POPE JULIUS AND THE GRAND PROJECT
Thumb-Twiddling in Florence
Both Michelangelo�s biographers speak of this Florence stint as a period of inactivity and time-wasting. �He remained for some time doing almost nothing in these arts, dedicating himself to the reading of poets and vernacular orators and to writing sonnets for his own pleasure until, after the death of Pope Alexander VI, he was called to Rome by Pope Julius II......� (Condivi, pp. 28-29)
Yet it is hard to imagine how more could have been squeezed into two years than the colossal David and a smaller bronze David for the Gonfalonier, the Bruges Madonna, two marble roundels, the Tondo Toni painting, a marble St. Matthew (though never finished), and the cartoon for the Great Council Hall fresco. Such an output, unfinished or not, seems more than respectable.
Michelangelo was both fast and slow: arrancadas de corcel y paradas de burro, say the Spanish of this kind of behavior: rearing racehorse starts and unaccountable donkey halts. The man who could carve the eighteen-foot-high David in eighteen months, without help, if we are to believe Vasari (probably we shouldn�t), rarely finished any other figure his whole life long. Wherever he worked he left unfinished statues behind, most of them in a stage of blurry perfection. Was this always due to the changes of fortune and to fickle patrons? Obviously not. Every artist understands this. They all have a few perpetually unfinished works standing suggestively in the shop and they know why: they hate to destroy the work as it is, even in order to perfect it. Are they afraid of spoiling it, making it worse? That too. It is hard to believe that Michelangelo really improved the Slaves in the Louvre by finishing and polishing them. Their �brothers�, the Giants in the Accademia, at an earlier, rougher, stage of execution, seem more alive; just as the simple preliminary pen-and-ink sketch often seems �better��more forceful, more memorable�than the large, finished painting it became.
But now Michelangelo�s problem wasn�t whether to finish divine unfinished works but to get commissions. He was twenty-nine years old, a man with titanic vitality in the strongest years of his life, with a million ideas, and he�d just proven himself to be the best sculptor in Italy by carving the Piet� and the David. He knew he was meant to conceive and execute great works and he could no longer be content with chickenfeed projects like Cupids and Bachusses or little paintings for some rich man�s dining-room. Those days were over, or should have been. Where was his great patron? We know that it was Pope Julius but he didn�t. He looked around him and saw nothing and no one big enough for his talent. Should he try France? He was so impatient he could scream.
POPE JULIUS AND THE TOMB
His great patron had been there all along, waiting to become pope, politicking around, pulling all the strings, bribing cardinals for their vote, bearing arms even. Lately he had spent ten years outside of Italy, in exile, doing all he could to get that Spaniard Borgia out of the papal throne. As long as Borgia was pope, Julius had had to lay low and work from France: he was too easy to kill in Italy and Borgia had already tried twice.
He and Borgia understood each other perfectly: they were two of a kind. Both had had uncle popes who favored them, brought them to Rome, made rich princes out of them and introduced them to the power game. When they clashed at the 1492 conclave, in spite of bribes, Julius lost and then after the first assassination attempt he understood he would have to work against Borgia from a greater distance. Though he didn�t like France much he hurried right to the French court and when King Charles told him of his plans to seize Naples, Julius said he would come along on that expedition. If it succeeded Borgia could be deposed: any charges would do�say, corruption and simony.
But the French king�s campaign to seize Naples failed; and another by his successor Louis XII failed too.
Then suddenly Borgia died and Julius ran to Rome as fast as he could, handing out bribes left and right.
From Cowl to Riches
He was rich, though he had started out as poor as a monk. In fact, he had started out as a monk. Luck had it, if there is luck, that his uncle had become pope when Julius was twenty. And right away the uncle, Sixtus IV, made the lad a cardinal and gave him a few bishoprics�six in France and three in Italy, plus some juicy abbeys and other church rents so he might live as befits a cardinal, a Renaissance cardinal. Sixtus called the boy to Rome and taught him how to rule. He also told him to get an army together and battle a little for the Papacy. Julius turned out to be not just good but brilliant at all these skills and he became the pope�s confidant.
By the time his uncle died, Julius had learned what could be done at the top and he naturally wanted to try his hand. He knew he didn�t yet have the clout to become pope himself so he tried the next best thing: to get a man elected who would follow his advice. At that he succeeded: Innocent III became pope and Julius did the actual ruling for him. When Innocent died, in spite of all Julius� politicking and pressuring and bribing, his arch-enemy Rodrigo Borja (Borgia, as he was called in Italy) was elected and Julius was in for several years of hard times and exile.
But he wasn�t the kind of man who sits and bides his time until circumstances change: he spent those years making circumstances, forcing them his way. The two military campaigns failed but that wasn�t his fault. Now it was time for the cardinals to elect a new pope and he wanted that papacy with all his soul. Julius was getting old and who knows how long it would take him to carry out his plans and pull Italy back together?
Foiled Again
But again, the third time, he didn�t have his way. Borgia had stacked the College of Cardinals with his own kind (and kin), and there was a Medici in the running too and for the longest time there was no fumata bianca�the conclave couldn�t reach unanimity. Finally an old cardinal by the name of Piccolomini was elected.
So Michelangelo wasn�t the only one who was frustrated in a big way. At twenty-nine, he could whine just like Julius Caesar that he hadn�t accomplished anything memorable at the age when Alexander the Great had conquered all of Asia. But Giuliano della Rovere was sixty. How many more popes could he hold out for? Look at how suddenly death comes: Borgia, who was just his age and in the best of health, had died one weekend because of a silly fever. One nasty flu and the ballgame would be over.
