have had the reserves of energy once, or if I were young now. Perhaps I made one or two stands against chaos when I was younger, a few instances among the millions of unsung defences against chaos. Many people do it, you know.

At the moment, I’m just trying to recover from our trip to the beach. It requires a certain fortitude to travel with your family to the beach by public transit. It’s a trade of stress and strain for a couple hours peace, and clearly the kind of peace one can’t find amid the mundane, or we wouldn’t exert such efforts. It might just be the persuasion of an eight-year-old. Little Ren is a beach-lover. Her enthusiasm is infectious.

I tend to linger somewhere between boredom and sincere appreciation when I am at the beach. I am restless, and then I am resting. I am happiest staring up at the clouds, and then out to the reaches of the sea, as far as the wind farm out there, as far as the big ships that seem to drift asleep, as far as the curve of the Earth and what I cannot see.

I watch the people. The crowds are exhausting. But they are there, and undeniably a part of the beach experience, the boisterous boys, the families ceaselessly moving, the old couples calm, the children squealing. The dogs. The motion swirls around us, rising and subsiding like the sea’s waves, and yet it has its codes and its lines, its prescribed limits, and people commit to the roughly drawn circles of their agitation, and their commotion becomes channelled. Centuries of repetition have encoded their manners. It’s a wonderful thing, and it’s no less foundational than a vote in Parliament. Every civil act, conscious and sub, is in fact a stand against the chaos, every normalcy a sort of kindness to the neighbour, in the face of the malignancy of the raiders running through the halls of our public buildings, shouting orders in our capitals’ streets, performing for each other like pirates who had forgotten how to behave, smug in their coarseness, donning fancy hats for each other.

Travelogue 1204 – 22 August
Travelling the Rivers

Little Ren needs a piano. Rotterdam has surprisingly few music stores with pianos in stock. It’s summer; we are free to travel and search. We decide on a music store in Sliedrecht, a small town upriver from Rotterdam.

I love water; I love being on water. I chose a watery place to live, and yet I find so few opportunities in the day-today to be on the water. We have to travel today, so I decide we’ll travel by water. It’s a direct way to travel in this case, from the west of Rotterdam to the eastern suburb, and yet not the most efficient. In a car, we would be there in half an hour. By train, it might take an hour. On the water bus, it takes an hour and a half. But it’s a beautiful summer day, and it’s an adventure of sorts, standing on the deck of a boat that is chugging against the river currents, watching the choppy water created in our wake. The girls are delighted.

On our journey of some 25-30 kilometres, we travelled on three rivers: the Nieuwe Maas, the Noord, and the Beneden Merwede. And each time, entering a new river meant literally entering a new river. In other words, the river ran no further. The waters changed their names. This is the magic of the delta.

There is a spot in Dordrecht, right where three rivers meet, the Noord, the Beneden Merwede, and the Oude Maas. There is a fifteenth-century brick gateway into the city, at the Groothoofdspoort, with a small, domed tower and seventeenth-century adornments, including a lovely relief of the Dordtse Stadsmaagd, the Maiden of Dordrecht, sitting in the “Garden of Holland, a palm of peace in one hand and the shield of the city in another, so delicate as to appear terracotta. It’s a cute little building. More importantly, there are a few modest eetcafes there by the water, where you can absorb the rare sun and feel like a witness of the convergence of waters.

Travelogue 1203 – 20 August
The Rivers They Come and They Go

It’s been a watery summer. We have celebrated August with many visits to the canals, rivers, lakes and sea that define this little country.

I’m still learning about the complexity of the river system here. In most European cities, one river runs through town. It was often the original raison d'être of the town. The river has a name; the name has roots deep in the past, some fun etymology, something comforting. There might be another river, a tributary.

In this part of the world, rivers come and go. Near Brugge, for example, the Zwin River was created by a storm in 1134. At one time, Bruges was close enough to the sea to be a port city. Then it wasn’t. Then the Zwin appeared, leading the sea almost to the walls of the city. It started silting up almost immediately. Canals were built, and the Zwin itself became unusable. Et cetera. But the Zwin played its part in history, enabling Bruges to become the medieval treasure that it was.

In this area, you can peacefully motor your way upstream on one waterway, never deviating, only to find several kilometres later that you are on a different waterway. Past the confluence with that smaller river, the larger river changed names. The Nieuwe Maas, for example, which runs through Rotterdam and connects it to the sea, actually only flows for 24 kilometres, and never makes it to the sea. Further, it has only existed since the thirteenth century, when, yes, a storm flooded the region, and river courses were changed.

It's a bit like the experience of an American trying to figure London out for the first time. The same street changes names every mile or so. “Why?” the innocent tourist asks. “It’s the same street!” Well, yes and no. It has everything to do with history, and with communities. Each village or borough had its own story about that thoroughfare, and the connection with other throughfares is a separate story.

Here, the rivers and canals are so many, and some are so recent. They form one huge network, like a web, and each strand much be identified for the purpose of navigation and planning. Some names are organic, some are quite dry, like the “New Waterway” that does finally connect the Nieuwe Maas – by way of the Scheur, mixing waters with the Oude Maas – connect it to the sea.

