Michelangelo’s true colors

MICHELANGELO AND THE POPE’S CEILING
By ROSS KING Available at A Different Bookstore, Podium and Eastwood branches

Anyone who’s had the pleasure of viewing the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome (or seen reproductions of it) would admit it’s amazing that such vivid colors have survived over 500 years – through wars, smoke, dirt and grime – to emerge even more brilliantly after a recent cleaning.

Ross King’s book, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, gives a detailed nonfiction account of how the Sistine Chapel project began: from Pope Julius II’s commission to Michelangelo, originally to design and construct for him a mammoth tomb, a project which was abandoned, much to the artist’s disgruntlement. (Michelangelo had already paid to have some 100 tons of Carrara white marble hauled to Rome, where it sat in a piazza, uncut and untouched for years.)

Indeed, the Pope and the artist engaged in a constant battle of wills, a relationship that sent Michelangelo fleeing Rome for his hometown of Florence after the tomb project went sour. But Julius, a wrathful pope who was known to have his enemies killed (when he wasn’t busy flogging them himself), just wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He had Michelangelo tracked down and ordered back to Rome – this time to begin another commission.

The Sistine Chapel served as a worship hall for the capella papalis, or Papal Chapel, a place where the Pope and several hundred of his highest cardinals, bishops and Vatican heads held Mass. It was also a where deliberations on pope selection were carried out. Built in 1474, it developed a series of cracks in its ceiling so damaging that, by 1508, a new ceiling fresco was needed.

The only problem? Michelangelo was not generally known as a painter. He was primarily a sculptor, and had never before tackled a mural of such complexity or size (130 x 43 feet). On top of this, the mural was 65 feet above ground, which required an intricate scaffolding system that would allow papal business and Masses to continue unimpeded below.

Added to the problem was the difficult and mysterious process of fresco painting itself, which Michelangelo had never attempted before. Fresco, or "fresh" painting, is just that: the artist and his assistants troweled a smooth, fresh layer of wet plaster over the existing dry plaster, then tacked the "cartoon," or full-scale drawing onto its surface. They would quickly trace the outlines (or perforate the cartoon at hundreds of points to allow charcoal to filter through onto the plaster), then begin painting right onto the wet medium, sometimes working with a brush in each hand as the plaster would dry within 12 to 24 hours.

This painting-on-the-fly was a virtuoso technique, requiring precise measures of water, pigment and plaster. There was little room for error; if the plaster dried with mistakes, it had to be chiseled away and work began again. As King’s book catalogues in spellbinding detail, cold temperature, mildew and corrosive salts quickly plagued Michelangelo’s project, which eventually took four years to complete.

There were other matters plaguing the great artist. By personality a proud and reclusive man, he was prone to paranoia, fits of anger and depression. He was convinced that his rivals were trying to ruin his reputation or doom his fresco to failure.

One perceived rival was Raphael, a young artist who was working on another fresco for Pope Julius just across town at the Stanza del Segnatura at the time. Whereas Raphael was said to be sweet-natured, open, and a definite ladies’ man, Michelangelo was secretive, coarse and celibate. (Theories on the artist’s homosexuality are dismissed by King as inconclusive, noting that the fashion in Rome at the time was more of "Platonic love" between men, though popes and priests were known to sleep with prostitutes.)

Michelangelo’s bigger battle may have been with Julius, who was then busy waging a Holy War with Venice and had little patience for temperamental artists. After instructing Michelangelo to depict the 12 Apostles on the Sistine ceiling, the artist told His Holiness flatly that the design would be "a poor thing" (cosa povera). Instead, Michelangelo devised an intricate series of panels that focused largely on the Old Testament, depicting obscure ancestors of Christ and biblical scenes that King convincingly links to internal conflicts within the artist’s family life. Plus, you’ve got to love a Renaissance artist who tells a pope that his design sucks.

The book also dispels certain myths about Michelangelo’s working habits, notions perpetuated by Irving Stone’s book, The Agony and the Ecstasy, as well as the Charlton Heston movie of the same name. No, Michelangelo did not dismiss his assistants and heroically paint the ceiling all on his own. And no, he didn’t paint lying on his back, but rather standing up and stretching overhead.

Despite all the internal and external conflicts, the results, as Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling illustrates, are still quite breathtaking. The reason has much to do with the fresco technique, in which the hand-ground pigments used as paint are actually absorbed into the wet plaster – somewhat like a tattoo – then locked in through a chemical process as the plaster dries. Oil or tempera paint would never withstand centuries of smoke from candles and oil lamps, let alone a meticulous cleaning of its surface. But after the 1980-89 restoration project, Michelangelo’s original colors emerged as clear and fresh as ever, proof that true art, though perhaps not eternal, is built to last.