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Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

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I'd seen this book and BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME in bookstores for quite a while. I just couldn't bring myself to purchase either for a very silly reason. The author's name, Ross King, just didn't sound very authoritative to me, for some reason. More a name for a movie actor than a Rennaissance biographer. As it turns out, that was a baseless bias. King definitely knows his stuff, as the book's bulging bibliography will attest to.

Purists may be put off by the fact that this book is so entertaining, that it can't possibly be serious scholarship. I say let them stick to Jacob Burckhardt, I'll take Ross King, any day. This is a masterly book, and King is an excellent story teller, marshalling his facts and arraying them in taut, controlled prose. His is an excellent overview of the full panoply of figures and events that made late 15th, early 14th c. Italy such an extraordinary place and era. Michelangelo lived in a time that teemed with larger than life figures. The Borgias were still wielding influence in Florence and Rome. Amongst Michelangelo's contemporaries that put in an appearance in the book are the firebrand priest, Girolamo Savonarola, Martin Luther, Machiavelli, and two of the other greatest artists of the Rennaissance, Leonardo and Raphael. The rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael is one of the keynotes of the book. Raphael and his team of artisans were frescoing the pope's private rooms in the Vatican at the same time Michelangelo was frescoing the massive vault of the Sistine Chapel. Raphael is depicted as an expansive, open-minded, hedonist, good looking and attractive to all. Michelangelo is a "jug-eared, flat-nosed, and rather squat, somewhat miserly loner, who also happened to possess an unparalleled artistic genius.

King is particularly adept at conveying exactly how delicate and painstaking the art frescoing actually was. The artist would have only a brief window of time to apply the precious pigments before the plaster dried. Michelangelo started the project knowing very little about the involved techniques necessary to perform under such a timetable. As the months and years went by, he became so adept that he could paint ever larger sections at breakneck speed. He had to learn his craft on the fly, however, under incredibly difficult conditions.

King dispels a couple myths that have come down to us, primarily via Irving Stone and from the movie version of his novel, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY. It is highly unlikely that Michelangelo had to paint any sections of the ceiling on his back. He did however, have to assume some rather uncomfortable craning postures for hours at a time. It's also evident that the artist didn't work alone on the project. He would hire assistants as the need arose. He definitely didn't mix his own pigments, for instance, a time consuming, exact and laborious task in itself. This in no way diminishes just how Herculean an effort he exerted, however. The sheer physical toll the painting exacted on his body was quite real. His spirit was drained by the enterprise. It was, after all, not a project he was eager to pursue. Had it not been for the overbearing will of Julius II, he would have turned the opportunity down and concentrated instead on sculpture, his first love.

This is a book I recommend without reservation and it goes to the top of my current list of reading suggestions. It's relatively brief at just over 200 pages and will keep anyone with even the slightest appreciation of art and of genius riveted.