Travelogue 1202 – 16 August
The Holy Blood

The Burg Square in Bruges is the site of the original fort (“burg”) that was the seed from which the town grew. That fort was built in the mid-ninth century by Margrave Baldwin I. Baldwin the Iron Arm, as he was called, was made first margrave because he was the son-in-law of Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne and Emperor. Flanders became the first hereditary autonomous county in the splintering Carolingian Empire.

There were a lot of Baldwins in Flemish history. Later Baldwins would include: the True Beard; the Leper King; Baldwin IX of Flanders, who was also Baldwin VI of Hainaut, who was also leader of the Fourth Crusade and afterward Baldwin I as Byzantine Emperor (and, sadly, the last of the Flemish Baldwins).

There was another Baldwin, one not descended from the family of Flemish counts but from French nobility, Baldwin III of Jerusalem, king of that Crusader state. According to legend, he presented to Thierry of Alsace, Theoderic, the actual Count of Flanders, a vial of the Christ’s holy blood in reward for his service in the Second Crusade. That was in the 1140s.

In 1150 or so, the Sint-Janshospitaal was founded. In the same decade, the Chapel of the Holy Blood was built. It was built next to the “Oud Steen”, the residence of the counts, which stood on the site of the old “burg” and would become the City Hall. The building we see on that site today was built in the fourteenth century. The Basilica of the Holy Blood that we see today is a combination of the first chapel and a fifteenth-century addition, with significant nineteenth-century renovation.

The weekly veneration of the Holy Blood happens upstairs, in the fifteenth- and nineteenth-century chapel. You walk up a lovely sixteenth-century staircase, designed by William Aerts, before entering the upper chapel, which is small and ornate, tinted by the nineteenth-century stained glass and the nineteenth-century frescoes behind the high altar. The Holy Blood is presented in a side chapel, at a marble altar designed in the eighteenth century.

Two priests enter with the relic. You have been bid to sit before the altar by an impatient deacon, but you stand when they enter. One priest is old, one is young. The old man handles the relic while the young man recites a blessing in four languages. Then we are allowed to line up before the stairs up to the altar. One by one, we are allowed a moment before the relic.

The relic is a piece of cloth holding the blood of Jesus, contained in a vial that tests have determined is made of Byzantine rock crystal dating back to the 11th or 12th century. There is golden thread wound around the vial’s neck which is visible through the encasing cylinder. That cylinder dates to the fourteenth century. It is glass with golden coronets on each end. Altogether, it is a mesmerising object.

I don’t believe or disbelieve that the relic is authentic. I am not a practicing Christian. And yet, I was moved by the experience of the ceremony and by seeing the relic. I would classify my response as a religious feeling. Religious feelings are public and ritual, aesthetic and moral. They are shared, and they are significant only as communal and moral emotion. I was moved by a consciousness of the suffering in history, as acknowledged by the church in the story of the Passion.

There is an awful lot of ‘protesteth-too-much” atheism in the world these days, particularly in Northern Europe, and it faces off with a smaller, but perhaps more obdurate, “protesteth-too-much” religion. The standoff feels inauthentic; both camps have feet firmly planted in another era. If either group had actually arrived at their station, they would have little to be so anxious about, so strident over.

The awkward artificiality on both sides makes it hard to speak about religion. But I can say I caught a bit of it on my trip to Brugge. It is a healthy feeling, when left alone, not pressed into service of one agenda or another. I felt like I learned something important about the church, something hard yet to verbalise.

Travelogue 1201 – 12 August
Sint-Jans

Het Sint-Janshospitaal, the Hospital of Saint John, in Bruges was founded in the twelfth century. For almost eight hundred years, the hospital was open to all who needed help, the poor, the sick, travellers and pilgrims. Those inside were bound by their charter never to turn anyone away. It’s an impressive complex, brick buildings enclosing quiet cloisters and gardens. Even today, when tourists are free to explore – the hospital moved across town to a modern facility in 1977 and the complex became a museum, – the place has a quiet dignity.

Honestly, I was very moved by the remains of this place and its charitable mission. Inside were many exhibits oriented to the work carried on there for more than 800 years, showcasing the medical work, explaining the medieval notions of hospitality and religion, making it real with recreations of the sounds that would have resounded in those halls, with images from centuries ago. One little video exhibit analyses the detail in one historical painting of the great hall that formed the heart of the hospital. Everything was in the open in that space, admission and diagnosis, beds and food, prayers and cleaning and even surgery. It is overwhelming to consider the work, the humanity, the suffering, the hope and despair housed in that great hall, day after day.

Also humbling was a little video of interviews with modern nuns from the order. Their words were very affecting. They were plain, simple words from women who loved their work. “No regrets” they said about their vows and their vocations. Regrets! I feel a sense of shame that anyone acting out such a vision of selflessness would feel a need to apologize. Their lives were given to the care of others. Religion moved them, and if many of us find religion suspect, the point is moot in the face of their commitment.

There is no denying that the monastics enjoyed a certain privilege and status in medieval society. It’s no accident that the hospital houses a collection of priceless works of art. I know nothing of the character of Hans Memling, but it’s sure he didn’t work for free. I forgive Sister Agnes her vanity, placing herself in paintings beside Mother Mary and Saint Catherine. She was the prioress of a great house doing God’s work. Her self-regard is not conclusive evidence against her competence, or can, with any seriousness, be held against her if she saved even one life.

