April 12, 2010 • 26 mins
As a painter and a sculptor, Michelangelo became famous within his own lifetime. But who exactly was this artist, and what compelled him to create his masterpieces? Listen in as Katie and Sarah explore the life of Michelangelo in this podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downey, and today we
have our third installment and our Medici super series michel Angelo,
(00:23):
and we can't talk about the Medici family without mentioning
their role as patrons of the arts and Lorenzo the
Magnificent alone worked with Botticelli, Barocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, and obviously,
most famously with the young michel Angelo. But michel Angelo's
a relationship to the Medici family didn't end with Lorenzo.
He goes from a teen living at their palazzo to
(00:45):
a man with a Medici hit on his head. So
we've got to figure out how this happened and how
did an impoverished boy from a rocky outpost become one
of the greatest artists of history. And it's critical to
understand michel Angelo's importance in his own lifetime before we
can appreciate him historically, though, because it explains a lot. Yeah,
(01:05):
he's this moody, guilty kind of guy. He loves Florence,
that's central about his character. But he's so incredibly famous
while he's alive, that his career is really well documented.
He was actually the first Western artist to have a
bio published while he was still alive. And he actually
has two rival bios. There's the saries, the lives, and
(01:27):
then there's also, I guess what you would consider more
of a an authorized biography by his assistant. And we
also have a lot of his stuff, his letters and
sketches and poetry. And consequently, a man of this caliber
and somebody who's so famous has a huge effect on
his contemporaries, even his seniors like Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo
(01:49):
left Florence for Milan, came back twenty years later and
found the art world a completely different place. And we
have a great quote from Heart's History of Italian Renaissance,
which we pulled from a lot for this podcast, and
he says of michel Angelo that one could accept him
or rebel against him, but one could not ignore him.
So with that quote, we will take you to michel
(02:11):
Angelo's early life. He was born michel Angelo de Lodovico
Buonarotti Simony on March six, fourtevent and pray say a
Florentine outpost and rather barren region and his father was
Ludovico de Simoni Buonarotti, and he was of a noble family,
or they had been noble for many generations, but they
(02:31):
had lost that. They were also very poor, and his
father was serving as the governor of the region, and
they returned to Florence only about a month after michel
Angelo was born, when his father's term came up. And
one important fact from this time though, he had a
wet nurse from a village of stone cutters, and he
liked to play at this connection a lot. The fact
(02:52):
that he had his love of sculpture and stone cutting
almost instilled from from his and see and his father
and uncle were against him becoming an artist because of
that noble lineage. They thought he should be above physical labor.
But they finally gave up and when he was thirteen,
which was a bit old to start, they placed him
(03:13):
in Domenico Gerlandio's studio for a term of three years,
and he's a paid apprentice, which was a big deal,
and he leaves after a year because he is just
so good. When he's invited by Lorenzo the Magnificent to
his home where he can work in the Medici gardens
and the art school that's held there, and he does
(03:33):
receive some instruction when he's living with Lorenzo, but most
of the benefit comes from just being around all of
the amazing artworks that Lorenzo owns the Medici statuary. They
have all this ancient Roman sculpture, ancient coins and cameos,
and a fair amount of interesting modern Renaissance stuff as well.
(03:56):
He also benefits from living with the Medici and seeing
what life is like for this powerful political family. He
dines with Lorenzo and with the Medaici boys, and during
his spare time he goes around the city copying works
of Giotto and Massaccio. It's actually in the Brancocci Chapel
that he criticized the drawing of a sculptor and gets
(04:17):
a broken nose for his trouble, something that he's so
self conscious about for his whole life. And his first
extant work from his teen years is a marble relief
called the Madonna of the Stairs, which is rather crude
in drapery, but great as far as the muscles. Yeah,
what he did with that. He also did the Battle
of Lapiths and Centaurs, and Lorenzo dies in so Michelangelo
(04:41):
is back with his dad in a modest house near
Santa Croce, and during this time in his life is
when he probably does a crucifixion for a meta chie
son and also starts dissecting corpses to make it, which
is something he'll do for the rest of his life
to make his human figures realistic. It's kind of strange
to think of our our famous Renaissance artists having these
(05:03):
da Vinci did bodies donated. Pretty cool, yeah, But in
fourteen ninety four he makes a brief visit to Venice
and then to Bologna, and he probably also hears Savonarola
preached during this time, who we have already podcasted on
um and as an old man, he still reads Savonarola's
work and remembers his voice, so he obviously has a
(05:24):
big impression on him early on. But let's go back
to Florence, which at the time was still the center
of art. But art wasn't paying as well as it
used to at this time, so a lot of artists
were moving on from Florence and going other places. And
in fourteen ninety six michel Angelo went to Rome. He
was twenty one and Pope Alexander the sixth Lucrezia Borge's
(05:46):
father was in charge, and there's obviously a lot of
amazing stuff in Rome for the young michel Angelo to study,
amazing um antiquities. But he does a lot of private
commissions during this time too, like Bacchus for a rich Roman,
which um, it's a it's an interesting statue. You can
tell Bacchus has been definitely indulging in his drink of choice,
(06:09):
and he does the Doni Madonna, the Brutiges Madonna, just
nice little, nice little works that helped establish his early career.
But his first major commission came in in when he
was twenty three, and it was a pieta, which was
an uncommon subject in Italy at the time. So pieta
(06:30):
subject is the Virgin Mary holding Christ in her lap
right after he's been taken off the off the cross,
and it kind of echoes madonna and child scenes, except
there's all this tragedy involved in it, and Michelangelo's piatak
kind of defines the scene ultimately huge. Well, it's huge
(06:51):
because you think you have to have a full grown Christ. Obviously,
the madonna who's holding him has to be enormous. Michelangelis
Pieta is also of note because it's his only signed sculpture.
