Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

Pope Julius II was a fastidious man whose eye for the arts was always set on his lofty standards of beauty and perfection that few artists could satisfy. So when the pope saw the Pieta whose beauty surpassed the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures adorning the tomb of a French cardinal, he wanted the same awe-inspiring adornment for his tomb, whereupon one Michelangelo Buonarroti from Florence was summoned for the commission for the work. From then on, that’s how Michelangelo at age thirty-three reluctantly embarked on his Herculean task of frescoing the vault of the Sistine Chapel. This book by Ross King recounts such background stories of the making of the Sistine Chapel frescoes and descriptions of the personal traits of Michelangelo. Michelangelo’s work on the frescoes resulted from part Divine Providence of endowing the humanity with an awe-inspiring masterpiece of art to delight the senses of mankind through the ages and part secular ambitions to mark the names of both the commissioner and the artist themselves. Pope Julius II also wanted to renovate the Sistine Chapel that had been used as a living quarter for the guards, a fortress against papal enemies, and a jail. As no one pours new wine into old wineskins as said in the bible, the pope’s plan to revert the chapel to its original place of worship, which made him drop his tomb project, was met by his idea of frescoing the vault in its entirety. Michelangelo, who was a breadwinner of his family, accepted the commission with sumptuous amount of salary and commenced four-year of labor of woes and dramas on the vault of the chapel. There are revealing truths that should be known concerning the process of frescoing the Sistine Chapel as follows: Contrary to popular belief that Michelangelo did the work while lying prone on his back, he worked with his upper body bent backward like a bow. Also, it wasn’t done by solely by Michelangelo but a work of concerted efforts made by a contingent of his assistants chosen by Francesco Granacci, a close friend of Michelangelo. Michelangelo was innately a solitary worker who had a strong distrust of others who worked with him. As a matter of fact, Michelangelo was never a jolly fellow whose sociability would have endeared him to all, as in the case of his contemporary Raphael Sancti. It is also interesting to pay special notes on the figures Michelangelo used for the frescoes, which shows his ingenuity of selecting unique subject matters distinguished from his contemporaries. To illustrate, he used 7 prophets from the Old Testament and 5 sibyls from pagan myth to decorate the Sistine vaults. He was fascinated with prophetic knowledge of the sibyls who dwelled in sacred shrines and predicted the future in fits of inspired madness. This offered a compelling link between the sacred and the profane, the church and the esoteric pagan culture by reconciling pagan mythology with orthodox Christian teachings. From this book, readers will find that the position of a painter/sculptor was not esteemed highly; he was more of a skilled laborer, a craftsman, given exact orders how to produce his work by his commissioner or patron. As a matter of fact, the image of a solitary genius who would wield his brush and pallets to portray his world of imagination from the fathoms of his soul was a romantic fable. In Michelangelo’s time, an artist’s creativity was fettered by the demands of marketplace or his patron. Nevertheless, Michelangelo often disagreed to the pope’s own artistic direction and even had a temerity of broaching the shipping charges incurred in transporting the marbles from Carrara for the aborted tomb project at a dinner table with the pope . Michelangelo was said to be a man of aesthetically unpleasing appearance without sociability; his direct altercation with Leonardo da Vinci as described in this book was amusing to discover. Both of the masters of the arts did not like each other publicly, but it was on the part of da Vinci who instigated such heated feud. He disregarded sculptors, including Michelangelo, as mechanics in the appearance of unkempt bakers. King’s research into this daunting subject matter is indeed impressive and highly laudable. Reading his account of how Michelangelo worked on his frescoes enabled me to envision the scene very vividly. The descriptions of the streets, alleys, and the Sistine Chapel are realistically rendered as if they were pictures. However, I could not help but feel a subtle tone of anti-papacy or even a remote sense of anti-Catholicism in this book. Evidently, there were corruptions among the church officials, clerics, not to mention the laypersons. But I wonder if King should have spent several chapters about Pope Julius II to discern just what kind of person he was in a negative shadow, the fallacy of his character, of the papacy in general. I ascribe such tendency to culturally transmitted anti-Catholicism in England, a home of the Episcopal Church, from the time of Henry VIII because this is not the first time I recognize such sentiment in English writers. Notwithstanding the above sentiment, the book has its magical way of transporting readers to Italy in the early 16th century and invites readers to meet with Michelangelo as he was in his disheveled hair and untidy outfit dripped with colors from the unfinished fresco. Despite all his personal foibles, he is indeed a person bizarre fantastico whose muscular nudes in frantic but graceful gyrates have both the beauty and the sublime that produce in the spectator a kind of astonished wonder so formidable and so fantastic throughout the ages.