Travelogue 1200 – 8 August
Memling’s Shrine

She led 11,000 virgins. She was a British princess on pilgrimage. She was slaughtered, along with all her entourage, by the Huns in Cologne. Their bodies were buried there, in the centre of modern Cologne, and there they remained until their discovery in the twelfth century. The bones unearthed entered the relic market, and St Ursula became very popular as the patron saint of young women. (The bones were probably from a Roman graveyard.)

I love the stories of Catholic saints. They are thousands of saints, and they are the superheroes of the Middle Ages. But there is a key difference between Catholic saints and heroes of Greek or Roman or Marvel mythology: they were human, born to live or die like anyone else, but were saved, sometimes martyred, and they effected miracles only incidentally, as an consequence of their holiness.

One can follow the story of St Ursula on the fifteenth-century relic shrine left us in Bruges, a product of the famous Flemish primitive, Hans Memling. Memling was a favourite of the sisters of the Sint-Janshospitaal. A particular fan was Agnes Casembrood, who commissioned the shrine, and who is portrayed on one of the short facades praying behind the Virgin and Child. She also appears, by the way, in one of the back panels of the huge Triptych of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, which is also housed at the Sint-Janshospitaal. She kneels there and prays under the tutelage of two tall women saints, one of which ohich is Catherine.

The relic shrine is a marvellous piece of work, carved in wood to be a miniature Gothic chapel to house the hospital church’s relics and then painted by Memling and his workshop. The shrine is wooden, but is gilded, and it features all the decoration common in Gothic architecture, pinnacles, finials, gablets, crockets, tracery, and statues in niches. Along both sides, you follow the story of St Ursula in Memling’s vivid colours, travelling to Rome, meeting the pope, and then besieged by the Huns in Cologne. The scenes are crowded with figures, and yet you have no trouble picking out Ursula and the pope and following the fundamental storyline. The shrine is not even a metre tall. The art of the miniature is in full glory in this period. The detail is wonderful.

Travelogue 1199 – 4 August
Our Lady

We spent a few days in Bruges (or Brugge, in the Flemish variation). I made a point of stopping by the Church of Our Lady straight away, to visit the Renaissance treasure hidden inside. Here is one of the very few Michelangelo sculptures to leave Italy during his lifetime.

During the years he was carving the David, 1501-1504, when he was young, Michelangelo also produced this lovely Madonna and Child. It may have been intended for an altar in Tuscany, but it was purchased by a pair of Flemish brothers in the cloth business, Jan and Alexander Mouscron, and shipped home to Bruges to embellish a funerary monument for their parents.

The sculpture is recognizable as Michelangelo’s, in the Carrara stone, in the polish applied, in the shape of the Virgin’s face, in the twisting pose of the Christ child. It breaks from medieval tradition in several ways, in its asymmetry, in the independence of the child, who seems to be ready to take a step, in the contemplative expression on Mary’s face. She is not looking at her baby, but down, presumably at the worshippers in the church where the sculpture was originally intended to be installed, on an altar above the congregation.

There is something of the great man’s character in the work, something of his complex character. Note his devotion to hard work in the fine detail and the high polish. Catch the tone of his religion in the way the pyramidal composition exalts the figures, in the cool detachment of the figures as they consider the boy’s fate. Note his pride in the illusion of simplicity in the challenging pose of the Christ child. His awe-inspiring competence is as much the subject and purpose of the piece as the religious subject matter. Michelangelo’s work is a kind of testament to and embodiment of Pico della Mirandola’s "Oration on the Dignity of Man".

It was a privilege to see this work. It is housed in the Church of Our Lady, the thirteenth-century church with the tallest tower in the city, and third tallest brickwork tower in the world, a lovely structure that also houses the elaborate fifteenth-century tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles the Bold.

Travelogue 1198 – 27 July
Mimesis and Perspective

Renaissance sonnets were precious trinkets, but they were not solitary productions. They were discursive and public. They were a fun way to trade comments, compliments and ideas. They were a kind of sport for the aristocracy, a friendly competition among those educated among the Renaissance humanists.

Lorenzo de’ Medici wrote sonnets, in the days when Michelangelo was a young man. He started a commentary on his sonnets; I’ve been reading excerpts. He says, “whoever diligently seeks the true definition of love, finds it to be nothing other than an appetite for beauty.” This captures something of the spirit of the age. It’s a taste of the Neo-Platonism popular at the time – Lorenzo next discusses Plato’s definition of love, – but the statement provides a simple enough declaration of priorities. Elegance in form, and even elegance of ideas: God’s universe should fit together like a fun, little puzzle.

Philosophy and religion and the force of courtly tradition forced him to treat of love, but the far more interesting variable in his equation is beauty.

Aristotle analysed beauty, and therefore the Renaissance humanist must. Both Aristotle and Plato called art “mimesis”, and said that the keys to art were utility and beauty. Aristotle was more forgiving of art, finding it had its uses for the human mind, first as “catharsis” – what he meant by the term is still not clear – and then as a stimulus to higher intellectual function.