Va Sorry writes that some Lombards came to see it
at St. Peter's and they thought it must be made
by one of their own countrymen. And I guess Michelangelo
(07:13):
got word of this, and so he snuck into St.
Peter's at night and and chiseled in his signature. But
if you go to St. Peter's today to see the Pieta,
unfortunately it's behind bulletproof glass, because in nineteen seventy seven
deranged geologists had to go and attack it. So I'm
not laughing and attacking the statue. I am laughing that
(07:33):
the attack was by a deranged geologist. Okay. During this time,
michel Angelo is also working on a public project. Perhaps
you've heard of it. It's the David Statue, and it
was to be made from a block of marble that
was from the fourteen sixties and had already been partially
blocked by Augustino di Duccio, who had been working on
a design probably done by Donna Tello, and it was
(07:54):
intended to go on the Cathedral of Florence to match
and go with Donna Tello's Joshua. But because it's so awesome,
people don't want to put it up so high. The
Republic wants it in front of the Palazzo de Priori,
which is now the Palazza de Vecchio, as a symbol
of the republic. The Medici, remember, have been in exile
since shortly after Lorenzo the Magnificence death. We talked about
(08:16):
that a little bit in our previous podcast. And the
night the statue is installed, pro Medici youths hit it
with rocks. So here we have the dr in geologist,
the pro Medici youths, all these people hating on michel Angelo. So,
since Florence is a republic again and we don't have
Medici power, we have a guy called Sodorini who's the
(08:36):
gold Felonieri for life, and that's basically the protector of
the Republic, the standard bearer. And he doesn't like how
nude David is, so he commissions a girdle essentially of
bronze and copper leaves to to go around David's way underpants. Yeah,
exactly has to developed for David, which is which is
(08:58):
pretty lame if you think about it. Some side notes
on the David Statue. During the third expulsion of the
Medici from Florence in seven a bench is throne from
the window of the Palazzo da Priory and it shatters
David's left arm in hand, and a teenage Fusari and
another teenager end up saving the pieces for reattachment. And
(09:20):
the marble of the statue was also soft and suffered
a lot from being in the rain, so in the
nineteenth century it was moved to the skylit rotunda of
the Academia after David's success. Michelangelo has lots and lots
of big projects. He liked ambitious work. He liked doing
the you know, big big things, but he didn't like
working with assistance, so he didn't get a lot done.
(09:43):
He was very difficult to work with um. For example,
there was this huge fresco for the Solidel Grand can
Cilio that he was supposed to do, or twelve marble
apostles for the Florence Cathedral, and he ends up only
doing St. Matthew. But he gets a customer in Rome
that he can't refuse Pope Julius the Second, So in
fifteen oh five Pope Julius says basically, come to Rome,
(10:05):
make me a tomb, put forty statues on it. It's
a huge commission, and michel Angelo spends about a year
bringing marble from Carrara before the Pope calls off the project.
He realizes it's going to be too expensive, and Michelangelo,
always suspicious of of other artists, even just onlookers and
his own family, thinks that Bremonti, who's also working at St. Peter's,
(10:28):
might have had a hand in the Pope's decision to
cut off funding, and he is so so angry. He's
famous for his fits of rage. He storms back to
Florence in fifteen o six and this project, the tomb commission,
turns out to be a real nightmare for michel Angelo
his whole life. He's very much invested in the project,
but it goes through multiple design changes, lots of halted work,
(10:50):
stop payment. It's it's always sort of hovering over him
for his for nearly his entire life. But he considered
himself a sculptor, not a painter like we often think
of him, so that's why this was so important to him.
And we also came across a little fact that we
couldn't figure out where else to put, so we're just
going to throw it out there right now. We mentioned
he was a little bit strange, and if you want
(11:12):
a fashion tip from michel Angelo, he wore boots made
from cured dog skin for months at a time, and
when it came time to remove them, his skin peeled off.
So we have our raging dog skin booted michel Angelo.
Angry michel Angelo. But the Pope isn't gonna stand michel
Angelo's fits of rage and he's not gonna let him
(11:33):
hide out in Florence, so he has the Florentine authorities
returned michel Angelo to Rome, but this time he has
another project for him, and it's a bronze colossal of
the pope that seems like a very egotistical pope with
his giant to him and now his bronze colossal um.
Michel Angelo does this, but we have no drawings of it,
no records of it. It's installed in the newly conquered
(11:55):
Bologna and three years later, anti papal forces push it off,
its pedestal melted, and cast it into a can in
which they named La Julia, which is the feminine version
of the Pope's name, and it's it's meant to be
the cannon firing at the pope when he retreats from town.
In fifteen o eight, michel Angelo had just gotten back
(12:18):
to Florence once again, when the Pope once again says,
come to Rome. There's this thing I want you to do.
It's called the Sistine Chapel, and the Sistine Chapel is
a special place for the popes. It's the chief consecrated
space in the Vatican, and it's used for papal conclaves.
If you want to think back to and Pope John
Paul the second died and I had to pick a
(12:38):
new pope. But it's mostly decorated at the time too.
It's it's been around for a while, and it's got
the Life of Moses, the Life of Christ, historic popes.
Everything is done except the ceiling, and so the Pope
suggests to michel Angelo, how about we include the twelve
apostles on the ceiling, each with their own panel. Michelangelo
is not a fan of this idea. He thinks it's
(13:00):
way too straightforward, it's not gonna be interesting enough, and
instead we end up with Old Testament profits and sibyls
from antiquity, plus all these scenes from Genesis that go
backward in time. When you enter the room, it starts
with Noah, it progresses to God's separation of light and darkness.
