Chapter 6

Courting Controversy

Michelanglo used the face of his friend Tommaso de’ Cavalieri for St. Sebastian (center right, holding arrows) in The Last Judgment (1541).

Following the phenomenal success of the Sistine Chapel commission, Michelangelo found himself in great demand. The next commission he accepted, however, was a small one for a patron named Metello Vari: The Risen Christ, to be installed in the 1 church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Michelangelo signed the contract for the commission in June 1514 and began the work almost immediately. Unfortunately, he chose a flawed block of marble and had to abandon the first attempt.

After the death of Pope Julius II, the papal conclave chose a Medici pope, Leo X, who loved art and grandeur. Leo X set Michelangelo to work on the Chapel of Pope Leo X in Castel Sant’Angelo and the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. Both papal commissions interfered with Michelangelo’s progress on The Risen Christ, but in 1518, while juggling other projects, he selected a second block of marble and began the work again. The sculpture took three years to complete and was installed in March 1521.

The contract for the piece called for “a marble Christ, large as life, nude.” The concept of Jesus in the nude shows the powerful influence of ancient art: indeed, Christ looks like classical images of Apollo. Squeamish clergy later added a gilded loincloth to the figure, which remains today.

As with Moses and David, Michelangelo manipulated the figure’s proportions to his own purposes, but this manipulation has raised criticism because the intentions of the distortion are not immediately obvious. The figure appears to be disproportional from several angles, with a large torso and skinny legs; from behind, it looks misshapen. But when viewed from the left, the sculpture comes into focus. Jesus’s stance forces the cross to the forefront, and his body disappears behind it. Unfinished patches on the back of the sculpture indicate that Michelangelo did not intend for the viewer to see Christ’s back.

Michelangelo showed keen awareness of lighting and placement as a sculptor and as an architect. The natural lighting in Santa Maria sopra Minerva is dim and angled, coming from high windows. Critics argue that Michelangelo planned The Risen Christ using his understanding of light effects. Contemporary sketches show that The Risen Christ was originally placed in a niche in the wall to be seen from one viewpoint. The niche, representing the tomb, allows the sculpture to emerge from “the shadow of death” and directs the viewer to the most proportional view of the piece.

By depicting Jesus in Rome in The Risen Christ (1518–21), Michelangelo emphasized the connection between the political and the spiritual center of the church—reaffirming the mandate of the popes.

Michelangelo’s contemporaries adored the work. The painter Sebastiano del Piombo wrote that “the knees of that figure are worth all of Rome.” Indeed, the sculpture became an object venerated and adored by the faithful. Jesus’s foot, stroked and kissed for centuries, has at times been covered by a brass slipper to keep it from wearing away. Michelangelo’s patron Metello Vari was so pleased with the final product that he presented the artist with a horse. Yet, in the position it now occupies, The Risen Christ is easily overlooked among the other pieces in the sanctuary.

Santa Maria sopra Minerva, just a block from the Pantheon, sits on a site where a temple to Minerva once stood. Sculptures, frescoes, oil paintings, and tombs (including those of Popes Leo X and Clement VII) are crowded into small chapels lining the nave.

The fact that Michelangelo did not make a physical distinction between the saved and the fallen also opened him up for criticism. Halos and wings had become the fashion of the day—such signs of salvation helped to emphasize the hierarchy some clung to as the salvation of a troubled church.

Luigi del Riccio

One of Michelangelo’s closest friends, Luigi del Riccio, cared for him in 1544 and 1545 when Michelangelo fell ill. Michelangelo wrote to a nephew, “I have not found a better man than him to do my business, or more faithful.”

Del Riccio had adopted a young relative named Cecchino Bracci, who, in 1544, died at the age of sixteen. Michelangelo soothed his grieving friend with poems and further honored his friend’s grief by designing a tomb for Bracci, installed in 6 Santa Maria in Aracoeli, a church just off the Piazza del Campidoglio on the Capitoline Hill. One of Rome’s most ancient basilicas, Santa Maria in Aracoeli sparkles with the light of many crystal chandeliers, invoking the vision of the heavens for which it is named.

Michelangelo wrote forty-eight epitaphs, a sonnet, and a madrigal about the death of young Cecchino Bracci, as well as designing this tomb for the teenager. His assistant Urbino made and installed it.

On October 31, 1541, Paul III unveiled The Last Judgment—twenty-nine years to the day from the first revelation of Michelangelo’s work in the chapel. Whereas people had marveled at Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling (the nude figure of Adam had been acclaimed as a triumph), The Last Judgment garnered mixed reviews primarily because most of the figures in it were nude.

Michelangelo was not the only one who remembered and revered the power of the nude, and his fresco provided a powerful example for those who strove for anatomical accuracy. Thanks to printing presses, copies of The Last Judgment were available far and wide in a relatively short time. Soon the work was held up as a “school for artists”—a textbook of sorts, offering artists a wide range of figures to study and to copy. When Michelangelo saw painters copying his work, he mourned, “Oh, how many men this work of mine wishes to destroy!”

Although artists sought to imitate the work, most critics tried to excoriate it. Michelangelo was even attacked by those he considered his friends. Many within Vittoria Colonna’s circle of intellectuals and theologians accused Michelangelo of heresy.