The great Renaissance theorist, Leon Battista Alberti, added mathematics. Harmony, symmetry, and proportion became properties of beauty. Beauty was measurable. And because art had become bound to philosophy and religion, it took on something of their gravity. Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio were seers and saints in the new order.

Some seventy years separate Lorenzo’s essay from Brunelleschi’s experiments with perspective. Brunelleschi was a protégé of Lorenzo’s grandfather the great Cosimo de’ Medici.

Travelogue 1197 – 22 July
Il Mio Basso Ingegno

The sestet that rounds off Michelangelo’s sonnet races toward a conclusion, one we modern readers might easily anticipate, just as well as a Renaissance reader might, having been conditioned by the persistent memento mori in Renaissance art and discourse. Glancing ahead, we see the final word of the poem is “morte”, and we conclude that yes, the lover must die without the attentions of the beloved. That seems a safe conclusion for a poem that seems both courtly (about love and admiration) and philosophical (entangled with medieval religion). So, yes, this must end badly for the lover.

But it is Michelangelo. The concentrated language here offers threads of meaning that could reach almost as far as Freud. He sees in the mirror of his beloved contempt (“gran disdegno”), and he’s afraid – for the art, for himself. He doesn’t blame her; he blames himself. It’s not even his destiny that dooms him, he says, in a surprising concession, or even an assertion of will, but a failure of intelligence (“ingego”). In her heart, she carries two possibilities: her “pietate” or “morte”, pity for him or his demise. He has failed to inspire pity, and therefore it must be death.

These melodramatic terms are common in courtly poetry, going back centuries before Michelangelo’s time. Pity becomes a function of the beloved, and the effects of a withdrawal of love are dire. The differences here are Michelangelo’s analogy to sculpture, and the interesting device of unrequited love as a failure of “ingegno”, a failure of imagination, basically. That is not a light matter in the case of an artist, maybe as stark a picture as he can paint in words, an indication that he is reaching for the most impact possible. It doesn’t mean that he actually felt so desperately. It’s more likely a rhetorical exercise, a parlour game, a statement of affection, perhaps a hint of real longing, but not a twentieth-century cry for help from an obsessed ex.

Artistically the sestet is less interesting than the preceding stanzas. Much of the metre is eaten up with a list of the things not responsible for his failure: not love, not her “beltate o durezza o fortuna”, etc. No, he just lacks the wit. And, of course, confessing this in the sophisticated format of a sonnet is, intentionally or not, ironic, an act of self-indulgence among friends. It’s a beautiful little piece, though, and a pleasure in the way that, say, Renaissance intaglio was, or a gilded, sculpted salt cellar.

Travelogue 1196 – 17 July

Il Disïato Effetto

The second stanza of the Michelangelo sonnet is a knotted string of discourse, an artist lamenting his failures. It seems like a fairly typical sentiment in the courtly love poetry of the period: the beauty of the beloved escapes the meagre talents of the artist. But there’s something more.

 

Il mal ch’io fuggo, e ’l ben ch’io mi prometto,
in te, donna leggiadra, altera e diva,
tal si nasconde; e perch’io più non viva,
contraria ho l’arte al disïato effetto.

 

The language is so concentrated, it manifests the dilemma that the artist seems to bemoan. He can’t access her character. Or her character evades his art. I can’t tell which. Are we able to understand the beloved? Can we reproduce the beloved, create true images of them? “The bad that I flee from and the good that I pursue, they are hidden in you.” Can we know the author any better? The reader knows neither.

The author issues a cry of despair: “Perch’io più non viva, contraria ho l’arte al disïato effetto.” Because I may live no longer, even though I am not alive, inasmuch as I no longer live …” I can’t seem to find a translation that fits correctly over that precious frame. “While I live, I only have art that falls short.”

Is it frustration with himself, is it a courtly raising of the beloved to an unreachable height, or is it something of a standard Christian statement about the corruptibility of the flesh? Is it all of the above? Was he a great poet or a clumsy one? That is the legacy left us by one of the true geniuses of our history, grandeur and riddles.

Travelogue 1195 – 14 July 

His Double Negatives 

Three of Michelangelo’s sonnets were published in his lifetime, and they were published anonymously. This one might have been one of those three. I can’t seem to confirm that yet.

It begins beautifully:

“Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto
  c’un marmo solo in sé non circonscriva
  col suo superchio, e solo a quello arriva
  la man che ubbidisce all’intelletto.”

 

The poem is famous because it forms a sort of artist’s statement, a philosophy of how art is made, while also being a poem of love or devotion. It was written to Vittoria Colonna, a woman that Michelangelo became quite attached to in the 1540s or so. He was already an elderly man, and it is debatable what form his devotion took. In all likelihood, a deep and friendly affection. Colonna was intensely religious. She was nearly as famous as Michelangelo, a noblewoman and an acclaimed poet. She had been widowed, and she lived in a convent at least part of the time that she spent in Rome. The two of them shared a lively faith in the church during a turbulent time. They entertained the company of reformers and people who confessed some sympathy with the Lutheran movement, but neither left the Catholic church.