And the subjects probably would have been a little theologically
(13:22):
complex for michel Angelo, so it's unlikely that he rejected
the apostle idea and presented this plan instead. He probably
couldn't even read Latin, so it's likely that michel Angelo
had a theological adviser of sorts in Marco Vigierro de
la Rovera, and he's the Pope's cousin and probably helped
(13:44):
him out, you know, with the planning and choosing which
subjects would be represented. In fift eight, michel Angelo sets
to work on his preliminary sketches before he makes cartoons.
And because I don't know a lot about Fresco making,
Sarah's going to explain that part a little bit. Well. Really,
simply the cartoons. You can't freehand on fresco, especially when
(14:05):
it's these huge scenes that are going to be on
top of a ceiling, So you make cartoons which are
basically life size mock ups for what you're ultimately going
to depict in fresco. You lay the cartoons up against
wet and tonico, and you outline the edges with a stylist,
which is a little metal instrument, so you can see
these little pin pricks sometimes in the plaster. And then
(14:28):
when you're actually applying the color to the to the fresco,
you have to do it in pretty small stages, so
you have the wet plaster on, you layer on the color.
Um It's not like an oil painting or something where
you're gradually putting more and more layers of color on
on top of each other. You have to work quickly.
Michel Angelo isn't perfect at this whole stylus in cartoon
(14:50):
bit at first, and the first work has to be
redone because it molds. But as he goes along he
gets a lot more confident and works much faster, and
eventually is able to eliminate some of those prep steps,
like the complete drawings and the stylus pricks, and consequently
the figures become a lot more expressive, and the whole
thing remarkably only takes about four years, less than four
(15:11):
years actually, probably including an interruption of about a year
when the funds were cut and to do a little
myth busting, I think a lot of people imagine michel
Angelo reclined as he's as he's painting in these frescoes.
That's not the case. He designs special scaffolding which is
suspended by beams, and this allows him to paint standing up,
(15:35):
so he's able to walk around, get his all his
supplies together, and I must really hurt your neck. Well,
and it does hurt his neck. He actually writes about
about it and includes a little a little sketch of
him looks very uncomfortable when the scaffolding only came down
occasionally for him to to review his work and look
up and see how it was looking. The first time
(15:55):
was in fifteen ten, and from then all the figures
get bigger when assumes he got down, looked up and
realized when things are that small and detailed, you can't
see them on the ground of the I can't see
everything I painted there. So obviously, the most impressive scene,
or the most famous scene, is the creation of Adam.
It has been spoofed in a million ways, everything from
(16:15):
et to George Michael's muscle suit. It's quite a quite
a spectrum there um. But it's it's what we've been
most impressed with. I'd say. The restoration of the Sistine
Chapel ceiling took place from nineteen eighty to nine, and
it removed centuries of lamp candle and incense smoke, a
(16:36):
coat of animal glue, even Greek wine that had been
added to brighten the colors. And for the longest time
people had thought maybe Michelangelo just worked in very in
a very muted palette. You know, he was a dark,
moody guy kind of guy. But it turns out once
all of that was removed, he worked in in vivid, brilliant,
beautiful colors. It's supercolors. If you've if you've ever seen
(16:58):
the Sistine chapeler seen real true to life photographs of it.
Just bright, bright colors, sherbet colors on the But in
fifteen thirteen, we're back to that old tomb for Julius,
Michelangelo's both favorite and nightmare project, but this time there's
a new design. He only finishes three figures, Moses and
(17:19):
a couple of slaves, and he ends up keeping these
for himself because the design on scale of the project
changes once again and he keeps them until he's old
before giving them to a family that helped him during
an illness. But Julius dies in fifteen thirteen, and um,
it sounds like the perfect time to make a tomb,
but it's not. The funding drives up, and some other
(17:40):
changes happened to at Julius's death that really affect Michelangelo
and Florence as well. So it's time for us to
catch up with the Medici. We haven't forgotten them. The
Medici were expelled in fourteen ninety four, as we've said,
but they came back in after austaing Soderini. The city
is being ruled again in the old fashion, behind the
(18:01):
scenes type of Medici way that Lawrence the Magnificent had pioneered,
but this time it's by his son Giuliano, and his
older brother is the powerful Cardinal Giovanni. But when Julius
the Second dies, Cardinal Giovanni becomes Pope Leo the Tenth.
So Leo the Tenth and michel Angelo have known each
other since they were boys and michel Angelo was living
(18:21):
in the Medici palace, and Leo obviously doesn't want michel
Angelo working on a pope Julius project, and he doesn't
even want him working on a papacy project. He's almost
more of a Medici before he's a pope. So he
brings he brings michel Angelo back to Florence to work
on Medici approved projects. Things are a little bit sketchy
(18:43):
and Florence at the time, though. Leo's replaced his brother
with his nephew Lorenzo as ruler of Florence, and Lawrence
is just not that great. He's mostly a puppet ruler.
He's very repressive and he dies early, but now before
fathering his one legitimate child, Catherine de Medici, who we
will talk about in some future podcast. You'll get an
episode for sure. So Leah the Tenth puts his cousin,
(19:05):
Cardinal Giulio de Medici, in charge, and you'll probably remember
him from our Popsy Conspiracy podcast. He's Giuliano de Medici's son,
who's the guy who's actually killed at the Duomo, his
illegitimate son. So Giulio and michel Angelo work really closely
together and they have a pretty respectful give and take relationship.
