by Ross King
During this time of heightened anxieties and mounting frustrations, Michelangelo nonetheless managed to paint some of his most striking and accomplished scenes. For much of the summer and early autumn, he and his men worked on at the extreme west end of the chapel, frescoing the two pendentives in the corners as well as the narrow space of wall between them. The first of these areas to be painted, that on the left as one faces the altar, illustrated The Crucifixion of Haman. It was a virtuoso performance that shows Michelangelo at the summit of his powers.
The Book of Esther in the Old Testament provides the complex, operatic plot behind this episode. Haman was chief minister, or vizier, of King Ahasuerus of Persia, who reigned over an empire stretching from India to Ethiopia. Ahasuerus kept a populous harem that required the services of no fewer than seven eunuchs, but his favourite mistress was Esther, a beautiful young woman who, unbeknown to him, was Jewish. Esther was also the cousin of one of the king’s servants, Mordecai, who had urged her to keep her faith a secret. Mordecai had once saved Ahasuerus’s life by foiling a plot by two eunuchs to have him murdered, but more recently he had fallen foul of Haman, the vizier, by refusing to bow before him like the other servants. The arrogant and vengeful Haman therefore ordered the extermination of the Jews from Persia, issuing in the name of the king a proclamation ‘to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children … and to plunder their goods’ (Esther 3:13). Not stopping at these measures, he began construction of a 75-foot-high gallows on which he planned to deal with the insolent Mordecai personally.
Like the bronze medallions, the four pendentives in the corners of the Sistine Chapel depict the timely rescue of the Jewish people from the machinations of their enemies. The Crucifixion of Haman is a perfect example. The act of genocide ordered by Haman was abruptly halted when Esther courageously intervened, announcing to King Ahasuerus that she herself was Jewish and, as such, in danger of falling victim to Haman’s bloody purge. The king immediately revoked the decree and hanged Haman on the gallows built for Mordecai, who was then promoted to chief minister as a belated thanks for saving the royal life.
Michelangelo depicted Haman nailed to a tree instead of hanging from a gallows, as artists had more usually portrayed him. This great enemy of the Hebrew people thus strikes a pose more usually associated with the crucified Christ. There was a scriptural warrant for this depiction, however, since the Vulgate recounts how Haman prepared a cross, rather than a gallows, that stood fifty cubits high. But since Michelangelo read little Latin, he must have followed either the reference in Dante’s Purgatorio — where Haman is also described as having been crucified10 — or else the instructions of a more erudite scholar. Theologians were swift to spot a parallel with Christ in this episode, noting how both crucifixions were followed by salvation.11 This image of salvation through the Cross therefore made an appropriate image for the chapel’s altar wall.
Painted over twenty-four working days, The Crucifixion of Haman is striking for the brio of its composition, especially the naked Haman sprawled on the tree. An awed Vasari found this figure the most impressive of all of those on the vault, describing it as ‘certainly the most beautiful and most difficult’.12 He may well have been right, especially regarding its difficulty, since the scene required numerous preliminary sketches in which the artist repeatedly rehearsed Haman’s exacting stance. The figure would have presented a challenge to Michelangelo’s model, who was forced to pose with both arms outstretched, his head thrown back, his hips twisted, his left leg retracted and his weight thrown on to his right foot — a pose that rivals that of the Libyan Sibyl for its strenuous gymnastics. The pose must have been held for considerable periods of time, since more drawings survive for The Crucifixion of Haman than for any other scene on the ceiling.
Once Michelangelo had settled his design for The Crucifixion of Haman, he did not transfer it to the plaster in freehand, as he had done only a few feet away with his upward-spiralling Creator in God Separating Light from Darkness. Instead, Haman’s outlines were incised in great detail from a cartoon. The figure then took four giornate to paint, a fairly slow pace for Michelangelo at this late stage, especially in view of how several recent figures — including the most recent God — had been completed in a single day. Numerous nail holes can still be found in the area of Haman’s arms and head, testifying to the problems involved in fixing the cartoon to a concave surface and then transferring its design to the damp plaster.
