I
The collegiate church of S. Lorenzo at Florence had long been
associated with the Medicean family, who were its most distinguished
benefactors, Giovanni d'Averardo de' Medici, together with the heads
of six other Florentine houses, caused it to be rebuilt at the
beginning of the fifteenth century. He took upon himself the entire
costs of the sacristy and one chapel; it was also owing to his
suggestion that Filippo Brunelleschi, in the year 1421, designed the
church and cloister as they now appear. When he died, Giovanni was
buried in its precincts, while his son Cosimo de' Medici, the father
of his country, continued these benevolences, and bestowed a capital
of 40,000 golden florins on the Chapter. He too was buried in the
church, a simple monument in the sacristy being erected to his memory.
Lorenzo the Magnificent followed in due course, and found his last
resting-place at S. Lorenzo.
We have seen in a previous chapter how and when Leo X. conceived the
idea of adding a chapel which should serve as mausoleum for several
members of the Medicean family at S. Lorenzo, and how Clement
determined to lodge the famous Medicean library in a hall erected over
the west side of the cloister. Both of these undertakings, as well as
the construction of a façade for the front of the church, were
assigned to Michelangelo. The ground plan of the monumental chapel
corresponds to Brunelleschi's sacristy, and is generally known as the
Sagrestia Nuova. Internally Buonarroti altered its decorative
panellings, and elevated the vaulting of the roof into a more
ambitious cupola. This portion of the edifice was executed in the
rough during his residence at Florence. The façade was never begun in
earnest, and remains unfinished. The library was constructed according
to his designs, and may be taken, on the whole, as a genuine specimen
of his style in architecture.
The books which Clement lodged there were the priceless manuscripts
brought together by Cosimo de' Medici in the first enthusiasm of the
Revival, at that critical moment when the decay of the Eastern Empire
transferred the wrecks of Greek literature from Constantinople to
Italy. Cosimo built a room to hold them in the Convent of S. Marco,
which Flavio Biondo styled the first library opened for the use of
scholars. Lorenzo the Magnificent enriched the collection with
treasures acquired during his lifetime, buying autographs wherever it
was possible to find them, and causing copies to be made. In the year
1508 the friars of S. Marco sold this inestimable store of literary
documents, in order to discharge the debts contracted by them during
their ill-considered interference in the state affairs of the
Republic. It was purchased for the sum of 2652 ducats by the Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, a second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and
afterwards Pope Leo X. He transferred them to his Roman villa, where
the collection was still further enlarged by all the rarities which a
prince passionate for literature and reckless in expenditure could
there assemble. Leo's cousin and executor, Giulio de' Medici, Pope
Clement VII., fulfilled his last wishes by transferring them to
Florence, and providing the stately receptacle in which they still
repose.
The task assigned to Michelangelo, when he planned the library, was
not so simple as that of the new sacristy. Some correspondence took
place before the west side of the cloister was finally decided on.
What is awkward in the approach to the great staircase must be
ascribed to the difficulty of fitting this building into the old
edifice; and probably, if Michelangelo had carried out the whole work,
a worthier entrance from the piazza into the loggia, and from the
loggia into the vestibule, might have been devised.
II
Vasari, in a well-known passage of his Life of Michelangelo, reports
the general opinion of his age regarding the novelties introduced by
Buonarroti into Italian architecture. The art of building was in a
state of transition. Indeed, it cannot be maintained that the
Italians, after they abandoned the traditions of the Romanesque
manner, advanced with certitude on any line of progress in this art.
Their work, beautiful as it often is, ingenious as it almost always
is, marked invariably by the individuality of the district and the
builder, seems to be tentative, experimental. The principles of the
Pointed Gothic style were never seized or understood by Italian
architects. Even such cathedrals as those of Orvieto and Siena are
splendid monuments of incapacity, when compared with the Romanesque
churches of Pisa, S. Miniato, S. Zenone at Verona, the Cathedral of
Parma. The return from Teutonic to Roman standards of taste, which
marked the advent of humanism, introduced a hybrid manner. This, in
its first commencement, was extremely charming. The buildings of Leo
Battista Alberti, of Brunelleschi, and of Bramante are distinguished
by an exquisite purity and grace combined with picturesqueness. No
edifice in any style is more stately, and at the same time more
musical in linear proportions, than the Church of S. Andrea at Mantua.
The Cappella dei Pazzi and the Church of S. Spirito at Florence are
gems of clear-cut and harmonious dignity. The courtyard of the
Cancelleria at Rome, the Duomo at Todi, show with what supreme ability
the great architect of Casteldurante blended sublimity with suavity,
largeness and breadth with naïveté and delicately studied detail. But
these first endeavours of the Romantic spirit to assimilate the
Classic mannerism--essays no less interesting than those of Boiardo in
poetry, of Botticelli in painting, of Donatello and Omodei in
sculpture--all of them alike, whether buildings, poems, paintings, or
statues, displaying the genius of the Italic race, renascent,
recalcitrant against the Gothic style, while still to some extent
swayed by its influence (at one and the same time both Christian and
chivalrous, Pagan and precociously cynical; yet charmingly fresh,
unspoiled by dogma, uncontaminated by pedantry)--these first
endeavours of the Romantic spirit to assimilate the Classic mannerism
could not create a new style representative of the national life. They
had the fault inherent in all hybrids, however fanciful and graceful.
