Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating tale of fresco work at the Sistine Chapel
Review: None of Michelangelo's other works ever won him quite the same renown as his fresco in the Sistine Chapel, a building now virtually synonymous with his name. Almost immediately after Michelangelo unveiled it in 1512, the fresco became like an academy for artists, who had since long been using the Sistine Chapel as storehouse of ideas. They treated works of Michelangelo as some kind of a portfolio through which they concocted new ideas. The prestigious style of buon fresco generated intense interest, in particular, among a new generation of painters that pioneered a movement later known as mannerism.

MICHELANGELO AND THE POPE'S CEILING recounts the beguiling, fascinating story of the four extraordinary years Michelangelo Buonarroti spent laboring over the 12,000 square feet of the vast ceiling made up of concave vaults, spandrels, and lunettes. The works marked an entirely new direction in which he had brought the power, vitality, and sheer magnitude of works of sculpture into the realm of painting.

The commission, however, did not commence on an auspicious note, as Michelangelo had meager experience as a painter, let alone working in the delicate medium of fresco and painting bent-back the concave and curved surfaces of vaults. Having been a masterful sculptor who had unveiled the statue "David" four years prior to the pope's summon, his rival Bramante took advantage of his lack of experience to thwart Michelangelo's ambitions and so to destroy his reputation. Such alleged conspiracy as perceived by Michelangelo made the dreadful commission all the more invidious. He would either refuse the Sistine project, and in doing so incurred the ire of Pope Julius II, or else failed miserably in his attempt through lack of experience.

The outcome of Michelangelo's works had proudly (and vindictively) served as a triumphant reply to the sneer of his insidious rival, who had once stated that he would be unable to paint overhead surfaces because he understood nothing of foreshortening. What Michelangelo had achieved was exactly the sheer opposite: he demonstrated how vastly more daring and successful his foreshortening technique had become following four years on a special scaffold he designed for the purpose. It was through the power, arm-raced politics, vicious personal rivalries, and a constant paranoia over the possible hiatus of the commission that Michelangelo achieved a virtuoso performance at the summit of his powers.

Battling against illness, financial difficulties, consistent changes of assistantships, domestic problems, family drama, predatory rival of the commission, and the pope's impatience and petulance, Michelangelo created his masterful scenes - The Creation, The Temptation, The Flood, The Crucifixion of Haman, The Brazen Serpent, David and Goliath - so beautiful that the telling movements lent the figures their verisimilitude and intense drama.

The book is not a critique of Michelangelo's art works, but to a small extent it does make comparison to works of Raphel, a brilliant young painter who was working in fresco on the neighboring Stanza del Segnatura, the papal apartments. Michelangelo's ability to generate, in a short space of time, so many of hundreds of postures for the Sistine's ceiling stunned the young artist. Raphael's works after 1512, the unveiling of Michelangelo's fresco at Sistine, manifested absorption of Michelangelo's style: the tumult of bodies, throngs of figures in dramatic, muscle-straining poses showing gradations of tone along anatomically accurate knots of muscles.

Ross King has written a brilliant book that combines uncommon insight on Michelangelo's works with historical facts. Woven through the artist's progress on the Sistine commission was history of upheaval during 16th century Italy, when Pope Julius II devoted on military campaigns against other Italian city states and against Louis XII of France. Niccolo Machiavelli defended Florence, Michelangelo's hometown, against Julius's attacking forces bent on restoring the Medicis to power. MICHELANGELO AND THE POPE'S CEILING painted a portrait of life in Michelangelo's Rome, on the ingenious scaffold in Sistine Chapel, as well as the daily minute history of Italy. It is a book through which history and art converge.

2004 (32) © MY

Rating:
Summary: A Slice of Life
Review: Probably the most famous fresco in the world is Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But, as any reader of Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy would know, Michelangelo considered himself a sculptor above all else and had no desire to paint this ceiling. In fact, as King makes clear in this book, Michelangelo only consented to Pope Julius II's command to paint the ceiling as a stepping stone to get back to the project he really desired--the sculpting of the figures for Julius's tomb. And, even then, it was often touch and go as to whether Michelangelo would finish the fresco.

