“The Pieta”
St. Peter’s, Rome
On January 25, 1503, a solemn conclave of artists resident in Florence met in the Opera del Duomo to decide where the great figure should be placed. Piero di Cosimo—readers of Romola will remember him—Cosimo Rosselli, Botticelli, then a man of sixty-six, Filippino Lippi, and Da Vinci were among those present. Francesco Monciatto, a wood-carver, began by advancing the proposition that the statue should be put up before the Duomo, the site proposed for the original work in fact. Cosimo Rosselli and Botticelli supported the proposal. Giuliano di San Gallo then suggested the Loggia dei Lanzi as an alternative on the ground that the marble had been softened by exposure and might not last. The “Second Herald” objected to this, fearing that ceremonies in the Loggia would be interfered with, and his remarks called Leonardi da Vinci to his feet. Finally Piero di Cosimo, a man of the soundest common sense in spite of his reputation for freakishness, with the aid of Salvestro, a jeweller, and Filippino Lippi, carried the proposal that the choice should be left to the sculptor himself on the ground that “he would know better how it should be.” Angelo’s decision was for the steps at the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio. The curious may see it in position in the portrait of Francesco Ferruccio, the Florentine general, in which Cosimo used the square in front of the Palace as a background. The work is numbered 895 in the National Gallery collection.
But let us return for a moment to the Court of Lorenzo de Medici and its galaxy of scholars and artists. The creed of the Court of the Magnificent is summed up for ever in the great right hand of the “David.” The sculptor purposely emphasized its size. Michael Angelo desired to lay stress upon the part which the boy took in the struggle rather than to portray him as a mere instrument. To have been at one with the spirit of the biblical narrative, the weakness of the human agent would have been emphasized—as it was, indeed, in the “David” of Donatello. But the right hand of Angelo’s “David” stands for a new view—the Greek view—of the part mankind must play in the world. Human endeavour, rather than divine interference, is now to perfect man. By his own effort, by the exercise of his own free will, man is to work out his end.
The influence of this new conception upon the art of Michael Angelo is equally noticeable in the “Pieta,” a rather earlier sculpture, and the first work of our artist’s maturity.
The Virgin Mother is seated upon the stone on which the cross had been erected. The dead Christ lies before her. The scene corresponds with nothing in the biblical account. It illustrates no single verse. But it does more. It breathes the very spirit of the Christian narrative, for it interprets its inner meaning in its most vital and useful sense. We can see at once that Angelo would have been false to his art had he been more faithful to the current conception of Christian truth. He was no preacher. He was not expounding a faith. What he took from the Bible story was the divine grief of a mother for an all-perfect son. His task was to translate that without the loss of one iota of physical or moral beauty. Condivi tells us that there were many who complained that the mother was too young when compared with her son, and that he himself laid the matter before Michael Angelo for explanation. The sculptor’s answer is an example of what a perfect humanist—and that is very near to saying a perfect man—would have said. It is so characteristic of the sculptor that no apology for quoting it at length is necessary. “One day,” says Condivi, “I was talking to Michael Angelo of this objection.”
MICHAEL ANGELO
(TOMB OF JULIUS II.)
“Do you not know,” he said, “that chaste women retain their fresh looks much longer than those who are not chaste? How much more, therefore, a virgin in whom not even the least unchaste desire ever arose? And I tell you, moreover, that such freshness and flower of youth besides being maintained in her by natural causes, it may possibly be that it was ordained by the Divine Power to prove to the world the virginity and perpetual purity of the Mother. It was not necessary in the Son; but rather the contrary; wishing to show that the Son of God took upon himself a true human body, subject to all the ills of man, excepting only sin; he did not allow the divine in him to hold back the human, but let it run its course and obey its laws, as was proved in his appointed time. Do not wonder then, that I have for all these reasons, made the most Holy Virgin, Mother of God, a great deal younger in comparison with her Son than she is usually represented. To the Son I have allotted his full age.”
The “Pieta” and the “David” are the typical works of Angelo’s first period—that in which the influences of humanism were paramount. But it is in the sculptures of his second period that we can detect the workings of the deep philosophical poetry which inspired the most characteristic of his works—the tomb of Julius II. and the monuments in the Medici chapel at Florence.
Neither was ever finished. The Medici monuments are the more complete, for the majesty of the sculptor’s first conception for the tomb of Julius II. can now be only guessed from a few rough sketches, half a dozen measurements and the well-known “Moses.” Yet it occupies a unique place in the history of Italian art as the foremost work by an Italian sculptor which arose directly out of the ambition of the Church to make the Pope’s temporal authority equal his spiritual.
