The agony and the ecstas.., p.41
The Agony and the Ecstasy, page 41
The commission declared Savonarola guilty of heresy. The special advisory council called by the Signoria sentenced him to death. At the same time the Pope granted the city its long-desired three per cent tax on all church property in Tuscany.
Three platforms were built from the steps of the Palazzo della Signoria into the square. The throng began filling the piazza during the night, pushing up against the gibbet. By dawn the square and all the streets leading into it were a seething mass.
Savonarola, Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro were led out onto the Signoria steps, stripped of their vestments, their tonsures scraped. They mounted the scaffold, praying silently. They climbed a steep ladder to the top of the gibbet. Ropes and chains were put about their necks. Within an instant, all three were dangling, their necks broken.
The pyre under the gibbet was lighted. The flames rose. The three bodies were held aloft by the chains after the ropes had burned. The Arrabbiati stoned the half-consumed corpses. The ashes were collected, carried in carts to the Old Bridge, and dumped into the Arno.
The martyrdom of Savonarola shook Michelangelo profoundly. He had sat as a boy and listened to Pico della Mirandola recommend to Lorenzo that the friar be invited to Florence. Savonarola had contributed to the deaths of Lorenzo, Pico, Poliziano, and now he too was dead. He hardly knew what to think or feel: except pity.
He turned to his work. Marble was dependable in a chaotic world. It had its own will and intelligence and stability. With marble in his hands, the world was good.
He became impatient to be finished with the Bacchus. He had only indicated the position of the forehead, nose, mouth, wanting to let the rest of the figure suggest the expression of the face. Now he completed the features, the expression dazed as the Bacchus stared at the cup of wine; the eyes bulging, the mouth opened greedily. For the grapes he used a drill, making each one round and juice-laden. To achieve the hair on the Satyr’s goat legs he sliced the rough-edged marble with a fully rounded chisel which brought out the rhythmic play of curls, each tuft designed separately.
There was left two months of polishing to get the glowing flesh effects he wanted. Though this work involved infinite care and precision, it was technical in nature and used only that part of him which was the craftsman. It left his mind free during the warm spring hours to reflect on the Pietà and its meaning. In the cool of the evenings he began searching for this last moment that mother and son would spend together.
He asked Jacopo Galli if he could now complete a contract with the Cardinal of San Dionigi. Galli explained that the cardinal’s monastery in Lucca had already ordered a block to Michelangelo’s dimensions. The block had been cut, but the quarry at Carrara had refused to ship it to Rome before being paid. The monastery at Lucca had in turn refused to pay until the cardinal approved the block. The quarry had grown tired of holding it and had sold it to a buying agent.
That night Michelangelo wrote an agreement which he thought would be fair to himself and to the Cardinal of San Dionigi. Galli read it without expression, said he would take it to his bank and put it in a safe place.
By the end of summer the Bacchus was finished. Galli was overjoyed with his statue.
“I feel as though Bacchus is fully alive, and will drop his cup at any moment. The Satyr is innocent and naughty at the same time. You have made for me the finest sculpture in all Italy. We must place it in the garden and give it a party.”
The blind Augustinians, Aurelius and Raffaelle Lippus, studied the Bacchus with their sensitive fingers, running them over every detail and saying they had never “seen” a male figure so powerful in projecting its inner life force. Professor Pomponius Laetus, who had been tortured by the Inquisition for paganism, was moved to tears, avowing that the statue was pure Greek in its structure and its gleaming white satiny finish. Serafino, the poet from Lucrezia Borgia’s court, hated it on sight, declaring it “ugly, wanton, without any sense of loveliness.” Sannazaro, the poet who mixed Christian and pagan images in his verses, declared it “a complete synthesis, Greek in carving, Christian in emotion, combining the best of both,” even as the Plato Four had commented on his Madonna and Child. Peter Sabinus, professor of Eloquence at the university, collector of Christian inscriptions, and his friend Giovanni Capocci, who was excavating the catacombs, came back three times to debate the statue’s virtues between themselves, finally concluding that, although they did not care for antique themes, this Bacchus was something new in the art of sculpture.
