Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

V. THE RECOVERY OF CLASSIC ART

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The pagan spirit of the age was enhanced by the presence and

salvaging of classic art. Poggio, Biondo, Pius II, and others had

denounced the demolition of classic structures, but it persisted

nevertheless, and probably increased as the influx of money enabled

Rome to build new and larger edifices with the ruins of the old.

Builders continued to throw ancient marbles into furnaces to produce

lime. Paul II used the stone wall of the Colosseum for the palace of

San Marco; Sixtus IV pulled down the temple of Hercules, and turned

a Tiber bridge into cannon balls. The temple of the Sun provided the

material for a chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore, for two public

fountains, and for a papal palace in the Quirinal. Artists

themselves were unconscious vandals; Michelangelo used one of the

columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux to form a pedestal for

the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, and Raphael took part of

another column from the same temple to make a statue of Jonah. The

material for the Sistine Chapel was quarried from the mausoleum of

Hadrian. Practically all the marble used in raising St. Peter's was

taken from classic buildings; and to the same new shrine went the

podium, steps, and pediment of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina,

the triumphal arches of Fabius Maximus and Augustus, and the temple of

Romulus, son of Maxentius. In just four years, 1546-9, the new

builders destroyed or dismantled the temples of Castor and Pollux,

Julius Caesar, and Augustus. `051855 The destroyers argued that

there were enough pagan monuments left; that the neglected ruins

took up valuable space and interfered with the orderly rebuilding of

the city; and that the appropriated materials were in most cases

used to erect Christian churches just as beautiful as the ruins, and

presumably more pleasing to God. Meanwhile the imperceptible

inhumations of time had buried the Forum and other historic sites

under successive layers of dust, debris, and vegetation, so that the

Forum was at places forty-three feet below the level of the

surrounding city; it was largely abandoned to pasturage, and was

called Campo Vaccino- the cow field. Time is the greatest vandal of

them all.

The influx of artists and humanists retarded the rate of demolition,

and generated movements for the preservation of the old monuments.

Popes collected pagan sculpture and architectural fragments into the

Vatican and Capitoline Museums. Poggio, the Medici, Pomponius

Laetus, bankers, cardinals gathered into private collections

whatever of worth they could acquire of the ancient remains. Many

classic sculptures found their way into private palaces and gardens,

and stayed there till the nineteenth century; hence such names as

the Barberini Faun, the Ludovisi Throne, the Farnese Hercules.

All Rome was thrilled when excavators unearthed (1506), near the

Baths of Titus, a new and complex sculptural group. Julius II sent

Giuliano da Sangallo to examine it, and Michelangelo went along. As

soon as Giuliano saw the statue he cried out, "This is the Laocoon

mentioned by Pliny." Julius bought it for the Belvedere Palace, paying

the finder and his son a lifetime annuity of 600 ducats ($7,500?);

so precious had classic sculptures become. Such rewards encouraged art

prospectors. A year later one of these found another ancient group,

Hercules with the Infant Telephus; soon afterward the Sleeping

Ariadne was unearthed. The enthusiasm for recovering ancient

manuscripts was now equaled by the eagerness to recover lost works

of ancient art. Both of these sentiments were strong in Leo. It was in

his pontificate that excavators found the so-called Antinous, and

the statues of the Nile and the Tiber; and these were placed in the

Vatican Museum. Leo bought back, whenever he could, the gems,

cameos, and other dispersed works of art once possessed by the Medici,

and placed these too in the Vatican. Supported by his patronage, and

starting with the previous work of Fra Giocondo and others, Iacopo

Mazochi and Francesco Albertini copied, through four years, all the

inscriptions they could find on Roman remains, and published them as

Epigrammata antiquae urbis Romae (1521)- an event in classical

archeology.

In 1515 Leo appointed Raphael superintendent of antiquities.

Helped by Mazochi, Andrea Fulvio, Fabio Calvo, Castiglione, and

others, the young painter formed an ambitious archeological plan. In

1518 he addressed to Leo a letter adjuring the Pontiff to use the

authority of the Church for the preservation of all classical remains.