They were sterile and unprocreative. The warring elements, so deftly
and beautifully blent in them, began at once to fall asunder. The San
Galli attempted to follow classical precedent with stricter severity.
Some buildings of their school may still be reckoned among the purest
which remain to prove the sincerity of the Revival of Learning. The
Sansovini exaggerated the naïveté of the earlier Renaissance manner,
and pushed its picturesqueness over into florid luxuriance or
decorative detail. Meanwhile, humanists and scholars worked slowly but
steadily upon the text of Vitruvius, impressing the paramount
importance of his theoretical writings upon practical builders.
Neither students nor architects reflected that they could not
understand Vitruvius; that, if they could understand him, it was by no
means certain he was right; and that, if he was right for his own age,
he would not be right for the sixteenth century after Christ. It was
just at this moment, when Vitruvius began to dominate the Italian
imagination, that Michelangelo was called upon to build. The genial
adaptation of classical elements to modern sympathies and uses, which
had been practised by Alberti, Brunelleschi, Bramante, yielded now to
painful efforts after the appropriation of pedantic principles.
Instead of working upon antique monuments with their senses and
emotions, men approached them through the medium of scholastic
erudition. Instead of seeing and feeling for themselves, they sought
by dissection to confirm the written precepts of a defunct Roman
writer. This diversion of a great art from its natural line of
development supplies a striking instance of the fascination which
authority exercises at certain periods of culture. Rather than trust
their feeling for what was beautiful and useful, convenient and
attractive, the Italians of the Renaissance surrendered themselves to
learning. Led by the spirit of scholarship, they thought it their duty
to master the text of Vitruvius, to verify his principles by the
analysis of surviving antique edifices, and, having formed their own
conception of his theory, to apply this, as well as they were able, to
the requirements of contemporary life.
Two exits from the false situation existed: one was the
picturesqueness of the Barocco style; the other was the specious vapid
purity of the Palladian. Michelangelo, who was essentially the genius
of this transition, can neither be ascribed to the Barocco architects,
although he called them into being, nor yet can he be said to have
arrived at the Palladian solution. He held both types within himself
in embryo, arriving at a moment of profound and complicated difficulty
for the practical architect; without technical education, but gifted
with supreme genius, bringing the imperious instincts of a sublime
creative amateur into every task appointed him. We need not wonder if
a man of his calibre left the powerful impress of his personality upon
an art in chaos, luring lesser craftsmen into the Barocco mannerism,
while he provoked reaction in the stronger, who felt more
scientifically what was needed to secure firm standing-ground. Bernini
and the superb fountain of Trevi derive from Michelangelo on one side;
Vignola's cold classic profiles and Palladio's resuscitation of old
Rome in the Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza emerge upon the other. It
remained Buonarroti's greatest-glory that, lessoned by experience and
inspired for high creation by the vastness of the undertaking, he
imagined a world's wonder in the cupola of S. Peter's.
III
Writing in the mid-stream of this architectural regurgitation, Vasari
explains what contemporaries thought about Michelangelo's innovations.
"He wished to build the new sacristy upon the same lines as the older
one by Brunelleschi, but at the same time to clothe the edifice with a
different style of decoration. Accordingly, he invented for the
interior a composite adornment, of the newest and most varied manner
which antique and modern masters joined together could have used. The
novelty of his style consisted in those lovely cornices, capitals,
basements, doors, niches, and sepulchres which transcended all that
earlier builders, working by measurements, distribution of parts, and
rule, had previously effected, following Vitruvius and the ancient
relics. Such men were afraid to supplement tradition with original
invention. The license he introduced gave great courage to those who
studied his method, and emboldened them to follow on his path. Since
that time, new freaks of fancy have been seen, resembling the style of
arabesque and grotesque more than was consistent with tradition. For
this emancipation of the art, all craftsmen owe him an infinite and
everduring debt of gratitude, since he at one blow broke down the
bands and chains which barred the path they trod in common."
If I am right in thus interpreting an unusually incoherent passage of
Vasari's criticism, no words could express more clearly the advent of
Barocco mannerism. But Vasari proceeds to explain his meaning with
still greater precision. Afterwards he made a plainer demonstration
of his intention in the library of S. Lorenzo, by the splendid
distribution of the windows, the arrangement of the upper chamber, and
the marvellous entrance-hall into that enclosed building.
"The grace and charm of art were never seen more perfectly displayed
in the whole and in the parts of any edifice than here. I may refer in
particular to the corbels, the recesses for statues, and the cornices.
The staircase, too, deserves attention for its convenience, with the
eccentric breakage of its flights of steps; the whole construction
being so altered from the common usage of other architects as to
excite astonishment in all who see it."