47. Michelangelo’s sketches for The Crucifixion of Haman.
Once he completed this difficult scene, Michelangelo was left with only a few square yards of vault still to paint. The two lunettes on the altar wall remained, as did both the second pendentive and the triangular stretch of vault directly across from where Zechariah was perched on his throne above the entrance. Michelangelo would feature Jonah, the last of his prophets, in this latter space. On the pendentive, meanwhile, he painted The Brazen Serpent — a scene that proved even more difficult than The Crucifixion of Haman.
It is interesting to note that when he was on the brink of finally completing his task, Michelangelo abruptly abandoned the minimalistic approach adopted for the second half of the vault and created, in The Brazen Serpent, a visually complex tableau featuring more than twenty struggling bodies. The drawn-out labours on this pendentive – which consumed an incredible thirty giomate, or about six weeks’ work — were one of the reasons why Michelangelo failed to finish the fresco and make it back to Florence by the end of September, as he had been hoping. Only the first two Genesis panels, frescoed more than three years earlier, had required more time. Michelangelo may have been desperate to finish the fresco, but his artistic ambitions remained gloriously uncompromised.
The Brazen Serpent depicts the event from the Book of Numbers in which the Israelites, wandering in the wilderness, complained about their hunger and thirst, only to have a much worse cause for complaint when God, irritated by their griping, sent among them fiery serpents with poisonous fangs. After the surviving Israelites pleaded with Moses to rid them of this horrible scourge, God ordered him to construct a serpent of bronze and erect it as a standard. Moses duly fashioned this brazen serpent and raised it on a pole, so that ‘if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live’ (Numbers 21:9). Like Haman spreadeagled on his tree, the brazen serpent was an image of the Crucifixion and, as such, a reminder of the salvation offered by Christ. Christ himself even drew this comparison in the Gospel According to St John. ‘And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,’ he told Nicodemus, ‘so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (John 3:14–15).
Michelangelo attacked the pendentive with gusto. The scene no doubt appealed to him because of the obvious similarities between the doomed Israelites and the snake-entwined figures in the Laocoön. Earlier depictions of the episode did not actually show the serpents constricting themselves around the bodies of their victims, concentrating instead on Moses raising his brazen image aloft.13 Michelangelo, however, chose to omit Moses altogether and emphasise instead the fate of the doomed Israelites. The scene was therefore devoted largely to one of his favourite motifs — a muscle-wrenching, spine-twisting battle, in this case one in which a densely packed swarm of half-naked figures writhe in the coils of the poisonous serpents.
Besides Laocoön and his sons, the contorted figures on the right-hand side of the pendentive recall both the soldiers in The Battle of Cascina and the half-human figures in The Battle of the Centaurs, from the latter of which Michelangelo even borrowed a pose for one of the Israelites.14 With its host of doomed figures the scene is also reminiscent of The Flood. Nevertheless, Michelangelo’s handling of The Brazen Serpent — painted on a more confined and concave surface than The Flood — demonstrates how vastly more daring and successful his technique had become following four years on the scaffold. Several of the twisted bodies are masterfully foreshortened, while the overall
composition is unified by both the undulating bodies that Michelangelo neatly fitted between the sharp angles of the pendentive and the brilliant oranges and greens that give the scene such a striking visual presence on the vault.
As well as appealing to Michelangelo’s artistic sense, the story of the brazen serpent also endorsed his religious convictions. Done around the time of the massacre at Prato, it reflected his belief, shaped largely by Savonarola, that mankind’s evil ways bring about a doom and suffering that can be relieved only when we beg God for forgiveness. Just as the waywardness of the Israelites brought down the plague of serpents, so the sins of the Florentines had resulted, he informed his father, in the descent of Ramón Cardona and his Spanish soldiers, sent as a scourge by a wrathful deity: ‘We must be resigned and commend ourselves to God and recognise the error of our ways,’ he wrote to Lodovico in the aftermath of the bloody sack, ‘through which alone these adversities come upon us.’15 This argument is a repetition of Savonarola’s claim that Florence would be punished for her sins by the army of Charles VIII. As Michelangelo painted the pendentive, the words of Savonarola may well have echoed in his head: ‘O Florence, O Florence, O Florence, for your sins, for your brutality, your avarice, your lust, your ambition, there will befall you many trials and tribulations!’
