The Story of the Renaissance and Reformation

Chapter XXV. The Pope and the Artist.

IF Leonardo da Vinci was the first and greatest of the Renaissance artists, Michelangelo Buonarroti (bwo-nar-ro´te) was the second. He was born at Caprese (cah-preh´say) in 1475, and was sent out to be nursed near a marble quarry, causing him to remark later in life that he had “sucked in chisels and hammers with his nurse’s milk.” His family moved to Florence while he was still an infant. He received the standard schooling of a middle-class Florentine, but preferred drawing to writing, much to the dismay of his father.

Thus Michael was apprenticed, at thirteen, to the most popular painter in Florence at that time, Do-men-i´co Ghirlandaio (gir-lan-dah´yo). Michael must have done some sculpting as well as painting while there, for when Lorenzo de’ Medici, wishing to establish a school for sculptors under his patronage, asked Ghirlandaio to send him promising sculptors from among his students, Michelangelo was one of the students sent.

Lorenzo soon took Michael into his home, where he had his own room and spending money, and ate meals with the Medici family and the cultured guests Lorenzo invited to the palace. The young sculptor often listened to the sermons of Savonarola, as well as the brilliant dialogue of the humanists at Lorenzo’s table. However, Michelangelo always had more of the Hebrew, rather than the pagan, about him; and he retained this purity, and his dismay at the moral corruption then prevailing in Italy, all his life.

However, Lorenzo died in 1492, and Michelangelo returned to his father’s home. He continued to sculpt, while learning anatomy by dissecting corpses at the local hospital. He was invited back to the Medici palace for a short time, fled to Bologna upon the advance of Charles VIII of France into Italy, but returned to Florence the following year when Savonarola’s reforms were instituted.

But at this time there were almost as many artists as citizens in Florence, and Michelangelo, still relatively unknown, and without the patronage of the Medici, found it difficult going. He moved to Rome in 1496, a city now full of wealthy patrons. His early works there were noticed by the papal court, which then commissioned the Pi-e-tà´, one of the glories of St. Peter’s.

He returned to Florence after this success, and was commissioned to create a statue out of a block of marble thirteen and a half feet high. From it, over the course of two and half years, Michelangelo carved David, of which his contemporaries said that it “surpassed all other statues ancient and modern, Latin or Greek.”

He was diverted to Rome on the request of Pope Ju´li-us II, to design and build a magnificent tomb, but the pope delayed fulfilling the conditions of the contract, so 1506 found him back in Florence. He worked on a sketch for a painting of The Battle of Pisa, his first, which was to be paired with Leonardo’s The Battle of Anghiari; however, both paintings were left unfinished, but the sketches for them, displayed in Florence, became “the school of the world,” as we have already heard.

Called to Bologna by Julius II, in order to make a large bronze of his likeness, Michelangelo finally completed it under difficult circumstances. He never had enough money for his support while there, and chafed under the high-strung temperament of the pope. Three years later the bronze was melted down to make cannon, to support one of Julius’ many wars at this time.

Michelangelo would have preferred to remain in Florence, but the pope again summoned him to Rome, this time to paint the ceiling of the Sis´tine Chapel. In vain Michael protested that he was a sculptor, not a painter; that Raphael would be a better choice for the job. The pope would have no one else; he commanded and cajoled by turns until the artist gave in. The ceiling proved to be an arduous task. There were ten thousand square feet to be painted, rising sixty-eight feet above the floor. Michelangelo lay on his back on scaffolding, in the dim light, for over four years, to complete the 343 figures. The difficulties were enormous, but Julius II added to them by constant demands. “When will it be finished?” he would ask impatiently.

“When I shall have done all that I believe required to satisfy art,” came the reply.

Taken together, the Sistine Chapel ceiling represents the greatest achievement by anyone in the history of painting, in conception, drawing, coloring, and technique. Add to that accomplishment the fact that Michelangelo was never a painter by trade, but a sculptor, and we can see the monumental artistic genius at work in him.

Julius II died just four months after the completion of the ceiling. Michelangelo then undertook work on the tomb for Julius which was earlier commissioned. The statue of Moses is the most impressive feature of this edifice, but the tomb was long in finishing, and haphazard in design and execution.

After the death of the pope, Michelangelo returned to Florence, where he began working as an architect, as well as a sculptor, under the patronage of the Medici once again. His greatest project during this time was the Medici chapel, built according to his design, and decorated with sculptures made at the height of his art.

In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time, and spent the remainder of his life in Rome. He painted The Last Judgment for the Sistine Chapel, a painting very different in style than the ceiling paintings finished decades earlier. In his final years he took over the design of St. Peter’s basilica, following a succession of other architects. The beautiful dome, which served as the inspiration for the Capitol dome in Wash´ing-ton D.C., is the most prominent feature of Michelangelo’s design. He died in Rome in 1564.

Michelangelo struggled with bouts of melancholy all his life, preferred solitude to friendship, and wasted no breath on niceties; no time on anything other than his work. He never married, and when asked about it, he proclaimed his art too much of a demanding wife, and his works his children. He bathed or changed clothes infrequently, and although a rich man, he lived meagerly, not caring to spend a single coin on luxuries which would distract him from the process of creation. His friend and student, Vasari (vah-sar´e), wrote about him, “He was sent into the world by God to help artists learn from his life, his character, and his works, what a true artist should be.”

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