What emerges with distinctness from Vasari's account of Michelangelo's
work at S. Lorenzo is that a practical Italian architect, who had been
engaged on buildings of importance since this work was carried out,
believed it to have infused freedom and new vigour into architecture.
That freedom and new vigour we now know to have implied the Barocco
style.
IV
In estimating Michelangelo's work at S. Lorenzo, we must not forget
that at this period of his life he contemplated statuary, bronze
bas-relief, and painting, as essential adjuncts to architecture. The
scheme is, therefore, not so much constructive as decorative, and a
great many of its most offensive qualities may be ascribed to the fact
that the purposes for which it was designed have been omitted. We know
that the façade of S. Lorenzo was intended to abound in bronze and
marble carvings. Beside the Medicean tombs, the sacristy ought to have
contained a vast amount of sculpture, and its dome was actually
painted in fresco by Giovanni da Udine under Michelangelo's own eyes.
It appears that his imagination still obeyed those leading principles
which he applied in the rough sketch for the first sepulchre of
Julius. The vestibule and staircase of the library cannot therefore be
judged fairly now; for if they had been finished according to their
maker's plan, the faults of their construction would have been
compensated by multitudes of plastic shapes.
M. Charles Gamier, in _L'OEuvre et la Vie_, speaking with the
authority of a practical architect, says: "Michelangelo was not,
properly speaking, an architect. He made architecture, which is quite
a different thing; and most often it was the architecture of a painter
and sculptor, which points to colour, breadth, imagination, but also
to insufficient studies and incomplete education. The thought may be
great and strong, but the execution of it is always feeble and
naïve.... He had not learned the language of the art. He has all the
qualities of imagination, invention, will, which form a great
composer; but he does not know the grammar, and can hardly write....
In seeking the great, he has too often found the tumid; seeking the
original, he has fallen upon the strange, and also on bad taste."
There is much that is true in this critique, severe though it may seem
to be. The fact is that Michelangelo aimed at picturesque effect in
his buildings; not, as previous architects had done, by a lavish use
of loosely decorative details, but by the piling up and massing
together of otherwise dry orders, cornices, pilasters, windows, all of
which, in his conception, were to serve as framework and pedestals for
statuary. He also strove to secure originality and to stimulate
astonishment by bizarre modulations of accepted classic forms, by
breaking the lines of architraves, combining angularities with curves,
adopting a violently accented rhythm and a tortured multiplicity of
parts, wherever this was possible.
V
In this new style, so much belauded by Vasari, the superficial design
is often rich and grandiose, making a strong pictorial appeal to the
imagination. Meanwhile, the organic laws of structure have been
sacrificed; and that chaste beauty which emerges from a perfectly
harmonious distribution of parts, embellished by surface decoration
only when the limbs and members of the building demand emphasis, may
be sought for everywhere in vain. The substratum is a box, a barn, an
inverted bottle; built up of rubble, brick, and concrete; clothed with
learned details, which have been borrowed from the pseudo-science of
the humanist. There is nothing here of divine Greek candour, of
dominant Roman vigour, of Gothic vitality, of fanciful invention
governed by a sincere sense of truth. Nothing remains of the shy
graces, the melodious simplicities, the pure seeking after musical
proportion, which marked the happier Italian effort of the early
Renaissance, through Brunelleschi and Alberti, Bramante, Giuliano da
Sangallo, and Peruzzi. Architecture, in the highest sense of that
word, has disappeared. A scenic scheme of panelling for empty walls
has superseded the conscientious striving to construct a living and
intelligible whole.
The fault inherent in Italian building after the close of the Lombard
period, reaches its climax here. That fault was connected with the
inability of the Italians to assimilate the true spirit of the Gothic
style, while they attempted its imitation in practice. The fabrication
of imposing and lovely façades at Orvieto, at Siena, at Cremona, and
at Crema, glorious screens which masked the poverty of the edifice,
and corresponded in no point to the organism of the structure, taught
them to overrate mere surface-beauty. Their wonderful creativeness in
all the arts which can be subordinated to architectural effect seduced
them further. Nothing, for instance, taken by itself alone, can be
more satisfactory than the façade of the Certosa at Pavia; but it is
not, like the front of Chartres or Rheims or Amiens, a natural
introduction to the inner sanctuary. At the end of the Gothic period
architecture had thus come to be conceived as the art of covering
shapeless structures with a wealth of arabesques in marble, fresco,
bronze, mosaic.
The revival of learning and a renewed interest in the antique withdrew
the Italians for a short period from this false position. With more or
less of merit, successive builders, including those I have above
mentioned, worked in a pure style: pure because it obeyed the laws of
its own music, because it was intelligible and self-consistent, aiming
at construction as the main end, subordinating decoration of richer
luxuriance or of sterner severity to the prime purpose of the total
scheme. But this style was too much the plaything of particular minds
to create a permanent tradition. It varied in the several provinces of
Italy, and mingled personal caprice with the effort to assume a
classic garb. Meanwhile the study of Vitruvius advanced, and that
pedantry which infected all the learned movements of the Renaissance
struck deep and venomous roots into the art of building.
