I
While Michelangelo was living and working at Florence, Bramante had
full opportunity to poison the Pope's mind in Rome. It is commonly
believed, on the faith of a sentence in Condivi, that Bramante, when
he dissuaded Julius from building the tomb in his own lifetime,
suggested the painting of the Sistine Chapel. We are told that he
proposed Michelangelo for this work, hoping his genius would be
hampered by a task for which he was not fitted. There are many
improbabilities in this story; not the least being our certainty that
the fame of the Cartoon must have reached Bramante before
Michelangelo's arrival in the first months of 1505. But the Cartoon
did not prove that Buonarroti was a practical wall-painter or
colourist; and we have reason to believe that Julius had himself
conceived the notion of intrusting the Sistine to his sculptor. A good
friend of Michelangelo, Pietro Rosselli, wrote this letter on the
subject, May 6, 1506: "Last Saturday evening, when the Pope was at
supper, I showed him some designs which Bramante and I had to test;
so, after supper, when I had displayed them, he called for Bramante,
and said: 'San Gallo is going to Florence to-morrow, and will bring
Michelangelo back with him.' Bramante answered: 'Holy Father, he will
not be able to do anything of the kind. I have conversed much with
Michelangelo, and he has often told me that he would not undertake the
chapel, which you wanted to put upon him; and that, you
notwithstanding, he meant only to apply himself to sculpture, and
would have nothing to do with painting.' To this he added: 'Holy
Father, I do not think he has the courage to attempt the work, because
he has small experience in painting figures, and these will be raised
high above the line of vision, and in foreshortening (i.e., because of
the vault). That is something different from painting on the ground.'
The Pope replied: 'If he does not come, he will do me wrong; and so I
think that he is sure to return.' Upon this I up and gave the man a
sound rating in the Pope's presence, and spoke as I believe you would
have spoken for me; and for the time he was struck dumb, as though he
felt that he had made a mistake in talking as he did. I proceeded as
follows: 'Holy Father, that man never exchanged a word with
Michelangelo, and if what he has just said is the truth, I beg you to
cut my head off, for he never spoke to Michelangelo; also I feel sure
that he is certain to return, if your Holiness requires it.'"
This altercation throws doubt on the statement that Bramante
originally suggested Michelangelo as painter of the Sistine. He could
hardly have turned round against his own recommendation; and,
moreover, it is likely that he would have wished to keep so great a
work in the hands of his own set, Raffaello, Peruzzi, Sodoma, and
others.
Meanwhile, Michelangelo's friends in Rome wrote, encouraging him to
come back. They clearly thought that he was hazarding both profit and
honour if he stayed away. But Michelangelo, whether the constitutional
timidity of which I have spoken, or other reasons damped his courage,
felt that he could not trust to the Pope's mercies. What effect San
Gallo may have had upon him, supposing this architect arrived in
Florence at the middle of May, can only be conjectured. The fact
remains that he continued stubborn for a time. In the lengthy
autobiographical letter written to some prelate in 1542, Michelangelo
relates what followed: "Later on, while I was at Florence, Julius sent
three briefs to the Signory. At last the latter sent for me and said:
'We do not want to go to war with Pope Julius because of you. You must
return; and if you do so, we will write you letters of such authority
that, should he do you harm, he will be doing it to this Signory.'
Accordingly I took the letters, and went back to the Pope."
Condivi gives a graphic account of the transaction which ensued.
"During the months he stayed in Florence three papal briefs were sent
to the Signory, full of threats, commanding that he should be sent
back by fair means or by force. Piero Soderini, who was Gonfalonier
for life at that time, had sent him against his own inclination to
Rome when Julius first asked for him. Accordingly, when the first of
these briefs arrived, he did not compel Michelangelo to go, trusting
that the Pope's anger would calm down. But when the second and the
third were sent, he called Michelangelo and said: 'You have tried a
bout with the Pope on which the King of France would not have
ventured; therefore you must not go on letting yourself be prayed for.
We do not wish to go to war on your account with him, and put our
state in peril. Make your mind up to return.' Michelangelo, seeing
himself brought to this pass, and still fearing the anger of the Pope,
bethought him of taking refuge in the East. The Sultan indeed besought
him with most liberal promises, through the means of certain
Franciscan friars, to come and construct a bridge from Constantinople
to Pera, and to execute other great works. When the Gonfalonier got
wind of this intention he sent for Michelangelo and used these
arguments to dissuade him: 'It were better to choose death with the
Pope than to keep in life by going to the Turk. Nevertheless, there is
no fear of such an ending; for the Pope is well disposed, and sends
for you because he loves you, not to do you harm. If you are afraid,
the Signory will send you with the title of ambassador; forasmuch as
public personages are never treated with violence, since this would be
done to those who send them.'"
We only possess one brief from Julius to the Signory of Florence. It
is dated Rome, July 8, 1506, and contains this passage: "Michelangelo
the sculptor, who left us without reason, and in mere caprice, is
afraid, as we are informed, of returning, though we for our part are
not angry with him, knowing the humours of such men of genius. In
order, then, that he may lay aside all anxiety, we rely on your
loyalty to convince him in our name, that if he returns to us, he
shall be uninjured and unhurt, retaining our apostolic favour in the
same measure as he formerly enjoyed it." The date, July 8, is
important in this episode of Michelangelo's life. Soderini sent back
an answer to the Pope's brief within a few days, affirming that
"Michelangelo the sculptor is so terrified that, notwithstanding the
promise of his Holiness, it will be necessary for the Cardinal of
Pavia to write a letter signed by his own hand to us, guaranteeing his
safety and immunity. We have done, and are doing, all we can to make
him go back; assuring your Lordship that, unless he is gently handled,
he will quit Florence, as he has already twice wanted to do." This
letter is followed by another addressed to the Cardinal of Volterra
under date July 28. Soderini repeats that Michelangelo will not budge,
because he has as yet received no definite safe-conduct. It appears
that in the course of August the negotiations had advanced to a point
at which Michelangelo was willing to return. On the last day of the
month the Signory drafted a letter to the Cardinal of Pavia in which
they say that "Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, citizen of Florence,
and greatly loved by us, will exhibit these letters present, having at
last been persuaded to repose confidence in his Holiness." They add
that he is coming in good spirits and with good-will. Something may
have happened to renew his terror, for this despatch was not
delivered, and nothing more is heard of the transaction till toward
the close of November. It is probable, however, that Soderini suddenly
discovered how little Michelangelo was likely to be wanted; Julius, on
the 27th of August, having started on what appeared to be his mad
campaign against Perugia and Bologna. On the 21st of November
following the Cardinal of Pavia sent an autograph letter from Bologna
to the Signory, urgently requesting that they would despatch
Michelangelo immediately to that town, inasmuch as the Pope was
impatient for his arrival, and wanted to employ him on important
works. Six days later, November 27, Soderini writes two letters, one
to the Cardinal of Pavia and one to the Cardinal of Volterra, which
finally conclude the whole business. The epistle to Volterra begins
thus: "The bearer of these present will be Michelangelo, the sculptor,
whom we send to please and satisfy his Holiness. We certify that he is
an excellent young man, and in his own art without peer in Italy,
perhaps also in the universe. We cannot recommend him more
emphatically. His nature is such, that with good words and kindness,
if these are given him, he will do everything; one has to show him
love and treat him kindly, and he will perform things which will make
the whole world wonder." The letter to Pavia is written more
familiarly, reading like a private introduction. In both of them
Soderini enhances the service he is rendering the Pope by alluding to
the magnificent design for the Battle of Pisa which Michelangelo must
leave unfinished.
Before describing his reception at Bologna, it may be well to quote
two sonnets here which throw an interesting light upon Michelangelo's
personal feeling for Julius and his sense of the corruption of the
Roman Curia. The first may well have been written during this
residence at Florence; and the autograph of the second has these
curious words added at the foot of the page: "_Vostro Michelagniolo_,
in Turchia." Rome itself, the Sacred City, has become a land of
infidels, and Michelangelo, whose thoughts are turned to the Levant,
implies that he would find himself no worse off with the Sultan than
the Pope.