The principle of utilizing the painter, the sculptor, and the architect for this purpose had been enunciated fifty years earlier. Recognizing that the earlier aim, which had sought to enforce a spiritual despotism by making the belief in a God-inspired pontiff universal, had failed, Nicholas V. determined to try the effect of making the Pope into a king. His court was to be the centre of European culture. With the aid of the vast wealth poured into the papal coffers during the Jubilee of 1450, Nicholas began by making the Vatican quarter of Rome a veritable stronghold for the sovereign pontiff. His full ambition was disclosed when his will was read to the princes of the church assembled round his deathbed. In this Nicholas V. showed that the Popes could be secured from internal revolution and external force by one thing only. That was by making the seat of the papacy so splendid in the eyes of Christendom that it would possess the sanctity that had attached to Imperial Rome itself. It was this great aim that Michael Angelo spent the best years of his life in forwarding. The personal ambition of each Pope interfered with the free progress of the great ideal, but it furnished a strong motive for many years, and actuated both of Angelo’s great patrons, Julius II. and Leo X.
After finally settling in Rome Michael Angelo’s first task was the sculptured mausoleum of Julius II. Nicholas himself had started to rebuild the old basilica of St. Peter, in which Julius designed to set up his great tomb. Angelo suggested a great marble monument symbolical of the victory of human energy over death. Upon the lower tiers of a great pyramid the sculptor showed the arts and sciences which the Pope had loved to patronize. Above were the prophets and graces, of which the great statue of “Moses” was one. The apex of the pyramid was a group in which the earth and the heavens upheld the open tomb where the dead pope awaited the Resurrection hour. In all forty figures. The vastness of the conception can best be realized from the fact that the sculptor spent eight months among the marble mines at Carrara quarrying the necessary stone. The space covered by the design was about twenty-five feet by forty. It was soon found that the basilica was not large enough to contain the monument. “What would be the cost of rebuilding?” asked Julius. “100,000 scudi,” said the sculptor. “Let it be 200,000.” And Michael Angelo set to work.
This great dream was never realized. The sculptor worked upon it for some years and then Julius was persuaded to entrust him with a task at least as great—that of decorating the vault of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
The Medici Tombs
For almost twenty years Michael Angelo produced no great sculpture. Then came what are perhaps the greatest works of Renaissance sculpture, the monuments in the Medici Chapel at Florence. They were executed at the command of Clement VII., the second Medicean pope. His purpose was to build an abiding testimony to the greatness of his house, which had now become supreme in Italy by making itself as powerful in Rome as it had been in Florence.
Evicted from Florence, the Medici had turned to Rome. Leo X., a son of the Magnificent, had succeeded Julius. He in turn was followed by Clement VII. To Clement came the idea of building a sacristy in San Lorenzo in honour of the Medici family. His intention was that monuments of Cosimo, Lorenzo, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, Leo X. and himself should be placed in the sacristy. Only two—those to the Dukes of Nemours and Urbino—were finished. A grim commentary upon the Medicean record, this. The two groups actually completed are identified, not with the memory of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Leo X., but with two illegitimate scions of the house.
The whole building was designed by Michael Angelo himself and was panelled to receive the sculptures, every architectural feature being planned to enhance the emotional effect of the great marble groups. In these, Michael Angelo cast aside the pretty compliments upon which he had exercised his fancy when planning the vast tomb of Julius II.—the sorrowing arts and sciences, for instance. His aim was to create a perfectly beautiful resting-place for the mighty dead. This, and nothing more.
Let us endeavour to follow the train of Michael Angelo’s imagination as it gradually found the definite forms which were to realize its deepest beliefs: “A perfectly beautiful resting-place for the mighty dead.” Could anything be more fraught with all the mingled emotions and thoughts which human philosophy has tried in vain to unravel? Yet Michael Angelo was never surer of anything than that sculptured marble was capable of expressing it all. Even the feelings aroused by this mystery of mysteries—death—were not beyond the cold stone and hot chisel of the sculptor. Allied to this faith—that there was no thought too profound for marble to express—was his favourite fancy that the form of his finished work dwelt in the rough block. His chisel did but release it from its marble tomb. He was not the author, only the agent through whom his work saw the light. As he himself wrote in one of the sonnets:
“The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include; to break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.”
MICHAEL ANGELO