Finally it happened. The new pope Piccolomini (Pius III) died after just twenty-seven days in office and this time Julius had his way with the conclave of cardinals. He was elected pope and right away started carrying out plans he knew so well he didn�t even have to write them down. He was going to get back the pieces of Italy Borgia had let go and drive out all the foreign powers. He was going to rebuild St. Peter�s and make it the greatest temple in the world. Of course it would house his tomb. He would do a thousand things if he lived.
The Great Tomb
Word of his big plans got around fast. All the artists thought their ship had come in. The architect Bramante was told to get right to work and design the new cathedral. Rafael Urbino was told to come up with a cartoon for frescos for the walls of the pope�s chambers. Michelangelo was told to draw up a design for a magnificent tomb, rich in ornaments and statuary.
Now this was his kind of commission. He quickly came up with a design, that, according to Vasari, surpassed every ancient or imperial tomb ever made. It was a small temple of marble, with statues�forty of them�on all sides and ornaments everywhere, with the pope�s sepulcre on high. He had it delivered to the pope and then waited to hear. Now things were going to work out. He had had enough of cheapskate patrons and men with little plans. This Julius was the big-time. If only God would let him live long enough for Michelangelo to complete his tomb!
He knew he would have to wait for several weeks while the new Pope handled all sorts of matters of state, as well as of the Church. This pope wasn�t a dreamy monk but a tough man of the world and a military leader as well, with clear political aims for his papacy. Michelangelo tried to learn patience but he couldn�t help dreaming up wonderful statues and he rehearsed over and over again the conversation he would have with Pope Julius when he was finally called for an audience.
Yet after several weeks he heard nothing. Nor after several months. One account says he waited more than a year and a half! The pope was busy. Once more it looked as though Michelangelo had been simply appropriated by a rich patron and kept inactive; once again it must have seemed that he had been used to appease the vanity of a rich man.
But no. When he was finally given an audience with the pope, he found him not only delighted with his design but ecstatic and heady with plans for rebuilding St. Peter�s and building his tomb�Michelangelo�s wonderful design�inside the new cathedral. �If you can make my tomb just half as good as your design, it�ll be the greatest tomb in the world,� he said. �Let�s get going. Where will we get all the marble?�
�I�ll see to that,� said Michelangelo. �Your Holiness won�t have to worry about a thing.�
Off to the Quarries
So, as soon as Michelangelo was installed in Rome, he had to leave for Carrara. By another account�that of both his biographers�he had been in Rome all this time, the year and a half since Julius� election, waiting for the pope to decide what to do with him. In any case, once the order to go ahead was given, he had to go to Carrara for the marbles. There aren�t blocks for forty giant figures lying around in a warehouse somewhere: you have to go quarry them; and he wanted to do that himself. He didn�t want to delegate such an important thing as the material out of which would come the greatest statues in the world. They were supposed to last forever; and you couldn�t trust a quarryman to find perfect blocks. You couldn�t trust anybody to do anything right.
Maybe he knew this little excursion would mean months of hard work in a marble quarry but it was a necessary part of the great project and he set out, says Vasari, �with very high hopes�. Going out to the quarries was itself a small adventure, a welcome change from the cramped and hectic city life of Rome, with its politics and disturbing rumors and cutthroat rivalries. Just because he specialized in the male nude doesn�t mean that Michelangelo failed to see beauty elsewhere. The mountains and the countryside must have worked like a drug on him during that spring trip. His plans got bigger and bigger.
He took along two assistants to help him excavate the marble at Carrara. With two helpers you can�t do much in a marble quarry. They were mere lackeys to assist him on the journey. He certainly counted on hiring workmen once he had reached Carrara and seen how many hands he needed and once he had received more cash from the pope. So far the pope had him paid out only a thousand crowns for expenses: he assumed those were merely the first installment. The pope seemed ready to spend all the money that was necessary.
But when he reached Carrara and began looking for good marble, he met with all kinds of impediments, the weeks started going by, and he ran short of cash. Finally whole months passed�eight of them�eight months of frustration while he did the work not of an artist but of a quarry foreman. No more money came from the pope and at first he spent his own, expecting reimbursement.
He drew a lot and daydreamed a lot as he looked at the marble cliffs. �Inspired by the masses of stone, he conceived many fantastic ideas for carving giant statues in the quarries, in order to leave there a memorial of himself, as the ancients had done,� says Condivi in admiration. But even making snowmen was better than that. The man with one of the greatest imaginations in Italy was beaming it on clouds and rocks like an idle lover. But the worst was that once more he was out of the running. While he was in Carrara directing ox-carts listing with marble blocks on impossible roads his rivals were chatting regularly with the pope, putting their own ideas into his head and making him forget about the tomb project. They even advised against it. There was no one there to defend it.
Finally the blocks of marble that he sent by ship began arriving in Rome and started filling the square in front of the old St. Peter�s, and their size and number created a real sensation: �So great was the quantity of the blocks of marble that, when they were spread out in the piazza, they made other people marvel and rejoiced [sic] the pope, who conferred such great and boundless favors on Michelangelo that, when he had begun to work, he would go more and more often to his house to see him, conversing with him there about the tomb and other matters no differently than he would have done with his own brother. And, in order to go there more conveniently, he ordered a drawbridge built between the Corridor and Michelangelo�s room, whereby he could go in there secretly.� (Condivi, p. 30)
