Stories of Art: Michelangelo - The Making of Rome- Part 4

[00:00:01]Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm  James Fox. And I'm Alastair Sooke.

[00:00:09]Near the centre of a vast, complex painting,  a muscular saint sits naked on a cloud.

[00:00:17]In his right hand, he grasps a short, curved  knife, a tool typically used to skin animals. In his left hand, he holds his own skin, which sags  lifelessly below him like a haunted plastic bag.

[00:00:32]But as we examine this human hide more closely,  it becomes increasingly clear that this isn't his skin. It likely belongs to the man who painted  the picture, a certain Michelangelo Buonarroti.

[00:00:46]Now, that, Alastair, is my description of a  very odd moment in Michelangelo's painting, The Last Judgment, a great fresco he painted later  in his life in his 60s. It is one of the weirdest self-portraits in the history of art, isn't it?  It's so bizarre because you see it's very grisly.

[00:01:05]I mean, the plastic bag line is lovely. It  gets him into trouble as well at the time with some contemporary viewers because the flayed  skin, which has Michelangelo's self-portraits, doesn't seem to resemble totally the actual  saint who's holding it, Saint Bartholomew, who was martyred by being flayed. For one  thing, Bartholomew's bald in the picture.

[00:01:27]Exactly. And the skin has a full head of hair. So,  I mean, what is going on here? I assume that part of it is simply this was another epic, monumental  painting in the Sistine Chapel and it's taken it out of him. He's much older. This is just how  Michelangelo's feeling. Exhausted, shattered at the end of that process. That's how we feel after  a multi-part podcast. Exactly. But there's also, it always reminds me of, there is this ancient  Greek mythological figure, Marsyas, who is flayed. And he's flayed for challenging Apollo to  a musical contest. So he's really good at music.

[00:02:07]He challenges Apollo. He loses. And his punishment  for his temerity at challenging the gods is... is to be flayed. And I think any literate viewer  at the time would have associated this with that myth as well. And there's something to do with  later in his life, perhaps he's losing that... arrogance about his art. Because I think what  we're about to sort of dive into is, you know, people associate Michelangelo with the Sistine  Ceiling, with the David, things that we've covered already in this series. But of course, at the end  of his life, we'd only got up last time to what, round about 1530? He lives until 1564. He's  almost 89. It's a huge chunk of his life.

[00:02:47]It's a very relatable period in his life  where he's much frailer, he's more infirm, he changes the way he works, he's much more  collaborative. And I think you get a sense, perhaps, of that shift, that new, darker vision  where he's much more spiritual as well. Yes.

[00:03:04]In this self-portrait. That's exactly right. And  in this, the final episode in our epic series on, in my view, history's greatest artist,  we are going to talk through the final dramatic, dark, desperate moments and decades of  Michelangelo's life. Before we do that, though, Alistair, should we just remind listeners where  we've got to? So Michelangelo is, well, obviously he's from Florence. He's part of a workshop in  Florence that was very inventive and active and enterprising, the Ghirlandaio workshop. He gets  spotted, sort of talent scouted, as it were, by Lorenzo Il Magnifico. And he has his big break,  though, not in Florence but in Rome, where he sculpts that beautiful, elegant, graceful Pietà.  with the dead Christ on the lap of his mother, the Virgin. And then he comes back to Florence and he  creates the David. He starts to create the mural, which is known as the Battle of Cascina, which he  never actually creates, but it's very influential, all of the studies that he does for that.  And he is winning renown, growing renown, both in Florence and in Rome. He gets called  to Rome by the great warrior Pope Julius II.

[00:04:12]I think this is, broadly speaking, right.  I'm very impressed. This is excellent. He, Julius commissions, well, he wants him to create  this enormous tomb for Julius, and that would have been the work of a lifetime. Originally, it  would have been this freestanding monument, 40-odd figures. But the saga of the tomb, which gets  called the tragedy of the tomb, lasts for decades.

[00:04:31]Michelangelo never quite manages to create it. It  eventually ends up in this very diminished form, very different form. At the same time, he's  asked by Julius to paint the Sistine Ceiling.

[00:04:43]which is the great high point of that first part  of his career. I think we left things last time as there was a new pope in town, Leo X, had come  to power, and he gets Michelangelo to go and work in Florence to create the facade for this basilica  there, the Medici family church, which never gets created. This then is the fourth and final part of  our series on the life and work of Michelangelo.

[00:05:15]Alistair, I'd like to begin this episode with a  quote from a film, The Third Man. Ah, surprising.

[00:05:23]Yes, I thought, why not? This is Orson Welles as  Harry Lyme. It's not the Cuckoo Clocks, is it?

[00:05:28]Yes, it is the Cuckoo Clocks, and now you've  given away the punchline. Thank you for that.

[00:05:33]In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they  had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed.

[00:05:39]But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da  Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of  democracy and peace. And what did that produce?

[00:05:52]It's the cuckoo clock. Cuckoo clock. It's a  great passage. Historians have criticised it, to be fair. Yes. I think I prefer your  Robert Hughes, if I may say. Okay. But one of the things that is true about that passage  is that really Italy was wracked by conflict. So really throughout Michelangelo's life, since the  1490s when he was still in his 20s, Italy had been engulfed in constant warfare. There were armies  marching this way and that. There were dynasties rising and falling. And of course, the social and  political and economic disruption that came with it. Because Italy was rich... Because it was weak,  because it was very strategically located, it became a battleground on which the major European  powers, France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, competed. And Italy, of course, as we've described  in earlier episodes, it was itself divided, divided between different families, different  city-states. And Michelangelo, of course, was no stranger to that. He was constantly moving from  one place to the other, dealing with these very powerful families whose interests were often not  aligned. But he had managed throughout his life to sidestep the big problems. And in many ways,  his talent, his reputation was saving him. But in the 1520s, when this episode begins, he suddenly  finds himself in the middle of this crisis. So in the 1520s, Michelangelo is, as you say, back up  in Florence. He's still working on San Lorenzo for the Medici. When he hears that in 1527, the sack  of Rome has happened. That is when the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, plunders the city of Rome.  I mean, this is a cataclysmic moment for Rome.

[00:07:39]It's a terrifying part of European history  where these soldiers are running amok in Rome, which hasn't actually been violated, sacked  since antiquity. They're torturing people.