_My Lord! If ever ancient saw spake sooth,
Hear this which saith: Who can doth never will.
Lo, thou hast lent thine ear to fables still.
Rewarding those who hate the name of truth.
I am thy drudge, and have been from my youth--
Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill:
The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.
Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword
Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.
Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
Here on the earth, if this be our reward--
To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.
Here helms and swords are made of chalices:
The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart:
His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short
Must be the time ere even His patience cease._
_Nay, let Him come no more to raise the fees.
Of this foul sacrilege beyond, report:
For Rome still flays and sells Him at the court,
Where paths are closed, to virtue's fair increase,
Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure,
Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he
Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still.
God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure:
But of that better life what hope have we,
When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?_
While Michelangelo was planning frescoes and venting his bile in
sonnets, the fiery Pope had started on his perilous career of
conquest. He called the Cardinals together, and informed them that he
meant to free the cities of Perugia and Bologna from their tyrants.
God, he said, would protect His Church; he could rely on the support
of France and Florence. Other Popes had stirred up wars and used the
services of generals; he meant to take the field in person. Louis XII.
is reported to have jeered among his courtiers at the notion of a
high-priest riding to the wars. A few days afterwards, on the 27th of
August, the Pope left Rome attended by twenty-four cardinals and 500
men-at-arms. He had previously secured the neutrality of Venice and a
promise of troops from the French court. When Julius reached Orvieto,
he was met by Gianpaolo Baglioni, the bloody and licentious despot of
Perugia. Notwithstanding Baglioni knew that Julius was coming to
assert his supremacy, and notwithstanding the Pope knew that this
might drive to desperation a man so violent and stained with crime as
Baglioni, they rode together to Perugia, where Gianpaolo paid homage
and supplied his haughty guest with soldiers. The rashness of this act
of Julius sent a thrill of admiration throughout Italy, stirring that
sense of _terribilità_ which fascinated the imagination of the
Renaissance. Machiavelli, commenting upon the action of the Baglioni,
remarks that the event proved how difficult it is for a man to be
perfectly and scientifically wicked. Gianpaolo, he says, murdered his
relations, oppressed his subjects, and boasted of being a father by
his sister; yet, when he got his worst enemy into his clutches, he had
not the spirit to be magnificently criminal, and murder or imprison
Julius. From Perugia the Pope crossed the Apennines, and found himself
at Imola upon the 20th of October. There he received news that the
French governor of Milan, at the order of his king, was about to send
him a reinforcement of 600 lances and 3000 foot-soldiers. This
announcement, while it cheered the heart of Julius, struck terror into
the Bentivogli, masters of Bologna. They left their city and took
refuge in Milan, while the people of Bologna sent envoys to the Pope's
camp, surrendering their town and themselves to his apostolic
clemency. On the 11th of November, S. Martin's day, Giuliano della
Rovere made his triumphal entry into Bologna, having restored two
wealthy provinces to the states of the Church by a stroke of sheer
audacity, unparalleled in the history of any previous pontiff. Ten
days afterwards we find him again renewing negotiations with the
Signory for the extradition of Michelangelo.
II
"Arriving then one morning at Bologna, and going to hear Mass at S.
Petronio, there met him the Pope's grooms of the stable, who
immediately recognised him, and brought him into the presence of his
Holiness, then at table in the Palace of the Sixteen. When the Pope
beheld him, his face clouded with anger, and he cried: 'It was your
duty to come to seek us, and you have waited till we came to seek you;
meaning thereby that his Holiness having travelled to Bologna, which
is much nearer to Florence than Rome, he had come to find him out.
Michelangelo knelt, and prayed for pardon in a loud voice, pleading in
his excuse that he had not erred through forwardness, but through
great distress of mind, having been unable to endure the expulsion he
received. The Pope remained holding his head low and answering
nothing, evidently much agitated; when a certain prelate, sent by
Cardinal Soderini to put in a good word for Michelangelo, came forward
and said: 'Your Holiness might overlook his fault; he did wrong
through ignorance: these painters, outside their art, are all like
this.' Thereupon the Pope answered in a fury: 'It is you, not I, who
are insulting him. It is you, not he, who are the ignoramus and the
rascal. Get hence out of my sight, and bad luck to you!' When the
fellow did not move, he was cast forth by the servants, as
Michelangelo used to relate, with good round kicks and thumpings. So
the Pope, having spent the surplus of his bile upon the bishop, took
Michelangelo apart and pardoned him. Not long afterwards he sent for
him and said: 'I wish you to make my statue on a large scale in
bronze. I mean to place it on the façade of San Petronio.' When he
went to Rome in course of time, he left 1000 ducats at the bank of
Messer Antonmaria da Lignano for this purpose. But before he did so
Michelangelo had made the clay model. Being in some doubt how to
manage the left hand, after making the Pope give the benediction with
the right, he asked Julius, who had come to see the statue, if he
would like it to hold a book. 'What book?' replied he: 'a sword! I
know nothing about letters, not I.' Jesting then about the right hand,
which was vehement in action, he said with a smile to Michelangelo:
'That statue of yours, is it blessing or cursing?' To which the
sculptor replied: 'Holy Father, it is threatening this people of
Bologna if they are not prudent.'"
Michelangelo's letter to Fattucci confirms Condivi's narrative. "When
Pope Julius went to Bologna the first time, I was forced to go there
with a rope round my neck to beg his pardon. He ordered me to make his
portrait in bronze, sitting, about seven cubits (14 feet) in height.
When he asked what it would cost, I answered that I thought I could
cast it for 1000 ducats; but that this was not my trade, and that I
did not wish to undertake it. He answered: 'Go to work; you shall cast
it over and over again till it succeeds; and I will give you enough to
satisfy your wishes.' To put it briefly, I cast the statue twice; and
at the end of two years, at Bologna, I found that I had four and a
half ducats left. I never received anything more for this job; and all
the moneys I paid out during the said two years were the 1000 ducats
with which I promised to cast it. These were disbursed to me in
instalments by Messer Antonio Maria da Legnano, a Bolognese."
The statue must have been more than thrice life-size, if it rose
fourteen feet in a sitting posture. Michelangelo worked at the model
in a hall called the Stanza del Pavaglione behind the Cathedral. Three
experienced workmen were sent, at his request, from Florence, and he
began at once upon the arduous labour. His domestic correspondence,
which at this period becomes more copious and interesting, contains a
good deal of information concerning his residence at Bologna. His mode
of life, as usual, was miserable and penurious in the extreme. This
man, about whom popes and cardinals and gonfaloniers had been
corresponding, now hired a single room with one bed in it, where, as
we have seen, he slept together with his three assistants. There can
be no doubt that such eccentric habits prevented Michelangelo from
inspiring his subordinates with due respect. The want of control over
servants and workmen, which is a noticeable feature of his private
life, may in part be attributed to this cause. And now, at Bologna, he
soon got into trouble with the three craftsmen he had engaged to help
him. They were Lapo d'Antonio di Lapo, a sculptor at the Opera del
Duomo; Lodovico del Buono, surnamed Lotti, a metal-caster and founder
of cannon; and Pietro Urbano, a craftsman who continued long in his
service. Lapo boasted that he was executing the statue in partnership
with Michelangelo and upon equal terms, which did not seem incredible
considering their association in a single bedroom. Beside this, he
intrigued and cheated in money matters. The master felt that he must
get rid of him, and send the fellow back to Florence. Lapo, not
choosing to go alone, lest the truth of the affair should be apparent,
persuaded Lodovico to join him; and when they reached home, both began
to calumniate their master. Michelangelo, knowing that they were
likely to do so, wrote to his brother Buonarroto on the 1st of
February 1507: "I inform you further how on Friday morning I sent away
Lapo and Lodovico, who were in my service. Lapo, because he is good
for nothing and a rogue, and could not serve me. Lodovico is better,
and I should have been willing to keep him another two months, but
Lapo, in order to prevent blame falling on himself alone, worked upon
the other so that both went away together. I write you this, not that
I regard them, for they are not worth three farthings, the pair of
them, but because if they come to talk to Lodovico (Buonarroti) he
must not be surprised at what they say. Tell him by no means to lend
them his ears; and if you want to be informed about them, go to Messer
Angelo, the herald of the Signory; for I have written the whole story
to him, and he will, out of his kindly feeling, tell you just what
happened."