BEK

Ahhh.....remember Charlton Heston as Michelangelo- all alone, on his back- painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Well, in this very informative and enjoyable book, Ross King quickly clears up those two major misconceptions. Michelangelo was not on his back: the scaffolding was placed 7 feet below the ceiling. Michelangelo painted while standing, reaching overhead, with his back arched. And, he had plenty of help in his glorious enterprise. Michelangelo took on the project with a great deal of reluctance. What he had really been excited to do was the job Pope Julius II had originally had in mind: the sculpting of the Pope's burial tomb. For Michelangelo considered himself to be a sculptor rather than a painter. Though originally trained, in his early teens, as a painter, he had devoted himself almost entirely to sculpting in the nearly 20 year period which had elapsed between his training and receiving the summons from Pope Julius II to begin work on the Sistine Chapel. Additionally, Michelangelo had never before painted a fresco, which is a very tricky process involving painting on wet plaster. (He had once started preparatory work on a fresco project where he was supposed to go "head to head" with Leonardo. Alas, that project never came to pass!) So, Michelangelo did what any sensible person would do...he hired as assistants artists who had prior experience doing frescoes. Thus begins the fascinating tale of the four year project. Along the way we learn of Renaissance rivalries- Michelangelo had once taunted Leonardo da Vinci in public for having failed in his attempt to cast a giant bronze equestrian statue in Milan. Leonardo gave as good as he got: "He claimed that sculptors, covered in marble dust, looked like bakers, and that their homes were both noisy and filthy, in contrast to the more elegant abodes of painters." There was also the rivalry between Raphael and Michelangelo. The two artists couldn't have been more different- Raphael, handsome, charming, well-mannered and sociable (and a notorious connoisseur of beautiful women); Michelangelo- squat nosed and surly, pathologically suspicious, seemingly uninterested in anything unrelated to his art. Raphael was at work on a fresco in the Pope's library, in another section of the Vatican, at the same time Michelangelo was working on the Sistine Chapel. One of the most interesting parts of the book occurs when the ceiling is halfway completed. All the scaffolding was removed so that the Pope could examine the work to date. This was also the first time that Michelangelo could get an idea of how the ceiling would look from the floor of the chapel. He is said to have been shocked at how small his figures looked, and when he started work on the second half of the ceiling he decreased the number of figures portrayed but increased their size by an average of four feet. It is also said that at this time Raphael, realizing how much more public and prestigious the Sistine Chapel project was than his own assignment in the Pope's library, lobbied to be allowed to do the second half of the ceiling. Of course, that never came to pass. Mr. King manages to incorporate an amazing amount of material into such a relatively small book: We learn about the complexities of fresco painting, especially on a concave surface; what materials the pigments were made of and the processes involved in making them; Michelangelo's lack of interest in adding realistic landscapes to the backgrounds of his compositions (he considered landscape painting to be an inferior form of art); his sense of humor- in one of the tableaus he has a character "making the fig" at another character (an Italian equivalent of giving someone the finger). The author also shows us the difficult relationships Michelangelo had with his father and brothers (they were always hitting him up for money or trying to get him to use his influence to get them jobs, etc.). And, as a change-of-pace, punctuating the entire book we have Pope Julius II going out on various military campaigns to punish wayward Italian city-states (and dragging along his reluctant cardinals)! Somehow, Mr. King manages to weave all this together into a seamless, smoothly flowing narrative. This is an excellent book, both educational and entertaining!

Have you ever visited a landmark and had a tour guide who brought history to life - an engaging and entertaining person who had all the facts at his (or her) fingertips, but who delved beneath the facts to bring the participants to life? If so, you will understand the appeal of Ross King's "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling," for Mr. King is that kind of a tour guide. He takes us into the Sistine Chapel and fully explicates Michelangelo's masterpiece as a work of art, including everything from the technique of fresco to the kinds and colors of paint (and their origins) to the various challenges in the technique known as foreshortening. Although he liberally sprinkles the text with Italian and art terms, he explains each as he goes along.

Along the way, he also drops in interesting bits of information, such as, which panels in the painting, Michelangelo first saw from the floor of the chapel and what stylistic and color changes he incorporated in the panels after that, or which poses must have been difficult for the models (and who some of the models may have been) or why the medallions are disproportionately small to the rest of the work. Mixed in with art history and art appreciation are relevant pieces of contemporary history: the debauched and demanding Pope Julius II and the state of the papacy during his reign, the wars and diseases that afflicted the various participants and hindered work on the chapel, and numerous other small details that enliven the narrative.

King compares and contrasts Michelanglo with great rival, Raphael, who was painting the pope's private apartments at the same time Michelanglo was painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Raphael, who died relatively young, was more attractive, more popular, more adept at fresco (at least more adept than Michelangelo was when he began the ceiling) and generally a more sympathetic character than Michelangelo who lived to be almost ninety, had disgusting personal habits, was really not much to look at, and who really wanted to sculpt, not paint. While Raphael had the characteristic Italians call sprezziatura (making the difficult look easy), Michelangelo seemed to find everything difficult, or make it so.

King also debunks some of the more popular myths, particularly that Michelanglo painted the entire ceiling by himself, lying on his back. He had a host of helpers, some of whom also served as his teachers because he had minimal fresco experience when he began the chapel, and, while the scaffold was positioned so that neither he nor his assistants had to lie on their backs, the half squatting and bent-backward positions they did assume were equally uncomfortable, if not more so.