(19:25):
Um And in fifteen sixteen, michel Angelo has commissioned to
design a facade for the Medici's churches of San Lorenzo,
and he actually builds a road to the mountains just
to get marble for this facade and this design of his,
but the contract is annulled in fifty and angry michel Angelo.
(19:46):
I mean, he's got good reason to be angry about
this stuff, but he's very upset. He ends up instead
working on kind of a smaller scale project for San Lorenzo,
which is the Medici Chapel, designing tombs for some of
the Medici heirs who have died early. And the tombs
have these beautiful figures of night and day and dawn
and dusk, and they're actually often mistaken for the tombs
(20:10):
of more illustrious family members. They're they're pretty much nobody's
in the grand scheme of Medici family members, but they
have these lovely elaborate tunes. But we have a bit
of a Medici break and interlude in power when Leo
the tenth died in Fife and a Dutch pope took
over Adrian the sixth, who's very into reform and cleaning
(20:33):
up Medici messes in general, and consequently he doesn't last
too long. He was probably poisoned, and he was succeeded
by Cardinal Giulio de Medici, who became Clement the seventh,
and Clement kept his day job ruling Florence as well
as taking over the papacy. Yeah, just because he's pope
doesn't mean he's about to leave everything at home behind. Well,
(20:53):
and this is when the people of the city realize
they're owned by the papacy, and they're not happy. Yeah,
they have this great um history of being a republic,
and now they realize what their true position is. So
by fifteen, Clement has gotten himself into too much trouble
with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the fifth, and this
(21:14):
results in a violent sacking of Rome in fifty seven,
which ends the High Renaissance, this great period of of
art that we we think of, you know, Michelangelo's peak,
it's over. This results in the Violet Sacking of Rome,
which happens in fifteen and ends the High Renaissance, and
(21:34):
Clement is forced to flee Rome and a lot of
people think, you know what, maybe this is the judgment
of God on Medici. Rome Laurence definitely think so, and
they take the opportunity to throw off the Medici and
reinstate the Republic. But while the city is besieged, Michelangelo
designed fortifications. He really understood defensive structure as well, which
(21:58):
is interesting again to see how his talents could go
across so many different areas. How I mean, he's a
renaissance man to put it in a cliche, but yeah,
that somebody can do um great fresco work and you know,
gorgeous sculpture, sculpture and then designed fortifications. It's pretty crazy.
But Florence is captured again in fifteen thirty and the
(22:21):
new Medicie government is pretty strict, and Michelangelo is actually
ordered to be assassinated for helping the Republic, for helping
with those fortifications and all that, and the Canon of
San Lorenzo. And this is how crazy it is. It's
the Medici church. The Canon of San Lorenzo hides him
until the Pope, the Medici pope issues in order to
(22:42):
spare his life so he can get back to work
on the Medici chapel. It's just also twisted and tied up.
And the Medici ruler at the time, Alessandro, who's the
first hereditary Duke of Florence. They've they've ditched that. Oh,
we're just behind the scenes running the republic thing for us. So, um,
he's a pretty cruel guy. So when Clement dies and
(23:04):
michel Angelo doesn't have that protection of the Medici Pope anymore,
he gets out of Florence. He's worried for his life.
So he leaves Florence for Rome for the last time
in fifteen thirty four, hoping to return someday. But this
is the point in his life where he starts contemplating
his own mortality. We have lots of letters to his
(23:24):
family from this time. Um, he's really concerned about his
nephew marrying and you know, carrying on the family name.
And some have suggested because some of his later letters
in his life that he was homosexual, because he wrote
a lot about his strong attachments to young men. But
there's another theory saying, you know, there aren't any similar
(23:45):
indications from when he was younger, so maybe this is
when he was looking for a surrogate son. He also
writes a lot of poetry along with his letters, and um,
just to show again what sort of a strange guy
he is, he starts taking to wearing hair shirts under
his clothes. Mimicking John the Baptist, and he's still working
(24:05):
though don't think of him as fading off into obscurity.
In Rome, he has some of his his biggest stuff here.
The new Pope, Paul the Third commissions michel Angelo to
come back to fresco work and come back to the
Sistine Chapel after a hiatus of twenty five years, and
he works on the last Judgment, which is interesting for something.
It's the same artist, the same location, but it's such
(24:28):
a different style. It's um it's the difference of a
quarter century, I guess. But he really turned to architecture
a lot in his later years because it was less physical.
His art before that was a bit hard on the body.
And most notably he was the head architect of projects
at St. Peter's. He designed the dome of St. Peter's,
which Sarah's been emailing me pictures of all day. But
(24:50):
it was built after his death, and it's not clear
just how much of the design followed what he intended
to do and how much of it was other people.
So michel Angelo died February eighteen, fifteen sixty four, in Rome,
and an interesting thing about him for somebody who is
so famous during his own lifetime that fame doesn't slip
away at all. I mean, if anything, he becomes more
(25:11):
famous when when we see his influence on later artists,
and that brings us to an art related Listener Mail.
So this edition of listener Mail is real mail. We
got a postcard as we we love getting postcards. As
we mentioned, I'll tacked up on our window and this
(25:33):
one is a postcard of remembrance the storm on the
Sea of Galilee, and it's from Chloe and she wrote,
I'm sending this card along and hopes that both of
you will do a podcast on the Isabella start Gardner
Museum or the highs that took place there twenty years ago.