It was Giuliano da Sangallo’s opinion Michelangelo valued most. Sangallo gleefully traced the intricate structural design. “You’ve built this Bacchus the way we build a temple or a palace. It was a dangerous, and courageous, experiment in construction. You could easily have suffered a collapse of material. This fellow will stand erect as long as there is space for him to displace.”
The following night Galli brought home a contract he himself had written between Michelangelo and the Cardinal of San Dionigi, and which the cardinal had signed. In it Michelangelo found himself called maestro for the first time; but he was also described as statuario, statue maker, which was deflating. For the sum of four hundred and fifty ducats in papal gold he agreed to make a Pietà of marble, one hundred and fifty ducats to be paid as he began, and a hundred ducats every fourth month. By the end of a year the statue was to be completed. In addition to guaranteeing the cardinal’s payments to Michelangelo, Galli had written:
I, Jacopo Galli, do promise that the work will be more beautiful than any work in marble to be seen in Rome today, and such that no master of our own time will be able to produce a better.
Michelangelo gazed at Galli with affection.
“You must have written this contract at home, rather than the bank.”
“Why?”
“Because you have taken quite a gamble. Suppose when I
finish the cardinal says, ‘I have seen better marbles in Rome.’ What happens then?”
“I give His Grace back his papal ducats.”
“And you are stuck with the carving!”
Galli’s eyes twinkled. “I could endure it.”
He went searching the stoneyards of Trastevere and the ports for the kind of block he needed; but a seven-foot-wide, six-foot-tall, three-foot-deep cut of marble was rarely quarried on the chance of sale. It took him only two days to complete the rounds; there was nothing even faintly resembling the massive block he needed. The next day, when he had decided that he would have to go to Carrara at his own expense, Guffatti came running up the rear alley to his workshed, crying out:
“… just unloaded a barge … the very size you’re looking for. It was cut for some order in Lucca. The quarry never got paid, so they sold it.”
He dog-trotted down to the Ripetta dock. There it stood, gleaming pure and white in the summer sun, beautifully cut by the quarrymen high in the mountains of Carrara. It tested out perfect against the hammer, against water, its crystals soft and compacted with fine graining. He came back before dawn the next morning, watched the rays of the rising sun strike the block and make it as transparent as pink alabaster, with not a hole or hollow or crack or knot to be seen in all its massive white weight.
His Pietà block had come home.
9.
He removed the last reminders of the Bacchus, settled down to the Pietà. But the Bacchus had become a controversial figure. Many people came to see it. Galli brought the visitors to the workshop or sent a servant to the shed to ask if Michelangelo would mind coming to the garden. He found himself plunged into explanations and defenses, particularly from the Bregno enthusiasts, who attacked it as “a perversion of the Dionysus legend.” When there were admirers he found himself involved in describing his concept and technique. Galli wanted him for supper every night now, and Sundays, so that he could make as many friends as possible, open the way to more commissions.
The Rucellai, Cavalcanti, Altoviti were proud of him. They gave parties in his honor, from which he awoke the next morning feeling tired. He yearned to put the Bacchus behind him, to wipe the slate of his mind clean of the pagan carving and make the transition to the spirituality he needed to think about the Pietà. After a month of festivities it became clear that he was not going to be able to conceive or carve a Pietà under these diverting conditions; that with his emergence as a professional sculptor had come the time to establish his own quarters and workshop where he could live quietly, secluded, work night and day if he wished, dedicate himself to abstemiousness. He had grown up, he was on his own. He could see no other way.
Perceptive Jacopo Galli asked, “Something is troubling you, Michelangelo?”
“Yes.”
“It sounds serious.”
“Just ungrateful.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“The men to whom I owe the most have all said that: Lorenzo de’ Medici, Bertoldo, Aldovrandi, and now you.”
“Tell me what you want to do.”
“To move out!” he blurted. “Life with the Galli family is too pleasant …” He paused. “I feel the need to work in my own household. As a man, rather than a boy, and perennial guest. Does this sound foolish?”