In spite of these precautions, Lapo seems to have gained the ear of
Michelangelo's father, who wrote a scolding letter in his usual
puzzle-headed way. Michelangelo replied in a tone of real and ironical
humility, which is exceedingly characteristic: "Most revered father, I
have received a letter from you to-day, from which I learn that you
have been informed by Lapo and Lodovico. I am glad that you should
rebuke me, because I deserve to be rebuked as a ne'er-do-well and
sinner as much as any one, or perhaps more. But you must know that I
have not been guilty in the affair for which you take me to task now,
neither as regards them nor any one else, except it be in doing more
than was my duty." After this exordium he proceeds to give an
elaborate explanation of his dealings with Lapo, and the man's
roguery.
The correspondence with Buonarroto turns to a considerable extent upon
a sword-hilt which Michelangelo designed for the Florentine, Pietro
Aldobrandini. It was the custom then for gentlemen to carry swords and
daggers with hilt and scabbard wonderfully wrought by first-rate
artists. Some of these, still extant, are among the most exquisite
specimens of sixteenth-century craft. This little affair gave
Michelangelo considerable trouble. First of all, the man who had to
make the blade was long about it. From the day when the Pope came to
Bologna, he had more custom than all the smiths in the city were used
in ordinary times to deal with. Then, when the weapon reached
Florence, it turned out to be too short. Michelangelo affirmed that he
had ordered it exactly to the measure sent, adding that Aldobrandini
was "probably not born to wear a dagger at his belt." He bade his
brother present it to Filippo Strozzi, as a compliment from the
Buonarroti family; but the matter was bungled. Probably Buonarroto
tried to get some valuable equivalent; for Michelangelo writes to say
that he is sorry "he behaved so scurvily toward Filippo in so trifling
an affair."
Nothing at all transpires in these letters regarding the company kept
by Michelangelo at Bologna. The few stories related by tradition which
refer to this period are not much to the sculptor's credit for
courtesy. The painter Francia, for instance, came to see the statue,
and made the commonplace remark that he thought it very well cast and
of excellent bronze. Michelangelo took this as an insult to his
design, and replied: "I owe the same thanks to Pope Julius who
supplied the metal, as you do to the colourmen who sell you paints."
Then, turning to some gentlemen present there, he added that Francia
was "a blockhead." Francia had a son remarkable for youthful beauty.
When Michelangelo first saw him he asked whose son he was, and, on
being informed, uttered this caustic compliment: "Your father makes
handsomer living figures than he paints them." On some other occasion,
a stupid Bolognese gentleman asked whether he thought his statue or a
pair of oxen were the bigger. Michelangelo replied: "That is according
to the oxen. If Bolognese, oh! then with a doubt ours of Florence are
smaller." Possibly Albrecht Dürer may have met him in the artistic
circles of Bologna, since he came from Venice on a visit during these
years; but nothing is known about their intercourse.
III
Julius left Bologna on the 22nd of February 1507. Michelangelo
remained working diligently at his model. In less than three months it
was nearly ready to be cast. Accordingly, the sculptor, who had no
practical knowledge of bronze-founding, sent to Florence for a man
distinguished in that craft, Maestro dal Ponte of Milan. During the
last three years he had been engaged as Master of the Ordnance under
the Republic. His leave of absence was signed upon the 15th of May
1507.
Meanwhile the people of Bologna were already planning revolution. The
Bentivogli retained a firm hereditary hold on their affections, and
the government of priests is never popular, especially among the
nobles of a state. Michelangelo writes to his brother Giovan Simone
(May 2) describing the bands of exiles who hovered round the city and
kept its burghers in alarm: "The folk are stifling in their coats of
mail; for during four days past the whole county is under arms, in
great confusion and peril, especially the party of the Church." The
Papal Legate, Francesco Alidosi, Cardinal of Pavia, took such prompt
measures that the attacking troops were driven back. He also executed
some of the citizens who had intrigued with the exiled family. The
summer was exceptionally hot, and plague hung about; all articles of
food were dear and bad. Michelangelo felt miserable, and fretted to be
free; but the statue kept him hard at work.
When the time drew nigh for the great operation, he wrote in touching
terms to Buonarroto: "Tell Lodovico (their father) that in the middle
of next month I hope to cast my figure without fail. Therefore, if he
wishes to offer prayers or aught else for its good success, let him do
so betimes, and say that I beg this of him." Nearly the whole of June
elapsed, and the business still dragged on. At last, upon the 1st of
July, he advised his brother thus: "We have cast my figure, and it has
come out so badly that I verily believe I shall have to do it all over
again. I reserve details, for I have other things to think of. Enough
that it has gone wrong. Still I thank God, because I take everything
for the best." From the next letter we learn that only the lower half
of the statue, up to the girdle, was properly cast. The metal for the
rest remained in the furnace, probably in the state of what Cellini
called a cake. The furnace had to be pulled down and rebuilt, so as to
cast the upper half. Michelangelo adds that he does not know whether
Master Bernardino mismanaged the matter from ignorance or bad luck. "I
had such faith in him that I thought he could have cast the statue
without fire. Nevertheless, there is no denying that he is an able
craftsman, and that he worked with good-will. Well, he has failed, to
my loss and also to his own, seeing he gets so much blame that he
dares not lift his head up in Bologna." The second casting must have
taken place about the 8th of July; for on the 10th Michelangelo writes
that it is done, but the clay is too hot for the result to be
reported, and Bernardino left yesterday. When the statue was
uncovered, he was able to reassure his brother: "My affair might have
turned out much better, and also much worse. At all events, the whole
is there, so far as I can see; for it is not yet quite disengaged. I
shall want, I think, some months to work it up with file and hammer,
because it has come out rough. Well, well, there is much to thank God
for; as I said, it might have been worse." On making further
discoveries, he finds that the cast is far less bad than he expected;
but the labour of cleaning it with polishing tools proved longer and
more irksome than he expected: "I am exceedingly anxious to get away
home, for here I pass my life in huge discomfort and with extreme
fatigue. I work night and day, do nothing else; and the labour I am
forced to undergo is such, that if I had to begin the whole thing over
again, I do not think I could survive it. Indeed, the undertaking has
been one of enormous difficulty; and if it had been in the hand of
another man, we should have fared but ill with it. However, I believe
that the prayers of some one have sustained and kept me in health,
because all Bologna thought I should never bring it to a proper end."
We can see that Michelangelo was not unpleased with the result; and
the statue must have been finished soon after the New Year. However,
he could not leave Bologna. On the 18th of February 1508 he writes to
Buonarroto that he is kicking his heels, having received orders from
the Pope to stay until the bronze was placed. Three days later--that
is, upon the 21st of February--the Pope's portrait was hoisted to its
pedestal above the great central door of S. Petronio.
It remained there rather less than three years. When the Papal Legate
fled from Bologna in 1511, and the party of the Bentivogli gained the
upper hand, they threw the mighty mass of sculptured bronze, which had
cost its maker so much trouble, to the ground. That happened on the
30th of December. The Bentivogli sent it to the Duke Alfonso d'Este of
Ferrara, who was a famous engineer and gunsmith. He kept the head
intact, but cast a huge cannon out of part of the material, which took
the name of La Giulia. What became of the head is unknown. It is said
to have weighed 600 pounds.