[00:07:52]Apparently one favoured mode of torture was just  to tie people up and let them die of starvation.

[00:07:58]And so it's this great moment of reckoning where  you had... The High Renaissance, Rome just seeming like this wonderful pinnacle and centre, and  it's desecrated. And all of that certainty, confidence, all of that wealth and excitement  is suddenly at a stroke. In terms of its, what, self-image, it's being attacked. And there's a  ripple effect throughout Italy. So when people hear in Florence about what has happened in  Rome... a rebellion begins in Florence as well. And the Florentines rise up against the  Medici, just as they had done in the 1490s.

[00:08:31]And they vanquish them. And the Medici then form  an army, together with some major European powers, and they aim to try to take the city back.  So I've got a question for you, Alistair.

[00:08:42]Who would Michelangelo side with? Will he side  with the rebels, or will he side with the Medici?

[00:08:48]You probably know the answer. Yeah. I confess  I may know the answer, but I would say, I mean, it's funny you say, because we obviously  didn't know you were coming with that question.

[00:09:00]I was about to ask you a question because I'm  reminded of the 1490s when Piero de' Medici was expelled from the city. And it was the moment  when Savonarola, the great preacher, that real kind of firebrand of a preacher was... all of  these sermons and this sort of theocratic state.

[00:09:22]But it was the moment where out of that you had  this republic. Yes. Florence returned to republic.

[00:09:28]And we know that Michelangelo was actually,  he always recalled the sermons of Savonarola much later in life. And there's this sense that  throughout his life, even though he works for Medici patrons and Medici popes, Actually, he  has these Republican sympathies. He does, yeah.

[00:09:48]Which, in a way, to a modern audience, is maybe  quite a sympathetic trait and characteristic, depending on your politics. He is an  anti-establishment figure, although he is essentially a pillar of the establishment, he's  building pillars for the establishment. He has this... element to him, this political element to  him. He believes very powerfully in the Republic.

[00:10:09]He believes in the city of Florence rather than  the big families of Florence. And so, indeed, when he's faced with this big decision, is he going to  back the Medici or is he going to back the rebels?

[00:10:20]He backs the rebels. He betrays the very family  that has made him, really. Yes. And the family he's been connected with intimately and received  great patronage from throughout his entire life.

[00:10:33]And so he gets a job. So we've talked about  Michelangelo doing everything. Great painter, great sculptor, great architect, great poet. He  also, in 1528, becomes chief of fortifications.

[00:10:45]I mean, this is something, in fairness, it's not  totally unusual. No. Leonardo da Vinci famously also worked in a military capacity at points in  his career. There is this sense, because, you know, this is one of the big narratives of this  series. This is a moment when what it means to be an artist is changing. And there was this sense  of being an artisan, being a craftsman, but also being slight jack of all trades. Yes, it's fluid,  isn't it? Much more fluid than it becomes in later centuries. So that's what you see here. I don't  know how effective the fortification designs were necessarily. No. So to put this into context,  so he's in Florence and the armies are amassing, the Medici's armies are amassing to take the  city back. And so he is hired to strengthen those fortifications to stop that happening.  And so he really throws himself into it. He tours the hills and the city walls. He surveys the  terrain. He studies all the military treatises. He builds barricades and bastions. He helps direct  the city's defences. He doesn't actually build an enormous amount. I don't think he really has  any effect on the outcome. Because in 1529, 1530, there is a brutal siege of Florence. when imperial  forces, Medici forces, papal forces as well, surround the city to try to repress the uprising.  And they do this for 10 months. It's a terrible situation in Florence. There's starvation,  there are people dying, there is illness.

[00:12:12]And in August 1530, Florence finally surrenders  and the Medici return. This is bad news for Michelangelo. And he's actually worried by this,  isn't he? I mean, explicitly he's concerned that there will be reprisals and that he may be a  victim of that. Well, yeah, indeed. There is a note that goes around with a list of traitors  to the Medici and to the city of Florence.

[00:12:36]He is on it. He is sentenced to death. in this  note. So he knows he's in serious, serious danger.

[00:12:43]So what he does is he goes into hiding. Which he  does at a few points in his career, doesn't he?

[00:12:49]Yeah. I mean, as we say, these  are very, very tumultuous times.

[00:12:52]And many people are, you know, living in constant  fear, having to move, having to go into hiding.

[00:12:58]Michelangelo is one of those figures. And  of course, by this stage, he's very famous.

[00:13:03]He's not someone who could really disappear in a  village somewhere that easily. He's a celebrity.

[00:13:08]And so what he does, the most amazing thing, he's  got to find somewhere to hide. He hides from the Medici in their own chapel. So he goes to the  San Lorenzo, the church he has been working on for years, trying to build the facade, which  never happens, and building the sacristy as well.

[00:13:27]He knows this building inside out and he knows  that under that building there is a little cellar that he can get into with a secret door and  he can see out of and no one can see into.

[00:13:38]And so he hides in this cellar for two months  from the Medici. He's having food brought to him.

[00:13:44]And one of the fascinating things about  this cellar, Alistair, is in 1975, so what, only 50 odd years ago, the walls were cleaned and  drawings were discovered all over the walls, which some people think were made by Michelangelo during  that period. Yeah. It's absolutely incredible, though I should add that some people think none  of what I've just said is true. They think he was actually hiding somewhere else. But one thing is  certain, the Pope at the time, Clement VII... Also a Medici Pope. Of course he is. Of course he is.  Yeah, they've sewn it up. So yes, another Medici Pope comes to power, Clement VII. And Clement  VII... pardons Michelangelo. So I think there is this phrase that he puts aside, quote, his  fury. Yes. And he's recognising the artist's every virtue, probably butchered that pronunciation, but  great talent and forgives him everything. Yeah.