I don’t like any of the translations of this poem I have seen so far. Not that I think I could do any better. There is something difficult to capture from Michelangelo’s style, his concentrated, even clenched, syntax and structure, elements that led Benedetto Croce to rather rudely label his poems “contorted and obscure”. This concentrated quality reminded me of Dante, even before I discovered that Michelangelo was a dedicated reader of the great poet.

Not atypically, he begins the poem with a double negative: there is no concept a great artist can conceive that is not already buried inside a block of marble underneath its excess stone; it just requires a hand properly guided by the intellect to find it.

The poem then becomes a poem of devotion to his dear friend Colonna, “donna leggiadra, altera e diva”. He is afraid that his art is no match for her beauty.

Much has been read into that first stanza as a statement of the sculpture’s method, because it sounds an awful lot like the Neo-Platonist thought of the day, of his youth, of Lorenzo’s day, in which the concept exists whole in the material, or in the ethers, waiting for the artist to capture it.

Travelogue 1194 – 10 July

Difficulties, Impediments and Labours

In Michelangelo’s day, and perhaps because of his extraordinary career, there was a lively debate among humanists, philosophers, and artists about which art was nobler, painting or sculpture. The great man had probably fuelled the debate with his performance at the Sistine Chapel, by the scorn with which he was assigned it, by his reluctance to do it, by his astonishing achievement there.

Later in life, he was asked to contribute something to the discussion by Benedetto Varchi, who was a historian and poet, and who was a friend of Michelangelo’s. (He would deliver the oration at Michelangelo’s funeral.) Varchi wanted his friend’s final word on the subject of which art was the nobler one.

“I admit that it seems to me that painting may be held to be good in the degree in which it approximates to relief, and relief to be bad in the degree in which it approximates to painting. I used therefore to think that painting derived its light from sculpture and that between the two the difference was as that between the sun and the moon.

“Now, since I have read the passage in your paper where you say that, philosophically speaking, things which have the same end are one and the same, I have altered my opinion and maintain that, if in face of greater difficulties, impediments and labours, greater judgement does not make for greater nobility, then painting and sculpture are one and the same, and being held so, no painter ought to think less of sculpture than of painting, and similarly no sculptor less of painting than of sculpture. By sculpture, I mean that which is fashioned by the effort of cutting away, that which is fashioned by the method of building up being like unto painting. It suffices that as both, that is to say sculpture and painting, proceed from one and the same faculty of understanding, we may bring them to amicable terms and desist from such disputes, because they take up more time than the execution of the figures themselves. If he who wrote that painting is nobler than sculpture understood as little about the other things of which he writes – my maidservant could have expressed them better.”

If translated correctly, there is a subtlety to this answer that I find compelling. It turns rather heavily on a negative if-clause that makes for an admission that is not an admission. It’s like saying that if the sun didn’t shine so strongly in Italy it might just be the Netherlands. And inside the if-clause we glimpse a core value for Michelangelo, which is the labour, the challenge that a job offers. It suggests to me that his achievement on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel came about not in spite of the challenge but because of it.

We can see here that he was contrary and stubborn. And yet, we can also see he was a thinker and a writer. The prose is pleasant. It isn’t simple grammatically. It has an edge; it has some humour. It isn’t a slave to bland abstraction like many of the rhetoricians of the day.

Travelogue 1193 – 7 July
No Priest

I enjoy primary sources. There’s always something revelatory in hearing the voices of people in their time. You never know so much about another era that the words from a primary source won’t add some shading, some perspective, some pathos to the subject.

The great Renaissance statesman and historian, Francesco Guicciardini, wrote about his youth that

 

his father "thought the affairs of the Church were decadent. He preferred to lose great present profits and the chance of making one of his sons a great man rather than have it on his conscience that he had made one of his sons a priest out of greed for wealth or great position."

 

So the young Francesco studied law, becoming a teacher of law at the Florentine Studium at age 23. He was from a noble family, so he would not remain unnoticed if he had any talent, and, indeed, he did go on to become an ambassador and administrator for the Medici and for three popes. All without the compromise that his father found distasteful!

He wrote in his “Ricordi” later in life: “Tutti gli stati, chi bene considera la loro origine, sono violenti ….” All states, he says, if you consider well their origin, are violent. Whether republican or imperial in nature, governments are founded in violence. And priests are no exception to the rule, he says. If anything, “la violenzia de' quali è doppia”: their violence is doubled. To keep us down, he says, (“tenerci sotto”,) they use arms that are both spiritual and earthly.

And this from someone with years of political service among the variety of city-states and nation states in play in the field of Renaissance Northern Italy. None of them, including the popes, were innocent. This isn’t shocking to the cynical modern mind, but it is surprising to see it written so plainly by someone writing at the time. He sounds like his friend, Machiavelli.

Travelogue 1192 – 2 July

Qua si fa

What was it like to be an artist in the Michelangelo’s time? It was obviously precarious. He served at the whim of tyrants. Popes threw temper tantrums. Projects fizzled. Funds came in fits and starts. Much of the time, the initial risk in a project was his. He received an advance, but then purchased a shipload of marble on his own account.

Was he a religious man? Much of his art had religious themes, following the tradition of the times. His patrons were often churchmen. What did he really think of Julius II, the conquering pope?