Michelangelo arrived at the moment I am attempting to indicate. He
protested that architecture was not his trade. Over and over again he
repeated this to his Medicean patrons; but they compelled him to
build, and he applied himself with the predilections and
prepossessions of a plastic artist to the task. The result was a
retrogression from the point reached by his immediate predecessors to
the vicious system followed by the pseudo-Gothic architects in Italy.
That is to say, he treated the structure as an inert mass, to be made
as substantial as possible, and then to be covered with details
agreeable to the eye. At the beginning of his career he had a
defective sense of the harmonic ratios upon which a really musical
building may be constructed out of mere bricks and mortar--such, for
example, as the Church of S. Giustina at Padua. He was overweighted
with ill-assimilated erudition; and all the less desirable licenses of
Brunelleschi's school, especially in the abuse of square recesses, he
adopted without hesitation. It never seems to have occurred to him
that doors which were intended for ingress and egress, windows which
were meant to give light, and attics which had a value as the means of
illumination from above, could not with any propriety be applied to
the covering of blank dead spaces in the interiors of buildings.
The vestibule of the Laurentian Library illustrates his method of
procedure. It is a rectangular box of about a cube and two thirds, set
length-way up. The outside of the building, left unfinished, exhibits
a mere blank space of bricks. The interior might be compared to a
temple in the grotesque-classic style turned outside in: colossal
orders, meaningless consoles, heavy windows, square recesses, numerous
doors--the windows, doors, and attics having no right to be there,
since they lead to nothing, lend view to nothing, clamour for bronze
and sculpture to explain their existence as niches and receptacles for
statuary. It is nevertheless indubitably true that these incongruous
and misplaced elements, crowded together, leave a strong impression of
picturesque force upon the mind. From certain points and angles, the
effect of the whole, considered as a piece of deception and
insincerity, is magnificent. It would be even finer than it is, were
not the Florentine _pietra serena_ of the stonework so repellent in
its ashen dulness, the plaster so white, and the false architectural
system so painfully defrauded of the plastic forms for which it was
intended to subserve as setting.
We have here no masterpiece of sound constructive science, but a freak
of inventive fancy using studied details for the production of a
pictorial effect. The details employed to compose this curious
illusion are painfully dry and sterile; partly owing to the scholastic
enthusiasm for Vitruvius, partly to the decline of mediaeval delight
in naturalistic decoration, but, what seems to me still more apparent,
through Michelangelo's own passionate preoccupation with the human
figure. He could not tolerate any type of art which did not concede a
predominant position to the form of man. Accordingly, his work in
architecture at this period seems waiting for plastic illustration,
demanding sculpture and fresco for its illumination and justification.
It is easy, one would think, to make an appeal to the eye by means of
colossal orders, bold cornices, enormous consoles, deeply indented
niches. How much more easy to construct a box, and then say, "Come,
let us cover its inside with an incongruous and inappropriate but
imposing parade of learning," than to lift some light and genial thing
of beauty aloft into the air, as did the modest builder of the
staircase to the hall at Christ Church, Oxford! The eye of the vulgar
is entranced, the eye of the artist bewildered. That the imagination
which inspired that decorative scheme was powerful, original, and
noble, will not be denied; but this does not save us from the
desolating conviction that the scheme itself is a specious and
pretentious mask, devised to hide a hideous waste of bricks and
mortar.
Michelangelo's imagination, displayed in this distressing piece of
work, was indeed so masterful that, as Vasari says, a new delightful
style in architecture seemed to be revealed by it. A new way of
clothing surfaces, falsifying façades, and dealing picturesquely with
the lifeless element of Vitruvian tradition had been demonstrated by
the genius of one who was a mighty amateur in building. In other
words, the _Barocco_ manner had begun; the path was opened to prank,
caprice, and license. It required the finer tact and taste of a
Palladio to rectify the false line here initiated, and to bring the
world back to a sense of seriousness in its effort to deal
constructively and rationally with the pseudo-classic mannerism.
The qualities of wilfulness and amateurishness and seeking after
picturesque effect, upon which I am now insisting, spoiled
Michelangelo's work as architect, until he was forced by circumstance,
and after long practical experience, to confront a problem of pure
mathematical construction. In the cupola of S. Peter's he rose to the
stern requirements of his task. There we find no evasion of the
builder's duty by mere surface-decoration, no subordination of the
edifice to plastic or pictorial uses. Such side-issues were excluded
by the very nature of the theme. An immortal poem resulted, an aërial
lyric of melodious curves and solemn harmonies, a thought combining
grace and audacity translated into stone uplifted to the skies. After
being cabined in the vestibule to the Laurentian Library, our soul
escapes with gladness to those airy spaces of the dome, that great
cloud on the verge of the Campagna, and feels thankful that we can
take our leave of Michelangelo as architect elsewhere.