[00:14:36]And the rules don't apply to Michelangelo.  This is the thing, you know, and this is what is so fascinating. If you're looking  at this from an art historical perspective, you've got to recognise that before Michelangelo,  and indeed for many people of Michelangelo's time, artists were nobodies. They were artisans. They  were manual workers. No one knew who their names were. They were paid a pittance of a daily rate.  Michelangelo is absolutely breaking that trend, isn't he? And he is a celebrity. He's a guy  who can get out of scrapes that no one else could get out of, who popes, princes, dukes were  willing to bend the rules because they knew they needed him so much. I think there must have  been this great belief amongst the people in charge at that time in the power, the potential  power of imagery. It was so important to their political programme to have artists of the stature  of Michelangelo who are creating what they can do, that it was more important to let bygones  be bygones. And Clement, of course, actually does have an idea for a new project that maybe  he could take on. Yes, so he hires him to do some more building work. So he asks him to continue  work on the Church of San Lorenzo and also the library attached, which we call the Laurentian  Library. Yes. We're not a podcast called, you know, Stories of Architecture, so we're  not going to... dived in too much depth into the architecture. But the Laurentian Library is an  incredible architectural invention. So the thing that I associate that with is principally there is  this kind of vestibule. Yes. And there's this very bizarre, big staircase. Way too big for the room  itself. like a great lolling tongue that sort of dominates this space. And it's sort of almost  absurd, kind of self-consciously so. And that is Michelangelo's design. He has this long career,  particularly in the second half of his life, as an architect, a sculptor architect, but as an  architect. And here he's working primarily as an architect, and this is one of his great creations,  as it were. It is one of his great creations, and it's seen as a forerunner for, you know, Mannerist  and Baroque architecture. It's a very important architectural invention. But in 1532, Alistair, he  goes back down to Rome. We're going to deal with his personal life a little bit here because this  is when he meets... very charming, very handsome young man called Tommaso di Cavalieri. This is  a Roman nobleman. He's much younger, isn't he?

[00:17:14]He's probably born in 1513 to 14, so he's actually  Michelangelo's junior by 38 or 39 years. And it's very interesting because what clearly happens is  that Michelangelo becomes infatuated with Tommaso.

[00:17:30]Tommaso has a higher social status and he's a very  good-looking young man. And Michelangelo probably falls in love with him. Yes. There is even a  question of whether he has a relationship with Tommaso. And Tommaso isn't the first beautiful  young man that Michelangelo has become interested in. There have been others. And one way that he  signals his interest in these younger men is he creates these gift drawings. And there's a  group of drawings which get given to Tommaso, which are all on Ovidian themes,  themes by the Roman poet Ovid.

[00:18:05]And they are themselves quite suggestive. There's  one which is now lost, which Tommaso receives, which is called the Rape of Ganymede. Ganymede  being this Phrygian shepherd boy who Jupiter Zeus takes a shine to, swoops down and whisks him up  to heaven, Zeus being in the form of an eagle.

[00:18:24]And there's a copy of the lost drawing, which  when you're looking at it, it's highly erotic.

[00:18:29]You have this big eagle is embracing Ganymede,  The youth, almost sort of grabbing onto his flesh with its talents. The fact that out of the  canonical set of these drawings that Tommaso had, the fact that this one has disappeared may itself  be almost a form of censorship because it seems to be alluding almost too directly to something  very intimate. What's your take on this? I mean, it was an open secret in his life, his interest  in younger men, possible pederasty even.

[00:19:04]It's clear in his art. I mean, one thing that we  didn't discuss in the Sistine ceiling,, one of the greatest artistic innovations of all, all of these  nudes, which are just dotted through the ceiling and they become progressively more monumental,  more powerful, and seem to be expressing something of Michelangelo's own predilection, shall we  say. Yeah, it's a very, very long-running debate, Michelangelo's sexuality. And I think it's worth  just digging into it just a little bit here.

[00:19:33]I think the first thing to say is that it is sort  of anachronistic of us to speak of sexuality. back in that period. No one really thought in the 16th  century of sexuality as an identity. You know, you weren't defined by who you had sex with. There  were many people in Florence. In fact, I've read a study here that suggests that most Florentine men  who were happily married with children were having sex with other men. It was just something you did.  And it didn't define your identity. It wasn't, you wouldn't have identified yourself as homosexual or  anything like that. It's just something you did.

[00:20:10]So we do need to understand that context.  But I think even with that context described, Michelangelo does stand out. I think he does stand  out. I mean, I hear what you're saying. It's very interesting. The thing that's fascinating to  me is that in the earlier biographies that are written in his lifetime, this side of his  life is downplayed. There seems to be a switch towards the end so that when the second edition of  Vasari's thing comes out, The Lives of the Artist, there's a more explicit, if you like, allusion to  his relationship with the so-called Tommasos and the other beautiful young men that he's interested  in. I mean, there is another question altogether about whether Michelangelo had sex at all. Well,  exactly. He was seen as being this abstemious figure. He had this, there's his final assistant,  who there's some marginalia where he actually has a copy of one of these biographies, Condivi, in  fact, and in the margin he's written something which seems to be quoting Michelangelo directly,  who's saying, on coitus, this I have always practised, this is Michelangelo speaking,  supposedly, if you would like to lengthen your life, do not do it or avoid it as much as you can.  Well, if you recall the Pietà, his explanation for why the Virgin Mary looked so young is because she  was a virgin. It's true. So there's the idea that having sex drains your creative energy. Yeah.  But the fact that it isn't really mentioned in those earlier biographies is suggesting to me that  there was a sense almost of embarrassment. Yeah.

[00:21:35]There was a sense of, for his... close, loyal  group, they wanted slightly to cover up this almost awkward thing. Because actually, you know,  there are these letters where he's describing, for example, whenever he's saying, whenever I  see someone who's showing talent, intellect, they're doing or saying something more becomingly  than others. And he's clearly referring here to kind of the young man he becomes interested  in. He says, this is Michelangelo speaking, he says, I see myself compelled to love him  and do so in abandonment so that I'm no longer myself but all his. I mean, admittedly, that's  someone remembering what he said, you know, kind of slightly putting words in his mouth. But  there is this idea that he does properly fall for people like Tommaso. Yes. And one thing we  can say for sure is he doesn't get married. He doesn't have children. We don't have any evidence  of him having sexual relationships with women.

