Whose arms to clasp us on the Cross were spread.[158]
THE PIETÀ OF SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE
FLORENCE
(By permission of the Fratelli Alinari Florence)
The marble group of the Deposition is so religious in character that it can be compared with no work of art executed since Michael Angelo's own early work the Pietà, in St. Peter's, the Madonna della Febbre. Both for its earnestness and its noble religious sentiment it is an act of worship to look at it, and the days and nights spent in its execution must have been periods of the heartiest religious devotion and sorrowing love. The old sculptor intended this work to have been his monument. The unfinished head of Nicodemus, who sustains the body of his dear Lord, is his own portrait, and, unfinished as it is, expresses the deepest devotion and sadness. Vasari saw this work in progress, and gives us a glimpse into the home-life of the aged worker, who was never content out of his workshop, and spent his sleepless nights working at this huge marble with a paper cap on his head, in which he stuck a lighted candle to see by. The solitary figure of [pg 235]the old man in the vast and dimly lighted studio, groping round the inchoate marble; the stillness of the night, broken only by the sharp click of the mallet and the grating of the chisel, is a picture of many of the bravest hours of his old age. Vasari, observing all this, and wishing to do the revered artist a kindness, sent him 40 lbs. of candles made of goat's fat, knowing that they gutter less than ordinary dips of tallow. His servant carried them politely to the house two hours after night-fall, and presented them to Michael Angelo. He refused, and said he did not want them. The man answered: "Sir, they have almost broken my back carrying them all this long way from the bridge, and I will not carry them home again. There is a heap of mud opposite your door, thick and firm enough to hold them upright. Here then will I set them all up, and light them." When Michael Angelo heard this he gave way: "Lay them down; I do not mean you to play pranks at my house door." Vasari tells another anecdote about the Deposition. Pope Julius III. sent him late one evening to Michael Angelo's house for a certain drawing. The aged master came down with a lantern, and, hearing what was wanted, told Urbino to look for the design. Meanwhile, Vasari turned his attention to one of the legs of the Christ, which Michael Angelo had been altering. In order to prevent his seeing it Michael Angelo let the light fall, and they remained in darkness. He then called for another light, and stepped forth from the screen of planks behind which he worked, saying: "I am so old that oftentimes Death plucks me by the cape to go with him, and one day this body of mine will fall like the lantern, and the light of life will be put out."
"If life gives us pleasure we ought not to expect displeasure [pg 236]from death, seeing it is made by the hand of the same master," was a favourite reflection of Michael Angelo's upon mortality. This Deposition was never completed, flaws appeared in the marble, and perhaps whilst working in the imperfect light Michael Angelo's impatient chisel cut too deep. He began to break up the work, but luckily his servant Antonio, successor to Urbino, begged the fragments from his master. Francesco Bandini, a Florentine exile settled in Rome, wished for a work by the master, and, with Michael Angelo's consent, bought it from Antonio for two hundred crowns. It was patched up, but apparently not worked upon, and remained in the garden of Bandini's heir at Monte Cavallo. It was afterwards taken to Florence and was finally placed in the Duomo in 1722 by the Grand Duke Cosimo III., where it may now be seen behind the high altar, well-placed, so that the great cross of the altar looks like the tree from which the body has just been lowered. So well does the line of the cross behind cut the group that we cannot help imagining that the artist intended some such erection to have been placed behind his figures. Those who would see this group aright must visit the Duomo before seven o'clock on a summer morning, when the light of the sun falls, though the white robe of a bishop in one of the high eastern windows, upon the neighbouring pillars and the floor, and lights up that end of the church; at other times the darkness of the dome covers the group as the darkness covered the earth during the tragic hours at Golgotha.
The right arm of the Christ has become over polished and much worn because it is used as a balustrade by the acolytes, who carelessly run up and down the steps between the group and the back of the high altar to light the candles during [pg 237]service. On the other side a rough metal handle has positively been let into the left side of the Joseph of Arimathea, so that a clumsy boy may climb the more easily; wooden steps also fit so closely to the marble that they injure the lines of the group. All the characteristics of Michael Angelo's impassioned period may be studied in this group; his favourite mannerisms are there also. Examine the hand of Joseph, with the middle finger touching the thumb, and compare it with the allegorical statues of the Medici Chapel. Vasari tells us that Michael Angelo began another Pietà on a smaller scale; this may be the beautiful group that has been spoiled by an alteration, now in the courtyard of the Palazzo Rondini, No. 418, the Corso, Rome. There is a cast of it in the Belle Arti at Florence. The hanging limbs of the Christ have a most pathetic effect, and so has the whole expression of the group. The effect is obtained by the length of the principal lines.
There is a medallion of the Madonna clasping her dead son at the Albergo dei Poveri, at Genoa, attributed to Michael Angelo; it may have been begun by him during this long period of old age, but it cannot be called his work. It has been entirely recarved by an imitator.
Michael Angelo made his famous report condemning the design of Antonio da Sangallo for the rebuilding of the Farnese palace upon the shores of the Tiber; it is a mysterious document, in Michael Angelo's own hand, and does not leave Sangallo a single merit. All the theories are proved by the precepts of Vitruvius. The adherents of Sangallo resented it very naturally, and the "Setta Sangallesca" became his bitter enemies. The Pope [pg 238]himself was dissatisfied with Sangallo, and the design for the cornice was thrown open to competition. Perino del Vaga, Sebastiano del Piombo, Giorgio Vasari, and Michael Angelo all competed. Michael Angelo's design was eventually carried out after he had placed a wooden model of part of his cornice in position. Vasari, who is the best authority upon this period of the life of Michael Angelo, attributes to him also the exterior of the palace from the second story upwards, and the whole of the central courtyard above the first story, "making it the finest thing of its sort in Europe." Michael Angelo had also a serious disagreement with Sangallo before the military committee fortifying the Borgo for the Pope.