Part 7 (1/2)

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 s said since then, to which, when I heard the in this way, they are doing wrong;' not that I believed the reports; and God grant they are not true About a o, some one who makes a show of friendshi+p for me spoke very evilly about their deeds I rebuked hied hiain to me

However, I should like Buonarroto quietly to find out how the ru calumniated the Medici; for if it is souard”

The Buonarroti fah 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 Governelo:--

”Dearest Father,--Your last inforh I already knew so We must have patience, commit ourselves to God, and repent of our sins; for these trials are solely due to theratitude I never conversed with a people rateful and puffed up than the Florentines Therefore, if judght and reasonable As for the sixty ducats you tell me you are fined, I think this a scurvy trick, and a as it pleases God I rite 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 ith 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 hardshi+ps 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 a 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 sa 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 anted leave to study the Cartoon; first begging Buonarroto to procure the keys for hilad to hear that the permission was refused It does not appear certain whether this was the saelo 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 hued upon the Sistine Condivi tells us that fro up at the vault, he lost for so 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 fronant 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 rind: My buttock like a crupper bears uided wander to and fro; In frontit 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 aiun that bends awry

Come then, Giovanni, try To succouris my shame_

CHAPTER VI

I

The Sistine Chapel was built in 1473 by Baccio Pontelli, a Florentine architect, for Pope Sixtus IV It is a sith, 44 in breadth, and 68 in height fro consists of one expansive flattened vault, the central portion of which offers a large plane surface, well adapted to fresco decoration The building is lighted by twelve s, six upon each side of its length These are placed high up, their rounded arches running parallel with the first spring of the vaulting The ends of the chapel are closed by flat walls, against the western of which is raised the altar

When Michelangelo was called to paint here, he found both sides of the building, just below the s, decorated in fresob Perugino, Cosinorelli, and Domenico Ghirlandajo These masters had depicted, in a series of twelve subjects, the history of Moses and the life of Jesus Above the lines of fresco, in the spaces between the s and along the eastern end at the saht Popes

The spaces below the frescoed histories, down to the seats which ran along the pave for the tapestries which Raffaello afterwards supplied frolish Crown At the west end, above the altar, shone three decorative frescoes by Perugino, representing the assu of Moses and the Nativity The two last of these pictures opened respectively the history of Moses and the life of Christ, so that the Old and New Testaments were equally illustrated upon the Chapel walls At the opposite, or eastern end, Ghirlandajo painted the Resurrection, and there was a corresponding picture of Michael contending with Satan for the body of Moses

Such was the aspect of the Sistine Chapel when Michelangelo began his great work Perugino's three frescoes on the ere afterwards dement The two frescoes on the east wall are now poor pictures by very inferior masters; but the twelve Scripture histories and Botticelli's twenty-eight Popes remain from the last years of the fifteenth century

Taken in their aggregate, the wall-paintings I have described afforded a fair sample of Ue of evolution It remained for Buonarroti to cover the vault and the whole western end withwhat Vasari called the ” urative arts, and rendered any further progress on the saan with Niccol of Pisa and with Ciino and Pinturicchio, Piero della Francesca and Signorelli, Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, the Ghirlandajo brothers, the Lippi and Botticelli, effloresced in Michelangelo, leaving nothing for aftercoelo, instinctively and on principle, reacted against the decorative methods of the fifteenth century If he had to paint a biblical or ical subject, he avoided landscapes, trees, flowers, birds, beasts, and subordinate groups of figures He eschewed the arabesques, the labyrinths of foliage and fruit enclosing pictured panels, the candelabra and gay bands of variegated patterns, which enabled a _quattrocento_ painter, like Gozzoli or Pinturicchio, to produce brilliant and hareneral effects at a sy Where the human body struck the keynote of the ed that such simple adjuncts and nave concessions to the pleasure of the eye should be avoided An architectural foundation for the plastic forrandiose in line as could be fashi+oned, must suffice These principles he put i For the vault of the Sistine he designed a hty architectural framework in the for pilasters, with bold cornices, projecting brackets, and ribbed arches flung across the void of heaven Since the whole of this ideal building was painted upon plaster, its inconsequence, want of support, and disconnection froround-plan of the chapel do not strike the mind It is felt to be a mere basis for the display of pictorial art, the theatre for a thousand shapes of dignity and beauty

I have called this iinary tes in the flattened surface of the central vault They are unequal in size, five being short parallelogra spaces of the sah these the eye is supposed to pierce the roof and discover the unfettered region of the heavens But here again Michelangelo betrayed the inconsequence of his invention He filled the spaces in question with nine do the history of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge Taking our position at the west end of the chapel and looking upwards, we see in the first coht fro the sun and thethe ocean with His brooding influence; in the fourth, creating Ada Eve The sixth represents the temptation of our first parents and their expulsion fro the ark; the eighth depicts the Deluge, and the ninth the drunkenness of Noah It is clear that, between the architectural conception of a roof opening on the skies and these pictures of events which happened upon earth, there is no logical connection Indeed, Michelangelo's new systeerously upon the barocco style, and contained within itself the germs of a vicious mannerism

It would be captious and unjust to push this criticisures and the pictures of the Sistine vault is so obviously conventional, every point of vantage has been so skilfully appropriated to plastic uses, every square inch of the ideal building becomes so naturally, and without confusion, a pedestal for the huination which here for the first ti in a single organism Each part of the immense composition, down to the smallest detail, is necessary to the total effect We are in the presence of a most complicated yet mathematically ordered scheht In spite of its complexity and scientific precision, the vault of the Sistine does not strike theartificial or worked out by calculation, but as being predestined to existence, inevitable, a cosmos instinct with vitality

On the pendentives between the spaces of the s, running up to the ends of each of the five lesser pictures, Michelangelo placed alternate prophets and sibyls upon fir the side-walls of the chapel The end-walls sustain each of theures are introduced as heralds and pioneers of Christ the Saviour, whose presence on the earth is demanded by the fall of e In the lunettes above the s and the arched recesses or spandrels over they of Christ and of His Mother At each of the four corner-spandrels of the ceiling, Michelangelo painted, in spaces of a very peculiar shape and on a surface of enificent subject sy of the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness; the second, the punishment of Haman; the third, the victory of David over Goliath; the fourth, Judith with the head of Holofernes

Thus, with a profound knowledge of the Bible, and with an intense feeling for religious syelo unrolled the history of the creation of the world and man, the entrance of sin into the human heart, the punishment of sin by water, and the reappearance of sin in Noah's fa done this, he intiranted to the Jewish people--types and syence--that a Saviour would arise to redee human race In confirmation of this promise, he called twelve potent witnesses, seven of the Hebrew prophets and five of the Pagan sibyls

He made appeal to history, and set around the thrones on which these witnesses are seated scenes detached from the actual lives of our Lord's human ancestors