I bought this book because I so completely enjoyed Brunelleschi's Dome by the same author. Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, is also a well-researched and thorough history of the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. However, as another reviewer described it, this book is ponderous to the point that I put it down several times or skipped through some of the minutia that added nothing to the story. The parts of the book that fascinated me the most included the artistic creation itself: The obtaining and mixing of pigments; The very method of painting fresco which is far more difficult than an artist painting a picture on a wall. It was so difficult that an Italian term was used to describe being in a fix or a mess: "stare fresco." The method involved painting on wet plaster called Intonaco which was a smooth paste made from lime and sand which provided a permeable surface for the pigments, first absorbing them and then sealing them in the masonry as it dried. The design was transferred to this patch of wet plaster from a drawing made by the artist called a cartoon. The description of how the paintings were completed by the artist himself, Michelangelo in this case, and many, many assistants, was all new information to me. It was the execution of the art that held my interest. Since Ross is an historian, he included the background of Pope Julius's constant war with other Italian City States as well as with France, his wicked temper and his many brushes with death. He included detailed descriptions of Michelangelo's family members and how their behavior and financial difficulties affected Michelangelo and at times caused him to be frantic and distracted from his work. The reader was given details about artists whose work influenced the likes of Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael as well as boring (to me) information about the many assistants who came and went on the job which took more than four years to complete. The book also discussed in great detail the competition between Michelangelo and the much younger, handsome Raphael. Raphael's work on the frescos in the Pope's apartments were also highlighted so the reader was introduced to yet another genius. In general, I enjoyed the book, learned a great deal about art, politics and life in16th Century Italy and liked Ross King's easy writing style. The book was not written like a textbook but in a far more casual and readable format. I just found it verbose with far more facts and many more characters than the average reader could possibly absorb.

ヴァチカンのシスチーナ礼拝堂には、ミケランジェロの傑作壁画「最後の審判」とともに、同じく彼の手による天地創造の天井画が描かれている。この本では、この天井画の制作過程が、法王との確執を軸に描かれている。本来彫刻が専門のミケランジェロが天井画を描くに至った過程、ラファエロとの関係、天井画制作の実際のプロセスなど、人間関係とともに、天井画制作の技術的な問題も詳しく記述されており、当時の様子が手に取るようによくわかる。80年以上生きたミケランジェロの生涯の、ほんの一部を描いているだけだが、ミケランジェロの人となり、時代背景が明解に伝わってくる。私は、1年ほど前、実際にシスチーナ礼拝堂を訪れ、彼の作品に大いに感動したが、もしこの本を先に読んでいたら、また別の見方もできたかもしれない。ミケランジェロあるいはルネッサンス芸術に興味のある方には、是非お勧めしたい伝記小説である。英語の難しさは中程度。

Scritto in maniera scorrevole da King Ross, il saggio ripercorre la storia della Cappella Sistina da un punto di vista artistico, storico, biografico e con tanti aneddoti sui vari personaggi ruotanti intorno a Michelangelo (Giulio II e Raffaello in primis) dando vita a questo capolavoro assoluto della civiltà occidentale. Consigliatissimo!

Ross King is establishing quite a niche in historical research having previously explored the background to "Brunelleschi's Dome" on Santa Maria del Fiore in Firenze, the largest dome for over 1,000 years after the Roman Pantheon was built, and now the newly-published "Leonardo and the Last Supper". Michelangelo was obviously an immensely gifted man and probably as difficult to work with as his Patron, the Pope Julius II, and Ross King makes the circumstances come alive in this fascinating book. As he says, forget Charlton Heston in the the film "The Agony and the Ecstasy" based on the Irving Stone book, what transpired was quite different. For anyone interested in mediaeval projects I would also recommend Philp Balls's "Universe of Stone" detailing the construction of Chartres Cathedral and the influences on its construction and its effects on later buildings.

He tenido oportunidad de leer varios títulos del autor, y en cada uno me ha dejado muy satisfecho su manera de relatar la historia. La lectura es dinámica llena de datos interesantes y no se vuelve tediosa al paso de los capítulos. En este libro uno puede enteder un poco mejor el contexto histórico y personal en el que el genio de Miguel Ángel se encuentra para realizar una de sus máximas obras; La Capilla Sixtina. Recomiento ampliamene el libro para los que disfrutan de la historia.

great book and to my surprise is signed by the author. 5outa5 stars.