The words may be Castiglione's, the passion has the ring of Raphael:

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When we reflect upon the divinity of those antique souls, when we

see the corpse of this noble city, mother and queen of the world, so

miserably mangled,... how many pontiffs have permitted the ruin and

defacement of the ancient temples, statues, arches and other

buildings, the glory of their founders!... I dare say that all this

new Rome that we now behold, however grand it is and beautiful and

adorned with palaces, churches, and other edifices, has been

cemented with lime made from the ancient marbles....

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The letter recalls how much destruction has taken place even

during Raphael's ten years in Rome. It surveys the history of

architecture, denounces the crude barbarism of the Romanesque and

Gothic styles (here called the Gothic and the Teutonic), and exalts

the Greco-Roman orders as models of perfection and taste. Finally it

proposes that a corps of experts should be formed, that Rome should be

divided into the fourteen regions anciently designated by Augustus,

and that in each of these regions a careful survey and record should

be made of all classic remains. Raphael's early death, soon followed

by Leo's, delayed for a long time this majestic enterprise.

The influence of the recovered relics was felt in every branch of

art and thought. That influence worked on Brunellesco, Alberti,

Bramante; now it became supreme, until in Palladio it completely and

almost servilely copied ancient forms. Ghiberti and Donatello had

tried to model classically. Michelangelo achieved the classic manner

perfectly in his Brutus, but for the rest he remained his passionate

and unclassic self. Literature transformed Christian theology into

pagan mythology, and replaced paradise with Olympus. In painting the

classic influence took the form of pagan subjects and- even in

Christian themes- pagan nudes; Raphael himself, darling of the

popes, painted Psyches, Venuses, and Cupids on palace walls; and

classic designs and arabesques mounted the pillars and ran along the

cornices and friezes of a thousand buildings in Rome.

The classical triumph expressed itself most clearly in the new St.

Peter's. Leo kept Bramante as "master of the works" there as long as

possible; but the old architect was crippled with gout, and Fra

Giocondo was commissioned to help him design; however, Fra Giocondo

was ten years older than Bramante, who was seventy. In January,

1514, Leo appointed Giuliano da Sangallo, also seventy, to direct

the operations. Bramante, on his deathbed, urged the Pope to confide

the enterprise to a younger man, specifically, Raphael. Leo

compromised; in August, 1514, he made the young Raphael and the old

Fra Giocondo comasters of the work. For a time Raphael worked

enthusiastically in his uncongenial function as an architect;

henceforth, he said, he would live nowhere but in Rome, and this "from

love for the building of St. Peter's... the greatest building that man

has ever yet seen." He continues, with characteristic modesty:

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The cost will amount to a million gold ducats; the Pope has

ordered 60,000 for the works. He thinks of nothing else. He has

associated me with an experienced monk who has passed his eightieth

year. The Pope sees that the monk cannot live much longer, and His

Holiness has therefore determined that I should benefit by the

instructions of this distinguished craftsman, and attain to greater

proficiency in the art of architecture, of the beauties of which the

monk has recondite knowledge.... The Pope gives us audience every day,

and keeps us long in conversation on the subject of the

building. `051856

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Fra Giocondo died July 1, 1515; and on the same day Giuliano da

Sangallo withdrew from the group of designers. Raphael, left

supreme, undertook to replace Bramante's ground plan with a Latin

cross, of unequal arms, and sketched a cupola that Antonio da Sangallo

(nephew of Giuliano) proved too heavy for its supporting pillars. In

1517 Antonio was appointed coarchitect with Raphael. Disputes arose

now at every step, and Raphael, burdened with pictorial engagements,

lost interest in the undertaking. Meanwhile Leo ran short of funds,

tried to raise more by issuing indulgences, and as a result found a

German Reformation on his hands (1517). St. Peter's made no

substantial progress until Michelangelo was put in charge of it

in 1546.