And I think this is such a good idea. I
definitely think we're going to be doing a podcast on
the subject, because we actually have a really cool article
(25:56):
on it already. Yes, five Biggest art Heists, and we
also have one called how to Steal a Painting. You
can find them both if you search on our homepage
at www dot how stuff works dot com, and you
can also follow us on Twitter at mist in History.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(26:16):
how stuff works dot Com and be sure to check
out the stuff you missed in History Glass Blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downey, and today we
have our third installment and our Medici super series michel Angelo,
(00:23):
and we can't talk about the Medici family without mentioning
their role as patrons of the arts and Lorenzo the
Magnificent alone worked with Botticelli, Barocchio, Leonardo da Vinci, and obviously,
most famously with the young michel Angelo. But michel Angelo's
a relationship to the Medici family didn't end with Lorenzo.
He goes from a teen living at their palazzo to
(00:45):
a man with a Medici hit on his head. So
we've got to figure out how this happened and how
did an impoverished boy from a rocky outpost become one
of the greatest artists of history. And it's critical to
understand michel Angelo's importance in his own lifetime before we
can appreciate him historically, though, because it explains a lot. Yeah,
(01:05):
he's this moody, guilty kind of guy. He loves Florence,
that's central about his character. But he's so incredibly famous
while he's alive, that his career is really well documented.
He was actually the first Western artist to have a
bio published while he was still alive. And he actually
has two rival bios. There's the saries, the lives, and
(01:27):
then there's also, I guess what you would consider more
of a an authorized biography by his assistant. And we
also have a lot of his stuff, his letters and
sketches and poetry. And consequently, a man of this caliber
and somebody who's so famous has a huge effect on
his contemporaries, even his seniors like Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo
(01:49):
left Florence for Milan, came back twenty years later and
found the art world a completely different place. And we
have a great quote from Heart's History of Italian Renaissance,
which we pulled from a lot for this podcast, and
he says of michel Angelo that one could accept him
or rebel against him, but one could not ignore him.
So with that quote, we will take you to michel
(02:11):
Angelo's early life. He was born michel Angelo de Lodovico
Buonarotti Simony on March six, fourtevent and pray say a
Florentine outpost and rather barren region and his father was
Ludovico de Simoni Buonarotti, and he was of a noble family,
or they had been noble for many generations, but they
(02:31):
had lost that. They were also very poor, and his
father was serving as the governor of the region, and
they returned to Florence only about a month after michel
Angelo was born, when his father's term came up. And
one important fact from this time though, he had a
wet nurse from a village of stone cutters, and he
liked to play at this connection a lot. The fact
(02:52):
that he had his love of sculpture and stone cutting
almost instilled from from his and see and his father
and uncle were against him becoming an artist because of
that noble lineage. They thought he should be above physical labor.
But they finally gave up and when he was thirteen,
which was a bit old to start, they placed him
(03:13):
in Domenico Gerlandio's studio for a term of three years,
and he's a paid apprentice, which was a big deal,
and he leaves after a year because he is just
so good. When he's invited by Lorenzo the Magnificent to
his home where he can work in the Medici gardens
and the art school that's held there, and he does
(03:33):
receive some instruction when he's living with Lorenzo, but most
of the benefit comes from just being around all of
the amazing artworks that Lorenzo owns the Medici statuary. They
have all this ancient Roman sculpture, ancient coins and cameos,
and a fair amount of interesting modern Renaissance stuff as well.
(03:56):
He also benefits from living with the Medici and seeing
what life is like for this powerful political family. He
dines with Lorenzo and with the Medaici boys, and during
his spare time he goes around the city copying works
of Giotto and Massaccio. It's actually in the Brancocci Chapel
that he criticized the drawing of a sculptor and gets
(04:17):
a broken nose for his trouble, something that he's so
self conscious about for his whole life. And his first
extant work from his teen years is a marble relief
called the Madonna of the Stairs, which is rather crude
in drapery, but great as far as the muscles. Yeah,
what he did with that. He also did the Battle
of Lapiths and Centaurs, and Lorenzo dies in so Michelangelo
(04:41):
is back with his dad in a modest house near
Santa Croce, and during this time in his life is
when he probably does a crucifixion for a meta chie
son and also starts dissecting corpses to make it, which
is something he'll do for the rest of his life
to make his human figures realistic. It's kind of strange
to think of our our famous Renaissance artists having these
(05:03):
da Vinci did bodies donated. Pretty cool, yeah, But in
fourteen ninety four he makes a brief visit to Venice
and then to Bologna, and he probably also hears Savonarola
preached during this time, who we have already podcasted on
um and as an old man, he still reads Savonarola's
work and remembers his voice, so he obviously has a
(05:24):
big impression on him early on. But let's go back
to Florence, which at the time was still the center
of art. But art wasn't paying as well as it
used to at this time, so a lot of artists
were moving on from Florence and going other places. And
in fourteen ninety six michel Angelo went to Rome. He
was twenty one and Pope Alexander the sixth Lucrezia Borge's
(05:46):
father was in charge, and there's obviously a lot of
amazing stuff in Rome for the young michel Angelo to study,
amazing um antiquities. But he does a lot of private
commissions during this time too, like Bacchus for a rich Roman,
which um, it's a it's an interesting statue. You can
tell Bacchus has been definitely indulging in his drink of choice,
(06:09):
and he does the Doni Madonna, the Brutiges Madonna, just
nice little, nice little works that helped establish his early career.
But his first major commission came in in when he
was twenty three, and it was a pieta, which was
an uncommon subject in Italy at the time. So pieta
(06:30):
subject is the Virgin Mary holding Christ in her lap
right after he's been taken off the off the cross,
and it kind of echoes madonna and child scenes, except
there's all this tragedy involved in it, and Michelangelo's piatak
kind of defines the scene ultimately huge. Well, it's huge
(06:51):
because you think you have to have a full grown Christ. Obviously,
the madonna who's holding him has to be enormous. Michelangelis
Pieta is also of note because it's his only signed sculpture.