Michelangelo’s own adversities — those suffered on the scaffold, at least — were all but over by the time he wrote this letter to his father. After completing The Brazen Serpent, he proceeded to paint the spaces beneath, including the final pair of lunettes, one of which featured Abraham and Isaac in the same lackadaisical poses as the other ancestors of Christ.16 A few days later, towards the end of October, he sent another letter to Florence. ‘I have finished the chapel I have been painting,’ he wrote, matter-of-factly. Typically, he did not rejoice in his accomplishment. ‘Other things’, he lamented to Lodovico, ‘have not turned out for me as I’d hoped.’17
31
Final Touches
ON 31 OCTOBER in 1512, the Eve of All Saints, the Pope hosted a banquet in the Vatican for the ambassador of Parma. When the dinner was finished, the company retired to the palace’s theatre to watch two comedies and listen to a poetry recitation. As was his custom in the late afternoon, Julius then retired to his rooms for a short nap. But the entertainments were not over yet, and at sunset he and his entourage, which included seventeen cardinals, proceeded to the Sistine Chapel to observe vespers. An enthralling sight awaited them as they filed into the chapel from the Sala Regia. Michelangelo and his assistants had spent the previous few days dismantling and then removing the enormous scaffold. Some four years and four weeks after Michelangelo had begun his fresco, the time had come for him to exhibit it in its entirety.
Due to the larger figures in the second half of the vault as well as Michelangelo’s more adroit and creative handling of his material, the fresco uncovered for the Eve of All Saints was much more breathtaking than the work-in-progress shown to the public some fifteen months earlier. One of the first figures seen by the Pope and his cardinals as they made their way into the chapel for vespers was, in the opinion of Condivi, the most awe-inspiring of all of the vault’s hundreds of figures. In the direct line of sight of worshippers entering at the opposite end of the chapel, Jonah occupied the narrow space between The Crucifixion of Haman and The Brazen Serpent. ‘A stupendous work,’ was Condivi’s estimation, ‘and one which proclaims the magnitude of this man’s knowledge, in his handling of lines, in foreshortening, and in perspective.’1
Painted on a concave surface, Jonah leans backwards with his legs apart, his torso twisted to the right and his head tipped up and turned to his left — a scene of struggle more akin to the body language of the Ignudi than that of his fellow prophets. What most impressed Condivi was how Michelangelo created a trompe-l’œil through an incredible feat of foreshortening. He depicted the prophet in the act of leaning backwards even though the painted surface curves towards the viewer, so that ‘the torso which is foreshortened backward is in the part nearest the eye, and the legs which project forward are in the part which is farthest’.2 If Bramante had once stated that Michelangelo would be unable to paint overhead surfaces because he understood nothing of foreshortening, Jonah seems to serve as his triumphant reply.
Jonah was the prophet ordered by the Lord to go to Nineveh and denounce its people for their wickedness. He refused this invidious mission, however, and instead boarded a boat going in the opposite direction, only to be caught in a violent tempest unleashed by the displeased Jehovah. Learning the reason for the storm, the frightened sailors tossed their passenger overboard, at which point the waters calmed and the reluctant prophet was swallowed by a ‘great fish’ in whose belly he then spent three days and three flights before being disgorged on to dry land. Duly chastened, he went to Nineveh and prophesied its destruction, only to be disappointed when the Lord took pity on its inhabitants when they repented their evil ways.
Theologians regarded Jonah as a precursor of Christ and the Resurrection, hence his position above the altar of the Sistine Chapel. Even Christ drew a direct comparison between himself and the prophet: ‘For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale,’ he told the Pharisees, ‘so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ (Matthew 12:40). However, the prophet’s pose in Michelangelo’s fresco has led scholars to puzzle over what moment in the biblical narrative Michelangelo was intending to portray. Some maintain that the fresco shows Jonah’s anger at the Lord for not destroying Nineveh, others the moment of his regurgitation.3 Whatever the episode in question, it is perhaps no accident that, in leaning backwards and gazing overhead, Jonah appears to stare in wordless stupefaction at the painted vault. Leon Battista Alberti had urged artists to include within their paintings a ‘spectator’ to guide the attention and emotions of the work’s viewers, either beckoning them to look at the scene or challenging them ‘with ferocious expression and forbidding glance’.4 Michelangelo seems to have taken Alberti’s advice since Jonah both directs the gazes of worshippers entering the chapel from the Sala Regia and pantomimes their reared-back stances and awestruck faces as they gaze at the magnificent fresco above their heads.