[00:22:27]It's quite possible, as you say, that he has no  sexual relationships at all and that it's more of an unconsummated thing with Tommaso. But anyway,  I think it was worth touching on. Only two years after coming down to Rome in 1534, Pope Clement  VII... commissions him to do another fresco in the Sistine Chapel again. This must have been  very strange for Michelangelo to be back 22 years later. He's no longer a young middle-aged  man, if you like. He's now approaching, he thought... at least, at the very end of his  life. And Michelangelo is asked to do a major, major painting of The Last Judgment. And this  great fresco of The Last Judgment occupies him for seven, eight years of his life. So it's  a really major, major commitment. He doesn't finish it until he's in his late 60s. It is  just as the Sistine Chapel ceiling had been, a very intimidating physical undertaking. There's  one point at which he falls off the scaffold and very seriously injures himself. And let's just  remind ourselves, he's not a young man any longer.

[00:23:38]And this is a very physically demanding  job to do. The thing that really strikes me about this is that there's this psychological  component you've already alluded to, but he is taking on a commission, which means he is in  direct competition with... not with the other artists who've already decorated the chapel,  but with himself and with his younger self, creating this vigorous composition that was  much praised. I mean, in a sense, it's a bit of a poison chalice commission. Yeah. So it's the  last judgment. The last judgment, to just explain to listeners, is the moment when Christ returns.  It's the second coming of Christ, and he judges all human beings and decides whether they should  go to hell or to heaven or to purgatory. So you typically see it's a very dramatic scene in  Christian art, isn't it? In which you see people either being dragged down to hell by devils or  they're becoming saints and heading up to heaven.

[00:24:35]There's a very famous example by an artist called  Signorelli, which is in the Cathedral of Orvieto, where in fact Clement ended up post the sack  of Rome, the Pope. So there is a theory that perhaps it may have been inspired by the time he  spent encountering that fresco, which Michelangelo himself would have known enormously well. He'd  even lent money to Signorelli much earlier. Yeah.

[00:24:59]Normally, though, the Last Judgment as a device,  as a subject, it's depicted by the entrance, the exit, isn't it, to a religious sacred space,  which isn't the case here. This is taking up the entirety of the altar wall. Yes. It's an enormous  painting that contains 300 figures or so, and it's really far more chaotic visually than the classic  Last Judgment scene. It's quite hard to follow, actually. I mean, it's overwhelming when you see  it. It's this great tangle, this kind of tumult of figures in the middle quite high up. And we  should say as well, just before we get stuck into kind of what it is, that as well as being  in competition with his younger self, this work is going to be destructive to decoration already  in existence in the chapel. So the decision is taken to get rid of a pre-existing altarpiece, an  Assumption of the Virgin by Perugino, an artist, and they have to brick in two windows that would  have been a source of illumination for decoration in the chapel. I think there are even a couple of  places where Ancestors of Christ by Michelangelo have to be painted over. So it was this  great sort of shoulder barge, if you like, into the Sistine Chapel. And Christ himself is  sort of almost doing a shoulder barge, because right in the centre of the canvas, right in the  centre of the wall, almost near the top, actually, you've got Christ like we've never really seen  him before. Unbelievably muscular, muscular.

[00:26:28]lurching figure, beardless. And he is the one...  Beardless being like, that was actually a massive controversy. So just remember that detail. Yeah,  I mean, you know, just as we said, it was pretty remarkable to show God as a man with a white  beard. He's now going the opposite direction, showing Christ without a beard, which had  been a relatively common part of Christ's iconography for... several hundred years at this  stage. And he's also absolutely ripped, isn't he? It's a scary image because what you're seeing  is he has... His two arms, his right arm is bent and it's above his head. And it's a gesture of  authority and judgment. And he's about to pass judgment. And all of these souls who at the last  judgment, the universal judgment, they're being separated into those who are going to heaven,  those who are going to hell. And that right hand of Christ is basically slam dunking. all of the  people on his left, down into hell in the lower corner of the fresco. Meanwhile, you have a sort  of his left arm is a slightly milder gesture and seems almost to be like a conductor  who's maybe conducting a sort of quieter, more beatific passage of music, seems to be  pulling up all of these figures who on the right of Christ, the left as we're looking at  the fresco, they are ascending up into heaven.

[00:27:49]But, you know, the thing is, as you say, it's  very, very confusing. There are all of these strange discrepancies of scale. Yeah. And the  other thing that we haven't touched on yet at all, but which is the most important thing about  this altogether, is that everyone's naked.

[00:28:05]Like, we are in the middle of the Sistine Chapel,  this sacred space, and Michelangelo, who we know, is quite keen on nudes. I mean, there are all  these nudes he's painted on the Sistine ceiling already. He's decided to depict everyone bar the  Virgin Mary who's cowering by the right of Christ.

[00:28:22]totally nude, which was a hugely controversial  thing to do. No wonder she's cowering. It's a sausage fest. But of course, this is one of the  reasons why the work proved so controversial.

[00:28:33]There were lots of people who were deeply  opposed to the nudity. There was one guy whose name escapes me who said it looked like  it belonged in a bathhouse rather than a chapel.

[00:28:43]So Michelangelo actually painted him in hell with  donkey ears. paint over the genitals. I feel sorry for this guy. Volterra. Yeah, Daniele da Volterra.  So Daniele, he was a really faithful pupil, an assistant, and later in life, Michelangelo  actually, as I said at the beginning, I mean, there's this more collaborative mode to the way he  makes art. And he would create drawings, designs for an image, and he entrusts... different artists  to then execute them in paint, which are then sold as products of the Michelangelo studio. Daniele's  doing one of these and he really relies on him.

[00:29:23]But because much later, the criticism and backlash  against the Last Judgment just becomes more and more intense, the decision is taken to, yes, start  painting over the nudity, paint these coverings, and it's Daniele who's tasked with doing this.  And it earns him this nickname, which I... Just wanted to get into the podcast, which is,  he's known as the Il Braghettone, which is the painter of loincloths. Oh, lovely. And that's  sort of almost how he's been remembered as a result. And he was just following orders,  you know. Can I make a confession? Mm-hmm.

[00:29:58]I hate this painting. I think it's  appalling. I'm a huge Michelangelo fan, as you know. I'm obsessed with Michelangelo. But,  you know, great artists can do terrible work. And I feel that everything he learned painting  the ceiling... The idea that less is more.

[00:30:14]Yes. He has forgotten here. There is too much  going on. There are too many figures. They're jumbled all together. The colours are too heavy.  The blues are too strong. The figures are so distorted and exaggerated in some awful ways. So  the women look like men. The elderly people look like bodybuilders. Every pose is overdone. It's  overmannered. It's... The sort of Marvel school of the Renaissance. You know, when I look at this  painting, there's one thing I keep coming back to.