Va Sorry writes that some Lombards came to see it
at St. Peter's and they thought it must be made
by one of their own countrymen. And I guess Michelangelo
(07:13):
got word of this, and so he snuck into St.
Peter's at night and and chiseled in his signature. But
if you go to St. Peter's today to see the Pieta,
unfortunately it's behind bulletproof glass, because in nineteen seventy seven
deranged geologists had to go and attack it. So I'm
not laughing and attacking the statue. I am laughing that
(07:33):
the attack was by a deranged geologist. Okay. During this time,
michel Angelo is also working on a public project. Perhaps
you've heard of it. It's the David Statue, and it
was to be made from a block of marble that
was from the fourteen sixties and had already been partially
blocked by Augustino di Duccio, who had been working on
a design probably done by Donna Tello, and it was
(07:54):
intended to go on the Cathedral of Florence to match
and go with Donna Tello's Joshua. But because it's so awesome,
people don't want to put it up so high. The
Republic wants it in front of the Palazzo de Priori,
which is now the Palazza de Vecchio, as a symbol
of the republic. The Medici, remember, have been in exile
since shortly after Lorenzo the Magnificence death. We talked about
(08:16):
that a little bit in our previous podcast. And the
night the statue is installed, pro Medici youths hit it
with rocks. So here we have the dr in geologist,
the pro Medici youths, all these people hating on michel Angelo. So,
since Florence is a republic again and we don't have
Medici power, we have a guy called Sodorini who's the
(08:36):
gold Felonieri for life, and that's basically the protector of
the Republic, the standard bearer. And he doesn't like how
nude David is, so he commissions a girdle essentially of
bronze and copper leaves to to go around David's way underpants. Yeah,
exactly has to developed for David, which is which is
(08:58):
pretty lame if you think about it. Some side notes
on the David Statue. During the third expulsion of the
Medici from Florence in seven a bench is throne from
the window of the Palazzo da Priory and it shatters
David's left arm in hand, and a teenage Fusari and
another teenager end up saving the pieces for reattachment. And
(09:20):
the marble of the statue was also soft and suffered
a lot from being in the rain, so in the
nineteenth century it was moved to the skylit rotunda of
the Academia after David's success. Michelangelo has lots and lots
of big projects. He liked ambitious work. He liked doing
the you know, big big things, but he didn't like
working with assistance, so he didn't get a lot done.
(09:43):
He was very difficult to work with um. For example,
there was this huge fresco for the Solidel Grand can
Cilio that he was supposed to do, or twelve marble
apostles for the Florence Cathedral, and he ends up only
doing St. Matthew. But he gets a customer in Rome
that he can't refuse Pope Julius the Second, So in
fifteen oh five Pope Julius says basically, come to Rome,
(10:05):
make me a tomb, put forty statues on it. It's
a huge commission, and michel Angelo spends about a year
bringing marble from Carrara before the Pope calls off the project.
He realizes it's going to be too expensive, and Michelangelo,
always suspicious of of other artists, even just onlookers and
his own family, thinks that Bremonti, who's also working at St. Peter's,
(10:28):
might have had a hand in the Pope's decision to
cut off funding, and he is so so angry. He's
famous for his fits of rage. He storms back to
Florence in fifteen o six and this project, the tomb commission,
turns out to be a real nightmare for michel Angelo
his whole life. He's very much invested in the project,
but it goes through multiple design changes, lots of halted work,
(10:50):
stop payment. It's it's always sort of hovering over him
for his for nearly his entire life. But he considered
himself a sculptor, not a painter like we often think
of him, so that's why this was so important to him.
And we also came across a little fact that we
couldn't figure out where else to put, so we're just
going to throw it out there right now. We mentioned
he was a little bit strange, and if you want
(11:12):
a fashion tip from michel Angelo, he wore boots made
from cured dog skin for months at a time, and
when it came time to remove them, his skin peeled off.
So we have our raging dog skin booted michel Angelo.
Angry michel Angelo. But the Pope isn't gonna stand michel
Angelo's fits of rage and he's not gonna let him
(11:33):
hide out in Florence, so he has the Florentine authorities
returned michel Angelo to Rome, but this time he has
another project for him, and it's a bronze colossal of
the pope that seems like a very egotistical pope with
his giant to him and now his bronze colossal um.
Michel Angelo does this, but we have no drawings of it,
no records of it. It's installed in the newly conquered
(11:55):
Bologna and three years later, anti papal forces push it off,
its pedestal melted, and cast it into a can in
which they named La Julia, which is the feminine version
of the Pope's name, and it's it's meant to be
the cannon firing at the pope when he retreats from town.
In fifteen o eight, michel Angelo had just gotten back
(12:18):
to Florence once again, when the Pope once again says,
come to Rome. There's this thing I want you to do.
It's called the Sistine Chapel, and the Sistine Chapel is
a special place for the popes. It's the chief consecrated
space in the Vatican, and it's used for papal conclaves.
If you want to think back to and Pope John
Paul the second died and I had to pick a
(12:38):
new pope. But it's mostly decorated at the time too.
It's it's been around for a while, and it's got
the Life of Moses, the Life of Christ, historic popes.
Everything is done except the ceiling, and so the Pope
suggests to michel Angelo, how about we include the twelve
apostles on the ceiling, each with their own panel. Michelangelo
is not a fan of this idea. He thinks it's
(13:00):
way too straightforward, it's not gonna be interesting enough, and
instead we end up with Old Testament profits and sibyls
from antiquity, plus all these scenes from Genesis that go
backward in time. When you enter the room, it starts
with Noah, it progresses to God's separation of light and darkness.
