Part 2

Michelangelo was greatly disappointed in his hopes of obtaining lucrative employment from Cardinal Riario. Indeed, the only work which he did during the first few weeks of his sojourn consisted in a cartoon for a _Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata_, to be painted by the Cardinal's barber! Fortunately for the young artist a wealthy Roman gentleman, Messer Jacopo Galli, came to his rescue, commissioning a _Bacchus_, which is now in the National Museum at Florence, and a _Cupid_, believed by some to be the statue now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. Of all Michelangelo's works, this _Bacchus_ is certainly the most realistic and least dignified, representing as it does a youth in the first stage of intoxication, holding a cup in his right hand and in his left a bunch of grapes, from which a mischievous little Satyr is slily helping himself.

The statue was greatly admired in Rome and was the means of bringing Michelangelo to the notice of the French king's envoy in Rome, Cardinal De la Groslaye de Villiers, who commissioned him to carve a marble group of _Our Lady holding the dead Christ in her arms_, for the price of four hundred and fifty golden ducats. The contract, dated August 26th, 1498, is still preserved in the Archivio Buonarroti, and concludes with these words: "And I, Jacopo Gallo, promise to his Most Reverend Lordship that the said Michelangelo will furnish the said work within one year, and that it shall be the most beautiful work in marble which Rome to-day can show, and that no master of our days shall be able to produce a better." We shall see, when describing this magnificent group, that Jacopo's boast and promise were more than justified.

While in Rome, Michelangelo kept up an active correspondence with Messer Lodovico, who, it appears, found himself in great financial straits at this time. Being a most dutiful and affectionate son, the young sculptor sent every available scudo of his money to succour his father and his three younger brothers, namely Buonarroto, born in 1477, whom he placed in the Arte della Seta; Giovan Simone, born in 1479, who led a vagabond life and was a source of continual trouble, and Sigismondo, born in 1481, who became a soldier. The letters which Michelangelo, in the midst of his artistic labours, found time to write home, full of tender solicitude and good advice and invariably containing a remittance, give us a touching insight into the beautiful and disinterested character which lay hidden underneath his stern and decidedly unattractive exterior.

He lived not only very economically, but penuriously, in order the better to help his family, and it appears that his health suffered not a little from these privations. His father heard of it, and wrote a letter, dated December 19th, 1500, in which these passages occur: "Economy is good, but above all do not be penurious; live moderately and do not stint yourself, and avoid hardships, because in your art, if you fall ill (which God forbid), you are a lost man. Above all things, never wash; have yourself rubbed down, but never wash!"

When Michelangelo returned to Florence in the spring of 1501, the fame of the great works which he had accomplished in Rome had already preceded him, and he was generally admitted to be the first sculptor of the day. Commissions came pouring in upon him, including one from Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini, who afterwards became Pope Pius III., for fifteen statues of saints to adorn the Piccolomini Chapel in the Duomo of Siena.

But he completely neglected this work in order to devote himself with characteristic ardour to a more congenial task, that of carving a colossal statue of David out of a huge block of marble which had been previously spoiled by an inferior artist and abandoned as useless in the Opera del Duomo. Surmounting the enormous technical difficulties which he had to contend with, Michelangelo succeeded, after nearly two years of hard work, in evolving from the crippled block of marble one of the greatest masterpieces of modern art.

On the 14th of May, 1504, _Il Gigante_, as it was called by the Florentines, left Michelangelo's workshop and was dragged with much difficulty to the Piazza della Signoria, where it stood until the year 1873, when it was removed to the hall of the Accademia delle Belle Arti. It has fortunately suffered very little from its exposure in the mild Florentine air, but the left arm was shattered by a stone during the tumults of 1527. The broken pieces were carefully collected, however, by Vasari and a young sculptor, Cecchino De' Rossi, who restored the arm in 1543. Another giant David in bronze was commissioned to Michelangelo in 1502 by the Republic, who wished to make a present of it to a French statesman, Florimond Robertet, but although this work is known to have remained for more than a hundred years in the château of Bury, near Blois, it has since disappeared.

While wrestling with the difficulties of his _David_, Michelangelo found time to accomplish many other important works, including two marble tondi in bas-relief, the first of which is now in the National Museum at Florence and the other in the Royal Academy, London. Both represent the _Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John_, and although lacking in finish they deserve to rank among the finest of Michelangelo's works. The composition is beautiful and simple, the modelling bold and the expression of the Madonna singularly noble and striking.