So perished another of Michelangelo's masterpieces; and all we know
for certain about the statue is that Julius was seated, in full
pontificals, with the triple tiara on his head, raising the right hand
to bless, and holding the keys of S. Peter in the left.
Michelangelo reached Florence early in March. On the 18th of that
month he began again to occupy his house at Borgo Pinti, taking it
this time on hire from the Operai del Duomo. We may suppose,
therefore, that he intended to recommence work on the Twelve Apostles.
A new project seems also to have been started by his friend
Soderini--that of making him erect a colossal statue of Hercules
subduing Cacus opposite the David. The Gonfalonier was in
correspondence with the Marquis of Carrara on the 10th of May about a
block of marble for this giant; but Michelangelo at that time had
returned to Rome, and of the Cacus we shall hear more hereafter.
IV
When Julius received news that his statue had been duly cast and set
up in its place above the great door of S. Petronio, he began to be
anxious to have Michelangelo once more near his person. The date at
which the sculptor left Florence again for Rome is fixed approximately
by the fact that Lodovico Buonarroti emancipated his son from parental
control upon the 13th of March 1508. According to Florentine law,
Michelangelo was not of age, nor master over his property and person,
until this deed had been executed.
In the often-quoted letter to Fattucci he says: "The Pope was still
unwilling that I should complete the tomb, and ordered me to paint the
vault of the Sistine. We agreed for 3000 ducats. The first design I
made for this work had twelve apostles in the lunettes, the remainder
being a certain space filled in with ornamental details, according to
the usual manner. After I had begun, it seemed to me that this would
turn out rather meanly; and I told the Pope that the Apostles alone
would yield a poor effect, in my opinion. He asked me why. I answered,
'Because they too were poor.' Then he gave me commission to do what I
liked best, and promised to satisfy my claims for the work, and told
me to paint down the pictured histories upon the lower row."
There is little doubt that Michelangelo disliked beginning this new
work, and that he would have greatly preferred to continue the
sepulchral monument, for which he had made such vast and costly
preparations. He did not feel certain how he should succeed in fresco
on a large scale, not having had any practice in that style of
painting since he was a prentice under Ghirlandajo. It is true that
the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa had been a splendid success; still
this, as we have seen, was not coloured, but executed in various
methods of outline and chiaroscuro. Later on, while seriously engaged
upon the Sistine, he complains to his father: "I am still in great
distress of mind, because it is now a year since I had a farthing from
the Pope; and I do not ask, because my work is not going forward in a
way that seems to me to deserve it. That comes from its difficulty,
and also _from this not being my trade._ And so I waste my time
without results. God help me."
We may therefore believe Condivi when he asserts that "Michelangelo,
who had not yet practised colouring, and knew that the painting of a
vault is very difficult, endeavoured by all means to get himself
excused, putting Raffaello forward as the proper man, and pleading
that this was not his trade, and that he should not succeed." Condivi
states in the same chapter that Julius had been prompted to intrust
him with the Sistine by Bramante, who was jealous of his great
abilities, and hoped he might fail conspicuously when he left the
field of sculpture. I have given my reasons above for doubting the
accuracy of this tradition; and what we have just read of
Michelangelo's own hesitation confirms the statement made by Bramante
in the Pope's presence, as recorded by Rosselli. In fact, although we
may assume the truth of Bramante's hostility, it is difficult to form
an exact conception of the intrigues he carried on against Buonarroti.
Julius would not listen to any arguments. Accordingly, Michelangelo
made up his mind to obey the patron whom he nicknamed his Medusa.
Bramante was commissioned to erect the scaffolding, which he did so
clumsily, with beams suspended from the vault by huge cables, that
Michelangelo asked how the holes in the roof would be stopped up when
his painting was finished. The Pope allowed him to take down
Bramante's machinery, and to raise a scaffold after his own design.
The rope alone which had been used, and now was wasted, enabled a poor
carpenter to dower his daughter. Michelangelo built his own scaffold
free from the walls, inventing a method which was afterwards adopted
by all architects for vault-building. Perhaps he remembered the
elaborate drawing he once made of Ghirlandajo's assistants at work
upon the ladders and wooden platforms at S. Maria Novella.
Knowing that he should need helpers in so great an undertaking, and
also mistrusting his own ability to work in fresco, he now engaged
several excellent Florentine painters. Among these, says Vasari, were
his friends Francesco Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini, Bastiano da
San Gallo surnamed Aristotele, Angelo di Donnino, Jacopo di Sandro,
and Jacopo surnamed l'Indaco. Vasari is probably accurate in his
statement here; for we shall see that Michelangelo, in his _Ricordi_,
makes mention of five assistants, two of whom are proved by other
documents to have been Granacci and Indaco. We also possess two
letters from Granacci which show that Bugiardini, San Gallo, Angelo di
Donnino, and Jacopo l'Indaco were engaged in July. The second of
Granacci's letters refers to certain disputes and hagglings with the
artists. This may have brought Michelangelo to Florence, for he was
there upon the 11th of August 1508, as appears from the following deed
of renunciation: "In the year of our Lord 1508, on the 11th day of
August, Michelangelo, son of Lodovico di Lionardo di Buonarrota,
repudiated the inheritance of his uncle Francesco by an instrument
drawn up by the hand of Ser Giovanni di Guasparre da Montevarchi,
notary of Florence, on the 27th of July 1508." When the assistants
arrived at Rome is not certain. It must, however, have been after the
end of July. The extracts from Michelangelo's notebooks show that he
had already sketched an agreement as to wages several weeks before. "I
record how on this day, the 10th of May 1508, I, Michelangelo,
sculptor, have received from the Holiness of our Lord Pope Julius II.
500 ducats of the Camera, the which were paid me by Messer Carlino,
chamberlain, and Messer Carlo degli Albizzi, on account of the
painting of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, on which I begin to work
to-day, under the conditions and contracts set forth in a document
written by his Most Reverend Lordship of Pavia, and signed by my hand.
"For the painter-assistants who are to come from Florence, who will be
five in number, twenty gold ducats of the Camera apiece, on this
condition; that is to say, that when they are here and are working in
harmony with me, the twenty ducats shall be reckoned to each man's
salary; the said salary to begin upon the day they leave Florence. And
if they do not agree with me, half of the said money shall be paid
them for their travelling expenses, and for their time."
On the strength of this _Ricordo_, it has been assumed that
Michelangelo actually began to paint the Sistine on the 10th of May
1508. That would have been physically and literally impossible. He was
still at Florence, agreeing to rent his house in Borgo Pinti, upon the
18th of March. Therefore he had no idea of going to Rome at that time.
When he arrived there, negotiations went on, as we have seen, between
him and Pope Julius. One plan for the decoration of the roof was
abandoned, and another on a grander scale had to be designed. To
produce working Cartoons for that immense scheme in less than two
months would have been beyond the capacities of any human brain and
hands. But there are many indications that the vault was not prepared
for painting, and the materials for fresco not accumulated, till a
much later date. For instance, we possess a series of receipts by
Piero Rosselli, acknowledging several disbursements for the plastering
of the roof between May 11 and July 27. We learn from one of these
that Granacci was in Rome before June 3; and Michelangelo writes for
fine blue colours to a certain Fra Jacopo Gesuato at Florence upon the
13th of May. All is clearly in the air as yet, and on the point of
preparation. Michelangelo's phrase, "on which I begin work to-day,"
will have to be interpreted, therefore, in the widest sense, as
implying that he was engaging assistants, getting the architectural
foundation ready, and procuring a stock of necessary articles. The
whole summer and autumn must have been spent in taking measurements
and expanding the elaborate design to the proper scale of working
drawings; and if Michelangelo had toiled alone without his Florentine
helpers, it would have been impossible for him to have got through
with these preliminary labours in so short a space of time.