Paul III did not forcefully defend Michelangelo, but he did not condemn the painting either. His successors, however, were more vocal. Paul IV (1555–59) even considered destroying the Sistine Chapel and other “immodest” works of art as a means to improve public morals.

Calls to censor or destroy the Sistine Chapel’s nudes would plague Michelangelo for the remainder of his life. He remained steadfast in defense of his work, however. When asked to amend the fresco, he replied defiantly, “Tell the pope that this is a small matter and can easily be amended; let him amend the world and pictures will soon amend themselves.”

With the election of Pius IV (1559–65), the calls for censorship found a sympathetic pontifical ear. In 1563, twenty-two years after The Last Judgment was unveiled, the Council of Trent took up a discussion of art, specifically Michelangelo’s frescoes. On January 21, 1564, the council ordered that the frescoes be changed.

But Michelangelo had loyal friends in the Curia (the Vatican’s political administration). The eighty-nine-year-old artist was dying, so they chose Michelangelo’s student, Daniele da Volterra, to make the changes, and allowed him to wait until after the artist’s death.

First Volterra made alterations—painting drapery over key figures and clothes on others. Then, rather than clothing St. Catherine and St. Blaise, Volterra destroyed them and painted new, clothed figures. He sought to preserve the intention and spirit of his master’s work while pleasing the squeamish clergy. For his pains, Volterra was known forever after as “the breeches maker.” Volterra was not the last painter to alter The Last Judgment. Several popes over the centuries appointed painters to make changes, though over time the fresco suffered more from smoke damage and neglect.

The Private Chapel

Despite the controversy over The Last Judgment, Michelangelo continued to receive papal commissions. Paul III wanted a new private chapel. The 7 Pauline Chapel is buried within the Vatican complex and is hardly known to the public—or even to scholars. For the pope, however, it is a private place of worship and is used regularly. The art Michelangelo created for Paul III’s commission turned out to be his last frescoes: The Crucifixion of Saint Peter and The Conversion of Saul.

In scale, the project cannot compare to The Last Judgment or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo began work in November 1542. His progress was delayed by illness in the summer of 1544, but he completed the Conversion in 1545—the same year he finished installing the tomb of Julius II. His progress in the Pauline Chapel was further slowed by his appointment as architect for both St. Peter’s Basilica and the Palazzo Farnese, but he finally finished the frescoes in 1550, at the age of seventy-five.

The Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1546–50).

In 1549, as he worked in the Pauline Chapel, Michelangelo wrote, “Painting is to be considered the better the more it approaches relief, and relief is to be considered the worse the more it approaches painting; and therefore I used to feel that sculpture was the lantern of painting and that there was the difference between them that there is between the sun and moon.” His frescoes attempt to bring painting closer to sculpture. They focus on dramatic events with little in the background to ground the figures. Like the Rome Pietà, the frescoes tell the story of moments.

In The Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1546–50) Michelangelo chooses the moment of agony as the cross is being raised and Peter lays suspended across the space in twisted pain, his face contorted and pleading. In The Conversion of Saul, the Holy Spirit suddenly grips Saul, traveling along a road, and his name and his path in life change forever. The Conversion also emphasizes the emotion of a moment—the moment when Saul converts. He is struck by fear and is overpowered by God.

At the height of the Reformation, Michelangelo chose subjects that affirmed the legitimacy of the papacy and its ties to Rome: Peter and Paul, the spiritual guardians of Rome, both of whom were martyred in the Eternal City.

Perhaps because Michelangelo presented such bare compositions, the Pauline Chapel frescoes stirred neither controversy nor adulation. After Michelangelo’s death, drapes were added to some of the nudes, but the frescoes were largely ignored as the work of an elderly, doddering artist. Because of its location deep in the private areas of the papal complex, the Pauline Chapel is rarely open to the public. In 2004, the Vatican announced that Michelangelo’s frescoes were being cleaned and restored using the same techniques that proved successful in the Sistine Chapel.

Caravaggio’s Crucifixion and Conversion

Relatively little is known about Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610). Working in Rome, Caravaggio created dramatic and intimate scenes, drawing on the pieces that surrounded him. In the 8 church of Santa Maria del Popolo (off the Piazza del Popolo, north of the Spanish Steps), Caravaggio created the same pairing of subjects that Michelangelo did for the Pauline Chapel. Unlike the Pauline Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo is relatively easy to visit.

Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of Saint Peter (1600–01) draws deeply from Michelangelo’s work—the two Peters take the same position and have strikingly similar features. The compositions are similar, but Caravaggio takes a much darker view of the scene. His Conversion on the Way to Damascus (1601), however, differs markedly from Michelangelo’s. Saul (who later became St. Paul), a Pharisee, was traveling on the road when he was suddenly converted to Christianity. Where Michelangelo illustrates a crowded scene with Christ in the sky performing the conversion, Caravaggio depicts Saul struck from his horse and bathed in light. In both Crucifixion and Conversion, Caravaggio makes significant use of chiaroscuro (using light and dark to achieve depth in painting). Although Michelangelo and other Renaissance artists understood chiaroscuro, painters of the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries, such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt, perfected and exploited the technique.