The Pope was delighted with the unveiled fresco, surveying it ‘with immense satisfaction’.5 Everyone visiting the Sistine Chapel in the days after the fresco’s completion was equally dazzled by Michelangelo’s work. ‘When the work was thrown open,’ wrote Vasari, ‘the whole world could be heard running up to see it, and, indeed, it was such as to make everyone astonished and dumb.’6 The final pairs of Ignudi were a particular tour de force, outstripping even magnificent ancient works such as the Laocoön for power and grace. They revealed a stunning virtuosity that pushed the limits of both human anatomy and artistic form. Never before, in either marble or paint, had the expressive possibilities of the human form been detailed with such astonishing invention and aplomb. None of Raphael’s individual figures, no matter how expertly integrated into his graceful ensembles, came close to the brute visual force of Michelangelo’s naked titans.
One of the two Ignudi situated above Jeremiah — the very last Ignudo to be painted, in fact — shows just how far behind Michelangelo had left his competition. Bent forward at the waist, his trunk tipped slightly to the left and his right arm reaching back for a garland of oak leaves, he strikes a pose whose originality and complexity go beyond anything created even in classical antiquity. If the male nude was the genre in which, by 1512, all artists were forced to test themselves, Michelangelo’s final few Ignudi set an almost impossible standard.
Much as Julius admired the new fresco, in his opinion the work was not quite finished: it lacked what he called l’ultima mano, the ‘final touch’. Accustomed to the ostentatious style of Pinturicchio, and wanting the vault to match the walls, where the garments had been trimmed with gold and the skies flecked with ultramarine, both of which needed to be added a secco, Julius asked Michelangelo to retouch the fre
sco ‘to give it a richer appearance’.7 Michelangelo did not relish the thought of reassembling the scaffold for the sake of a few secco touches, especially since he had avoided making such additions as much as possible in order to enhance both the durability of the fresco and, perhaps; his own reputation as a practitioner of the more prestigious style of buon fresco. He therefore informed the Pope that the additions were unnecessary. ‘It really ought to be retouched with gold,’ insisted the Pope. ‘I do not see that men wear gold,’ replied Michelangelo. ‘It will look poor,’ protested His Holiness. ‘Those who are depicted there,’ joked the artist, ‘they were poor too.’8
Julius eventually relented, and the extra touches of gold and ultramarine were never added. This, however, was not the end of their disagreements, since Michelangelo believed he had not yet been properly compensated for his work. Despite having received, by the time of the unveiling, payments totalling three thousand ducats, he claimed to be in a desperate financial situation. Had things become any worse, he later wrote, no option would have been left to him but to ‘go with God’.9
The reason for Michelangelo’s melodramatic lament about his poverty is difficult to fathom. His expenses as he painted the vault were not exceedingly high despite the great size of the project. In total, eighty-five ducats had gone to Piero Rosselli, three to the rope-maker, twenty-five on pigments, another twenty-five on rent, and approximately 1,500 (at most) for his team of assistants. Probably another hundred had been spent on assorted other expenses, including brushes, paper, flour, sand, pozzolana and lime. The surplus would have been more than a thousand ducats, meaning that he earned himself, over the course of four years, an annual salary of around three hundred ducats, or triple the wages of the average craftsmen in Florence or Rome. The Sistine Chapel might not have made him wealthy by the standards of, say, a cardinal or a banker, but neither did it leave him in the poorhouse, as he implied. His purchase of La Loggia, for which he had paid about 1,400 ducats,10 indicates that he was not short of cash as the project neared completion. Acquiring the farm may well have depleted his liquid assets, but this was hardly the fault of the Pope.