VI
While seeking to characterise what proved pernicious to contemporaries
in Michelangelo's work as architect, I have been led to concentrate
attention upon the Library at S. Lorenzo. This was logical; for, as we
have seen, Vasari regarded that building as the supreme manifestation
of his manner. Vasari never saw the cupola of S. Peter's in all its
glory, and it may be doubted whether he was capable of learning much
from it.
The sacristy demands separate consideration. It was an earlier work,
produced under more favourable conditions of place and space, and is
in every way a purer specimen of the master's style. As Vasari
observed, the Laurentian Library indicated a large advance upon the
sacristy in the development of Michelangelo's new manner.
At this point it may not unprofitably be remarked, that none of the
problems offered for solution at S. Lorenzo were in the strictest
sense of that word architectural. The façade presented a problem of
pure panelling. The ground-plan of the sacristy was fixed in
correspondence with Brunelleschi's; and here again the problem
resolved itself chiefly into panelling. A builder of genius, working
on the library, might indeed have displayed his science and his taste
by some beautiful invention adapted to the awkward locality; as
Baldassare Peruzzi, in the Palazzo Massimo at Rome, converted the
defects of the site into graces by the exquisite turn he gave to the
curved portion of the edifice. Still, when the scheme was settled,
even the library became more a matter of panelling and internal
fittings than of structural design. Nowhere at S. Lorenzo can we
affirm that Michelangelo enjoyed, the opportunity of showing what he
could achieve in the production of a building independent in itself
and planned throughout with a free hand. Had he been a born architect,
he would probably have insisted upon constructing the Medicean
mausoleum after his own conception instead of repeating Brunelleschi's
ground-plan, and he would almost certainly have discovered a more
genial solution for the difficulties of the library. But he protested
firmly against being considered an architect by inclination or by
education. Therefore he accepted the most obvious conditions of each
task, and devoted himself to schemes of surface decoration.
The interior of the sacristy is planned with a noble sense of unity.
For the purpose of illuminating a gallery of statues, the lighting may
be praised without reserve; and there is no doubt whatever that
Michelangelo intended every tabernacle to be filled with figures, and
all the whitewashed spaces of the walls to be encrusted with
bas-reliefs in stucco or painted in fresco. The recesses or niches,
taking the form of windows, are graduated in three degrees of depth to
suit three scales of sculptural importance. The sepulchres of the
Dukes had to emerge into prominence; the statues subordinate to these
main masses occupied shallower recesses; the shallowest of all,
reserved for minor statuary, are adorned above with garlands, which
suggest the flatness of the figures to be introduced. Architecturally
speaking, the building is complete; but it sadly wants the plastic
decoration for which it was designed, together with many finishing
touches of importance. It is clear, for instance, that the square
pedestals above the double pilasters flanking each of the two Dukes
were meant to carry statuettes or candelabra, which would have
connected the marble panelling with the cornices and stucchi and
frescoed semicircles of the upper region. Our eyes are everywhere
defrauded of the effect calculated by Michelangelo when he planned
this chapel. Yet the total impression remains harmonious. Proportion
has been observed in all the parts, especially in the relation of the
larger to the smaller orders, and in the balance of the doors and
windows. Merely decorative carvings are used with parsimony, and
designed in a pure style, although they exhibit originality of
invention. The alternation of white marble surfaces and mouldings with
_pietra serena_ pilasters, cornices, and arches, defines the
structural design, and gives a grave but agreeable sense of variety.
Finally, the recess behind the altar adds lightness and space to what
would otherwise have been a box. What I have already observed when
speaking of the vestibule to the library must be repeated here: the
whole scheme is that of an exterior turned outside in, and its
justification lies in the fact that it demanded statuary and colour
for its completion. Still the bold projecting cornices, the deeper and
shallower niches resembling windows, have the merit of securing broken
lights and shadows under the strong vertical illumination, all of
which are eminently picturesque. No doubt remains now that tradition
is accurate in identifying the helmeted Duke with Lorenzo de' Medici,
and the more graceful seated hero opposite with Giuliano. The
recumbent figures on the void sepulchres beneath them are with equal
truth designated as Night and Day, Morning and Evening. But
Michelangelo condescended to no realistic portraiture in the statues
of the Dukes, and he also meant undoubtedly to treat the phases of
time which rule man's daily life upon the planet as symbols for
far-reaching thoughts connected with our destiny. These monumental
figures are not men, not women, but vague and potent allegories of our
mortal fate. They remain as he left them, except that parts of
Giuliano's statue, especially the hands, seem to have been worked over
by an assistant. The same is true of the Madonna, which will ever be
regarded, in her imperfectly finished state, as one of the finest of
his sculptural conceptions. To Montelupo belongs the execution of S.