Michelangelo's artistic achievements were great, wide and varied but by focusing on this single, famous project that occupied better than three years of the artist's life King is able to give us a living portrait of this genius. We get to see his petulance and penny-pinching as well as his fantastic work. We get to see his fights with family, assistants and pope as well as his tireless work to better his family and amaze his observers. We get to see a man more like us with his cares and worries as well as his triumphs. It is a worthwhile endeavor.

King also makes a point to dispel some of the legends that have grown up around Michelangelo and his painting of the ceiling. We lose the image of a single man lying on his back, covered in paint; replaced by a man leading a team of assistants of varying competence standing with tilted head to paint above him. We lose the image of a work created as a single outpouring of genius; replaced by a man who made mistakes and tried to fix them, who learned from as well as inspired other artists and whose work improved as he worked and mastered the skills of fresco.

Personally, I am a more of a fan of Michelangelo's sculpture than his painting; however, I have been lucky enough to go to the Sistine Chapel and see this most amazing of frescoes. It truly is a work of art unequaled in its technique. It is very interesting to get a close-up picture of how it was created. King has given us that and, though there was much more to Michelangelo's life and work than you will get here, it is worthwhile to read.

Rating:
Summary: Fine Art and a Fine Tale
Review: Rivalry! Intrigue! War! Oh yes . . . and some timeless art too.

Ross King's "Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling" is an ambitious work which combines artistic study, the mechanics of fresco painting and the oft-sordid history of early 16th century Europe. The painting of the Sistene Chapel ceiling provides the framework for this story but there is more to be told than what meets the eye. The author successfully spins a narrative which deftly interweaves the creation of the fresco with the events of the time.

Each section of the Sistene Chapel is reviewed in the order in which it was created. The story progresses along with the work on the ceiling. We can see Michelangelo's work gain confidence as he moves through the vault and we see how the interplay of politics and the opinions of the artist interact to yield the final product. The players in this story gather to form a veritable who's who of the Renaissance. Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael along with the Borgia and Medici clans play a role. There are even guest appearances by Henry VIII, Machiavelli and Martin Luther.

The book also offers a detailed, yet presentable to the layman, look at the process of fresco painting. No, Michelangelo did not lie on his back to paint. Nevertheless the work was complex and these complexities are examined in full. No small detail, from the chemistry of each color to the mechanics of application is overlooked. Yet even with this fine level of detail the book does not lose focus or get bogged down by the minutia. Indeed, these details are woven back into the story in such a manner as to provide the reader with a richer and fuller sense of the accomplishment.

An outstanding historical work in its own right, this book is also a must for anyone with an interest Michelangolo's magnum opus.

Rating:
Summary: Ross King Does it Again
Review: Ross King did a wonderful job with Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling. The story was compelling, and moved quickly. I was pleased that there were no dull spots in the story, no single chapter that was laborious to read through. The story is primarily about the Michelangelo and the painting, however, it also dealt with war, and political intrigue. A number of famous names from Italian history make an appearance in this story, including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Machiavelli, and numerous members of the Medici family.