[00:30:43]Ghostbusters. It just reminds me of Ghostbusters,  this painting. And, you know, when everything is so high key, I think it loses its power. It  loses its emotion. So there's one figure... in the picture, near the bottom of the painting,  there's a figure, it's one of the most famous figures in The Last Judgment, who has just  discovered that he's been damned. And he's been grabbed, he's been bitten by devils and dragged  down to hell. Horrific moment. And he does this kind of face plant. Yes, very famous. He's looking  out of the view. You can only see one eye. You can only see one eye. He looks miserable. This  should be terrifying. This should be terrifying.

[00:31:21]This should be absolutely so moving, so  affecting, and yet it almost makes me laugh.

[00:31:28]It's almost comical. And I do think that he's  just gone too far. I think artists often become pastiches of themselves, don't they? Parodies  of themselves. I just feel that Michelangelo, this is where he's heading here. My  question for you in that context is there's a lot of talk with Michelangelo about  how... free he is to create his paintings and when we touched on the sistine chapel's ceiling  i think we both agreed that despite the myth it's highly unlikely that he had total creative  freedom and control and worked with assistants With the last judgment, it's much later in his  career. His stature and status is so much grander.

[00:32:10]Do you think there is more leeway? And he  actually is indulged in some way. I mean, this is speculation, total speculation. But do  you think there could be anything to that? And that's where maybe things are going slightly awry?  I think you're right. You know when filmmakers get too much power and they end up getting directors  cut and they get to do what they want and they end up producing vastly over-length films that just  don't make sense? I feel that is sort of what's happening here. I mean, the extraordinary thing  about it is that actually, in a way, some of, certainly to our eyes, I think, the finest works  of art associated with The Last Judgment are the studies, the drawings that he creates, working  from the life. Some of them are so vigorous and powerful and beautiful And that perhaps is not  translated into the finished product, which, as you say, it is quite a messy, complex,  overwhelming thing to see. And also feels very idiosyncratic, very sort of this strange  personal vision. You feel you can't quite... get a hold of. I mean, sort of down at the bottom,  you have, what's that, the ancient ferryman from Greek mythology? Charon? Charon? Yeah, Charon.  But he seems to be swatting at the damned with this paddle. It's quite odd in a Christian  scheme. I know that he appears in Dante and Michelangelo loves Dante and maybe it's just as  simple as that, it's a reference to that, but it is quite confusing to have this sort of Christian  pagan mix in such a fashion. It's bizarre, but it's also fascinating that that picture got  made, because I think now when you go into the Sistine Chapel... You can stand in the middle  of the building. Well, obviously the crowds are so enormous, but it's quite difficult to  do this. But you can look up at the ceiling and you can look over at The Last Judgment. And  those works together can show us how Michelangelo has developed as an artist. The first, of course,  the ceiling he painted in his pomp, really, in his early 30s as a fresh young  talent, relatively inexperienced painter.

[00:34:16]And the Last Judgment he paints in his mid-60s,  his body slowly fading. But I think, in a way, these artworks don't only capture his evolution as  an artist. they capture a wider change in art, in culture of the time. They encapsulate a move from  what we might call the high Renaissance with its poise and its grace and its equilibrium and  its harmony towards the melodrama of mannerism.

[00:34:48]And I think one thing, to try and understand  what's going on here, I think, you know, obviously I'm an art historian, so I always like to try  to put things into context. What has happened... in history between those two projects.  Well, the Reformation has happened. Yeah.

[00:35:02]The challenge, this fundamental challenge to the  authority of the Catholic Church has happened, and it has put the Catholic Church and the Vatican and  the Pope on the back foot. Yeah, but you see now, James, you are making a compelling case for...  for the Last Judgment. It doesn't make it a good work of art. Well, you're saying, but there is the  chaos, the chaos of the world around that sort of tumult is being expressed on that wall. So there  is a truth there for all of its weirdness. Yeah.

[00:35:31]But I think when you look at that picture, stand  under the Sistine ceiling and you look over at the Last Judgment, I think you sort of realise at  that point, the Renaissance, if it ever existed, is over. And I think that actually it was shocking  to his contemporaries because we know that it was maybe for the first time to such an extent. But  this is this is the first major work of art by Michelangelo the public would have seen for  some time. And the reviews when they come in, they are damning many of them. I mean, there are  sort of terrible things being written about it.

[00:36:05]You know, a lot of it was quite literal-minded,  you know, along the lines of, in the Bible, it says that at the Last Judgment there would be  no winds, but you can clearly see that there's a lot of sort of wind operating in the image,  or the thing about Christ not having a beard, or the thing I said right at the start of this...  episode about the fact that the self-portrait, the flayed skin of Bartholomew doesn't seem to  match the saint himself. These are all things that bother people, but I wonder whether on a deeper  level they're just being totally unsettled by the strangeness, the dark idiosyncrasies of the  fresco. Yes, I think that's absolutely right.

[00:36:43]Anyway, when Michelangelo finishes The Last  Judgment, he's 66 years old. He must have felt, Alistair, that his life was almost over. He'd  already lived almost twice as long as the average Italian person. But quite extraordinarily,  Alistair, he had another 23 years to live after completing this picture and some seriously great  works ahead of him. Now, I realise, Alistair, we have talked a lot over these last four episodes  about Michelangelo as a painter and as a sculptor.

[00:37:11]But he was also, as I think we alluded to  earlier on in this part, a seriously accomplished architect. And architecture would prove very  important to him in the last decades of his life.

[00:37:21]We talked, I think, earlier about his work for San  Lorenzo in Florence, the building he had hid under after the war. He also does the Laurentian Library  in Florence, which he'd started in the 1520s, and we described that wonderful staircase.  Well, that weird staircase, perhaps, is the more accurate way to put it. But in the final decade  or two of his life, He's mostly working in Rome.

[00:37:44]And so in 1546, to add to his many jobs, this  George Osborne list of jobs, he gets appointed capo maestro. I mean, George Osborne is going to  be so delighted to be compared to Michelangelo.