Damiano, and to Montorsoli that of S. Cosimo. Vasari says that Tribolo
was commissioned by Michelangelo to carve statues of Earth weeping for
the loss of Giuliano, and Heaven rejoicing over his spirit. The death
of Pope Clement, however, put a stop to these subordinate works,
which, had they been accomplished, might perhaps have shown us how
Buonarroti intended to fill the empty niches on each side of the
Dukes.
When Michelangelo left Florence for good at the end of 1534, his
statues had not been placed; but we have reason to think that the
Dukes and the four allegorical figures were erected in his lifetime.
There is something singular in the maladjustment of the recumbent men
and women to the curves of the sarcophagi, and in the contrast between
the roughness of their bases and the smooth polish of the chests they
rest on. These discrepancies do not, however, offend the eye, and they
may even have been deliberately adopted from a keen sense of what the
Greeks called _asymmetreia_ as an adjunct to effect. It is more
difficult to understand what he proposed to do with the Madonna and
her two attendant saints. Placed as they now are upon a simple ledge,
they strike one as being too near the eye, and out of harmony with the
architectural tone of the building. It is also noticeable that the
saints are more than a head taller than the Dukes, while the Madonna
overtops the saints by more than another head. We are here in a region
of pure conjecture; and if I hazard an opinion, it is only thrown out
as a possible solution of a now impenetrable problem. I think, then,
that Michelangelo may have meant to pose these three figures where
they are, facing the altar; to raise the Madonna upon a slightly
projecting bracket above the level of SS. Damiano and Cosimo, and to
paint the wall behind them with a fresco of the Crucifixion. That he
had no intention of panelling that empty space with marble may be
taken for granted, considering the high finish which has been given to
every part of this description of work in the chapel. Treated as I
have suggested, the statue of the Madonna, with the patron saints of
the House of Medici, overshadowed by a picture of Christ's sacrifice,
would have confronted the mystery of the Mass during every celebration
at the altar. There are many designs for the Crucifixion, made by
Michelangelo in later life, so lofty as almost to suggest a group of
figures in the foreground, cutting the middle distance.
At the close of Michelangelo's life the sacristy was still unfinished.
It contained the objects I have described--the marble panelling, the
altar with its candelabra, the statues of the Dukes and their
attendant figures, the Madonna and two Medicean patron saints--in
fact, all that we find there now, with the addition of Giovanni da
Udine's frescoes in the cupola, the relics of which have since been
buried under cold Florentine whitewash.
All the views I have advanced in the foregoing paragraphs as to the
point at which Michelangelo abandoned this chapel, and his probable
designs for its completion, are in the last resort based upon an
important document penned at the instance of the Duke of Florence by
Vasari to Buonarroti, not long before the old man's death in Rome.
This epistle has so weighty a bearing upon the matter in hand that I
shall here translate it. Careful study of its fluent periods will
convince an unprejudiced mind that the sacristy, as we now see it, is
even less representative of its maker's design than it was when Vasari
wrote. The frescoes of Giovanni da Udine are gone. It will also show
that the original project involved a wealth of figurative decoration,
statuary, painting, stucco, which never arrived at realisation.
VII
Vasari, writing in the spring of 1562, informs Michelangelo concerning
the Academy of Design founded by Duke Cosimo de' Medici, and of the
Duke's earnest desire that he should return to Florence in order that
the sacristy at S. Lorenzo may be finished. "Your reasons for not
coming are accepted as sufficient. He is therefore considering
--forasmuch as the place is being used now for religious services by day
and night, according to the intention of Pope Clement--he is
considering, I say, a plan for erecting the statues which are missing in
the niches above the sepulchres and the tabernacles above the doors. The
Duke then wishes that all the eminent sculptors of this academy, in
competition man with man, should each of them make one statue, and that
the painters in like manner should exercise their art upon the chapel.