VI. MICHELANGELO AND LEO X

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Julius II had left funds to his executors for the completion, on a

smaller scale, of the tomb that Michelangelo had designed for him. The

artist worked at this task through the first three years of Leo's

pontificate, and received from the executors, in those years, 6100

ducats ($76,250?). Most of what remains of the monument was probably

produced in this period, along with the Christ Risen of Santa

Maria sopra Minerva- a handsome naked athlete whom later taste clothed

in a loincloth of bronze. A letter written by Michelangelo in May,

1518, tells how Signorelli came to his studio and borrowed eighty

giulii ($800?), which he never returned, and adds: "He found me

working on a marble statue four cubits in height, which has the

hands bound behind the back." `051857 This was presumably one of the

Prigioni or Captivi intended to represent the cities or arts

made captive by the warrior Pope. A statue in the Louvre fits the

description: a muscular figure wearing only a loincloth, and with arms

so tightly bound at the back that the cords eat into the flesh. Near

it is a finer Captive, naked except for a narrow band about the

breast; here the musculature is not exaggerated; the body is a

symphony of health and beauty; this is Greek perfection. Four

unfinished Schiavi or Slaves in the Florence Academy were

apparently intended as caryatids to support the superstructure of

the tomb. The aborted tomb is now in Julius' church of San Pietro in

Vincoli: a magnificent massive throne, pillars elegantly carved, and a

seated Moses - an ill-proportioned monster of beard and horns and

wrathful brow, holding the Tables of the Law. If we choose to

believe an improbable story in Vasari, Jews could be seen on any

Saturday entering the Christian church "to worship this figure, not as

a work of the human hand, but as something divine." `051858 On

Moses' left is a Leah, on his right a splendid Rachel - statues

that Michael called "the Active and the Contemplative Life." The

remaining figures of the tomb were indifferently carved by his

aides: above the Moses a Madonna, and at her feet the

half-recumbent effigy of Julius II, crowned with the papal tiara.

The whole monument is a torso, the painfully interrupted work of

scattered years from 1506 to 1545, confused, enormous, incongruous,

and absurd.

While these figures were being chiseled out, Leo- perhaps during a

stay in Florence- conceived the idea of finishing the church of San

Lorenzo there. This was the shrine of the Medici, containing the tombs

of Cosimo, Lorenzo, and many other members of the family.

