Michelangelo

by Romain Rolland

Michelangelo had constant trouble with his workmen, and to these worries and his pangs of conscience were added domestic difficulties which never ceased to embitter his life. During the period of the Sistine frescoes it was his relations with his brothers that gave him most trouble, for they tried to make use of him and he had to watch them sharply. Then it was his father whom he adored with almost religious reverence and who undoubtedly loved him, but who, irritable like himself, and peevish and suspicious, picked unfair quarrels and spread odious calumnies about him.

In the midst of all these difficulties the work did not progress at all. A letter of June, 1526, says that one statue of a captain had been begun, as well as four allegories and the Madonna, but as a matter of fact not one of these was ready in 1527. As for the Library and the Medici Chapel they were hardly begun.

At this moment the revolution broke out in Florence (April, 1527).

Michelangelo had until then shown in politics the same indecision from which he had suffered so much in his own affairs and even in his art. He never succeeded in reconciling his love of liberty with his[{65}] obligations to the Medici. It must be admitted that this violent genius was always timid in action; he never incurred any risk through struggling against the powers of this world on political or religious grounds. He was afraid of compromising himself. He was afraid of everything. He was always afraid. If in spite of his natural timidity he let himself be drawn into the Florentine Revolution of 1527 he must have been driven by deep despair and the belief that his life was practically lost. That extremity of suffering brought to the surface and into action his fundamental beliefs.

His timid introspective soul was secretly ardently republican. We can see this in the violent discussions which he had in 1545 with intimate friends, Luigi del Riccio, Antonio Petreo and Donato Giannotti, who made note of them in his "Dialogues on Dante's Divine Comedy." In these talks he defends tyrannicide with enthusiasm.

He found himself in the front ranks of the Florentine revolutionists in those days of national and republican revival which, in Florence, followed the news of the taking of Rome by the Imperialists (May 6, 1527) and the driving out of Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici (May 17th). At first the Republic seems only to have given him artistic commissions. He was ordered to cut from a block of[{66}] marble a colossal group of two figures as a companion-piece to the David. He obeyed, and began a Hercules and Cacus;[43] then changed his plan and made a sketch for a Samson slaying the Philistines. But the situation grew tragic and he was called to more pressing tasks. In October, 1528, at San Miniato he took part in a council presided over by the Gonfalonier Niccolo Capponi to discuss the question of the fortification of the town. Florence had summoned the architect Sebastiano Serlio and the engineer Pierfrancesco d'Urbino and had sent Francesco da San Gallo and Amadio d'Alberto to examine the fortifications of Prato, Pistoia, Pisa and Livorno. Michelangelo was chosen in his turn on January 10, 1529, in the Collegium of the Nove di Milizzia to direct the works of defense. He was named on April 6th for one year Governatore Generale and Procuratore of the fortifications of Florence, and was given a salary of one golden ducat a day.[44] He realised that the important point of defense was San Miniato for, "if the enemy gained possession of that hill they would be master of the city." He determined, therefore, to strengthen that position[{67}] with bastions, but he encountered the ill-will of the Gonfalonier Capponi, who tried to send him away from Florence on various missions.

In June, 1529, he was ordered to inspect the citadel of Pisa and the fortifications of Arezzo and Livorno. In July and August he was sent to Ferrara to examine the celebrated defensive works there and to consult with the Duke, a great expert in fortifications. The Duke received him with great honour and took him over the fortifications himself, showed him his art collection and asked him for one of his works.[45] But Michelangelo suspected Capponi and the party of the Medici of taking advantage of his absence to delay the fortification of the town and his suspicions were confirmed by the neglected condition in which he found the work on his return. To block these intrigues he installed himself at San Miniato and would not stir from there again. His restless spirit felt the least breath of the rumours of treason which, as always, circulated in a besieged town and which unhappily, as the future showed, were only too well founded.

Capponi, under suspicion, had been replaced as Gonfalonier by Francesco Carducci, but the[{68}] untrustworthy Malatesta Baglioni, who later on was to give up the town, was named Condottiere and governor-general of the Florentine troops. Michelangelo foresaw his treason and confided his suspicions to Carducci. Malatesta did not fail to hear of this denunciation. He was all-powerful at Florence as Generalissimo, and since a man of his type would stop at nothing when it was a question of revenge or of the removal of a dangerous adversary, Michelangelo believed himself lost. "I had resolved, however, to await without fear the end of the war," he writes on September 25, 1529, to Battista della Palla. "But on Tuesday morning the twenty-first of September a certain man came to me outside of the Porta San Niccolo, where I was on the bastions, and whispered in my ear that if I wished to save my life I must not stay any longer in Florence. He went with me to my house, brought me some horses, and did not leave me again until he had put me outside of Florence."

Varchi, filling in the details, gives the name of the Councellor Rinaldo Corsini[46] and adds that Michelangelo had sewed twelve thousand golden florins into three quilted shirts, and that it was not without difficulty that he escaped from Florence[{69}] with Rinaldo and his pupil Antonio Mini by the gate of Justice, which was the least guarded. That was on the morning of September 21st. He went through Ferrara without stopping there and arrived at Venice on September 25th. The Signory at once sent two gentlemen to do anything for him which he might need (a proof of the fame which he enjoyed already throughout the whole of Italy). Michelangelo, however, refused everything and withdrew to the Giudecca. He thought of going to France and spoke of this intention to Battista della Palla, the agent of Francis I in Italy for the purchase of works of art. Lazare de Baïf, the ambassador of France at Venice, was told of this and wrote immediately to Francis I and to the Constable de Montmorency, urging them to profit by this chance to secure Michelangelo. The King at once offered Michelangelo a pension and a house, but by the time the letter arrived at Venice he had already returned to Florence.