Interesting insight comes in his writings. Besides being the sculptor of the age, and having become the painter of the age, he was an accomplished poet. Some 300 poems of his survive, including a number of sonnets.

He wrote, in the first lines of a sonnet,

 

“Qua si fa elmi di calici e spade
e ’l sangue di Cristo si vend’a giumelle,
e croce e spine son lance e rotelle,
e pur da Cristo pazïenzia cade.”

 

Which means something like,

 

Here they make helms and swords from chalices,

They sell the blood of Christ,

And the cross and thorns become lances and shields,

So that even the patience of Christ fails.

 

No one has an exact date for the poem, but it’s probably during the reign of Julius II, the warrior pope. That was the pope who hired him for his mausoleum, then fought with him. That was the one who punished him by assigning him to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo was a devout man, which is given witness to in this sonnet and sonnets of a later time. An artist of his calibre was channelled as a matter of course right up the church hierarchy, and to the top. Was he disillusioned? What happened when Martin Luther challenged the papacy as corrupt? Some say even Michelangelo’s faith wavered.

Travelogue 1191 – 27 June
The Road to Carrara
Part Five: the Titbits

Aureae Petronillae Filiae Dulcissimae

Today, Michelangelo’s marvellous Pietà stands inside of Saint Peter’s Basilica, in the first chapel on the right as you enter. It has been there for several centuries. But the statue was not intended for the basilica. It was commissioned by the French Cardinal Bilheres to decorate his tomb, which would stand in the ancient Chapel of Santa Petronilla.

Saint Petronilla was an early martyr, probably of a noble Roman family in the second century. She was already venerated in the following century, when a basilica was built over her burial site. In the early Middle Ages, her identity became confused. People began praying to her as the daughter of St Peter. A story grew that she had been locked in a castle by the Apostle himself to protect her from King Flaccus. In a demonstration of how odd bits of reality survive in legend, Flaccus was the name of a noble Roman family that was indeed prominent in the second and third centuries.

In the middle of the eighth century, her remains were moved by Pope Stephen III to a mausoleum serving several late Roman emperors, which had been built in the late fourth century on the site of a circus (race track) built by the emperor Caligula. This building became the Chapel of Santa Petronilla. This was quite near the site of St Peter’s burial place, and near Constantine’s basilica.

The Chapel of Santa Petronilla became a favourite of French kings, from the time of Charlemagne. It was rumoured (falsely) that Charlemagne was buried there. When Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800, he was declared the adopted son of St Peter, and therefore brother to Petronilla.

That is the long backstory to the first location for the Pietà, carved for the tomb of the French cardinal who represented the French crown at the Vatican.

Poor Cardinal Bilheres was not remembered long. The Chapel of Santa Petronilla was demolished only a decade or so later to make way for the new basilica of St Peter. Some years later, Michelangelo himself would become the chief architect of the new basilica.

If it seems as though Renaissance and Baroque Rome was busy moving bodily remains from one place to another, well, yeah.

Travelogue 1190 – 24 June
The Road to Carrara
Part Four: the Titbits

The Carrara story begs some extras to tidy up. There are always interesting titbits to history, aren’t there? Being too strict in story-telling is to miss out on the fun of it, and, I believe, to violate the spirit of narrative history.

Michelangelo didn’t have to travel to Carrara for his next project after the Pietà. He returned to Florence to work on a huge block of marble that had been left aside, partially worked and abandoned. There was new leadership in Florence, and Michelangelo had a new reputation. The gifted young man was gifted the stone, a chunk of marble that a few artists had started on and stopped, noticing “imperfections” in the grain. Michelangelo took the challenge.

What he fashioned took three years. Everyone loved it so much, they changed the plan for its placement in the Duomo, and instead placed in the Piazza della Signoria for all to see. They called it “Il Gigante”, and it became a symbol of the city. The nickname makes me think of the 1956 film, “Giant”, which makes me think of James Dean. The sultry boy looks up from under his cowboy hat, taking the measure of the day’s Goliath. There is, after all, something Dean-like to the “Gigante”.

After that, Michelangelo was back in Carrara, this time for his longest stint, eight months, collecting a massive amount of marble for a monumental tomb he had designed for the new pope, Julius II. His relationship with this pope was a famously stormy one. Julius II was an ambitious man with a fiery temper, and he had big dreams for the city of Rome and the Papal States. He pursued wars like any contemporary warlord in Italy. And he took an interest in the up-and-coming young sculptor. The young man had risen into the highest ranks of artistic talent. And this did not go unnoticed among his competition. While Michelangelo was scouting marble in Carrara, a rival whispered in the pope’s ear that it might be bad luck to be building his tomb so early.

Even as Julius’s interest in the project flagged, Michelangelo worked on, always diligent, always dedicated to his vision. “He remained in those mountains for more than eight months,” Ascanio Condivi, his friend and his biographer, wrote, “with two helpers and a horse and no provision other than food.” He inspected marble; he supervised its excavation and the hewing of the blocks; he bargained with shipowners from Lavagna and Avenza. There were always politics, in every locale. Here, he had to balance Versilia with Liguria, Lucca with Florence, and with Rome. In the end, he accomplished his work; he had collected all the marble he needed, the raw material for a magnificent three-level monument, with more than forty statues, even as the will and the funds for it all were fading. Most of the marble would stand languishing in St Peters Square.