[00:37:56]In 1546, he gets appointed capo maestro, the  chief architect of St Peter's Basilica. It's a massive job, a very prestigious job. I  mean, this is the undertaking that began with Julius around the time of the tomb, Julius  II. where there was this Constantinian basilica built on the site where supposedly St. Peter, the  rock of the church, was martyred. And that had stood for centuries. And Julius II decided that he  would tear it down and build a new cathedral. And that project itself... would also take a very  long time. It wasn't completed in any way by Michelangelo. It was a huge deal, a massive drain  on financial resources as much as anything else, and a great honour for Michelangelo, even though  there was a lot of opposition within the works of St. Peter's. He had all of these rivals. There  were, you know, understandably a lot of architects who thought what he does is... quite strange in  some ways. He has this odd interest in ornament and also how much has he really built? There  was that kind of debate going on. He does become appointed the chief architect of St Peter's  and he has that role, even though he tries to get out of it, for 17 years. I think even by the  time he dies, even though he's tried to resign, I don't think it's formally been rescinded. So  technically he's still in charge of St Peter's.

[00:39:18]It's very difficult to, and again, we are not  a podcast about architecture, but it is quite difficult to disentangle in these very, very  complex, multi-generational building projects.

[00:39:28]And what is his and what isn't his, what was built  in his lifetime. But I think a lot of St Peter's, as we see it today... was in some ways shaped by  him. So the centralised Greek cross floor plan, the floor plan is shaped in this even cross,  that was his conception. Right. And, of course, the Great Dome, which is one of the great domes,  one of the most famous domes in the world, that was designed by him. And this, of course,  went on to inspire St Paul's Cathedral in London, the US capital in Washington. Apparently it  remains the tallest dome in the world, even today.

[00:40:07]I think he's also famous for he's inheriting a lot  of other work from previous architects and he's streamlining and he's unifying and he's conscious  that he needs to reduce costs and budgets.

[00:40:21]But I think the old line is that he may diminish  some of those complexities and some of that scale, but he augments the grandeur. of the structure  of the building. He's also doing town planning.

[00:40:33]I mean, amazing. I mean, there's nothing he  can't do. He's doing town planning. So, in fact, many architectural historians will consider his  finest architectural achievement to be the Piazza del Campidoglio, which is this... Square that sits  up on top of the Capitoline Hill, I'm sure you've been there before. It was this real ruin. It was a  wreck. There were some pastures with cows in there and nothing really related to each other very  well. I think it was a bit of an embarrassment for people in Rome. You'd have visiting dignitaries  who'd come along and they couldn't actually really get up and access this muddy zone. Mm-hmm. The  decision was taken as well to move one of the great survivals from antiquity, the equestrian  monument to Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and that was placed in the middle of this  area. I think Michelangelo, to begin with, he resisted, he didn't really like that, but  he then creates this everything else around it, in a sense. It becomes the focal point for his  designs. Yeah, it's very beautiful, and many people consider it the most beautiful urban square  in modern Europe. Europe. And so he's busy working away on these various architectural projects. But  we are now, Alistair, reaching the final stages of Michelangelo's life. He is not a young man any  longer. And he is becoming increasingly sad, increasingly lonely. I mean, one of the die and  by this stage by the time we get into the 1550s really everyone michelangelo has ever loved is  already dead so his mother we mentioned right back at the first episode died when he was six his  father who also lived a very long life yeah in the genes uh died in 1531 michelangelo by this stage  had outlived all of his four brothers and And in the last few years of his life, he also loses his  loyal servant and assistant. We may have mentioned him in a previous episode. Urbino. Urbino,  who had served him for 25 years. I mean, he's properly bereft when that happens. After Urbino  dies, actually, he develops a death wish, really.

[00:42:36]And at this stage, Michelangelo, you know, despite  the fact he is immensely wealthy, immensely wealthy, he's as rich as many of the great patrons  of Europe at this stage, he is living in squalor.

[00:42:49]and his health is declining he's suffering  from gallstones probably arthritis his hands are trembling he's struggling to get up  and down the stairs and i just want to read a poem that he writes towards the end of his life. I  think, well, you have more literary expertise than me, but I think this poem is truly astonishing  for something that is written in the 16th century.

[00:43:15]Let me read this to you. And I've filleted  it a little bit because it's very long.

[00:43:21]How many poems begin with this word?  Urine. How well I know it. Drippy duct, compelling me awake too early. When dawn  plays at peekaboo, then yonder. Yuck.

[00:43:34]Soul gets some help from body, though, in this.  If guts unclogged could ventilate their smell, no bread and cheese would keep it in duress, while  round it now, catarrh and mucus gel. My pleasure, gloomy moping. Old and grey discomforts my repose.  The bogeyman, that's me, at a twelfth night show.

[00:43:55]No flames of love within my heart. A bare, cold  hearthstone deep in ash. Chilled draughts prevail.

[00:44:03]My eyes, mauve pigment pestle till it's ground.  Teeth, oboe keys that when I puff out air, whistle it through or else begrudge the sound. My face  says, boo, it's scary. One ear, it's all spider fuzz. Can't sleep for my raucous snuffling mouth  and nose. My cherished art, my season in the sun, name, fame, acclaim, that cant I made a run  for, left me in servitude, poor, old, alone.

[00:44:34]Oh, death, relieve me soon, or soon I'm done  for. Isn't that incredible? I love the oboe keys.

[00:44:43]I know. Brilliant. Incredibly immediate and  visceral. It's like Philip Larkin or something, isn't it? I thought you were going to go with the  conventional, there's the voyage of my life at last has reached across a stormy sea in a fragile  boat. The common portal must pass through to give an accounting for every evil and pious deed, which  is a whole different thing. That one... I mean, it's an unflinching catalogue, isn't it? For the  mid-16th century, someone is writing a poem like that. It feels like it's written in the 1960s,  1970s. It's an unbelievably vivid description of what it's like to feel your body and your mind  failing. The passage I find particularly powerful.

[00:45:20]I'm going to reread it because I think it's so  important. My cherished art, my season in the sun, name, fame, acclaim, that cant I made a run  for, left me in servitude, poor old alone.