Galli gazed at him wistfully. “I want only that you be happy, and that you carve the most beautiful marbles in Italy.”
“For me they are one and the same.”
He was directed to several houses in which the ground floor was available, one recommended by Altoviti in the Florentine quarter, another near the Piazza del Quirinale, with a fine view of Rome. They were too elaborate and expensive. On the third day, on the Via Sistina, across from the Bear Inn and on the edge of the Campo Marzio lying below the embankment of the Tiber, he found a big corner room with two windows, one facing north for steady light, the other east for the sharp sunlight he sometimes needed. At the rear was a smaller room with a fireplace. He paid a few scudi for two months’ rent, drew up the oiled linen on wooden frames that served as window covering, and studied the shabby space: the wooden floor, thin in spots, broken in others, cement crumbling between the stones of the walls, the ceiling plaster falling in patches, exposing variegated colors of decay where the rain had leaked through. He put the key in his pocket and returned to the Gallis’.
He found Buonarroto waiting for him. His brother was jubilant. He had come as a guard on a mule train, and so the trip had cost him nothing. He was going back the same way. Michelangelo gazed with pleasure at the stubby features, the hair combed over Buonarroto’s brow in imitation of his own. It had been a year since they had seen each other.
“You couldn’t have come at a better time,” he cried. “I need help in setting up my new home.”
“You have taken a place? Good, then I can stay with you.”
“Wait till you see my palatial quarters before you settle in,” said Michelangelo, smiling. “Come with me to Trastevere, I need a supply of plaster, whitewash and lye. But first I will show you my Bacchus.”
Buonarroto stood gazing at the statue a long time. Then he asked:
“Did people like it?”
“Most did.”
“I’m glad.”
That was all. Michelangelo observed to himself, “He doesn’t have the faintest notion of what sculpture is about. His only interest is that people approve what I’ve done, so that I can be happy, and get more work … none of which he will ever understand. He’s a true Buonarroti, blind to the meaning of art. But he loves me.”
They bought the supplies, had dinner at the Trattoria Toscana, then Michelangelo took his brother to the Via Sistina. When Buonarroto entered the room he whistled sharply.
“Michelangelo, surely you’re not thinking of living in this … this hole? The place is falling apart.”
“You and I are going to put it back together,” replied Michelangelo grimly. “It is adequate work space.”
“Father would be distressed.”
Michelangelo smiled. “Don’t tell him.” He set a tall ladder in the center of the room. “Let’s scrape this ceiling.”
When they had scraped and given the ceiling a coat of plaster, they began on the walls, then set to work patching the broken floor with odd-sized pieces of wood. Next they turned their attention to the private courtyard. The only door to it was from the side of his room, but the other tenants had access from their windows, as a result of which it was covered with a thick compost of garbage and debris. The odor was as thick as the enclosing walls. It took two days to shovel the refuse into sacks and carry it through his own room to a vacant lot below the Tiber.
Balducci, who held all physical labor in abhorrence, showed up after Michelangelo and Buonarroto had finished their repairs. He knew a second-hand furniture dealer in Trastevere, where he bargained shrilly for the best prices on a bed, rope mattress, kitchen table, two cane chairs, chest of drawers, a few pots, dishes and knives. When the donkey cart arrived a few hours later, the brothers set up the bed under the window to the east, where Michelangelo would be waked at first light. The chest of drawers went on the back wall, next to the opening to the kitchen. Under the front north window he placed a table of four planks on horses, for his drawing, wax and clay modeling. The center of the big room he kept clear for his marble. In the rear cubicle they installed the kitchen table, two chairs, pots and dishes.
Balducci returned, having explored the neighborhood.
“There’s a plump little partridge lives just behind your rooms: blond, about fifteen, beautifully made, French, I think. I could persuade her to become your servant. Think how pleasant it would be to finish work at noon and find her in your kitchen over a pot of hot soup.” Balducci did a little dance. “… and at night, to find her in your bed. It’s part of their job; and you’re going to need a little natural warmth in this cave.”
