Michelangelo Buonarroti

V

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling

In 1505, Michelangelo was recalled to Rome by Pope Julius II to fulfil a commission to make a tomb for the pope. Having started on the project, Michelangelo left Rome for Florence and Bologna. On his return to Rome in 1508, the pope’s interest had turned to the new basilica of St Peter’s, and he ordered Michelangelo to abandon the tomb and start work on what was to be his most magnificent achievement, the frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in St Peter’s, which he completed in 1512.

The vault of the papal chapel was decorated with an intricate scheme of five large and four small scenes from the Book of Genesis, beginning with God Separating Light from Darkness and including the Creation of Adam, the Creation of Eve, the Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, and the Flood. The simulated architecture painted around the smaller narratives is adorned by naked youths, who appear to represent a Neoplatonic ideal of human beings, while the sides of the vault contain the immense forms of prophets and sibyls, who were regarded as having foretold the coming of Christ. Together with further biblical scenes and figures on the edge of the ceiling, these frescos constitute one of the grandest and most harmonious creations of the High Renaissance.

VI

The Tomb of Julius II

With the completion of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo was able to return to his sculpture, in particular figures for the tomb of Pope Julius II, which had originally been commissioned in 1505. In 1513 a second contract was drawn up by the pope’s heirs, as a result of which Michelangelo produced two remarkable although unfinished works, known as the Dying Slave and the Rebellious Slave (1513, Louvre, Paris), with characteristically expressive, twisted poses. These were followed by the bulky, immensely powerful sculpture of Moses (1515-1516, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome), which recalls the figures of the prophets Jeremiah and Joel in the Sistine Chapel. They demonstrate Michelangelo’s approach to carving: he conceived of the figure as being imprisoned in the block; by removing excess stone, the form was released.

Despite this activity, it was only after three more contracts and 30 years that Julius’s tomb was finally erected (in 1545), not in St Peter’s but in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome. By this time Michelangelo had begun a further four Slaves (1527-1528, Accademia, Florence), which are much less finished than the earlier ones, and the Victory (1527-1530, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence), whose spiral composition was to be particularly influential on the development of Mannerism. Of all these works, only the Moses was included in the final tomb, where it was accompanied by figures of Leah and Rachel, as well as by various other sculptures that Michelangelo had assigned to his assistants. The monument’s eventual format was that of a modest wall-tomb, in contrast to the immense free-standing structure that had originally been intended. This protracted failure to realize the original scheme led Michelangelo’s biographer Ascanio Condivi to describe the project as the “Tragedy of the Tomb”.

VII

The Medici Chapel

Though the Julius Tomb had required architectural planning, Michelangelo’s activity as an architect began in earnest only when, as a result of the accession of the Medici pope Leo X in 1514, he began a series of works concerning the Medici parish church, San Lorenzo, in Florence. The first was a design for the façade, commissioned in 1516, which was never executed but led to two further projects of great importance.

One of these was the Medici Chapel, or New Sacristy, next to the main church, which was commissioned in 1520 (during Leo X’s reign), but was still unfinished when Michelangelo returned to Rome in 1534. The Chapel, a centrally planned domed building, contains the wall-tombs of two relatively undistinguished members of the Medici family: Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino. Both men are shown seated in a niche above a sarcophagus, on which recline two nude figures, one male and one female, representing Night and Day, or Dawn and Dusk. All the recumbent sculptures are extremely muscular, with strained, unstable poses, while the two Medici are given contrasting gestures and expressions intended to represent the active and contemplative lives. Despite these differences, both Lorenzo and Giuliano look towards the end wall, where the Virgin and Child are seated, flanked by the Medici patron saints, Cosmas and Damian. As well as containing an extremely sophisticated programme of sculpture, the Chapel is also characterized by a highly unconventional architectural style that greatly influenced Mannerist buildings later in the 16th century. This is exemplified by the treatment of the tabernacle above each of the doors, in which the pilasters become wider rather than narrower as they rise, while the niche that they frame encroaches into the area enclosed by the pediment above.

VIII

The Laurentian Library

An even more extraordinary effect was achieved in 1524-1534 in the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, also next to San Lorenzo. Here, pairs of columns set claustrophobically into the wall, rather than projecting from it, rest on consoles that seem far too small to support them. The uncomfortable sensation created by this arrangement is enhanced by the tall, narrow proportions of the room as a whole, and by the overpowering three-flighted staircase (completed 1559-1562) that rises to the main part of the library.

Inevitably, Michelangelo’s career was affected by the political and religious disturbances of the period. When the Medici were expelled from Florence in 1527, the construction of the Medici Chapel was suspended, and Michelangelo took the side of the Republicans. However, on their return in 1530, the Medici pardoned him for his disloyalty, and he continued to work for them until his final move to Rome in 1534.

IX

The Last Judgement

The rest of Michelangelo’s career was spent in a city whose mood had been transformed by the Sack of Rome in 1527, and by the convulsions caused by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The effect of this new cultural climate can clearly be seen by comparing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with the Last Judgement, an enormous altarpiece that Michelangelo painted for the chapel between 1536 and 1541. While the earlier work exemplified the Neoplatonic humanism of Julius II’s reign, the Last Judgement expresses a far more troubled vision of human beings. The crowded, dynamic composition is dominated by the colossal form of Christ, who is surrounded by a mass of nude, often contorted, figures. These are arranged in a circular motion that begins in the left of the fresco, where the dead are shown rising from their graves, and runs round the upper part of the wall, finishing in the bottom right, where the damned in Hell are tormented by hideous demons.

The Last Judgement was commissioned by the Farnese pope Paul III, for whom Michelangelo also painted two dramatic frescos, the Conversion of St Paul and the Crucifixion of St Peter (1542-1550), in the Pauline Chapel, also in the Vatican. The emotive quality of these paintings can also be seen in two late sculptures of the Pietà, one (Florence Cathedral) dating from the late 1550s and the other (Castello Sforzesco, Milan) that Michelangelo worked on shortly before his death in 1564. Both works clearly convey the intensity of Michelangelo’s emotional involvement with their subjects: the former even includes a self-portrait in the features of Joseph of Arimathea. Michelangelo’s piety is also eloquently expressed in his sonnets, in which he passionately repents his past worldliness: “Take from me all liking for what the world holds dear and for such of its fair things as I esteem and prize, so that, before death, I may have some earnest of eternal life.”