Though longer than "Bruneleschi's Dome," "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" moves just as quickly. King is never slow, dry or pedantic. He is, however, unfailingly informative. Should you be fortunate enough to visit the Vatican, this is obligatory preparatory reading. If you do not have that opportunity, King's tour of the Sistine Chapel is the next best thing to seeing it in person.

Continuing in the tradition of his earlier book, "Brunelleschi's Dome," Ross King explores the genesis of Michelangelo's masterpiece, the Sistine Chapel ceiling. King eloquently discusses not only Michelangelo's technique and composition, but also the contemporaneous rivalry with Raphael, who at the time was engaged in frescoing several of Pope Julius II's apartments. Written for the general reader, "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" is must reading for anyone visiting the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel for the first time--and indeed for the repeat visitor. What one misses, though, are more comprehensive illustrations of the various sections of the ceiling itself, which would assist in following King's descriptions and analysis. Still, by the end of the book, one realizes that the hand of God in the "Creation of Adam" is really the hand of Michelangelo, and we are all blessed by his divine inspiration.

Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King tells the story of four years, 1508-1512, in the life of three larger than life personalities: Michelangelo, Pope Julius II, and Raphael. Mr. King's latest nonfiction historical "thriller" is, however, more than a story of the four years that Michelangelo spent laboring over the twelve thousand square feet of the vast ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Mr. King's able hands it becomes an early 16th century soap opera, starring Michelangelo, Pope Julius II, and Raphael, and featuring all the intrigue, passion, violence, and pettiness of a Sopranos' episode. What's so astonishing is that all that is told actually happened -- it's history.
Ross King's gift is his ability to bring us, his readers, back through the maze of time and lead us to an understanding of all that coalesced -- politically, socially, and artistically -- to create great art, great history and, for us, great reading.
According to King:
"Pope Julius II was not a man one wished to offend.... A sturdily built sixty-three-year old with snow-white hair and a ruddy face, he was known as il papa terrible , the `dreadful' or `terrifying' pope.... His violent rages, in which he punched underlings or thrashed them with his stick were legendary.... In body and soul he had the nature of a giant. Everything about him is on a magnified scale, both his undertakings and passions."
Michelangelo and Raphael as portrayed by King:
"Almost as renowned for his moody temper and aloof, suspicious nature as he was for his amazing skill with the hammer and chisel, Michelangelo could be arrogant, insolent, and impulsive....If Michelangelo was slovenly and, at times, melancholy and antisocial, Raphael was, by contrast, the perfect gentleman. Contemporaries fell over themselves to praise his polite manner, his gentle disposition, his generosity toward others....Raphael's appealing personality were accompanied by his good looks: a long neck, oval face, large eyes, and olive skin -- handsome, delicate features that further made him the antithesis of the flat-nosed, jug-eared Michelangelo."
The stories of these three men during this extraordinary four year period and the art they produced is the story embodied in Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling. The confrontations between Julius II and Michelangelo are legendary. "The major problem seems to have been that Michelangelo and Julius were remarkably alike in temperament. Michelangelo was one of the few people in Rome who refused to cringe before Julius."
For almost the entire four years Michelangelo was shadowed by the brilliant young painter Raphael, who was working in fresco on the neighboring Papal apartments. This rivalry the Pope seemed to enjoy and encourage. To help us better understand the friction between these two great artists King introduces us to Edmund Burke's treatise on the sublime and the beautiful:
"For Burke, those things we call beautiful have the properties of smoothness, delicacy, softness of color, and elegance of movement. The sublime, on the other hand, comprehends the vast, the obscure, the powerful, the rugged, the difficult -- attributes which produce in the spectator a kind of astonished wonder and even terror. For the people of Rome in 1511, Raphael was beautiful but Michelangelo sublime."
For me, reading a book like Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling is the way to read history. Mr. King transported me back to those four years during which Michelangelo and Raphael created art both beautiful and sublime. I was there with and among the players, engrossed in the anecdotes King skillfully wove into his narrative. This is history -- up close and personal -- and yet far, far away from the pain, anguish, anger and turmoil that pervaded so much of the lives of Michelangelo, Pope Julius II, and Raphael. As I read, I learned, I felt, and I understood. Isn't that what reading is all about? I certainly could not ask for anything more.