Brunellesco had built the church, but had left the facade

unfinished. Leo asked Raphael, Giuliano da Sangallo, Baccio

d'Agnolo, Andrea and Iacopo Sansovino to submit plans for completing

the front. Michelangelo, apparently of his own accord, sent in a

plan of his own, which Leo accepted as the best; hence the Pope cannot

be blamed, as so many have blamed him, for diverting Michael from

Julius' tomb. Leo sent him to Florence, whence he went to Carrara to

quarry tons of marble. Back in Florence, he hired assistants for the

work, quarreled with them, sent them packing, and brooded inactively

in his uncongenial role as architect. Cardinal Giulio de' Medici,

Leo's cousin, appropriated some of the idle marble for work on the

cathedral; Michael fumed, but still dallied. At last (1520) Leo

freed him from the contract, and required no accounting of the funds

that had been advanced to the artist. When Sebastiano del Piombo asked

the Pope to give Angelo further assignments, Leo excused himself. He

recognized Michelangelo's supremacy in art, but, he said, "he is an

alarming man, as you yourself see, and there is no getting on with

him." Sebastiano reported the conversation to his friend, adding: "I

told His Holiness that your alarming ways did no man any harm, and

that it was only your devotion to the great work to which you have

given yourself that made you seem terrible to others." `051859

What was this famous terribilita? It was, first of all, energy,

a wild consuming force that tortured Michelangelo's body, but

sustained it, for eighty-nine years; and second, a power of will

that kept that energy harnessed and directed to one purpose- art-

ignoring almost everything else. Now energy directed by a unifying

will is almost the definition of genius. The energy that looked upon

formless stone as a challenge, and clawed and hammered and chiseled it

con furia till it took on a revealing significance, was the same

force that swept angrily over the distracting trivialities of life,

took no thought of clothing or cleanliness or superficial

courtesies, and advanced to its end, if not blindly yet with blinders,

over broken promises, broken friendships, broken health, at last

over a broken spirit, leaving the body and mind shattered, but the

work done- the greatest painting, the greatest sculpture, and some

of the greatest architecture, of the time. "If God assist me," he

said, "I shall produce the finest thing that Italy has ever

seen." `051860

He was the least prepossessing figure in an age brilliant with proud

beauty of person and splendor of dress. Middle height, broad

shoulders, slim frame, large head, high brow, ears protruding beyond

the cheeks, temples bulging out beyond the ears, drawn and somber

face, crushed nose, sharp, small eyes, grizzly hair and beard- this

was Michelangelo in his prime. He wore old clothing, and clung to it

till it became almost part of his flesh; and he seems to have obeyed

half of his father's advice: "See that you do not wash. Have

yourself rubbed down, but do not wash." `051861 Though rich, he

lived like a poor man, not only frugally but penuriously. He ate

whatever he found at hand, sometimes dining on a crust of bread. At

Bologna he and his three workmen occupied one room, slept in one

bed. "While he was in full vigor," says Condivi, "he usually went to

bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always

worn because of a chronic tendency to cramp.... At certain seasons

he has kept these boots on for such a length of time that when he drew

them off, the skin came away together with the leather." `051862 As

Vasari puts it, "he had no mind to undress merely that he might have

to dress again." `051863

While he prided himself on his supposed noble lineage, he

preferred the poor to the rich, the simple to the intellectual, the

toil of a worker to the leisure and luxuries of wealth. He gave most

of his earnings to maintain his shiftless relatives. He liked

solitude; he found it intolerable to make small talk with third-rate

minds; wherever he was, he followed his own train of thought. He cared

little for beautiful women, and saved a fortune by continence. When

a priest expressed regret that Michelangelo had not married and

begotten children, he replied: "I have only too much of a wife in my

art, and she has given me trouble enough. As to my children, they

are the works that I shall leave; and if they are not worth much, they

will at least live for some time." `051864 He could not bear women

about the house. He preferred males both for companionship and for

art. He painted women, but always in their maternal maturity, not in

the bright charm of their youth; it is remarkable that both he and

Leonardo were apparently insensitive to the physical beauty of

woman, who has seemed to most artists the very embodiment and

fountainhead of beauty. There is no evidence that he was homosexual;

apparently all the energy that might have gone into sex was in his

case used up in work. At Carrara he spent the day, from early morn, in

the saddle, directing the stonecutters and road makers; and the

evening in his cabin by lamplight, studying plans, calculating

costs, projecting the morrow's tasks. He had periods of apparent

sluggishness, and then suddenly the fever of creation would possess

him again, and everything else would be ignored, even the sack of

Rome.

Absorbed in work, he gave himself little time for friendship, though

he had devoted friends. "Rarely did any friend or other person eat

at his table." `051865 He was content with the company of his faithful

servant Francesco degli Amadori, who for twenty-five years took care

of him, and for many years shared his bed. Michael's gifts made

Francesco a rich man, and the artist was heartbroken at his death

(1555). For others he had a bad temper and a sharp tongue,

criticized rudely, took offense readily, suspected everybody. He

called Perugino a fool, and expressed his opinion about Francia's

paintings by telling Francia's handsome son that his father made

better forms by night than by day. `051866 He was jealous of Raphael's

success and popularity. Though the two artists respected each other,

their supporters divided into feuding cabals; and Iacopo Sansovino

sent Michael a letter of violent abuse, saying, "May the day be cursed

on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." `051867 There

were a few such days. Seeing Titian's portrait of Duke Alfonso of

Ferrara, Michael remarked that he had not thought that art could

perform so much, and that only Titian deserved the name of

painter. `051868 His bitter temper and somber mood were his lifelong

tragedy. At times he was melancholy to the edge of madness; and in his

old age the fear of hell so obsessed him that he thought of his art as

a sin, and he dowered poor girls to propitiate an angry God. `051869 A

neurotic sensitivity brought him almost daily misery. As early as 1508

he wrote to his father: "It is now about fifteen years since I had a

single hour of well-being." `051870 He would not have many more,

though he had still fifty-eight years to live.

