The velvet softness of the skin is rendered with the utmost fidelity; the vestments in which the Pope is clothed are also most faithfully depicted, the damask shines with a glossy luster; the furs which form the linings of his robes are soft and natural, while the gold and silk are copied in such a manner that they do not seem to be painted, but really appear to be silk and gold. There is also a book in parchment decorated with miniatures, a most vivid imitation of the object represented, with a silver bell, finely chased, of which it would not be possible adequately to describe the beauty. Among other accessories, there is, moreover, a ball of burnished gold on the seat of the Pope, and in this—such is its clearness—the divisions of the opposite window, the shoulders of the Pope, and the walls of the room, are faithfully reflected; all these things are executed with so much care, that I fully believe no master ever has done, or ever can do anything better.
A man who can perform such miracles for the rich and powerful can command his own price, and is master of everything except his own passions. Raphael’s old uncle wrote, begging him to return to his home town and take himself a respectable wife. The young painter’s reply has come down to us. “If I had done as you wished,” he says, “I should not be where I am now.” And he goes on to tell where he is—
At the present time I have property in Rome worth three thousand gold ducats, and an income of fifty gold crowns, as his Holiness gives me a salary of three hundred gold ducats for superintending the fabric of St. Peter, which will continue as long as I live; and I am sure to earn more from other sources and am paid whatever I choose to ask for my work. And I have begun to paint another room for his Holiness which will bring me one thousand two hundred gold ducats, so that you see, my dearest uncle, that I do honor to you and to all my family and to my country.... What city in the world can compare with Rome, what enterprise is more worthy than this of Peter, which is the first temple in the world? And these are the grandest works which have ever been seen, and will cost more than a million in gold, and the Pope has decided to spend sixty thousand ducats a year on the fabric and can think of nothing else.
While Raphael was thus flourishing and proud of his world, a German monk by the name of Martin Luther was nailing his condemnation of the papacy upon the door of the church at Wittenberg. But our painter-prince was so busy, he had so many commissions to portray new popes and cardinals, new annunciations and transfigurations and illuminations and immaculate conceptions, that he probably never even heard of the barbarian rebel in the far North. He remained to the end the perfect exemplar of leisure-class art, and is today the darling of pious peasant-wives, and sentimental school-marms doing culture-pilgrimages: in short, of all who wish to develop their emotions at the expense of their brains, and to shut their eyes to the grim realities of life, out of which alone true and vital beauty can grow.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE PAPAL PAYMASTERS
Among its numerous artists of beauty Renaissance Italy produced one man who did not find life a garden of pleasure; one man who, when he sinned, did not do it with easy grace and cheerful heart; a man who faced the mysteries of life, and took seriously the terrors which the medieval mind has conjured for itself. This man was a rebel against the wanton and cruel spirit of his age; a rebel also against nature, those cruelties which time and death inflict upon our race. He was a lonely man, pursued by the jealousies and greeds of his rivals, tortured by his own sensuality and by fears of eternal torment. He lived a life of futile and agonized revolt, and produced some magnificent and terrible art.
In this book it is our task to study the artist in relation to the masters of money; and we shall find no more tragic illustrations of the waste that is wrought in the life of genius by the powers of greed, than are revealed to us in the story of Michelangelo Buonarroti. He is ranked as one of the greatest sculptors of all time; he was also one of the greatest of painters, and a great poet. Like most of those who have visioned the sublime and the colossal, he was a man of frail physique, fear-haunted all his life. As a child he was beaten by his father, who sought to break him of the desire to become an artist. At the age of nine he was taken to hear the thunderings of Savonarola, another frail prophet who had arisen to denounce the vices of the church in Florence. When Michelangelo was twenty-three, Savonarola was publicly hanged, after having been excommunicated by the Borgia pope. The young painter at that time was beguiling himself with Greek beauty; but the terrible fate of the prophet cannot have failed to impress him, and helps to account for the religious fervors of his later years. Two worlds struggled in his soul, the world of pagan beauty and luxurious pleasure, and the world of heavenly raptures and fanatical asceticism.
This artist’s abilities were quickly recognized. The same pope, Julius II, who was showering Raphael with golden ducats, adopted Michelangelo as his chief glorifier, and the two of them spent a year or two preparing colossal plans for the pope’s tomb, something greater than any tomb ever seen on earth before, a perfect mountain of marble, with more than forty statues of colossal size. Here we see Michelangelo’s fate; one of the great masters of life, with a mighty message concerning the destiny of man, he is obliged to get the money by which he lives, and the marble which he carves, from a vain and greedy politician in churchly raiment. He is permitted to make statues of David and of Moses, of Day and Night and Morning and Evening, and other great symbolic ideas; but he must carve them for the tomb of some pope or potentate, and must spend the greater part of his life in quarreling—not merely with this pope or potentate, but with officials and subordinates, all hating, intriguing, threatening to stab or to poison.
In the sentimental rubbish which historians and art critic’s write about the Middle Ages, we are told that mighty cathedrals and temples were produced by the co-operative devotion and reverence of whole communities of worshipers. When you come to investigate the facts, you find that they were produced amid a chaos of wrangling and cheating and lying, exactly as a modern public building, or a battleship, or a fleet of aeroplanes is produced. The chief architect of Pope Julius II was a dissipated and murderous rascal, who was putting rotten walls into the Vatican buildings—walls which have had to be repaired incessantly ever since. He carried on intrigues against Michelangelo, and succeeded in persuading the pope that it was bad luck for anyone to build his own tomb while he was alive. So the pope dropped the project, and Michelangelo was left in debt, having to pay out of his own pocket the costs of transporting the mountain of marble. The sculptor stormed the Vatican and insisted upon being paid, and the pope had him put out by a groom.
Next he was required to make a bronze statue of his most holy pope. He protested that he did not know anything about casting bronze, but he worked at it for more than a year, making a wretched failure of it, and ruining his health. Then he was ordered to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He protested that he did not know how to paint ceilings, it was hard and exhausting work; but again the pope insisted, and Michelangelo spent four years at this, painting his colossal and terrifying symbols upside down. Because he took so long at it, the pope was enraged, insisting upon seeing the work and criticizing it, flying into a fury and beating Michelangelo with his staff, then sending a messenger with five hundred ducats to salve his feelings.