Designs are to be prepared for the arches according to your own project,
including works of painting and of stucco; the other ornaments and the
pavement are to be provided; in short, he intends that the new
academicians shall complete the whole imperfect scheme, in order that
the world may see that, while so many men of genius still exist among
us, the noblest work which was ever yet conceived on earth has not been
left unfinished. He has commissioned me to write to you and unfold his
views, begging you at the same time to favour him by communicating to
himself or to me what your intentions were, or those of the late Pope
Clement, with regard to the name and title of the chapel; moreover, to
inform us what designs you made for the four tabernacles on each side of
the Dukes Lorenzo and Giuliano; also what you projected for the eight
statues above the doors and in the tabernacles of the corners; and,
finally, what your idea was of the paintings to adorn the flat walls and
the semicircular spaces of the chapel. He is particularly anxious that
you should be assured of his determination to alter nothing you have
already done or planned, but, on the contrary, to carry out the whole
work according to your own conception. The academicians too are
unanimous in their hearty desire to abide by this decision. I am
furthermore instructed to tell you, that if you possess sketches,
working cartoons, or drawings made for this purpose, the same would be
of the greatest service in the execution of his project; and he promises
to be a good and faithful administrator, so that honour may ensue. In
case you do not feel inclined to do all this, through the burden of old
age or for any other reason, he begs you at least to communicate with
some one who shall write upon the subject; seeing that he would be
greatly grieved, as indeed would the whole of our academy, to have no
ray of light from your own mind, and possibly to add things to your
masterpiece which were not according to your designs and wishes. We all
of us look forward to being comforted by you, if not with actual work,
at least with words. His Excellency founds this hope upon your former
willingness to complete the edifice by allotting statues to Tribolo,
Montelupo, and the Friar (Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli). The last named of
these masters is here, eagerly desirous to have the opportunity of doing
you honour. So are Francesco Sangallo, Giovanni Bologna, Benvenuto
Cellini, Ammanato, Rossi and Vincenzio Danti of Perugia, not to mention
other sculptors of note. The painters, headed by Bronzino, include many
talented young men, skilled in design, and colourists, quite capable of
establishing an honourable reputation. Of myself I need not speak. You
know well that in devotion, attachment, love, and loyalty (and let me
say this with prejudice to no one) I surpass the rest of your admirers
by far. Therefore, I entreat you, of your goodness, to console his
Excellency, and all these men of parts, and our city, as well as to show
this particular favour to myself, who have been selected by the Duke to
write to you, under the impression that, being your familiar and loving
friend, I might obtain from you some assistance of sterling utility for
the undertaking. His Excellency is prepared to spend both substance and
labour on the task, in order to honour you. Pray then, albeit age is
irksome, endeavour to aid him by unfolding your views; for, in doing so,
you will confer benefits on countless persons, and will be the cause of
raising all these men of parts to higher excellence, each one of whom
has learned what he already knows in the sacristy, or rather let me say
our school."
This eloquent despatch informs us very clearly that the walls of the
sacristy, above the tall Corinthian order which, encloses the part
devoted to sculpture, were intended to be covered with stucco and
fresco paintings, completing the polychromatic decoration begun by
Giovanni da Udine in the cupola. Twelve statues had been designed for
the niches in the marble panelling; and one word used by Vasari,
_facciate_, leaves the impression that the blank walls round and
opposite the altar were also to be adorned with pictures. We remain
uncertain how Michelangelo originally meant to dispose of the colossal
Madonna with SS. Damian and Cosimo.
Unhappily, nothing came of the Duke's project. Michelangelo was either
unable or unwilling--probably unable--to furnish the necessary plans
and drawings. In the eighth chapter of this book I have discussed the
hesitations with regard to the interior of the sacristy which are
revealed by some of his extant designs for it. We also know that he
was not in the habit of preparing accurate working cartoons for the
whole of a large scheme, but that he proceeded from point to point,
trusting to slight sketches and personal supervision of the work.
Thus, when Vasari wrote to him from Rome about the staircase of the
library, he expressed a perfect readiness to help, but could only
remember its construction in a kind of dream. We may safely assume,
then, that he had not sufficient material to communicate; plans
definite enough in general scope and detailed incident to give a true
conception of his whole idea were lacking.
VIII
Passing to aesthetical considerations, I am forced to resume here what
I published many years ago about the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo, as it now
exists. Repeated visits to that shrine have only renewed former
impressions, which will not bear to be reproduced in other language,
and would lose some of their freshness by the stylistic effort. No
other course remains then but to quote from my own writings, indorsing
them with such weight as my signature may have acquired since they
were first given to the world.
"The sacristy may be looked on either as the masterpiece of a sculptor
who required fit setting for his statues, or of an architect who
designed statues to enhance the structure he had planned. Both arts
are used with equal ease, nor has the genius of Michelangelo dealt
more masterfully with the human frame than with the forms of Roman
architecture in this chapel. He seems to have paid no heed to classic
precedent, and to have taken no pains to adapt the parts to the
structural purpose of the building. It was enough for him to create a
wholly novel framework for the modern miracle of sculpture it
enshrines, attending to such rules of composition as determine light
and shade, and seeking by the relief of mouldings and pilasters to
enhance the terrible and massive forms that brood above the Medicean
tombs. The result is a product of picturesque and plastic art as true
to the Michelangelesque spirit as the Temple of the Wingless Victory
to that of Pheidias. But where Michelangelo achieved a triumph of
boldness, lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie; and this
chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose simplicity, proved a
stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to
despise propriety and violate the laws of structure.
"We may assume then that the colossal statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo
were studied with a view to their light and shadow as much as to their
form; and this is a fact to be remembered by those who visit the
chapel where Buonarroti laboured both as architect and sculptor. Of
the two Medici, it is not fanciful to say that the Duke of Urbino is
the most immovable of spectral shapes eternalised in marble; while the
Duke of Nemours, more graceful and elegant, seems intended to present
a contrast to this terrible thought-burdened form. The allegorical
figures, stretched on segments of ellipses beneath the pedestals of
the two Dukes, indicate phases of darkness and of light, of death and
life. They are two women and two men; tradition names them Night and
Day, Twilight and Dawning. Thus in the statues themselves and in their
attendant genii we have a series of abstractions, symbolising the
sleep and waking of existence, action and thought, the gloom of death,
the lustre of life, and the intermediate states of sadness and of hope
that form the borderland of both. Life is a dream between two
slumbers; sleep is death's twin-brother; night is the shadow of death;
death is the gate of life:--such is the mysterious mythology wrought
by the sculptor of the modern world in marble. All these figures, by
the intensity of their expression, the vagueness of their symbolism,
force us to think and question. What, for example, occupies Lorenzo's
brain? Bending forward, leaning his chin upon his wrist, placing the
other hand upon his knee, on what does he for ever ponder?