And the subjects probably would have been a little theologically
(13:22):
complex for michel Angelo, so it's unlikely that he rejected
the apostle idea and presented this plan instead. He probably
couldn't even read Latin, so it's likely that michel Angelo
had a theological adviser of sorts in Marco Vigierro de
la Rovera, and he's the Pope's cousin and probably helped
(13:44):
him out, you know, with the planning and choosing which
subjects would be represented. In fift eight, michel Angelo sets
to work on his preliminary sketches before he makes cartoons.
And because I don't know a lot about Fresco making,
Sarah's going to explain that part a little bit. Well. Really,
simply the cartoons. You can't freehand on fresco, especially when
(14:05):
it's these huge scenes that are going to be on
top of a ceiling, So you make cartoons which are
basically life size mock ups for what you're ultimately going
to depict in fresco. You lay the cartoons up against
wet and tonico, and you outline the edges with a stylist,
which is a little metal instrument, so you can see
these little pin pricks sometimes in the plaster. And then
(14:28):
when you're actually applying the color to the to the fresco,
you have to do it in pretty small stages, so
you have the wet plaster on, you layer on the color.
Um It's not like an oil painting or something where
you're gradually putting more and more layers of color on
on top of each other. You have to work quickly.
Michel Angelo isn't perfect at this whole stylus in cartoon
(14:50):
bit at first, and the first work has to be
redone because it molds. But as he goes along he
gets a lot more confident and works much faster, and
eventually is able to eliminate some of those prep steps,
like the complete drawings and the stylus pricks, and consequently
the figures become a lot more expressive, and the whole
thing remarkably only takes about four years, less than four
(15:11):
years actually, probably including an interruption of about a year
when the funds were cut and to do a little
myth busting, I think a lot of people imagine michel
Angelo reclined as he's as he's painting in these frescoes.
That's not the case. He designs special scaffolding which is
suspended by beams, and this allows him to paint standing up,
(15:35):
so he's able to walk around, get his all his
supplies together, and I must really hurt your neck. Well,
and it does hurt his neck. He actually writes about
about it and includes a little a little sketch of
him looks very uncomfortable when the scaffolding only came down
occasionally for him to to review his work and look
up and see how it was looking. The first time
(15:55):
was in fifteen ten, and from then all the figures
get bigger when assumes he got down, looked up and
realized when things are that small and detailed, you can't
see them on the ground of the I can't see
everything I painted there. So obviously, the most impressive scene,
or the most famous scene, is the creation of Adam.
It has been spoofed in a million ways, everything from
(16:15):
et to George Michael's muscle suit. It's quite a quite
a spectrum there um. But it's it's what we've been
most impressed with. I'd say. The restoration of the Sistine
Chapel ceiling took place from nineteen eighty to nine, and
it removed centuries of lamp candle and incense smoke, a
(16:36):
coat of animal glue, even Greek wine that had been
added to brighten the colors. And for the longest time
people had thought maybe Michelangelo just worked in very in
a very muted palette. You know, he was a dark,
moody guy kind of guy. But it turns out once
all of that was removed, he worked in in vivid, brilliant,
beautiful colors. It's supercolors. If you've if you've ever seen
(16:58):
the Sistine chapeler seen real true to life photographs of it.
Just bright, bright colors, sherbet colors on the But in
fifteen thirteen, we're back to that old tomb for Julius,
Michelangelo's both favorite and nightmare project, but this time there's
a new design. He only finishes three figures, Moses and
(17:19):
a couple of slaves, and he ends up keeping these
for himself because the design on scale of the project
changes once again and he keeps them until he's old
before giving them to a family that helped him during
an illness. But Julius dies in fifteen thirteen, and um,
it sounds like the perfect time to make a tomb,
but it's not. The funding drives up, and some other
(17:40):
changes happened to at Julius's death that really affect Michelangelo
and Florence as well. So it's time for us to
catch up with the Medici. We haven't forgotten them. The
Medici were expelled in fourteen ninety four, as we've said,
but they came back in after austaing Soderini. The city
is being ruled again in the old fashion, behind the
(18:01):
scenes type of Medici way that Lawrence the Magnificent had pioneered,
but this time it's by his son Giuliano, and his
older brother is the powerful Cardinal Giovanni. But when Julius
the Second dies, Cardinal Giovanni becomes Pope Leo the Tenth.
So Leo the Tenth and michel Angelo have known each
other since they were boys and michel Angelo was living
(18:21):
in the Medici palace, and Leo obviously doesn't want michel
Angelo working on a pope Julius project, and he doesn't
even want him working on a papacy project. He's almost
more of a Medici before he's a pope. So he
brings he brings michel Angelo back to Florence to work
on Medici approved projects. Things are a little bit sketchy
(18:43):
and Florence at the time, though. Leo's replaced his brother
with his nephew Lorenzo as ruler of Florence, and Lawrence
is just not that great. He's mostly a puppet ruler.
He's very repressive and he dies early, but now before
fathering his one legitimate child, Catherine de Medici, who we
will talk about in some future podcast. You'll get an
episode for sure. So Leah the Tenth puts his cousin,
(19:05):
Cardinal Giulio de Medici, in charge, and you'll probably remember
him from our Popsy Conspiracy podcast. He's Giuliano de Medici's son,
who's the guy who's actually killed at the Duomo, his
illegitimate son. So Giulio and michel Angelo work really closely
together and they have a pretty respectful give and take relationship.
(19:25):
Um And in fifteen sixteen, michel Angelo has commissioned to
design a facade for the Medici's churches of San Lorenzo,
and he actually builds a road to the mountains just
to get marble for this facade and this design of his,
but the contract is annulled in fifty and angry michel Angelo.