I had only one minor issue, and that was the pictures of the ceiling. As the old expression goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, the picture of the ceiling was incomplete (it did not show the alter end of the fresco), and while the author spent quite a bit of time writing about Raphael's Fresco's in the Pope's apartments, he only included two pictures of them, and the least compelling of them at that. This did not take away from the story, but as this is a story about art, more pictures would have certainly added to it.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacularly Complete.
Review: Ross King does it again. Just as he succeeded in engulfing the reader in the birth of the renaissance with Brunelleschi's Dome, King again entrances readers with this book. His thorough exploration of art, architecture, politics, war, religion, and daily life during the height of the renaissance reminds us just how difficult it would have been for Michelangelo to accomplish something as beautiful as the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes. I couldn't put this book down and now I can't wait for the next book on art or architecture from Ross King (or anyone else) that is this readable and complete.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful tale
Review: Ross King's delightful book, "Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling" changed the way I see and think about the fresco painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Rather than a painting isolated from both its creation and its author I now see it as a painful four-year journey to create a masterpiece. Pope Julius II, who saw himself both as Caesar and Pope, Warrior and Spiritual Guide, commissioned Michelangelo to paint the vault of the Sistine Chapel in 1508 - some 12,000 square feet of lunettes, spandrels, pendentives, and curved spaces. It would be the largest fresco ever painted to date. Michelangelo abandoned work on the Pope's tomb some 2 years earlier for non-payment and had fled back to Florence fearing retribution from the Pope, a man called Il papa terribile because of his violent temper. He had misgivings about accepting the commission because he considered himself a sculptor, not a painter; the only painting he is know to have completed before this was the Holy Family for a friend. Amid his suspicions of a conspiracy by Donato Bramante to deprive him of the work and a strained relationship with the Pope Michelangelo began work on the fresco. Painting a fresco on a flat surface, let alone a curved one such as Sistine Chapel ceiling, was a complex and difficult task requiring experience to execute properly. It required such preparation as drawing the cartoon's that would serve as patterns, selecting pigments and mixing them to create the paint, covering the surface with an undercoat of plaster, and finally adding a layer of plaster onto which the artist which apply color while still wet. In the case of the Sistine Chapel, scaffolding capable of reaching the ceiling nearly 100 feet above the floor was also required.

Despite an inauspicious start - his first sequence, The Flood, needed to be redone, requiring about 4 weeks of rework - family problems, depression, a temper almost matching that of Il papa terribile, plague, and Julius' military campaign's Michelangelo managed to complete the first half of the fresco by 1510, though he would have to wait until 1511, due to the Pope's wars and illness, to unveil it and begin work on the second half. Though painted by a man who claimed not be a painter the fresco was unveiled to great acclaim. And though Raphael's fresco's in the Pope's library were certainly more beautiful and showed a unity of composition that Michelangelo had not achieved, the fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was the more powerful, the more sublime. Having gained the necessary experience, work on the second half of the fresco proceeded more quickly. He even, in some cases, skipped the step of transferring the cartoon to the surface of the plaster and instead painted freehand. Again, family problems and war threatened the completion of his work. The second half of the Sistine Chapel contains some of Michelangelo's best work - particularly the paintings of The Crucifixion of Haman and The Brazen Serpent. The entire fresco was completed in 1512, four years after it was started. Pope Julius II would die in early 1513 and Michelangelo resumed the work on the papal tomb that had been abandoned six years before.

It is ironic that today Michelangelo's fame almost surely rests on the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco - a virtuoso work created by a man who until that time had really only created sculpture. At a state funeral held after his death, Benedetto Varchi proposed that Raphael would have been the greatest artist that had lived - if Michelangelo had not existed.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating slice of history
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Battle of the Titans
Review: Some human achievements are hard to put into any human level of understanding. The painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was one such legendary achievement, one that is momentarily glimpsed by the thousands of viewers who file beneath it every day. There is too much to see on one such visit, of course; the painting took four agonizing years of work, and is full of detail that could not be appreciated from floor level. The most famous modern tribute to the work was the 1965 film _The Agony and the Ecstasy_, in which Charleton Heston was depicted spending months in solitary labor, flat on his back on a scaffold. Don't believe all the history Hollywood teaches. In _Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling_ (Walker), Ross King has corrected the image, and has done a great deal more. Michelangelo was literally a Renaissance man, and also dabbled in architecture. He himself designed the platform and scaffolding that would bring the chapel ceiling into his reach. It was fastened to the chapel walls, so that masses could continue unobstructed beneath it, and it was not so close that he had to scoot around on his back in a narrow crawlspace. He stood on the platform, head back, arms up, to paint; it still sounds remarkably uncomfortable, and Michelangelo even wrote a poem about the torments. Another myth is that he worked alone; he did paint much of the huge fresco himself, but he had assistants working on other parts, not to mention handling the jobs of conveying materials up and down and plastering.

