Danger: man at work

My heart is always lifted when a book begins with a map; it is like getting on a plane, we are about to go on an adventure. The first image in this generously illustrated work is a map of Italy 400 years ago; it shows a loose collection of independent nation states which, at that time, stood in the middle of the world.

Having, in his book Brunelleschi’s Dome, successfully conjured up Florence in the 15th century, Ross King now moves to 16th-century Rome and Michelangelo’s astonishing Sistine chapel ceiling; an artistic achievement so stunning that, according to Goethe, we cannot understand what one man is capable of without visiting the chapel. King, however, informs us that Goethe was wrong; the fresco is the result of many men’s labour; Michelangelo worked with a team of expert assistants. In this book hardly a chapter passes without a myth being exploded. He was forced to lie on his back in order to paint the ceiling? No, we see his own scaffold design which allowed him to stand. Julius II was an interfering patron? Quite the reverse, most of the artist’s problems were caused by the Pope’s absences due to military campaigns or illness. Michelangelo was homosexual? Unlikely: we learn that he had been an ardent follower of Savonarola who proposed that sodomites should be burned in the same fire as such ‘vanities’ as playing- cards, perfumes and mirrors. For those of us whose thoughts of Michelangelo Buonarroti do not wander far from the image of Charlton Heston in the Agony and the Ecstasy this book offers a comprehensive re-education.

Our journey begins in Florence, Michelangelo refusing the Pope’s entreaties, which became demands, to return to Rome (he was brooding over being ignored by His Holiness when trying to collect an unpaid bill). King then leads us through the four years from the ceiling being commissioned to its completion; we share in each day’s work, suffering the failures and enjoying the successes. He draws on many sources but wisely concentrates on the protagonist’s own accounts (Michelangelo was a regular, if often dejected, correspondent) and some lively contemporary reports (a Spanish ambassador when describing the Pope’s temper noted that a ‘hospital in Valencia’ has ‘100 people who are less mad than His Holiness’). We meet the artist’s family, a loving but unreliable father and various demanding brothers; we are privy to conspiracies, both real and imagined; we witness the difficult relationships between the master and his assistants on the scaffold; Michelangelo’s struggles to get paid and finally the triumph of the unveiling, which Vasari described:

When the work was thrown open, the whole world could be heard running up to see it, and indeed, it was such as to make everyone astonished and dumb.

If the intricacies of this achievement were not enough we are also taken outside the walls of the Vatican. There are artistic rivals for the Pope’s favours, most notably the young Raphael who surfaces with an irritating precocity in this, Michelangelo’s, book. King also clearly relishes the political restlessness of the time; Julius II was a warrior Pope faced with the problem of 40,000 French soldiers on Italian soil (we are told he ordered his sickbed to be shipped to the front muttering, ‘Let’s see if I’ve got balls as big as the King of France’) and there were also erring papal states to bring back into line, alliances to be made and broken.

We learn an enormous amount by reading this book; King’s grasp of and research into the period seem all-encompassing. Among other things we discover how to create a fresco (and the short cuts if we are in a real hurry), the many difficulties in casting a large bronze statue, the details of Florentine marital law (and how it affects the in-laws of a widow) and the 16th-century ‘cure’ for piles. Each of these is fascinating, but there are times when the story seems hampered rather than supported by the sheer weight of finely researched detail, moments when one feels not so much carried along by the march of time but more as if one is analysing each individual step. This is a minor cavil, however, and the journey is one that is well worth taking.