Michelangelo's method in preparing his Cartoons seems to have been the
following. He first made a small-scale sketch of the composition,
sometimes including a large variety of figures. Then he went to the
living models, and studied portions of the whole design in careful
transcripts from Nature, using black and red chalk, pen, and sometimes
bistre. Among the most admirable of his drawings left to us are
several which were clearly executed with a view to one or other of
these great Cartoons. Finally, returning to the first composition, he
repeated that, or so much of it as could be transferred to a single
sheet, on the exact scale of the intended fresco. These enlarged
drawings were applied to the wet surface of the plaster, and their
outlines pricked in with dots to guide the painter in his brush-work.
When we reflect upon the extent of the Sistine vault (it is estimated
at more than 10,000 square feet of surface), and the difficulties
presented by its curves, lunettes, spandrels, and pendentives; when we
remember that this enormous space is alive with 343 figures in every
conceivable attitude, some of them twelve feet in height, those seated
as prophets and sibyls measuring nearly eighteen feet when upright,
all animated with extraordinary vigour, presenting types of the utmost
variety and vivid beauty, imagination quails before the intellectual
energy which could first conceive a scheme so complex, and then carry
it out with mathematical precision in its minutest details.
The date on which Michelangelo actually began to paint the fresco is
not certain. Supposing he worked hard all the summer, he might have
done so when his Florentine assistants arrived in August; and,
assuming that the letter to his father above quoted (_Lettere_, x.)
bears a right date, he must have been in full swing before the end of
January 1509. In that letter he mentions that Jacopo, probably
l'Indaco, "the painter whom I brought from Florence, returned a few
days ago; and as he complained about me here in Rome, it is likely
that he will do so there. Turn a deaf ear to him; he is a thousandfold
in the wrong, and I could say much about his bad behaviour toward me."
Vasari informs us that these assistants proved of no use; whereupon,
he destroyed all they had begun to do, refused to see them, locked
himself up in the chapel, and determined to complete the work in
solitude. It seems certain that the painters were sent back to
Florence. Michelangelo had already provided for the possibility of
their not being able to co-operate with him; but what the cause of
their failure was we can only conjecture. Trained in the methods of
the old Florentine school of fresco-painting, incapable of entering
into the spirit of a style so supereminently noble and so astoundingly
original as Michelangelo's, it is probable that they spoiled his
designs in their attempts to colour them. Harford pithily remarks: "As
none of the suitors of Penelope could bend the bow of Ulysses, so one
hand alone was capable of wielding the pencil of Buonarroti." Still it
must not be imagined that Michelangelo ground his own colours,
prepared his daily measure of wet plaster, and executed the whole
series of frescoes with his own hand. Condivi and Vasari imply,
indeed, that this was the case; but, beside the physical
impossibility, the fact remains that certain portions are obviously
executed by inferior masters. Vasari's anecdotes, moreover, contradict
his own assertion regarding Michelangelo's singlehanded labour. He
speaks about the caution which the master exercised to guard himself
against any treason of his workmen in the chapel. Nevertheless, far
the larger part, including all the most important figures, and
especially the nudes, belongs to Michelangelo.
These troubles with his assistants illustrate a point upon which I
shall have to offer some considerations at a future time. I allude to
Michelangelo's inaptitude for forming a school of intelligent
fellow-workers, for fashioning inferior natures into at least a
sympathy with his aims and methods, and finally for living long on
good terms with hired subordinates. All those qualities which the
facile and genial Raffaello possessed in such abundance, and which
made it possible for that young favourite of heaven and fortune to
fill Rome with so much work of mixed merit, were wanting to the stern,
exacting, and sensitive Buonarroti.
But the assistants were not the only hindrance to Michelangelo at the
outset. Condivi says that "he had hardly begun painting, and had
finished the picture of the Deluge, when the work began to throw out
mould to such an extent that the figures could hardly be seen through
it. Michelangelo thought that this excuse might be sufficient to get
him relieved of the whole job. So he went to the Pope and said: 'I
already told your Holiness that painting is not my trade; what I have
done is spoiled; if you do not believe it, send to see.' The Pope sent
San Gallo, who, after inspecting the fresco, pronounced that the
lime-basis had been put on too wet, and that water oozing out produced
this mouldy surface. He told Michelangelo what the cause was, and bade
him proceed with the work. So the excuse helped him nothing." About
the fresco of the Deluge Vasari relates that, having begun to paint
this compartment first, he noticed that the figures were too crowded,
and consequently changed his scale in all the other portions of the
ceiling. This is a plausible explanation of what is striking--namely,
that the story of the Deluge is quite differently planned from the
other episodes upon the vaulting. Yet I think it must be rejected,
because it implies a total change in all the working Cartoons, as well
as a remarkable want of foresight.
Condivi continues: "While he was painting, Pope Julius used oftentimes
to go and see the work, climbing by a ladder, while Michelangelo gave
him a hand to help him on to the platform. His nature being eager and
impatient of delay, he decided to have the roof uncovered, although
Michelangelo had not given the last touches, and had only completed
the first half--that is, from the door to the middle of the vault."
Michelangelo's letters show that the first part of his work was
executed in October. He writes thus to his brother Buonarroto: "I am
remaining here as usual, and shall have finished my painting by the
end of the week after next--that is, the portion of it which I began;
and when it is uncovered, I expect to be paid, and shall also try to
get a month's leave to visit Florence."
V
The uncovering took place upon November 1, 1509. All Rome flocked to
the chapel, feeling that something stupendous was to be expected after
the long months of solitude and seclusion during which the silent
master had been working. Nor were they disappointed. The effect
produced by only half of the enormous scheme was overwhelming. As
Vasari says, "This chapel lighted up a lamp for our art which casts
abroad lustre enough to illuminate the World, drowned, for so many
centuries in darkness." Painters saw at a glance that the genius which
had revolutionised sculpture was now destined to introduce a new style
and spirit into their art. This was the case even with Raffaello, who,
in the frescoes he executed at S. Maria della Pace, showed his
immediate willingness to learn from Michelangelo, and his
determination to compete with him. Condivi and Vasari are agreed upon
this point, and Michelangelo himself, in a moment of hasty
indignation, asserted many years afterwards that what Raffaello knew
of art was derived from him. That is, of course, an over-statement;
for, beside his own exquisite originality, Raffaello formed a
composite style successively upon Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, and
Lionardo. He was capable not merely of imitating, but of absorbing and
assimilating to his lucid genius the excellent qualities of all in
whom he recognised superior talent. At the same time, Michelangelo's
influence was undeniable, and we cannot ignore the testimony of those
who conversed with both great artists--of Julius himself, for
instance, when he said to Sebastian del Piombo: "Look at the work of
Raffaello, who, after seeing the masterpieces of Michelangelo,
immediately abandoned Perugino's manner, and did his utmost to
approach that of Buonarroti."
Condivi's assertion that the part uncovered in November 1509 was the
first half of the whole vault, beginning from the door and ending in
the middle, misled Vasari, and Vasari misled subsequent biographers.
We now know for certain that what Michelangelo meant by "the portion I
began" was the whole central space of the ceiling--that is to say, the
nine compositions from Genesis, with their accompanying genii and
architectural surroundings. That is rendered clear by a statement in
Albertini's Roman Handbook, to the effect that the "upper portion of
the whole vaulted roof" had been uncovered when he saw it in 1509.
Having established this error in Condivi's narrative, what he proceeds
to relate may obtain some credence. "Raffaello, when he beheld the new
and marvellous style of Michelangelo's work, being extraordinarily apt
at imitation, sought, by Bramante's means, to obtain a commission for
the rest." Had Michelangelo ended at a line drawn halfway across the
breadth of the vault, leaving the Prophets and Sibyls, the lunettes
and pendentives, all finished so far, it would have been a piece of
monstrous impudence even in Bramante, and an impossible discourtesy in
gentle Raffaello, to have begged for leave to carry on a scheme so
marvellously planned. But the history of the Creation, Fall, and
Deluge, when first exposed, looked like a work complete in itself.
