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.