[00:45:36]And so he's saying in a way that his vanity,  his quest to be this great artist, to be this successful artist, to be a genius... to be rich  and famous has ruined his life. I think it's a very similar sentiment to the poem that I thought  you were going to read. I'm delighted to have not heard you read it, but the one that I started  quoting ends with a similar thought about neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to  calm my soul, now turn towards that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in.  And I think the difference there is that it's a reminder of how devout Michelangelo is, certainly  by this stage. Yes. We know that there's a period in his later life where he actually explores some  quite interesting religious ideas with a group of people who themselves might later be considered  almost heretical. I mean, that's one of the big debates about Michelangelo. how heretical are his  beliefs. But fundamentally, he is devout and he's increasingly interested in meditating on the  sacred and preparing for the end, really. Yeah.

[00:46:45]Like many people, turns to religion towards the  end. So he's right at the end of his life now, but he is still hard at work. It's quite astonishing.  He made his first artworks back in the 1490s.

[00:46:56]He's still working away 70 years later and And I  think his final great work in some ways, Alastair, is another Pieta, the Rondanini Pietà. And  we talked in episode one about the Pieta that Michelangelo had made as a young man in the  1490s in Rome, very much his breakthrough work.

[00:47:18]Well, here he is, 65 years later. I repeat, 65  years later, he's returning to the same subject.

[00:47:26]He's back to the Pieta. And I think it's... It's  quite different. It's very different. And it's a work he makes for himself. And it really connects  with what you're describing. This is his attempt to reconnect with his faith. in the very last  weeks, months of his life. So according to Vasari, it's almost as if he's doing exercises, but  that supposedly late in life, Michelangelo is enjoying passing some time every day with  the chisel. And he has this piece of marble, probably in the mid-50s. It's there in his  studio. It's already blocked out with a Pietà.

[00:48:03]And that becomes, for the final probably 10 years  of his life, he's working on this sporadically, not quite daily perhaps, but frequently there  it is. And that's the Rondanini Pietà. And it is totally, shockingly strange, I think. I mean,  I find it fascinating. You have two figures... There is Christ who's slumped in his mother's  arms. She seems to be almost supporting him or giving him a hug over his shoulders. But when  you start really engaging with this work of art, you realise that he's constantly refined the  sculpture. And when you're talking about refining sculpture, it means you're chipping stuff away. So  whatever the original concept for this Pietà is, particularly the top half of the figures, He's  chipped and chipped and chipped, and he's reducing these forms. So that on the left, if you're  looking at sort of what seems like a frontal view, you can see there's Christ, mother sort of looming  over the shoulders above. And on Christ's right, there's something that looks almost like this  tree trunk that's just there. That is the original right arm of Christ. that is now not connected  at all to the Christ we see. It's sort of almost floating off to one side. That's how much it's  been reduced. What an interesting development, though, because, you know, earlier on in his  life, he was making enormous figures. He was sort of pumping up the muscles like balloons,  wasn't he? The figures were getting bigger and bigger and stronger and more monumental. Now, at  the end of his life, he's going completely the other direction. The figures are vanishing.  They're withering away, like, I presume, he himself. Absolutely. I think that there's  a sense here of, again, spiritual exploration.

[00:49:48]This is something which is totally personal. He's  doing it just for his own. Pleasure's not quite the right word. There's some compulsion here.  I mean, some art historians see it almost as quite archaic. There's a sort of medievalising  aspects to the sculpture. People sometimes say it looks quite gothic in some ways, which itself  is extremely interesting. There was this wonderful exhibition at the British Museum quite recently  in 2024, which concentrated on Michelangelo's last decades. And there was this line in the  catalogue by one of the curators, Sarah Vowles, where she writes, It's hard to escape the  idea that the work on the Rondanini Pietà, in which the figures were steadily chiselled  away by Michelangelo's restless amendments, was an exercise not only for the body, but also for  the soul. Yeah. And I think that is right. You're seeing something which feels here quite raw,  quite emotionally intimate and revealing, perhaps, totally different to what's happened before, but  has this new spiritual quality which is undeniable and really quite compelling. The strangeness of  it is compelling. Really compelling. I find this work immensely moving. It's displayed in Milan  in a room on its own and the fragility of it feels so fresh, feels so new for an artist  who is not known for his fragility visually.

[00:51:08]I mean, he's working on this just days before  his death, we know. Yeah, indeed. The last few days of his life, he's working on it. But  he is reaching the end game at this point, Alistair. So a few days before his death, on a  cold and wet February in 1564, he goes riding and he becomes ill. He probably  catches pneumonia. Valentine's Day, 1564, he probably suffers a stroke. And  eventually he dies on the 18th of February, 1564. I mean, there is this moment just in that  run up that you're describing the thing about the rain where an assistant comes to the house and he  finds Michelangelo just wandering around outside the house in the rain. And supposedly he says,  what do you want me to do? I'm sick and I can't find rest anywhere. that feels like we're talking  on a different level to just simple comfort of being inside and away from the rain. Yeah. He's  almost 89 years old. Extraordinary longevity for someone of that generation. There's one final  strange story at the end. I mean, there are so many great stories in Michelangelo. But the body  was carried by a very large crowd to be buried in St Peter's. Again, what an amazing honour for  a manual worker at that point. But Michelangelo always harboured this desire to return to  his home city of Florence. And so his nephew had to smuggle the coffin out of the city as cargo  and took the body away. up to Michelangelo's local church, his parish church in Florence. I mean,  they've been taught for decades about getting Michelangelo to come back to Florence. I think  he leaves for Rome in 1534. He never returns.

[00:52:48]He says just before he leaves, I'm never  going to come back to this place. For years, many people have been trying to persuade him. The  rulers in Florence are saying, Cosimo de' Medici is saying, please come back, come and work  here. And he's always like, yeah, I might, I might. And it never quite happens. No. But it does  happen in a sense. In death, it does. And indeed, he gets smuggled out of Rome, brought up to  Florence. The members of the Florentine Academy, they have this torch-lit procession in his honour.  The coffin is opened. Everyone goes to see him.