Ross King's story of the "Pope's ceiling" is much more than the history of the painitng of the Sistine Chapel, as fascinating as that is. Spanning only four years, this book is art history, military history, church history and more all in one. Michelangelo was a renowned sculptor, who at the beginning of the 16th century was commissioned by Julius II to create the grandest tomb the world had known. But Julius, the feared and volatile ruler of part of Italy as well as the Pope, changed his mind before Michelangelo started, and directed him to paint the chapel instead. Unskilled in the complicated fresco process, and bitterly disappointed, Michelangelo nevertheless has no choice and begins the project. King details the challenging job of preparing the walls, transferring the design to the plaster, quickly painting before the walls dry. The author debunks many of the stories that have grown up over the years--Michelangelo did not work alone but with a changing crew of assistants; he did not lie on his back but painted in a much more uncomfortable position--standing, looking up.

King also offers an intriguing look at the corrupt church of the time, as we recall that the chapel is being painted on the eve of the Protestant reformation. The pope is hardly a spiritual leader, but one prince among many, with the extra power of condemning his enemies to hell or granting forgiveness and absolution for sins. Julius spends more time warring with rival kingdoms than worrying about salvation, and one cannot help thinking of the many lives lost during these useless escapades. Julius fancies himself as the successor not only of the first pope Peter but of Christ himself, and his triumphant entry into conquered cities in a fashion reminiscent of Palm Sunday are colorfully described. The clergy are uneducated, poor and hardly living a life of holiness--the vow of chastity simply means one cannot marry, and as a result Rome is overrun with prostitutes. In a wonderful aside, King quotes from the writings of the young Martin Luther--overjoyed at the prospect of visiting Rome's holy shrines, he quickly sees the filth and corruption in the city, which no doubt deeply influenced his subsequent break with Rome.

King does a wonderful job describing the fresco itself, explaining the origins of the designs in history, the classics, and earlier art works. We also learn quite a bit about Raphael, a young likeable man about town compared to the grumpy Michelangelo. Raphael was painting the pope's apartments at the same time as Michelangelo was working on the ceiling, and King does a great job explaining the differences between these two great masters. Leonardo da Vinci, the older, acknowledged master, was also working at this time, and King refers to his works throughout.

Whatever one might say about Julius and the corruption of the time, the popes did much to nuture the flowering of the Renaissance, and they certainly knew their art! This book is highly recommended--the audio version is also very well done.

If you do, you will love this book. I read a good part of it while in Italy on vacation and marveled at the richness and detail Ross King uses to illustrate the people, politics, daily grind, and so much more of the early sixteenth-century in Italy. The ceiling of Sistine Chapel was painted in four years, 1508-1512, and King puts you on the scaffolding right beside Michelangelo as he works, whines, fusses, and demonstrates pure genius. I loved King's book, Brunelleschi's Dome, for many of the same reasons. The author has a background in academics and has done his research to produce an "in your face" accounting of Michelangelo and his famous ceiling. This is a terrific read and lots of fun. I hated to finish!

I just finished this wonderful book by Ross King. It details the life of Michaelangelo during the 4 years he spent painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It offers a mix of family history, art history, Vatican history and a detailed overview of each scene in the chapel and what may have led to its creation.

King is great at making history come alive. He includes incidents both private and public in an effort to allow the reader to understand not only the artist, but also time in which he lived.

King's previous book, Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture, contained all these traits as well. I read through each of these books in the course of a week or so, picking them up when I had a spare moment or needed to engage in something other than business books or my daily work.