Michelangelo, who was notoriously secretive, had almost certainly not
explained his whole design to painters of Bramante's following; and it
is also improbable that he had as yet prepared his working Cartoons
for the lower and larger portion of the vault. Accordingly, there
remained a large vacant space to cover between the older frescoes by
Signorelli, Perugino, Botticelli, and other painters, round the walls
below the windows, and that new miracle suspended in the air. There
was no flagrant impropriety in Bramante's thinking that his nephew
might be allowed to carry the work downward from that altitude. The
suggestion may have been that the Sistine Chapel should become a
Museum of Italian art, where all painters of eminence could deposit
proofs of their ability, until each square foot of wall was covered
with competing masterpieces. But when Michelangelo heard of Bramante's
intrigues, he was greatly disturbed in spirit. Having begun his task
unwillingly, he now felt an equal or greater unwillingness to leave
the stupendous conception of his brain unfinished. Against all
expectation of himself and others, he had achieved a decisive victory,
and was placed at one stroke, Condivi says, "above the reach of envy."
His hand had found its cunning for fresco as for marble. Why should he
be interrupted in the full swing of triumphant energy? "Accordingly,
he sought an audience with the Pope, and openly laid bare all the
persecutions he had suffered from Bramante, and discovered the
numerous misdoings of the man." It was on this occasion, according to
Condivi, that Michelangelo exposed Bramante's scamped work and
vandalism at S. Peter's. Julius, who was perhaps the only man in Rome
acquainted with his sculptor's scheme for the Sistine vault, brushed
the cobwebs of these petty intrigues aside, and left the execution of
the whole to Michelangelo.
There is something ignoble in the task of recording rivalries and
jealousies between artists and men of letters. Genius, however, like
all things that are merely ours and mortal, shuffles along the path of
life, half flying on the wings of inspiration, half hobbling on the
feet of interest the crutches of commissions. Michelangelo, although
he made the David and the Sistine, had also to make money. He was
entangled with shrewd men of business, and crafty spendthrifts,
ambitious intriguers, folk who used undoubted talents, each in its
kind excellent and pure, for baser purposes of gain or getting on. The
art-life of Rome seethed with such blood-poison; and it would be
sentimental to neglect what entered so deeply and so painfully into
the daily experience of our hero. Raffaello, kneaded of softer and
more facile clay than Michelangelo, throve in this environment, and
was somehow able--so it seems--to turn its venom to sweet uses. I like
to think of the two peers, moving like stars on widely separated
orbits, with radically diverse temperaments, proclivities, and habits,
through the turbid atmosphere enveloping but not obscuring their
lucidity. Each, in his own way, as it seems to me, contrived to keep
himself unspotted by the world; and if they did not understand one
another and make friends, this was due to the different conceptions
they were framed to take of life the one being the exact antipodes to
the other.
VI
Postponing descriptive or aesthetic criticism of the Sistine frescoes,
I shall proceed with the narration of their gradual completion. We
have few documents to guide us through the period of time which
elapsed between the first uncovering of Michelangelo's work on the
roof of the Sistine (November 1, 1509) and its ultimate accomplishment
(October 1512). His domestic correspondence is abundant, and will be
used in its proper place; but nothing transpires from those pages of
affection, anger, and financial negotiation to throw light upon the
working of the master's mind while he was busied in creating the
sibyls and prophets, the episodes and idyls, which carried his great
Bible of the Fate of Man downwards through the vaulting to a point at
which the Last Judgment had to be presented as a crowning climax. For,
the anxious student of his mind and life-work, nothing is more
desolating than the impassive silence he maintains about his doings as
an artist. He might have told us all we want to know, and never shall
know here about them. But while he revealed his personal temperament
and his passions with singular frankness, he locked up the secret of
his art, and said nothing.
Eventually we must endeavour to grasp Michelangelo's work in the
Sistine as a whole, although it was carried out at distant epochs of
his life. For this reason I have thrown these sentences forward, in
order to embrace a wide span of his artistic energy (from May 10,
1508, to perhaps December 1541). There is, to my mind, a unity of
conception between the history depicted on the vault, the prophets and
forecomers on the pendentives, the types selected for the
spandrels, and the final spectacle of the day of doom. Living, as he
needs must do, under the category of time, Michelangelo was unable to
execute his stupendous picture-book of human destiny in one sustained
manner. Years passed over him of thwarted endeavour and distracted
energies--years of quarrying and sculpturing, of engineering and
obeying the vagaries of successive Popes. Therefore, when he came
at last to paint the Last Judgment, he was a worn man, exhausted in
services of many divers sorts. And, what is most perplexing to the
reconstructive critic, nothing in his correspondence remains to
indicate the stages of his labour. The letters tell plenty about
domestic anxieties, annoyances in his poor craftsman's household,
purchases of farms, indignant remonstrances with stupid brethren; but
we find in them, as I have said, no clue to guide us through that
mental labyrinth in which the supreme artist was continually walking,
and at the end of which he left to us the Sistine as it now is.
VII
The old reckoning of the time consumed by Michelangelo in painting the
roof of the Sistine, and the traditions concerning his mode of work
there, are clearly fabulous. Condivi says: "He finished the whole in
twenty months, without having any assistance whatsoever, not even of a
man to grind his colours." From a letter of September 7, 1510, we
learn that the scaffolding was going to be put up again, and that he
was preparing to work upon the lower portion of the vaulting. Nearly
two years elapse before we hear of it again. He writes to Buonarroto
on the 24th of July 1512: "I am suffering greater hardships than ever
man endured, ill, and with overwhelming labour; still I put up with
all in order to reach the desired end." Another letter on the 21st of
August shows that he expects to complete his work at the end of
September; and at last, in October, he writes to his father: "I have
finished the chapel I was painting. The Pope is very well satisfied."
On the calculation that he began the first part on May 10, 1508, and
finished the whole in October 1512, four years and a half were
employed upon the work. A considerable part of this time was of course
taken up with the preparation of Cartoons; and the nature of
fresco-painting rendered the winter months not always fit for active
labour. The climate of Rome is not so mild but that wet plaster might
often freeze and crack during December, January, and February.
Besides, with all his superhuman energy, Michelangelo could not have
painted straight on daily without rest or stop. It seems, too, that
the master was often in need of money, and that he made two journeys
to the Pope to beg for supplies. In the letter to Fattucci he says:
"When the vault was nearly finished, the Pope was again at Bologna;
whereupon, I went twice to get the necessary funds, and obtained
nothing, and lost all that time until I came back to Rome. When I
reached Rome, I began to make Cartoons--that is, for the ends and
sides of the said chapel, hoping to get money at last and to complete
the work. I never could extract a farthing; and when I complained one
day to Messer Bernardo da Bibbiena and to Atalante, representing that
I could not stop longer in Rome, and that I should be forced to go
away with God's grace, Messer Bernardo told Atalante he must bear this
in mind, for that he wished me to have money, whatever happened." When
we consider, then, the magnitude of the undertaking, the arduous
nature of the preparatory studies, and the waste of time in journeys
and through other hindrances, four and a half years are not too long a
period for a man working so much alone as Michelangelo was wont to do.
We have reason to believe that, after all, the frescoes of the Sistine
were not finished in their details. "It is true," continues Condivi,
"that I have heard him say he was not suffered to complete the work
according to his wish. The Pope, in his impatience, asked him one day
when he would be ready with the Chapel, and he answered: 'When I shall
be able.' To which his Holiness replied in a rage: 'You want to make
me hurl you from that scaffold!' Michelangelo heard and remembered,
muttering: 'That you shall not do to me.' So he went straightway, and
had the scaffolding taken down. The frescoes were exposed to view on
All Saints' day, to the great satisfaction of the Pope, who went that
day to service there, while all Rome flocked together to admire them.
What Michelangelo felt forced to leave undone was the retouching of
certain parts with ultramarine upon dry ground, and also some gilding,
to give the whole a richer effect. Giulio, when his heat cooled down,
wanted Michelangelo to make these last additions; but he, considering
the trouble it would be to build up all that scaffolding afresh,
observed that what was missing mattered little. 'You ought at least to
touch it up with gold,' replied the Pope; and Michelangelo, with that
familiarity he used toward his Holiness, said carelessly: 'I have not
observed that men wore gold.' The Pope rejoined: 'It will look poor.'