VII. RAPHAEL AND LEO X: 1513-20

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Leo neglected Michelangelo partly because he liked men and women

of equable temper, and partly because he had no great love for

architecture or the massive in art; he preferred a gem to a cathedral,

and miniatures to monuments. He kept Caradosso, Santi de Cola Sabba,

Michele Nardini, and many other goldsmiths busy making jewelry,

cameos, medals, coins, sacred vessels. At his death he left a

collection of precious stones, rubies, sapphires, emeralds,

diamonds, pearls, tiaras, miters, and pectorals worth 204,655

ducats- over $2,500,000; we should remember, however, that most of

these had been inherited from his predecessors, and that they

constituted a portion of the papal treasury immune to depreciations of

the currency.

He invited a score of painters to Rome, but Raphael was almost the

only one that he really cared for. He tried Leonardo, and dismissed

him as a dawdler. Fra Bartolommeo came to Rome in 1514, and painted

a St. Peter and a St. Paul; but the air and excitement disagreed

with him, and he soon returned to the peace of his Florentine

monastery. Leo liked the work of Sodoma, but hardly dared let that

reckless rake roam too freely about the Vatican. Sebastiano del Piombo

was appropriated by Leo's cousin, Giulio de' Medici.

Raphael agreed with Leo in both temperament and taste. Both were

amiable epicureans who made Christianity a pleasure and took their

heaven here; but both worked as hard as they played. Leo plied the

happy artist with tasks: the completion of the stanze, the designing

of cartoons for the Sistine Chapel tapestries, the decoration of the

Vatican Loggie, the building of St. Peter's, the preservation of

classic art. Raphael accepted these commissions with good cheer and

appetite, and found time, besides, to paint a score of religious

pictures, several series of pagan frescoes, and half a hundred

Madonnas and portraits any one of which would have assured him

wealth and fame. Leo abused his complaisance by asking him to

arrange fetes, to paint the scenery for a play, to make a portrait

of a beloved elephant. `051871 Perhaps overwork, as well as love,

brought Raphael to an early death.

But he was now in the fullness of his powers and the bloom of his

prosperity. In a letter (July 1, 1514) to his "dear Uncle Simone...

who art dear to me as a father," and who had reproached him for

persistent bachelorhood, he writes in a mood of happy self-confidence:

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As for a wife, I must tell you that I am daily thankful that I did

not take the one you destined for me, or, indeed, any other. In this

instance I have been wiser than you... and I am sure that you must now

see that I am better as I am. I have capital in Rome worth 3000

ducats, and an assured income of fifty more. His Holiness allows me

a salary of 300 ducats for superintending the rebuilding of St.

Peter's, which will not fail me as long as I live.... Besides this,

they give me whatever I ask for my works. I have commenced the

decoration of a large hall for His Holiness, for which I am to get

1200 golden crowns. Thus you must see, my dear uncle, that I do

honor to my family as well as to my country. `051872

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At thirty-one he was entering into conscious manhood. He had grown a

dark beard, perhaps to disguise his youth. He lived in comfort, even

splendor, in a palace built by Bramante and bought by Raphael for

three thousand ducats. He dressed in the style of a young

aristocrat. On his visits to the Vatican he was accompanied by a

princely retinue of pupils and clients. Michelangelo reproved him,

saying, "You go about with a suite, like a general"; to which

Raphael replied, "And you go about alone, like a hangman." `051873

He was still a good-natured youth, free from envy but eager with

emulation, not quite as modest as before (how could he be?), but

always helpful to others, presenting masterpieces to his friends,

and even serving as Maecenas and patron to artists less fortunate or

gifted than himself. But on occasion his wit could be sharp enough.

When two cardinals, visiting his studio, amused themselves by

picking flaws in his pictures- saying, for example, that the faces

of the Apostles were too red- he replied: "Do not be surprised at

that, your eminences; I painted them so deliberately; may we not think

that they can blush in heaven when they see the Church governed by

such men as you?" `051874 However, he could take correction without

resentment, as in the plans for St. Peter's. He could flatter a

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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