"The sight, as Rogers said well, 'fascinates and is intolerable.'
Michelangelo has shot the beaver of the helmet forward on his
forehead, and bowed his head, so as to clothe the face in darkness.
But behind the gloom there lurks no fleshless skull, as Rogers
fancied. The whole frame of the powerful man is instinct with some
imperious thought. Has he outlived his life and fallen upon
everlasting contemplation? Is he brooding, injured and indignant, over
his own doom and the extinction of his race? Is he condemned to
witness in immortal immobility the woes of Italy he helped to cause?
Or has the sculptor symbolised in him the burden of that personality
we carry with us in this life, and bear for ever when we wake into
another world? Beneath this incarnation of oppressive thought there
lie, full length and naked, the figures of Dawn and Twilight, Morn and
Evening. So at least they are commonly called, and these names are not
inappropriate; for the breaking of the day and the approach of night
are metaphors for many transient conditions of the soul. It is only as
allegories in a large sense, comprehending both the physical and
intellectual order, and capable of various interpretation, that any of
these statues can be understood. Even the Dukes do not pretend to be
portraits, and hence in part perhaps the uncertainty that has gathered
round them. Very tranquil and noble is Twilight: a giant in repose, he
meditates, leaning upon his elbow, looking down. But Dawn starts from
her couch, as though some painful summons had reached her, sunk in
dreamless sleep, and called her forth to suffer. Her waking to
consciousness is like that of one who has been drowned, and who finds
the return to life agony. Before her eyes, seen even through the mists
of slumber, are the ruin and the shame of Italy. Opposite lies Night,
so sorrowful, so utterly absorbed in darkness and the shade of death,
that to shake off that everlasting lethargy seems impossible. Yet she
is not dead. If we raise our voices, she too will stretch her limbs,
and, like her sister, shudder into sensibility with sighs. Only we
must not wake her; for he who fashioned her has told us that her sleep
of stone is great good fortune. Both of these women are large and
brawny, unlike the Fates of Pheidias, in their muscular maturity. The
burden of Michelangelo's thought was too tremendous to be borne by
virginal and graceful beings. He had to make women no less capable of
suffering, no less world-wearied, than his country.
"Standing before these statues, we do not cry, How beautiful! We
murmur, How terrible, how grand! Yet, after long gazing, we find them
gifted with beauty beyond grace. In each of them there is a
palpitating thought, torn from the artist's soul and crystallised in
marble. It has been said that architecture is petrified music. In the
Sacristy of S. Lorenzo we feel impelled to remember phrases of
Beethoven. Each of these statues becomes for us a passion, fit for
musical expression, but turned like Niobe to stone. They have the
intellectual vagueness, the emotional certainty, that belong to the
motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left without a key,
sculpture has passed beyond her old domain of placid concrete form.
The anguish of intolerable emotion, the quickening of the
consciousness to a sense of suffering, the acceptance of the
inevitable, the strife of the soul with destiny, the burden and the
passion of mankind:--that is what they contain in their cold
chisel-tortured marble. It is open to critics of the school of Lessing
to object that here is the suicide of sculpture. It is easy to remark
that those strained postures and writhen limbs may have perverted the
taste of lesser craftsmen. Yet if Michelangelo was called to carve
Medicean statues after the sack of Rome and the fall of Florence--if
he was obliged in sober sadness to make sculpture a fit language for
his sorrow-laden heart--how could he have wrought more truthfully than
this? To imitate him without sharing his emotion or comprehending his
thoughts, as the soulless artists of the decadence attempted, was
without all doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not
without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the
fair antique _Heiterkeit_ and _Allgemeinheit_ were beyond his reach."
That this regret is not wholly sentimental may be proved, I think, by
an exchange of verses, which we owe to Vasari's literary sagacity. He
tells us that when the statue of the Night was opened to the public
view, it drew forth the following quatrain from an author unknown to
himself by name:--
_The Night thou seest here, posed gracefully
In act of slumber, was by an Angel wrought
Out of this stone; sleeping, with life she's fraught:
Wake her, incredulous wight; she'll speak to thee._
Michelangelo would have none of these academical conceits and
compliments. He replied in four verses, which show well enough what
thoughts were in his brain when he composed the nightmare-burdened,
heavy-sleeping women:
_Dear is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
So long as ruin and dishonour reign:
To hear naught, to feel naught, is my great gain;
Then wake me not; speak in an undertone._