Buonarroti added: 'Those who are painted there were poor men.' So the
matter turned into pleasantry, and the frescoes have remained in their
present state." Condivi goes on to state that Michelangelo received
3000 ducats for all his expenses, and that he spent as much as twenty
or twenty-five ducats on colours alone. Upon the difficult question of
the moneys earned by the great artist in his life-work, I shall have
to speak hereafter, though I doubt whether any really satisfactory
account can now be given of them.
VIII
Michelangelo's letters to his family in Florence throw a light at once
vivid and painful over the circumstances of his life during these
years of sustained creative energy. He was uncomfortable in his
bachelor's home, and always in difficulties with his servants. "I am
living here in discontent, not thoroughly well, and undergoing great
fatigue, without money, and with no one to look after me." Again, when
one of his brothers proposed to visit him in Rome, he writes: "I hear
that Gismondo means to come hither on his affairs. Tell him not to
count on me for anything; not because I do not love him as a brother,
but because I am not in the position to assist him. I am bound to care
for myself first, and I cannot provide myself with necessaries. I live
here in great distress and the utmost bodily fatigue, have no friends,
and seek none. I have not even time enough to eat what I require.
Therefore let no additional burdens be put upon me, for I could not
bear another ounce." In the autumn of 1509 he corresponded with his
father about the severe illness of an assistant workman whom he kept,
and also about a boy he wanted sent from Florence. "I should be glad
if you could hear of some lad at Florence, the son of good parents and
poor, used to hardships, who would be willing to come and live with me
here, to do the work of the house, buy what I want, and go around on
messages; in his leisure time he could learn. Should such a boy be
found, please let me know; because there are only rogues here, and I
am in great need of some one." All through his life, Michelangelo
adopted the plan of keeping a young fellow to act as general servant,
and at the same time to help in art-work. Three of these servants are
interwoven with the chief events of his later years, Pietro Urbano,
Antonio Mini, and Francesco d'Amadore, called Urbino, the last of whom
became his faithful and attached friend till death parted them. Women
about the house he could not bear. Of the serving-maids at Rome he
says: "They are all strumpets and swine." Well, it seems that Lodovico
found a boy, and sent him off to Rome. What followed is related in the
next letter. "As regards the boy you sent me, that rascal of a
muleteer cheated me out of a ducat for his journey. He swore that the
bargain had been made for two broad golden ducats, whereas all the
lads who come here with the muleteers pay only ten carlins. I was more
angry at this than if I had lost twenty-five ducats, because I saw
that his father had resolved to send him on mule-back like a
gentleman. Oh, I had never such good luck, not I! Then both the father
and the lad promised that he would do everything, attend to the mule,
and sleep upon the ground, if it was wanted. And now I am obliged to
look after him. As if I needed more worries than the one I have had
ever since I arrived here! My apprentice, whom I left in Rome, has
been ill from the day on which I returned until now. It is true that
he is getting better; but he lay for about a month in peril of his
life, despaired of by the doctors, and I never went to bed. There are
other annoyances of my own; and now I have the nuisance of this lad,
who says that he does not want to waste time, that he wants to study,
and so on. At Florence he said he would be satisfied with two or three
hours a day. Now the whole day is not enough for him, but he must
needs be drawing all the night. It is all the fault of what his father
tells him. If I complained, he would say that I did not want him to
learn. I really require some one to take care of the house; and if the
boy had no mind for this sort of work, they ought not to have put me
to expense. But they are good-for-nothing, and are working toward a
certain end of their own. Enough, I beg you to relieve me of the boy;
he has bored me so that I cannot bear it any longer. The muleteer has
been so well paid that he can very well take him back to Florence.
Besides, he is a friend of the father. Tell the father to send for him
home. I shall not pay another farthing. I have no money. I will have
patience till he sends; and if he does not send, I will turn the boy
out of doors. I did so already on the second day of his arrival, and
other times also, and the father does not believe it.
"_P.S._--If you talk to the father of the lad, put the matter to him
nicely: as that he is a good boy, but too refined, and not fit for my
service, and say that he had better send for him home."
The repentant postscript is eminently characteristic of Michelangelo.
He used to write in haste, apparently just as the thoughts came.
Afterwards he read his letter over, and softened its contents down, if
he did not, as sometimes happened, feel that his meaning required
enforcement; in that case he added a stinging tail to the epigram. How
little he could manage the people in his employ is clear from the last
notice we possess about the unlucky lad from Florence. "I wrote about
the boy, to say that his father ought to send for him, and that I
would not disburse more money. This I now confirm. The driver is paid
to take him back. At Florence he will do well enough, learning his
trade and dwelling with his parents. Here he is not worth a farthing,
and makes me toil like a beast of burden; and my other apprentice has
not left his bed. It is true that I have not got him in the house; for
when I was so tired out that I could not bear it, I sent him to the
room of a brother of his. I have no money."
These household difficulties were a trifle, however, compared with the
annoyances caused by the stupidity of his father and the greediness of
his brothers. While living like a poor man in Rome, he kept
continually thinking of their welfare. The letters of this period are
full of references to the purchase of land, the transmission of cash
when it was to be had, and the establishment of Buonarroto in a
draper's business. They, on their part, were never satisfied, and
repaid his kindness with ingratitude. The following letter to Giovan
Simone shows how terrible Michelangelo could be when he detected
baseness in a brother:--
"Giovan Simone,--It is said that when one does good to a good man, he
makes him become better, but that a bad man becomes worse. It is now
many years that I have been endeavouring with words and deeds of
kindness to bring you to live honestly and in peace with your father
and the rest of us. You grow continually worse. I do not say that you
are a scoundrel; but you are of such sort that you have ceased to give
satisfaction to me or anybody. I could read you a long lesson on your
ways of living; but they would be idle words, like all the rest that I
have wasted. To cut the matter short, I will tell you as a fact beyond
all question that you have nothing in the world: what you spend and
your house-room, I give you, and have given you these many years, for
the love of God, believing you to be my brother like the rest. Now, I
am sure that you are not my brother, else you would not threaten my
father. Nay, you are a beast; and as a beast I mean to treat you. Know
that he who sees his father threatened or roughly handled is bound to
risk his own life in this cause. Let that suffice. I repeat that you
have nothing in the world; and if I hear the least thing about your
ways of going on, I will come to Florence by the post, and show you
how far wrong you are, and teach you to waste your substance, and set
fire to houses and farms you have not earned. Indeed you are not where
you think yourself to be. If I come, I will open your eyes to what
will make you weep hot tears, and recognise on what false grounds you
base your arrogance.
"I have something else to say to you, which I have said before. If you
will endeavour to live rightly, and to honour and revere your father,
I am willing to help you like the rest, and will put it shortly within
your power to open a good shop. If you act otherwise, I shall come and
settle your affairs in such a way that you will recognise what you are
better than you ever did, and will know what you have to call your
own, and will have it shown to you in every place where you may go. No
more. What I lack in words I will supply with deeds.
"Michelangelo _in Rome_.
"I cannot refrain from adding a couple of lines. It is as follows. I
have gone these twelve years past drudging about through Italy, borne
every shame, suffered every hardship, worn my body out in every toil,
put my life to a thousand hazards, and all with the sole purpose of
helping the fortunes of my family. Now that I have begun to raise it
up a little, you only, you alone, choose to destroy and bring to ruin
in one hour what it has cost me so many years and such labour to build
up. By Christ's body this shall not be; for I am the man to put to the
rout ten thousand of your sort, whenever it be needed. Be wise in
time, then, and do not try the patience of one who has other things to
vex him."