In April, 1503, Michelangelo was commissioned by the Operai of the Duomo to carve out of Carrara marble twelve colossal statues of the Apostles, one to be finished each year, and a workshop was specially built for the sculptor in the Borgo Pinti, but the contract could not be carried out, the unfinished _St. Matthew_, now in the courtyard of the Accademia, in Florence, being the only work which resulted from this commission: "And in order not altogether to give up painting," says Condivi, "he executed a round panel of Our Lady for Messer Agnolo Doni, a Florentine citizen, for which he received seventy ducats." This tondo, representing _The Holy Family_, with nude figures in the background, is now in the Uffizi Gallery, and apart from its originality and artistic merit, it is especially interesting as being the only easel picture which may be attributed with absolute certainty to Michelangelo.

In August, 1504, Michelangelo was commissioned by his friend and protector, Piero Soderini, Gonfaloniere of the Republic, to decorate a wall in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo Vecchio, a most flattering compliment to the young artist, as Leonardo da Vinci, then at the height of his fame, was already engaged in preparing cartoons for the opposite wall. Leonardo's designs represented the famous _Fight for the Standard_, an episode of the battle of Anghiari, fought in 1440, when the Florentines defeated Niccolò Piccinino. Michelangelo selected for his subject an episode in the war with Pisa, which gave him an opportunity to display his wonderful draughtsmanship and his profound knowledge of the human frame.

Benvenuto Cellini, who copied the cartoon in 1513, just before its mysterious disappearance, describes it as follows: "Michelangelo portrayed a number of foot soldiers who, the season being summer, had gone to bathe in the Arno. He drew them at the moment the alarm is sounded, and the men, all naked, rush to arms. So splendid is their action that nothing survives of ancient or of modern art which touches the same lofty point of excellence; and, as I have already said, the design of the great Leonardo was itself most admirably beautiful. These two cartoons stood, one in the Palace of the Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope. So long as they remained intact they were the school of the world. Though the divine Michelangelo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope Julius, he never rose halfway to the same pitch of power; his genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies."

Leonardo, after having begun painting a group of horsemen on the wall, abandoned the task with characteristic fickleness, and Michelangelo having been summoned to Rome in the beginning of 1505 by Pope Julius II., left his work unfinished. It is said that a worthless rival named Baccio Bandinelli, envious of Michelangelo's greatness, destroyed the famous cartoon of Pisa. A sketch of the whole composition may be seen in the Albertina Gallery at Vienna, but perhaps the most complete copy of the cartoon is the monochrome painting belonging to the Earl of Leicester, at Holkham Hall.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE TOMB

Michelangelo little suspected when he left Florence that he was bidding adieu for ever to his happiness and peace of mind. Hitherto he had had to deal with generous tyrants, such as the Medici, with rivals whose envy was shorn of dangers by their cowardice, and with a protector such as Piero Soderini, whom Machiavelli taunted with being a weakling only fit for the Limbo of Infants. It was not until he came to Rome that he was brought face to face with a man blessed or cursed with indomitable energy, boundless ambition and a morbid restlessness which was probably the resultant of these two forces. Both Julius II. and Michelangelo were what their contemporaries called _uomini terribili_, proud, passionate, given to sudden bursts of fury, yet generous withal and truly great. For two such men to live together in uninterrupted peace and goodwill would have been a sheer impossibility.

After some months of hesitation, Julius II. finally decided upon the best way of employing Michelangelo's talents. He resolved to have a magnificent monument erected during his lifetime, and confided the task to the young sculptor. In an incredibly short time Michelangelo prepared his great design, which pleased the Pope so much that he at once sent him to Carrara to quarry the necessary marble. During the eight months which he spent at Carrara, Michelangelo blocked out two of the figures for the tomb, so anxious was he to begin his colossal work.

In November Michelangelo returned to Rome, where a house and spacious workshop were as signed to him near the Vatican, and in January, 1506, most of the marble, which had come by water, was spread all over the Piazza of St. Peter's: "This immense quantity of marble," says Condivi, "was the admiration of all and a joy to the Pope, who heaped immeasurable favours upon Michelangelo, and was so interested in his work that he ordered a drawbridge to be thrown across from the Corridore to the rooms of Michelangelo, by which he might visit him in private."

Michelangelo's original project of the tomb subsequently underwent so many modifications and reductions, that Condivi's account of what the monument should have been is deeply interesting: "The tomb was to have had four faces, two of eighteen braccia, that served for the flanks, so that it was to be a square and a half in plan. All round about the outside were niches for statues, and between niche and niche terminal figures; to these were bound other statues, like prisoners, upon certain square plinths, rising from the ground and projecting from the monument. They represented the liberal arts, each with her symbol, denoting that, like Pope Julius, all the virtues were the prisoners of Death, because they would never find such favour and encouragement as he gave them. Above these ran the cornice that tied all the work together. On its plane were four great statues; one of these, the Moses, may be seen in San Pietro ad Vincula. So the work mounted upward until it ended in a plane. Upon it were two angels who supported an arc; one appeared to be smiling as though he rejoiced that the soul of the Pope had been received amongst the blessed spirits, the other wept, as if sad that the world had been deprived of such a man. Above one end was the entrance to the sepulchre in a small chamber, built like a temple; in the middle was a marble sarcophagus, where the body of the Pope was to be buried; everything worked out with marvellous art. Briefly, more than forty statues went to the whole work, not counting the subjects in mezzo rilievo to be cast in bronze, all appropriate in their stories and proclaiming the acts of this great Pontiff."