(19:46):
I mean, he's got good reason to be angry about
this stuff, but he's very upset. He ends up instead
working on kind of a smaller scale project for San Lorenzo,
which is the Medici Chapel, designing tombs for some of
the Medici heirs who have died early. And the tombs
have these beautiful figures of night and day and dawn
and dusk, and they're actually often mistaken for the tombs
(20:10):
of more illustrious family members. They're they're pretty much nobody's
in the grand scheme of Medici family members, but they
have these lovely elaborate tunes. But we have a bit
of a Medici break and interlude in power when Leo
the tenth died in Fife and a Dutch pope took
over Adrian the sixth, who's very into reform and cleaning
(20:33):
up Medici messes in general, and consequently he doesn't last
too long. He was probably poisoned, and he was succeeded
by Cardinal Giulio de Medici, who became Clement the seventh,
and Clement kept his day job ruling Florence as well
as taking over the papacy. Yeah, just because he's pope
doesn't mean he's about to leave everything at home behind. Well,
(20:53):
and this is when the people of the city realize
they're owned by the papacy, and they're not happy. Yeah,
they have this great um history of being a republic,
and now they realize what their true position is. So
by fifteen, Clement has gotten himself into too much trouble
with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the fifth, and this
(21:14):
results in a violent sacking of Rome in fifty seven,
which ends the High Renaissance, this great period of of
art that we we think of, you know, Michelangelo's peak,
it's over. This results in the Violet Sacking of Rome,
which happens in fifteen and ends the High Renaissance, and
(21:34):
Clement is forced to flee Rome and a lot of
people think, you know what, maybe this is the judgment
of God on Medici. Rome Laurence definitely think so, and
they take the opportunity to throw off the Medici and
reinstate the Republic. But while the city is besieged, Michelangelo
designed fortifications. He really understood defensive structure as well, which
(21:58):
is interesting again to see how his talents could go
across so many different areas. How I mean, he's a
renaissance man to put it in a cliche, but yeah,
that somebody can do um great fresco work and you know,
gorgeous sculpture, sculpture and then designed fortifications. It's pretty crazy.
But Florence is captured again in fifteen thirty and the
(22:21):
new Medicie government is pretty strict, and Michelangelo is actually
ordered to be assassinated for helping the Republic, for helping
with those fortifications and all that, and the Canon of
San Lorenzo. And this is how crazy it is. It's
the Medici church. The Canon of San Lorenzo hides him
until the Pope, the Medici pope issues in order to
(22:42):
spare his life so he can get back to work
on the Medici chapel. It's just also twisted and tied up.
And the Medici ruler at the time, Alessandro, who's the
first hereditary Duke of Florence. They've they've ditched that. Oh,
we're just behind the scenes running the republic thing for us. So, um,
he's a pretty cruel guy. So when Clement dies and
(23:04):
michel Angelo doesn't have that protection of the Medici Pope anymore,
he gets out of Florence. He's worried for his life.
So he leaves Florence for Rome for the last time
in fifteen thirty four, hoping to return someday. But this
is the point in his life where he starts contemplating
his own mortality. We have lots of letters to his
(23:24):
family from this time. Um, he's really concerned about his
nephew marrying and you know, carrying on the family name.
And some have suggested because some of his later letters
in his life that he was homosexual, because he wrote
a lot about his strong attachments to young men. But
there's another theory saying, you know, there aren't any similar
(23:45):
indications from when he was younger, so maybe this is
when he was looking for a surrogate son. He also
writes a lot of poetry along with his letters, and um,
just to show again what sort of a strange guy
he is, he starts taking to wearing hair shirts under
his clothes. Mimicking John the Baptist, and he's still working
(24:05):
though don't think of him as fading off into obscurity.
In Rome, he has some of his his biggest stuff here.
The new Pope, Paul the Third commissions michel Angelo to
come back to fresco work and come back to the
Sistine Chapel after a hiatus of twenty five years, and
he works on the last Judgment, which is interesting for something.
It's the same artist, the same location, but it's such
(24:28):
a different style. It's um it's the difference of a
quarter century, I guess. But he really turned to architecture
a lot in his later years because it was less physical.
His art before that was a bit hard on the body.
And most notably he was the head architect of projects
at St. Peter's. He designed the dome of St. Peter's,
which Sarah's been emailing me pictures of all day. But
(24:50):
it was built after his death, and it's not clear
just how much of the design followed what he intended
to do and how much of it was other people.
So michel Angelo died February eighteen, fifteen sixty four, in Rome,
and an interesting thing about him for somebody who is
so famous during his own lifetime that fame doesn't slip
away at all. I mean, if anything, he becomes more
(25:11):
famous when when we see his influence on later artists,
and that brings us to an art related Listener Mail.
So this edition of listener Mail is real mail. We
got a postcard as we we love getting postcards. As
we mentioned, I'll tacked up on our window and this
(25:33):
one is a postcard of remembrance the storm on the
Sea of Galilee, and it's from Chloe and she wrote,
I'm sending this card along and hopes that both of
you will do a podcast on the Isabella start Gardner
Museum or the highs that took place there twenty years ago.
And I think this is such a good idea. I
definitely think we're going to be doing a podcast on
the subject, because we actually have a really cool article
(25:56):
on it already. Yes, five Biggest art Heists, and we
also have one called how to Steal a Painting. You
can find them both if you search on our homepage
at www dot how stuff works dot com, and you
can also follow us on Twitter at mist in History.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
(26:16):
how stuff works dot Com and be sure to check
out the stuff you missed in History Glass Blog on
the how stuff works dot com home page
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