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.