Painting the Sistine Chapel – 2

On his return to Rome in 1508, Michelangelo had found Julius II not cooled toward him, but preoccupied by new projects.

Continuing Painting the Sistine Chapel,
our selection from Charles Clement. The selection is presented in four easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Painting the Sistine Chapel.

Time: 1508
Place: Saint Peters Basilica, Vatican City

Such is the very abridged history of this monument, which was not entirely completed till 1550, after having caused for nearly half a century real torment to Buonarroti. The Duke of Urbino was not satisfied, neither was Michelangelo. The figures, originally intended to form part of a colossal whole under the great roof of St. Peter’s, appear too large for the place they now occupy. The importance of the statue of “Moses” misleads the mind, suggesting the idea that the monument itself is raised to the memory of the Hebrew legislator, rather than to that of the warrior-pope. At all events, in this statue is centered the principal, we may say the unique, interest of the tomb. This prodigious work must be in the memory of all. Amid the masterpieces of ancient and modern sculpture the “Moses” remains ever unparalleled, a type, not irreproachable, but the most striking, of a new art. I do not speak of the consummate science which Michelangelo displays in the modelling of this statue; the Greeks were learned in another fashion but were so equally with him. Whence comes it, nevertheless, that in spite of bizarreries needless to defend or to deny, and although this austere figure is far from attaining or pretending to the serene and tranquil beauty which the ancients regarded as the supreme term of art, whence is it that it produces upon the most prejudiced mind an irresistible impression? It is that it is more than human, that it lifts the soul into a world of feelings and ideas of which the ancients knew less than we do. Their voluptuous art, in deifying the human form, held down thought to earth. The “Moses” of Michelangelo beheld God, heard that voice of thunder, and bears the terrible impress of what he saw and heard on Mount Sinai: his profound eye is scrutinizing the mysteries he vaguely sees in his prophetic dreams. Is it the Moses of the Bible? I cannot say. Is it in this way Praxiteles and Phidias would have represented Lycurgus and Solon? We may deny it boldly. The legislators in their hands would have been the embodiment of law; they would have represented an abstraction in a form whose harmonious beauty nothing could alter. Moses is not merely the legislator of a people. Not thought alone dwells beneath this powerful brow; he feels, he suffers, he lives in a moral world which Jehovah has opened to him, and, although above humanity, is a man.

On his return to Rome in 1508, Michelangelo had found Julius II not cooled toward him, but preoccupied by new projects. The Pope made no allusion to his monument, and was absorbed in the reconstruction of St. Peter’s, which he had confided to Bramante. Raphael was beginning at the same time the frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura; and two biographers of Michelangelo, whose testimony, it is true, on this point may be suspected, agree in saying that the architect of St. Peter’s, jealous of the superiority of the Florentine sculptor, fearing lest he should discover the mistakes committed in his recent constructions, and the malversations of which perhaps he was not innocent, advised the Pope to confide to him the painting of the ceiling of the chapel built by Sixtus IV, hoping to compromise and ruin him by engaging him in works of which he had no experience.

Julius adopted the idea, sent for Michelangelo, and ordered him to begin forthwith. Buonarroti had had no practice in fresco-painting since his student days under Ghirlandajo. He knew that the painting of a ceiling was not an easy matter. He pleaded every excuse, proposed that the commission should be given to Raphael, saying that for his part, being but a sculptor, he could not succeed. The Pope was inflexible, and Michelangelo began the ceiling on May 10, 1508, the most prodigious monument perhaps that ever sprang from the human mind.

Julius had ordered Bramante to construct the necessary scaffoldings, but the latter did it in so inefficient a manner that Michelangelo was obliged to dispense with his assistance and construct the whole machinery himself. He had sent for some of his fellow-students from Florence, not, as Vasari, by some strange aberration, states, because he was ignorant of fresco-painting, since all the artists of the time understood it, and the pupil of Ghirlandajo had himself practiced it, but because his fellow-students had had more experience in it, and he wished to be helped in a work of this importance. He was, however, so dissatisfied with their work that he effaced all that they did, and, without any assistance, if we are to believe his biographer, even grinding his own colors, he shut himself up in the chapel, beginning at dawn, quitting at nightfall, often sleeping in his clothes on the scaffolding, allowing himself but a slight repast at the end of the day, and letting no one see the works he had begun.

Hardly had he set to work when unforeseen difficulties presented themselves, which were on the point of making him relinquish the whole thing. The colors, while still fresh, were covered with a mist, the cause of which he was unable to discover. Utterly discouraged, he went to the Pope and said: “I forewarned your holiness that painting was not my art; all I have done is lost, and, if you do not believe me, order someone to come and see it.” Julius sent San Gallo, who saw that the accident was caused by the quality of the time, and that Michelangelo had made his plaster too wet. Buonarroti, after this, proceeded with the utmost ardor, and in the space of twenty months, without further accident, finished the first half.

The mystery with which Michelangelo surrounded himself keenly excited public curiosity. In spite of the painter’s objection, Julius frequently visited him in the chapel, and notwithstanding his great age ascended the ladder, Michelangelo extending a hand that he might with safety reach the platform. He grew impatient; he was eager that all Rome should share his admiration. It was in vain that Michelangelo objected that all the machinery would have to be reconstructed, that half the ceiling was not completed; the Pope would listen to nothing, and the chapel was accordingly opened to the public on the morning of November 1, 1509. Julius was the first to arrive before the dust occasioned by the taking down of the scaffolding was laid, and celebrated mass there the same day.

The success was immense. Bramante, seeing that his evil intentions, far from succeeding, had only served to add to the glory of Michelangelo, who had come triumphant out of the trap he had laid for him, besought the Pope to permit Raphael to paint the other half of the chapel. Notwithstanding the affection he bore his architect, Julius adhered to his resolution, and Michelangelo resumed, after a brief interruption, the painting of the ceiling; but rumors of these cabals reached him. They troubled him, and he complained to the Pope of Bramante’s conduct. It is probable that the coolness which always existed between Raphael and Michelangelo dates from this period.

Continued.

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