Michelangelo started the work in Rome, but clearly the pope’s mood had shifted. The sculptor was discouraged. After a quarrel with the pope over funding, he moved back to Florence to pick up his project carving St Matthew, as something more fulfilling. Julius II was not pleased. He harassed Florence’s gonfaloniere, Piero Soderini to such an extent that the city’s leader reluctantly asked Michelangelo to return to Rome. The court artist whispering in the pope’s ear, Donato Bramante, opined that the perfect assignment would be the vault of the Sistine Chapel. He thought it would be a way to set Michelangelo up for failure and finally dim the glow of this rising star.

So it was that Carrara and the marbles were set aside for a few years.

Travelogue 1189 – 20 June
The Road to Carrara
Part Three

The first time Michelangelo visited Carrara, the world was young. It was young, but not so innocent. In the same year, the Venetian John Cabot landed in Newfoundland, and the Florentine Vespucci embarked on his first voyage. Columbus was between voyages, perhaps fretting over the end of the world. The Genovese-Spaniard believed he was personally shepherding along Biblical prophecy with his exploration and conquest. The world must be laid open to evangelism. Gold must be collected in order to reconquer Jerusalem. Once again, it is good if we remind ourselves of the deep weirdness at the inception of the European project in America.

The poor, sad French monarch, Charles VIII, who had upset the apple cart in Italy a few years earlier, was planning a second campaign to recapture all he had quickly won and quickly lost in southern Italy. He had had two sons and heirs die as babies within the past two years. He was twenty-seven. In the spring of 1498, his wife would die in childbirth, and he himself would die a month afterward after banging his head against a door lintel in a rush to watch a tennis match. His successor would be his cousin, who would pursue his own ambitions in Italy, becoming the Duke of Milan and King of Naples, (only to lose it quickly to the Spaniards once again.)

Meanwhile, Michelangelo contentedly rode his grey horse across the mountains between Lucca and Pietrasanta, through Monte Magno and Camaiore. It was November; we can assume it was cloudy and cold. The road along the base of the mountains, from Camiore through Pietrasanta to Massa and Carrara was probably fairly rough. The region was going to be made more accessible after the Medicis claimed it, some sixteen years later. And as noted earlier, Michelangelo himself would be delegated to take a lead in the development.

For the moment, he is sure to have been content with his lot. He was 22 years old, and he had received a major commission. He was preceded by a letter from the Cardinal of Saint-Denis, asking the Elders of Lucca to support the young “maestro buonarrotto” in his task. The coast was Lucca’s for the moment. And so he travelled as someone important.

He arrived in beautiful Carrara, a town trailing down the hill, and arrived among the quarries above the town, where bone-white stone stood bare to the weather, squared and sheer from the blocks that were cut away. Here was the raw resource of his first genius, the element that held inside it his vision. He would write about the design inside the stone in his famous sonnet series when he was older and had done his reading in Renaissance Neo-Platonism.

The sculptor was put up in a house owned by the quarryman Francesco Pelliccia. Francesco worked in the Polvaccio quarry, and that is where Michelangelo found his blocks to carve. One can only imagine with what joy and what curiosity the young sculptor explored the quarries, led by stonemason Matteo Cuccarelli. One can imagine his agile mind at work, learning the techniques of quarrying, how he identified the stone, how he studied it, with what care and curiosity the young man ran his fingers over the raw marble in the mountainside.

Michelangelo paid for the stone, and he arranged for the horse and cart for the stones to be transported down the hill and to the port. And he left for Rome, probably to be there for Christmas. The marble was delayed; there was some problem with delivery. By spring, the marble had still not arrived. The cardinal was forced to write to friends to intervene.

As he became older, Michelangelo was reluctant to handle the business of the marble himself. It was no doubt an exhausting process haggling with the canny masons and workmen and cart owners, and then cajoling them to follow through with what they said, negotiating with the various customs agents of the day, the taxmen, the toll collectors, and the trolls under the bridges. By 1515, he was asking his brother to arrange for mediators.

Travelogue 1188 – 15 June
The Road to Carrara
Part Two

The stage had been set. Michelangelo had been a precocious boy. He had demonstrated unusual talent, enough to raise speculation and gossip, enough to be picked up by a cardinal in Rome. It was in Rome that his moment would come. It just took a little patience.

Strangely, it was the cardinal who had been fooled by Michelangelo’s faux-ancient sleeping Cupid that took him and acted as his patron, the Cardinal San Giorgio. But he never made use of him. Other small commissions came up here and there. This is when the sculptor carved his Bacchus for another cardinal, a piece now at the Bargello in Florence, the god of wine high on his own supply, leaning back unsteadily while a boyish satyr nibbles from the grapes he holds by his side.

After a year of small projects, Michelangelo was approached by the French cardinal of Saint-Denis, one Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, who was acting as ambassador to Rome. He wanted nothing less than “la più bella opera di marmo che sia oge in Roma, e che maestro niuno la farìa megliore oge”, the most beautiful work in marble in Rome, something no master could do better. Those are words straight from the contract between Michelangelo and the cardinal, a contract negotiated, by the way, by Jacopo Galli, a banker and patron, the savvy man who eventually ended up with several works by Michelangelo in his garden, including the Bacchus.