[00:53:20]They all touch his face. It's reported that though  he has been dead by the stage... for 22 days, the body has not decayed at all, which I do not  believe. Not for a second. But, you know, this is describing him as some kind of holy saint. So  that is the end of Michelangelo's life. Shall we talk for a few minutes about the legacy, which I  think is pretty significant? I think the legacy is fascinating to get into. I mean, one thing just  to say at the start is, at the time of recording this podcast... There have been news stories  quite recently about supposed new attribution discoveries of Michelangelo. There's a Pieta scene  which has been linked to him. There's someone, an Italian researcher, who's claiming that a bust  in a Roman basilica is by Michelangelo. So his oeuvre, it's still growing now. There was a  drawing of a foot for the study for the Sistine ceiling that was sold quite recently, perhaps,  at auction as well. So it's still ongoing.

[00:54:17]Yeah. So where does he stand? I mean, he  is conventionally one of, if not the most celebrated artist in the Western canon. I think  we've touched on that quite a lot. You know, his work is immediately recognisable. Yeah. described  quite a few of the most famous pieces, such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He is synonymous with  the High Renaissance. He's this universal genius.

[00:54:41]I like that idea of his terribilita, that sort  of superhuman genius quality to him is extremely compelling. And I think for me, that's where there  is an important legacy, very important legacy.

[00:54:52]He becomes almost this archetype for a modern  artist. This sort of that brooding quality, the irascibility, even the not finishing work becomes  this great positive attribute for what would you describe it as? A sort of romantic genius idea?  Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I would say there are two major legacies of Michelangelo  beyond obviously changing the physical environment in Italy. One is that I think his influence as  an artist exists. was enormous. I think really there's only one artist I can think of in the  Western tradition who has as big an influence, and that's Picasso, maybe Marcel Duchamp, in terms  of completely changing the game. And I think from Raphael onwards, all the way through, to William  Blake, to Rodin, to Henry Moore, to Francis Bacon, to Anthony Gormley, to any Western artist working  in the figurative tradition, there is that... giant figure of Michelangelo standing in front  of them. I think, you know, the idea of the Renaissance is called the Renaissance because it's  the revival of antiquity. And, you know, there are lots of debates about whether the Renaissance  exists in any specific way. But if you are to understand it, it is understood by contemporaries  as an attempt to try to resurrect or match up to the spirit of antiquity. And if there is any  artist who does that, it is Michelangelo. I think for artists at the time, it must have  been very exciting to encounter all of these discoveries that were coming out of the ground,  these ancient works of sculpture. But it must also have been immensely daunting. But what you find  with Michelangelo is he sees and recognises the challenge and takes it on. And it becomes, doesn't  it, a common refrain, even in his lifetime, that he is not only imitating... the sculptures of  antiquity, but he's actually surpassing them. And I think you can see, you know, the Laocoon, which  we have mentioned in the course of this series, it is discovered. He is there at the moment of  its discovery. It's this great, impassioned, vigorous male nude in marble. And Michelangelo  channels that. It's a touchstone for him. And he's almost super turbocharging, if you like, that...  tradition of antiquity in his own work and taking that forward, I think, for Western art. How  exciting it must have been for his contemporaries.

[00:57:08]You know, they revered antiquity. They felt  that antiquity, the ancient Greeks and Romans, were untouchable. They could never be equaled. And  yet here they were living alongside a man who had single-handedly taken on the ancients and at the  very least matched them. Well, it's interesting you mention the academy that's created in Florence  in the 16th century, because that's the beginning of this tradition of all of these European art  academies. And Michelangelo is the sort of seen as the head, the patron saint of that. So it is  as if he is the touchstone, the gold standard for successive artists. Yeah. But I totally agree with  you. I think if we're talking about the ultimate, the most significant aspect of his legacy, it is  that he shapes the idea of artistic genius itself, for good or for bad, whether we like that idea.  And of course, the concept of genius is deeply problematic. It's associated with sexism and  racism and all these other kinds of things. But for good or for bad, he is the person who, in  whom that idea first properly crystallises unlike many of his predecessors, unlike many of his  contemporaries, who were relatively lowly workers, beavering away in anonymous workshops. He  cultivated this reputation, didn't he, as being unique, as being divine. We talked at the very  beginning of this series about him being called the divine Michelangelo. I think on that sort  of question, I mean, that I think is a really important part of his legacy, the raising of  the station, the status of the artist. There's a moment towards the end of his life, which I think  is relevant to that point you're making, where it's November 1560, you have the Duke Cosimo de'  Medici from Florence. He's paying a state visit with his wife to Rome, to the Eternal City,  and to come and see Michelangelo. And because he values the genius of Michelangelo, He, the  Duke, makes him sit by his side. There's that sense of parity. Yes. He's holding his own.  I mean, hopefully this series that we've done reveals through these many acrimonious moments  that him holding his own in front of, against the most powerful people in Europe at that time. And I  think you're completely right. I think ultimately what he does is he creates... the prototype for  the romantic idea of the artist. You're absolutely right. That is exactly what he does, this idea of  the rude, melancholy, obsessive, the neurodiverse genius. That is Michelangelo's gift to  the world in that sense. I mean, I have... I think you know this just from sort of exchanging  messages outside of recording this series. I have adored really getting to grips for this with  Michelangelo's life and work. At the end of this process, for me, I think I feel I'm still slightly  cowering before that terribilità kind of aspect.

[01:00:05]I admire him profoundly now, enormously, and very  much thanks to your brilliant elucidation of the life and work. but I'm not sure that I love  him. And I mean, who cares? I mean, in fact, rightly, most listeners might be like, couldn't  give a toss whether you love him or not. But there's something about that sort of overpowering  nature of his work, where I can see everything that he's done and why he's so important. And I  can admire that really genuinely immensely. But... There are many other artists who I think perhaps,  just for me, this is just a trivial personal response, but have more of a kind of personal  response, instinctive connection with it. I'll admit he's not a particularly likeable individual.  But I think... Hopefully this four-part series has brought home to people the scale of his  achievement. Oh, his superhuman-ness, no doubt.

[01:00:59]I mean, I think it is just astonishing. And it's  a model of just the most astonishing talent and dedication and persistence and obsessive, dogged  determination to get better and better and better.

[01:01:12]Yeah. So I think he's an inspiration in  that sense. But I think we should bring this to a close. I mean, the risk is we are slightly  perhaps doing ourselves out of future episodes, but they are, you know, clearly these are some  of the very greatest stories of art history. Oh, I've got more to come. OK, good. I'm glad to  hear it. I'm relieved. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

[01:01:38]If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow  Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts, and maybe even leave a review.