Chapter 3

Rome

Marvels in Marble

The Roman Forum was the heart of the ancient city and the center of both its political and its religious life. By the time Michelangelo wandered through the ruins, sheep and cattle grazed among the toppled columns and sculptures. As Rome was rebuilt, however, the Forum became a popular place to find building materials. Doors, columns, sculptures, and tons of marble were spirited away from the ruins and recycled in Renaissance buildings all over Rome. Today, it is both a public space for all to enjoy and an active archaeological site.

Civic and religious authority have always mingled in Rome. Since the days when emperors were worshipped as gods, the line between spiritual and earthly powers in Rome has been fuzzy. Indeed, the principles of the empire’s organization influenced the organization of the Christian church, with bishops governing dioceses just as Roman governors ruled provinces.

At its peak, the Roman Empire dominated the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Europe. The vast size of the empire, however, overstretched Rome’s ability to administer and protect it, and with rampant corruption sapping the empire’s political vitality, the Barbarian tribes from northern and central Europe eventually overran imperial defenses. In 410A.D., Rome was sacked by the Visigoths; the empire dissolved completely in 476, when a Germanic Barbarian king deposed the last Roman emperor. Had it not acquired land and begun to establish political control over what would become known as the Papal States, the church might also have fragmented more than it did and eventually disappeared. Instead, successive popes during the Dark and Middle Ages seized territory, waged war, negotiated treaties, and generally behaved much like the kings and princes who carved up Europe in general and Italy in particular. As the cities in Italy fortified themselves during the Middle Ages, so too did the Papal States.

The city of Rome lay within the borders of the Papal States and was governed by the pope. Thus, as the pope’s fortunes rose and fell, so did those of the city. During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, while the papacy was preoccupied with the Crusades—a series of military campaigns launched to recapture parts of Europe and the Holy Land from Muslim control—the city of Rome actually shrank. At the peak of the Roman Empire, Rome had boasted a population of 1.5 million people. Now a smaller and smaller population huddled in the shadows of the imperial ruins and clung to themily. filthy shores of the Tiber, contending with frequent floods and outbreaks of the plague. By the twelfth century, Rome was little more than a large village, with just 17,000 inhabitants.

Piazzas, like Piazza Navona, have for centuries been an integral part of the Italian way of life, serving as living rooms, yards, markets, and parks.

Gone were the efficient sewage systems and functioning aqueducts of the Roman Empire. Drinking water was drawn primarily from the Tiber, the same river where waste was dumped—that is, if waste made it farther than the street outside the home. Most Romans lived in what today we might call tenements and row houses. Medieval Romans built relatively little compared to the Romans of the empire. Most of what they did build was constructed around piazzas, which, then as now, were noisy, social places lined with shops and markets and, in many cases, boasting fountains and public taps for the neighborhood.

The contract between a patron and a sculptor usually stipulated the type of material to be used in a commissioned piece, the source of the material, the finish to be used, and the deadline for completion. A sculptor had to know his materials well when investing time and money in a block of stone. He had to consider the workability of the stone, its color, its durability, the size of the block needed, and how to transport it to his workshop, which was typically hundreds of miles from where the rock was quarried.

Sacred Sculpture

Sculpture as an art form went out of fashion with the rise of the early Christian church. The church founders considered the sculptures of the ancient Romans to be idols and demons, and the sculpting of freestanding forms eventually became taboo. Yet, human and animal figures persisted in church and domestic decoration in the form of relief and architectural elements. When, around 1440, the Florentine sculptor Donatello unveiled his David, a new artistic era began.

Donatello’s bronze was not only the first freestanding figure of the Renaissance but also a nude. Emboldened by his example, sculptors began to imitate classical figures that could still be found throughout Italy.

For Michelangelo, the ideal sculpture emerged from a single block of marble, which meant he had to be especially careful in choosing his stone. Like many sculptors, he often visited the quarries in Pietrasanta and Carrara in Tuscany, where marble has been quarried since the first century A.D. To make sure he could get the finest stone, Michelangelo cultivated close relationships with quarry workers, compensating them generously. In return, they labored loyally and diligently on his behalf in a perilous line of work. The sculptor himself was nearly killed one day in a quarry when a ring supporting the ropes around a large block of marble snapped, sending the rock hurtling downhill toward him.

To quarry marble, Renaissance workers inserted a series of wooden wedges into cracks in the stone. When they poured water over the wedges, the wedges swelled. The process was repeated over and over again until the block split away from the mountain. The stones were then given a “rough dressing”—shaped into usable blocks—before being shipped away.

The tools of a sculptor have hardly changed since Michelangelo’s day.

A Sonnet by Michelangelo (undated)

If my rough hammer in hard stones can form

A human semblance, one and then another,

Set moving by the agent who is holder,

Watcher and guide, its course is not its own.

But that divine One, staying in Heaven at home,

Gives others beauty, more to itself, self-mover;

If hammers can’t be made without a hammer,

From that one living all the others come.

And since a blow will have the greatest force

As at the forge it’s lifted up the highest,

This above mine to Heaven has run and flown.

Wherefore with me, unfinished, all is lost.

Unless the divine workshop will assist

In making it; on earth it was alone.

Once stone arrived in his workshop, Michelangelo used large chisels and drills to remove the bulk of the stone, gradually transitioning to finer chisels for the detailed work. He used both small and full-sized models based on his sketches to guide his work. Made from clay, the models were supported by a wooden armature. If the figure was to be clothed, the model could be draped in cloth dipped in clay to give it beautiful, flowing, but permanent folds of voluminous cloth.

Michelangelo worked on full-scale figures in the same way that he did relief: from the front to the back. He would make a wax model of the figure and lay it in a pan of water. Then, as he worked back through the marble, he raised more and more of it from the water, revealing the figure a bit at a time.

He did not “finish” every inch of his pieces; rather, he left parts of each sculpture in rough rock, a testament to their origins and to his love of stone in its raw form. The proportions of the original marble block can be gauged from the size of the base of each piece. The finishing process—and the sculpting process itself—was dirty and dangerous, much like quarrying. As he hammered against his chisels, metal on metal against stone, chips flew. He did not wear safety glasses. The hammers and chisels and stones were heavy and bulky and sharp. Sculpting was bruising, sweaty work—but it was also inspiring for Michelangelo, who not only wrote poems about sculpting but also while sculpting.

To light his workshop, Michelangelo spent money on expensive candles made of pure goat’s tallow. He often worked into the night, carving and polishing in the candles’ golden glow. He constructed a “helmet made of pasteboard holding a burning candle over the middle of his head which shed light where he was working without tying up his hands,” a biographer noted. Michelangelo used light—both natural and candlelight—to guide him as he created different textures: cloth, skin, hair, wood—each with its own sheen and depth. He often worked on several pieces at once. He carved constantly, taking pleasure and solace in his work.