And Michelangelo did deliver. He promised “la più bella opera di marmo” and that is what he accomplished. I was awestruck when I first saw the “Pietà” in Rome. Everyone was. “To this work let no sculptor, however rare a craftsman, ever think to be able to approach in design or in grace,” wrote Vasari. It was transcendent, the detail, the passion, the fine polish of its surface, the sublime expression on Mary’s face, the masterful composition. It is one of the many great privileges of my life to have seen this singularly beautiful piece of art, and sadly, a privilege never shared by the patron, the Cardinal of Saint-Denis, who died before the completion of the piece.

Galli had negotiated the deal for the Pietà. Michelangelo received an advance on the work, and, before he even signed the contract, he travelled to Carrara to scout for marble for the job.

Travelogue 1187 – 8 June
The Road to Carrara
Part One

The first time Michelangelo visited the marble quarries in Carrara, the fifteenth century hadn’t even reached its close, the High Renaissance was in full bloom, Mannerism and Baroque were waiting patiently in the wings – largely waiting for this young man to mature, – Raphael was a teenager, and Leonardo was working on his “Last Supper”, while designing weapons of war for the Sforza in Milan. Savonarola, the radical preacher, was running Florence – an episode I’ll be writing more about soon. Botticelli was in middle age, and was quite enthralled with Savonarola’s message, so much so, according to some, that he threw some of his own artwork into the great Bonfire of the Vanities earlier in the same year that Michelangelo visited Carrara.

Lorenzo de’ Medici had been Michelangelo’s first great patron. After Lorenzo had died, and after his son and successor, Piero, had been exiled from Florence, Michelangelo was forced to make other plans. His first stop was Bologna. But every ambitious artist of the day hoped to make their way to Rome. The Eternal City was resurgent, recovering from the rough years of the previous century and the early fifteenth century. The popes and Roman aristocracy were eager to rebuild the city in their image. The twenty-two-year-old Michelangelo already had achieved some renown as a sculptor. Next step: find his way to Rome.

How it came about was strange and fortuitous. On a visit back to Florence, Michelangelo fashioned a sleeping cupid from marble left over from another sculpture. The story goes that he contrived, upon the advice of a friend, to make the sculpture appear as though it were ancient and recently excavated. As Vasari puts it, “nor is there any reason to marvel at that, seeing that he had genius enough to do it, and even more.”

What followed was a bit of scandal, at least according to one version of the story. His friend sold it to a cardinal in Rome, and then shorted Michelangelo on the payment. The cardinal subsequently discovered it was modern and demanded his money back. This brought to light the friend’s deceit. There was outrage all around. The cupid did eventually find a home, and Michelangelo found his notoriety among the Roman aristocracy. That led in quick succession to his first extended stay in Rome and to the creation of the masterpiece that, among all his work, first stole my heart a long time ago.

Travelogue 1186 – 5 June
Versilia
Part Two

Forte dei Marmi was like a ghost town when we arrived in early May. The weather had been unreliable. It had rained the day before. We emerged onto the beach on a lovely day, and no one was there. It was like a dream.

The coast there is entirely privately owned. Forte dei Marmi and Pietrasanta each have one small public beach. All the rest, long kilometres of beach, is controlled by clubs, with each bagno, as they are called, running its strip of property between the road and the sea, its restaurant, its changing rooms and showers, its sands set with rows of gazebos, tents, chairs and umbrellas, all the way to within a few metres of the waves.

We stood on the narrow boardwalk, transfixed by the sight of the chairs arranged in rows as far as we could see, and all of them empty. The only people we saw were bagno staff, listlessly working here and there, arranging chairs, raking the sand, or effecting repairs. We walked up the boardwalk, peering into the empty restaurants. Bagno people looked at us curiously. There is no easy entry onto the private beaches. We had happened upon a path beside a club that was being rebuilt; otherwise, we would have been barred from seeing the beach by the long line of bagno fences. The nearest public beach was several kilometres away.

We got our time for fun in the sun. One club-owner kindly offered a day on the beach for twenty euros. It was off-season; the restaurant was closed, but we were free to occupy our chairs under the umbrella as long as we liked. It was a lovely, sunny day, and yet the beaches were still and quiet. The only signs of life were the occasional locals walking their dogs and the staff of the nearby bagni lazily inspecting their equipment.

The sands were so soft, and the water so refreshing. The girls ran tirelessly in and out of the water, pausing only to spend time on their sandcastles. I was happy just soaking in the warmth of the sun and sands, soaking in the long view out over the sea, and glancing back incredulously at the beautiful mountains, which were close enough to offer a dramatic backdrop, and close enough that one could see the white scarring on their sides where the marble was quarried.

Had the great man stood here? Michelangelo would have examined the shore, inspecting inlets, harbours and piers, no doubt, but he didn’t seem like a meditate-on-the-beach kind of guy. You don’t see much love of landscape among his works. He seems rather the type to choose mountains over seas, to me, the type to relish rocks and earth and the feel of solid land under his feet.