As the monument would have covered an area of about 34½ feet by 23 feet, the church of St. Peter, although restored by Nicholas V., was found to be too small to contain it, and Julius II. decided to rebuild the whole church on a more magnificent scale, after designs prepared by Bramante.

The eager enthusiasm with which Michelangelo attacked his colossal task was not destined to last long. One day a quantity of marble arrived from Carrara, and Michelangelo, desiring at once to pay the freight and porterage, went to ask the Pope for money, but found his Holiness occupied. He paid the men out of his own pocket, but when he returned on several succeeding days he found access to the Vatican more difficult than usual, and finally learned that the Pope had given orders that he should not be admitted. Julius II., always entangled in warlike adventures, was evidently short of money and could not or would not pay Michelangelo at the time. The proud and short-tempered sculptor flew into a passion, and exclaiming that "henceforward the Pope must look for him elsewhere if he wanted him," took horse at once and returned to Florence, vainly pursued by five messengers from the Pope.

It was thus that the gigantic work on which he had set his heart was interrupted for the first time, and the curtain rose on the first act of that "tragedy of the tomb," as Condivi appropriately calls it, by which the rest of Michelangelo's life was darkened.

He had no sooner arrived in Florence than he received an imperative order from the Pope to return immediately to Rome under pain of his displeasure, but Michelangelo's blood was up, and he disregarded alike the threats of the Pope and the exhortations of Piero Soderini, who was greatly embarrassed, having received three official Briefs from Julius II., demanding that the artist should be sent back either by fair means or by force. Fearing actual violence, Michelangelo had made up his mind to go to Constantinople, but the Gonfaloniere dissuaded him, saying "that it was better to die with the Pope than to live with the Turk."

In the meantime, Julius II., after subduing Perugia, had entered Bologna in triumph on November 11th, 1506, and he had not been many days in the town before he despatched another urgent message to the Signoria asking for Michelangelo to be sent to him. The artist finally gave in, and proceeded to Bologna, armed with a most flattering letter from the Signoria, but feeling "like a man with a halter round his neck." His misgivings, however, were unfounded, for Julius II., who was only too glad to have won his artist back, welcomed Michelangelo most cordially and commissioned him to make a great portrait statue of him in bronze, to be placed in front of the church of San Petronio. And thus were these two men, who had so many points in common that they regarded each other with mutual fear, like giants conscious of their strength, reconciled for the time.

The Pope returned to Rome in very good spirits, leaving Michelangelo in Bologna to finish the colossal statue, which was only completed on February 21st, 1508, after much hard work and many disappointments, chiefly caused by the ignorance of the bronze-founder, who cast it faultily. It is greatly to be regretted that this work, which cost Michelangelo over a year of unremitting labour, should have been destroyed in 1511, when the Bentivogli returned to Bologna and drove out the Papal Legate. A huge cannon, ironically called La Giulia, was cast out of the broken fragments. Michelangelo, having completed his task, hurried back to Florence, and three days after his arrival Messer Lodovico emancipated his son from parental control, as we learn from a document dated March 13th, 1508.

It appears that Michelangelo intended to settle down for several years in his native city in order to decorate the Sala del Consiglio, for which he was to receive three thousand ducats, and to carry out other important commissions, including that of twelve statues of the Apostles for Santa Maria del Fiore, but "his Medusa," as he called Julius II., would not suffer him to remain in peace, and summoned him to Rome.

THE SISTINE CHAPEL

The artist obeyed, hoping that the Pope would allow him to go on with the tomb, but, during his absence, Michelangelo's rivals had persuaded Julius II. that it was unlucky to have a monument erected during his lifetime, and that it would be much better to set Michelangelo to work on the vault of the Sistine Chapel.

This they did maliciously, because they never suspected that Michelangelo was as great a painter as he was a sculptor, and hoped that he would prove himself inferior to the task, and thus lose the Pontiff's favour. "All the disagreements which I have had with Pope Julius," wrote Michelangelo to Marco Vigerio, "have been brought about by the envy of Bramante and of Raphael of Urbino," who were the cause that his monument was not finished during his lifetime. Bitter, unscrupulous rivalry was the leper-spot that marked the Italian Renaissance, especially at the Papal Court.