Michelangelo and Buonarroto chuckled at Balducci’s ebullience. In another minute he would be out the front door and down the street after the girl.
“Look, Balducci,” cried Michelangelo. “I want no entanglements, and have no money for a servant. If I need anyone, I’ll stick to the artist’s custom of taking in a young apprentice and training him in return for services.”
Buonarroto agreed. “I’ll keep my eyes open in Florence for a bright young lad.”
Buonarroto settled Michelangelo in, shopped and cooked the food, cleaned the rooms. The housekeeping went downhill the moment he left. Immersed in his work, Michelangelo took no time off to cook, to go out to a restaurant or eat in the streets. He lost weight, even as his rooms lost their tidy appearance. He saw nothing about him but his workbench and the huge white block sitting on beams in the center of the floor. He never bothered to make his bed or to wash the dishes he left on the kitchen table. The rooms became covered with dust from the street, ashes from the kitchen fire where he boiled water for an occasional hot drink. He knew by the end of a month that this system was not going to work. He even began to eye Balducci’s little French girl, who passed his door more frequently than he thought strictly necessary.
Buonarroto solved his problem. Michelangelo answered to a knock late one afternoon to see standing in the street a plain-faced, olive-complexioned lad of about thirteen, travel-stained, holding out a letter on which Michelangelo recognized his brother’s handwriting. The note introduced Piero Argiento, who had come to Florence looking for a sculptor to whom he could be apprenticed. He had been sent by someone to the Buonarroti house, then made the long trip on foot to Rome.
Michelangelo invited him in, studied the boy while he told of his family and their farm near Ferrara. His manner was quiet, his voice plain.
“Can you read and write, Argiento?”
“The Gesuati fathers in Ferrara taught me to write. Now I need to learn a trade.”
“And you think sculpture might be a good one?”
“I want a three-year apprenticeship. With a Guild contract.”
Michelangelo was impressed by the forthrightness. He gazed into the muddy brown eyes of the stringy lad before him, at the soiled shirt, worn-out sandals, the thin, hungry cheeks.
“You have no friends in Rome? No place to go?”
“I came to see you.” Stubbornly.
“I live simply, Argiento. You can expect no luxury.”
“I am of contadini. What is to eat, we eat.”
“Since you need a home, and I need a helper, suppose we try it for a few days? If it doesn’t work out, we part as friends. I’ll pay your way back to Florence.”
“Agreed. Grazie.”
“Take this coin, and go to the baths near Santa Maria dell’Anima. On the way back, stop at the market for food to cook.”
“I make a good soup-of-the-country. My mother taught me before she died.”
The fathers had taught Argiento not only to count but also to be doggedly honest. He left the house before dawn for the markets, carrying with him a scrap of crayon and paper. Michelangelo was touched by the way he painfully kept his accounts written down: so many denari for vegetables, so many for meat, for fruit, for bread and pasta, with every coin accounted for. Michelangelo put a modest amount in a cooking pot as their weekly allowance. Argiento was a relentless pursuer of bargains. Within a week he knew every stall selling produce. His shopping took him the better part of the morning, which suited Michelangelo because it gave him the solitariness he sought.
They established a simple routine. After their one-dish midday dinner, Argiento cleaned the rooms while Michelangelo took an hour’s walk along the Tiber to the docks to listen to the Sicilians sing as they unloaded the boats. By the time he returned home Argiento was taking his riposo on the truckle bed in the kitchen under the wooden sink. Michelangelo had two more hours of quiet at his workbench before Argiento woke, washed his face noisily in a basin, and came to the worktable for his daily instruction. These few hours in the afternoon appeared to be all the teaching Argiento wanted. At dusk he was back in the kitchen, boiling water. By the time dark settled in he was asleep on his truckle bed, a blanket drawn securely over his head. Michelangelo then lit his oil lamps and returned to his workbench. He was grateful to Buonarroto for sending Argiento to him; the arrangement looked as though it would be satisfactory, despite the fact that Argiento showed not a shred of talent for drawing. Later, when he began working the marble, he would teach the boy how to use a hammer and chisel.