Even Buonarroto, who was the best of the brothers and dearest to his
heart, hurt him by his graspingness and want of truth. He had been
staying at Rome on a visit, and when he returned to Florence it
appears that he bragged about his wealth, as if the sums expended on
the Buonarroti farms were not part of Michelangelo's earnings. The
consequence was that he received a stinging rebuke from his elder
brother. "The said Michele told me you mentioned to him having spent
about sixty ducats at Settignano. I remember your saying here too at
table that you had disbursed a large sum out of your own pocket. I
pretended not to understand, and did not feel the least surprise,
because I know you. I should like to hear from your ingratitude out of
what money you gained them. If you had enough sense to know the truth,
you would not say: 'I spent so and so much of my own;' also you would
not have come here to push your affairs with me, seeing how I have
always acted toward you in the past, but would have rather said:
'Michelangelo remembers what he wrote to us, and if he does not now do
what he promised, he must be prevented by something of which we are
ignorant,' and then have kept your peace; because it is not well to
spur the horse that runs as fast as he is able, and more than he is
able. But you have never known me, and do not know me. God pardon you;
for it is He who granted me the grace to bear what I do bear and have
borne, in order that you might be helped. Well, you will know me when
you have lost me."
Michelangelo's angry moods rapidly cooled down. At the bottom of his
heart lay a deep and abiding love for his family. There is something
caressing in the tone with which he replies to grumbling letters from
his father. "Do not vex yourself. God did not make us to abandon us."
"If you want me, I will take the post, and be with you in two days.
Men are worth more than money." His warm affection transpires even
more clearly in the two following documents:
"I should like you to be thoroughly convinced that all the labours I
have ever undergone have not been more for myself than for your sake.
What I have bought, I bought to be yours so long as you live. If you
had not been here, I should have bought nothing. Therefore, if you
wish to let the house and farm, do so at your pleasure. This income,
together with what I shall give you, will enable you to live like a
lord." At a time when Lodovico was much exercised in his mind and
spirits by a lawsuit, his son writes to comfort the old man. "Do not
be discomfited, nor give yourself an ounce of sadness. Remember that
losing money is not losing one's life. I will more than make up to you
what you must lose. Yet do not attach too much value to worldly goods,
for they are by nature untrustworthy. Thank God that this trial, if it
was bound to come, came at a time when you have more resources than
you had in years past. Look to preserving your life and health, but
let your fortunes go to ruin rather than suffer hardships; for I would
sooner have you alive and poor; if you were dead, I should not care
for all the gold in the world. If those chatterboxes or any one else
reprove you, let them talk, for they are men without intelligence and
without affection."
References to public events are singularly scanty in this
correspondence. Much as Michelangelo felt the woes of Italy--and we
know he did so by his poems--he talked but little, doing his work
daily like a wise man all through the dust and din stirred up by
Julius and the League of Cambrai. The lights and shadows of Italian
experience at that time are intensely dramatic. We must not altogether
forget the vicissitudes of war, plague, and foreign invasion, which
exhausted the country, while its greatest men continued to produce
immortal masterpieces. Aldo Manuzio was quietly printing his complete
edition of Plato, and Michelangelo was transferring the noble figure
of a prophet or a sibyl to the plaster of the Sistine, while young
Gaston de Foix was dying at the point of victory upon the bloody
shores of the Ronco. Sometimes, however, the disasters of his country
touched Michelangelo so nearly that he had to write or speak about
them. After the battle of Ravenna, on the 11th of April 1512, Raimondo
de Cardona and his Spanish troops brought back the Medici to Florence.
On their way, the little town of Prato was sacked with a barbarity
which sent a shudder through the whole peninsula. The Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, who entered Florence on the 14th of September,
established his nephews as despots in the city, and intimidated the
burghers by what looked likely to be a reign of terror. These facts
account for the uneasy tone of a letter written by Michelangelo to
Buonarroto. Prato had been taken by assault upon the 30th of August,
and was now prostrate after those hideous days of torment, massacre,
and outrage indescribable which followed. In these circumstances
Michelangelo advises his family to "escape into a place of safety,
abandoning their household gear and property; for life is far more
worth than money." If they are in need of cash, they may draw upon his
credit with the Spedalingo of S. Maria Novella. The constitutional
liability to panic which must be recognised in Michelangelo emerges at
the close of the letter. "As to public events, do not meddle with them
either by deed or word. Act as though the plague were raging. Be the
first to fly." The Buonarroti did not take his advice, but remained at
Florence, enduring agonies of terror. It was a time when disaffection
toward the Medicean princes exposed men to risking life and limb.
Rumours reached Lodovico that his son had talked imprudently at Rome.
He wrote to inquire what truth there was in the report, and
Michelangelo replied: "With regard to the Medici, I have never spoken
a single word against them, except in the way that everybody
talks--as, for instance, about the sack of Prato; for if the stones
could have cried out, I think they would have spoken. There have been
many other things said since then, to which, when I heard them, I have
answered: 'If they are really acting in this way, they are doing
wrong;' not that I believed the reports; and God grant they are not
true. About a month ago, some one who makes a show of friendship for
me spoke very evilly about their deeds. I rebuked him, told him that
it was not well to talk so, and begged him not to do so again to me.
However, I should like Buonarroto quietly to find out how the rumour
arose of my having calumniated the Medici; for if it is some one who
pretends to be my friend, I ought to be upon my guard."
The Buonarroti family, though well affected toward Savonarola, were
connected by many ties of interest and old association with the
Medici, and were not powerful enough to be the mark of violent
political persecution. Nevertheless, a fine was laid upon them by the
newly restored Government. This drew forth the following epistle from
Michelangelo:--
"Dearest Father,--Your last informs me how things are going on at
Florence, though I already knew something. We must have patience,
commit ourselves to God, and repent of our sins; for these trials are
solely due to them, and more particularly to pride and ingratitude. I
never conversed with a people more ungrateful and puffed up than the
Florentines. Therefore, if judgment comes, it is but right and
reasonable. As for the sixty ducats you tell me you are fined, I think
this a scurvy trick, and am exceedingly annoyed. However, we must have
patience as long as it pleases God. I will write and enclose two lines
to Giuliano de' Medici. Read them, and if you like to present them to
him, do so; you will see whether they are likely to be of any use. If
not, consider whether we can sell our property and go to live
elsewhere.... Look to your life and health; and if you cannot share
the honours of the land like other burghers, be contented that bread
does not fail you, and live well with Christ, and poorly, as I do
here; for I live in a sordid way, regarding neither life nor
honours--that is, the world--and suffer the greatest hardships and
innumerable anxieties and dreads. It is now about fifteen years since
I had a single hour of well-being, and all that I have done has been
to help you, and you have never recognised this nor believed it. God
pardon us all! I am ready to go on doing the same so long as I live,
if only I am able."
We have reason to believe that the petition to Giuliano proved
effectual, for in his next letter he congratulates his father upon
their being restored to favour. In the same communication he mentions
a young Spanish painter whom he knew in Rome, and whom he believes to
be ill at Florence. This was probably the Alonso Berughetta who made a
copy of the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa. In July 1508 Michelangelo
wrote twice about a Spaniard who wanted leave to study the Cartoon;
first begging Buonarroto to procure the keys for him, and afterwards
saying that he is glad to hear that the permission was refused. It
does not appear certain whether this was the same Alonso; but it is
interesting to find that Michelangelo disliked his Cartoon being
copied. We also learn from these letters that the Battle of Pisa then
remained in the Sala del Papa.
IX
I will conclude this chapter by translating a sonnet addressed to
Giovanni da Pistoja, in which Michelangelo humorously describes the
discomforts he endured while engaged upon the Sistine. Condivi tells
us that from painting so long in a strained attitude, gazing up at the
vault, he lost for some time the power of reading except when he
lifted the paper above his head and raised his eyes. Vasari
corroborates the narrative from his own experience in the vast halls
of the Medicean palace.
_I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den--
As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they hap to be--
Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
My feet unguided wander to and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succour my dead pictures and my fame,
Since foul I fare and painting is my shame._