Michelangelo would gladly have declined the commission, for which he considered himself unfit, but, seeing the Pope's obstinacy, he reluctantly set to work on May 10th, 1508. The difficulties which he had to surmount were enormous, but he was not a man to be frightened by obstacles, however formidable. Knowing little or nothing of the technicalities of fresco painting, Michelangelo at first called six Florentine painters to his aid, including his old friends Francesco Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini. But he was too exacting, and aimed at an ideal of perfection which his assistants could never attain, so that in January, 1509, he sent them all away, and destroying the work done by them, shut himself alone in the chapel to wrestle single-handed with his gigantic task.

The result fully justified his confidence in his own powers. To attempt an adequate description of the vault of the Sistine Chapel in this little book would be a hopeless task. The stupendous frescoes which adorn it, although described in hundreds of volumes, still afford material for much original study and research, but we must here content ourselves with a mere enumeration of the principal motives which go to make up this grand pictorial symphony.

Michelangelo chose for his subject the Story of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Flood, and the Second Entry of Sin into the World, illustrated by a series of nine compositions on the central space of the ceiling. Twenty magnificent nude figures, representing Athletes, decorate the corners of these central compositions, and support bronze medallions held in place by oak garlands and draperies. The shape of the ceiling is what is commonly called a barrel vaulting resting on lunettes, six to the length and two to the width of the building. The second part of the decoration demonstrates the need for a scheme of Salvation, promised by the Prophets and Sibyls, whose majestic figures are painted alternately in the triangular spaces between the lunettes, in the lower part of which is a series of wonderful groups representing the ancestors of Christ.

Michelangelo, although engaged on a great pictorial work, never considered himself as anything but a sculptor, and followed in painting the same systems that he would have adopted in his own art. Sir Charles Holroyd, in his recent most valuable contribution to Michelangelesque literature, very justly remarks: "When Pope Julius prevented Michelangelo from going on with his beloved project of the tomb and made him paint the vault, the master set to work to produce a similar conception to the tomb in a painted form. The vault became a great temple of painted marble and painted sculptures raised in mid air above the walls of the chapel. The cornices and pilasters are of simple Renaissance architecture, the only ornaments he allowed himself to use being similar to those he would have used as a sculptor. Acorns, the family device of the della Rovere, rams' skulls, and scallop shells, and the one theme of decoration that Michelangelo always delighted in--the human figure. The Prophets and Sibyls took the positions occupied by the principal figures designed for the tomb, like the great statue of Moses. The Athletes at the corner of the ribs of the roof were in place of the bound captives, two of which are now in the Louvre, and the nine histories of the Creation and the Flood fill the panels like the bronze reliefs of the tomb."

Michelangelo must have toiled with almost superhuman energy at his great work. In a letter to his favourite brother, Buonarroto, dated October 17th, 1509, he writes: "I live here in great distress and with the greatest fatigue of body, and have not a friend of any sort, and do not want one, and have not even enough time to eat necessary food." This is not surprising when we remember that as early as the 1st of November, 1509, the first and most important part of this colossal work, which comprises three hundred and ninety-four figures, the majority ten feet high, was exposed to view, and greatly admired by the Pope, who, being vehement by nature and impatient of delay, insisted upon having it uncovered, although it was still incomplete.

Such was the impatience of Julius II. that on one occasion he threatened to have Michelangelo thrown down off the scaffolding if he did not hasten the completion of the work, and even went so far as to strike the artist with a stick. Thus urged, Michelangelo uncovered his work on the 1st of November, 1512, although he used to say in after years that he had been prevented by the hurry of the Pope from finishing it as he would have wished. "Michelangelo's fame and the expectation they had of him," says Condivi, "drew the whole of Rome to the chapel, whither the Pope also rushed, even before the dust raised by the taking down the scaffolding had settled."

SECOND FLORENTINE PERIOD

Julius II. died on February 21st, 1513, four months after the completion of the great work with which his name will remain as indelibly associated as that of Michelangelo. Shortly before his death he had ordered that the tomb which Michelangelo had begun should be finished, and had instructed his nephew, Cardinal Aginense, and Cardinal Santi Quattro, to see that everything should be carried out according to the original designs. But his executors, finding the project far too grand and expensive, had it altered, so that Michelangelo began all over again.

He set to work with great energy and goodwill, determined to finish the monument now that its completion appeared to him almost as a sacred debt to the memory of his dead patron. But the strange fatality that presided over the tragedy of the tomb again interfered. Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who had been Michelangelo's friend and fellow-pupil at the Medicean Court, succeeded Julius II. on the pontifical throne and assumed the name of Leo X. No sooner were the magnificent festivities over with which he celebrated his accession, than he sent for Michelangelo and ordered him to proceed to Florence to ornament the façade of San Lorenzo with sculpture and marble work. It was in vain that Michelangelo protested, saying that he was bound by contract to finish the tomb before undertaking any other commission, for Leo X. was as self-willed and imperious as his predecessor, and "in this fashion," says Condivi, "Michelangelo left the tomb and betook himself weeping to Florence."