In 1505, Michelangelo Buonarroti was commisionned by Pope Julius II to design and create a tomb for the latter. The Pope was naturally impressed after seeing the artist's "Pieta" and had him return to Rome to begin work on the project. Despite being preoccupied with a project, Michelangelo headed to Rome and began on the new enterprise with enthusiasm. But the unreliable Pope suddenly left Rome on one of his colorful military expeditions and forgot about the busy sculptor, reneging on the fiscally dependent artist. Outraged at this betrayal of what he considered mutually conceded trust, Michelangelo ceased work and fled back to Florence disgusted at the Pope's fickle attitude. Returning after a succesful campaign, the Pope remembered the work on his tomb and had Michelangelo recalled. Michelangelo, one of the most admired and lauded artists in those heady days of the Italian Renaissance, was a notoriously difficult man whose temperamental personality was something to be reckoned with, refused the request of the Pope and aired his grievances. Busy with his previous project, he was perhaps the only man to refuse the Pope. But Julius was a character himself: dubbed "Il Papa Terrible", he had an equally volatile personality and would not consider any breaches to his demands. Eventually, out of fear of reprisal should he further refuse the hot-tempered sovereign, he returned to Rome to continue his aborted undertaking. To his surprise and regret, the Pope now ordered him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, a prominent and storied edifice whose importance meant much personally to the Pope and was the place where new Popes were elected. The artist, more of a sculptor than a painter, protested. Worse, Michelangelo had to paint using fresco, one of the most difficult mediums used in painting, an artform which he was not too experienced with. Brushing aside all complaints, the Pope ordered him to proceed to work. Grudgingly, the artist began, and thus came to be what is considered one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art.

Ross King relates the creation of the sublime work of art and the world around it. He depicts Michelangelo's challenges in beginning the daunting task ahead of him, which included the painstaking and demanding use of fresco, the architecture of the chapel, unreliable assistants, an impatient and demanding patron, and his volatile family, among others. He describes simply the creation and meaning of the different scenes and symbols of the paintings, making one aware of how the "Creation of Adam" was made and who the inspiration for Holofernes was. He dispels popular myths, like the famous legend that Michelangelo toiled on the work while lying on his back, paint dripping on his face, and that he worked alone.

Amidst this the author depicts early 16th-Century Rome and includes the cast of famous figures who shaped events in the tumultuous city. Rome was a filth-ridden metropolis inhabited by pilgrims and prostitutes, the eternal city run by a decadent clergy where homosexuality and syphillis ran rampant. In this environment ran a confluence of some of the prominent keyplayers of the day: the aforementioned Julius, the warrior pope who undertook extravagant building projects and military expeditions like donning his robe; the fiery and fanatical Savonarola, whose incendiary declamations ironically mirrored his fate; the poet Ariosto, part-time diplomat and scenemaker; the devoted and cynical Luther; and the great Raphael, whose competition with Michelangelo fuelled and inspired each other to greater heights in their works.

A good rendering of a definitive moment in art history, "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" is a tale of man's struggle to satisfy his muse, and the rewards to humanity it brings.

The book is, as the cover title suggests, about Michelangelo Buonarroti and the fresco he painted on the vault of the Sistine Chapel, his most celebrated work of art.

I must say that the book reaches out and grabs you from the very moment you turn to the first page. It begins simply enough with Michelangelo's boyhood years, progressing through to his training in the arts apprenticing with various masters of that era, then on to his yrs as a sculptor and very wonderfully flows on to how he got himself commissioned by Pope Julius II to re-paint the vault of the chapel (the initial fresco that was there was chipped away to make way for the new one which Michelangelo would paint) . Amazingly enough you'll find that Michelangelo was never pleased with the proposal to begin with; in fact he was not only reluctant to begin work on the ceiling but that he actually had little or no experience working with frescoes at all til then!!! His forte then lay in sculpture and he is aslo responsible for two very famous marble statues, the Pieta and the David.

The book not only tells the story of Michelangelo but includes other great art heavy-weights such as Leonardo da Vinci (Michelangelo's arch rival), Raphael Sanzio (who's famous for his murals and frescoes in the papal chambers and his earlier paintings of the Madonna), Perugino and Domenico Ghirlandaio. It includes the events that took place during the time when Rome, Venice and Florence were at civil war waged by "the worrior pope" in order to become the one supreme power in Italy. It (the book)also gives a wonderful narrative about what exactly is a "fresco" and how it is done. The author has included in the book various illustrations to accompany the reading material and a most wonderful full-colour actual photo of the chapel vault in the center fold to better appreciate the terminologies and to allow the reader to follow through the progress of Michelangelo as he painted. Detailed explanation is given with regards to each of the biblical scenes of the main panel and certain characters of a particular lunette or spandrel.

Truly an awe-inspiring biography about a man whose hand was forced (technically) to come up with the most brilliant masterpiece ever created NOT entirely by the Pope but, ironically, by a man who, in Michelangelo's eyes, intended that the commission to fresco the vault would bring about his downfall...the pope's architect.