Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

Ross King

New York: Penguin, 2003. ISBN: 0-14-200369-7. Pp. 373, index, biblio

This is a narrative account of the epic creation of what many consider to be Michelangelo's masterpiece, the painting of the Old Testament frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, which took him about four years to complete (1508-12). The book is not a fictionalized account, there are no dialogues, and direct quotations come only from written evidence, usually personal correspondence of protagonists, mostly of Michelangelo himself. It is a lively story that delves deep into detail of the techniques of fresco painting: you will learn more than you will ever want to know about giornata, slaking of lime for the plaster, production and selection of pigments for the colors, just about everything from that you need to appreciate the technical virtuosity necessary to execute something as monumental as the ceiling in that technique, up to the laborious corrective process that the unforgiving technique required. In other words, if you were not awed by Michelangelo's achievement before, King aims to fix that even while dispelling myths such as the perennial favorite of the artist lying on his back inches from the ceiling, toiling in solitude (he had a scaffolding that followed the contours of the ceiling, so he worked standing, albeit in an uncomfortable position, and he had many assistants).

It is not the myth busting that detracts from King's book, it is his very strange characterization of Michelangelo as a petulant coward who was concerned mostly with money, who grumbled at everyone and everything, and who played practical jokes by painting unauthorized and occasionally scandalous fragments in the most important chapel at the Vatican. Readers should be forgiven for walking away with the distinct impression that the genius was a scrooge at best and a psychotic at worst. King rarely talks about the artist's spirituality and whenever he does, it is to mention that Michelangelo was deeply religious (which immediately casts in doubt the more irreverent interpretations of his work). In fact, King is decidedly weak on the interpretive side and does not have much to say about the meaning of the frescoes apart from the occasional snide remark about how Michelangelo took revenge on his patron, the peripatetic and restless Pope Julius II, or how he supposedly imbued the Temptation scene with erotic meaning by depicting pretty Eve's head suggestively close to Adam's (non-erect) penis. The fact that one of the cherubs is giving "the fig" to the Cumaean Sibyl is not a hidden message as much it is akin to the humorous marginalia that often appears in medieval manuscripts (often left by bored copyists) and to the whimsical figures that adore many a Gothic building and that often have less than passing relevance for Christian theology.

In fact, the little King says on the subject is made even more doubtful when one recalls that Michelangelo spoke no Latin (and so for a Renaissance humanist he would have been little better than an illiterate peasant in that regard), which then raises the question about how the artist could have created his masterpiece with such a dense web of references and allusions. Most of us will not know the minor prophets and the sybils, and it is very doubtful that many an average person did in the 16th century either. Not to mention just how utterly unlikely it is that the pope would allow an unsupervised and largely improvised decoration of the ceiling of the chapel where the elections for pope take place. This would be especially true for someone like Julius II whom a modern person would charitably characterize as a militant control freak. It would be most unlike him to allow Michelangelo complete freedom in the selection of subjects and scenes in what must have been one of the crucial propaganda places in Rome.

In fact, it is highly unlikely that King is right when he suggests that the ceiling was meant to educate ignorant spectators as there would not be many of those until the influx of tourist hordes in modern times. Much more probable is that the audience would have consisted of highly educated cardinals and important visitors all of whom would be able to appreciate the work and its deeper meaning which is only evident when considered in the proper context. None of this is meant to suggest that Michelangelo's achievement is somehow less. However, turning the Pope into a petulant irascible bump on Michelangelo's road to greatness surely distorts his role. After all, if it weren't for this particular pope, we would have had neither the Sistine Chapel nor Stanza di Rafaello, among other things.

In the end, it is difficult to decide just what to make of this book. It is a pleasure to read and Mr King does describe the wider political and artistic milieu of the times, which enables one to appreciate the events much more fully than a strictly biographical account would have done. It is meticulously documented, so anyone who wishes to learn more about a particular incident can quickly find at least one reference to get him started. In the final analysis, it seems that King does not particularly like Michelangelo and would have preferred to have written a book on Raphael whose amorous escapades and talent he praises every time he gets the chance. In fact, he also gives what amount to a gloss of Michelangelo's presence in the famous School of Athens telling the readers that Raphael added the melancholy lonely muscular figure of the great artist as a sort of a practical joke. This is highly doubtful, especially considering that it was not present in the original design and must have been a spur of the moment thing. It is much more consistent with Raphael being so struck by Michelangelo's work after he glimpsed some of it that he added this as a tribute to the talent he recognized all too well. In fact, Raphael was quick to adopt styles that he admired (as King himself notes), so something like that would be quite in character, and certainly quite unlike anything Michelangelo would have done.

Another complaint about the book has to do with the atrocious color illustrations (the B&W ones are actually fine). Grouped, as usual, in the middle they are hard to refer to because the text never specifies whether a particular detail King is talking about is available among them. Furthermore, the photograph of the ceiling is awful: it misses the lower portions of the fresco and the altar wall pendentives (the ones toward the entrance are shown but barely discernible). It is true that there are several books with stunning reproductions of the entire ceiling but since I read this on a plane, I had none of them handy. The photographs are of low quality and are not color-corrected. For some odd reason, there is no reproduction of the School of Athens even though two other frescoes by Raphael are shown.

All of this leaves me with decidedly mixed feelings about the book: I enjoyed reading it, and I found tons of insightful material, especially with respect to technique and its implications. On the other hand, I found the lack of interpretive discussion distracting and the low quality of images annoying. But I guess the latter cannot be blamed on Mr King (Penguin should have known better).

December 9, 2006