There is still plenty heroic in the achievement, though. As the title suggests, there is a good deal here about the artist and his relationship to the patron for this particular project, Pope Julius II, who was not an easy man to work for. Known as "_il papa terribile_" by his contemporaries, he might well be classed among the bad popes. Julius advocated getting funds by the selling of indulgences. He was vindictive, irritable, and addicted to fine food, wine, and women. Michelangelo was an accomplished sculptor, not a painter, and fled to Florence when Julius wanted him to do the ceiling. Eventually he relented, and had to learn from the start the difficulties of fresco technique (well described here). As the years of work progressed, his technique progressed, too, so that his final scenes are masterpieces of dramatic foreshortening. A case can be made that Michelangelo's work changed painting forever.

King has described the interplay between these two titans well, and makes the argument that one of the reasons they so often clashed was that they had matching temperaments of being headstrong, cocky, and pushy. The book is excellent in giving the history and atmosphere of the tempestuous times they lived in, following Julian off to war and Michelangelo off to visits with his forever troubling family. There is, however, another partner in the drama. Raphael was also hired by the pope for frescos of panels in the papal apartments while Michelangelo did the huge, elevated, more public chapel ceiling. Raphael was charming, cultivated, handsome, upper-class, pleasure-loving, and sociable. Michelangelo was suspicious, surly, ugly and uncouth; he did not care about food, and his personal habits and cleanliness were atrocious even in a time when a once-a-week bath was thought overdoing it. Needless to say, they didn't like each other, but once the Sistine ceiling had been unveiled, Raphael understood immediately the mastery it displayed. Raphael was good at composition, at depicting details of faces and gestures, but with a sculptor's eye, Michelangelo had produced figures that were full of power and realism. Raphael thereupon depicted Michelangelo within his own fresco, _The School of Athens_, where he presides as the philosopher Heraclitus, the disciple of eternal change. Raphael had recognized the dynamism in Michelangelo's ceiling.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Account of the Making of a Masterpiece
Review: The painting of the Sistine Chapel has become so imbued with legend over the centuries, the story feels more like a fairy tale now, than it does hard history. Add to that the folkloric nuances that have embellished the story (the caustic and homely artist creates a sublime masterpiece on his aching back, despite an evil benefactor and a handsome and dashing competitor), and you might have a hard time figuring out where history ends and Hollywood begins.

Enter Ross King to set you straight. This book is neither overly ambitious, nor cumbersome, nor scholarly (in the negative pedantic way). It is quite simply a succinct, well-written, nicely paced and balanced account of what is undeniably one of the greatest artistic accomplishments of the Renaissance. Mr. King introduces us to the real Michaelangelo Buonarotti (caustic and homely to be sure) and describes the events of this turbulent time of his life, from his propensity for sculpture and disdain for fresco, to his troubled relationship with the pope, to his rivalry with Da Vinci and Raphael. King gives you some insight into Michaelangelo's financial and family problems and the origins of his extraordinary talent, and does a very nice job of placing these into the historical context of the brutal 16th Century Italian political scene.

All this is a great backdrop, but what King does so well is intersperse these vignettes with a detailed, panel-by-panel account of the actual painting of the chapel ceiling. I found it absolutely fascinating. King tells us the story of how the scaffolding was designed (a work of art in itself), how Michaelangelo struggled with the extremely difficult medium of fresco (with which he was not particularly familiar), and traces the development of the paining (and its artist) from panel to panel, telling the story of how Michaelango integrated new techniques and ideas into the work as he got more experienced and comfortable. King tells us how the early panels were fairly rudimentary and uninspired. But as Michaelangelo comes to the end of his work, he gets bolder, more unorthodox and less risk-averse, ending up with a masterpiece in which even his contemporaries were in awe.

Perhaps the best indication of my enthusiasm for this book is that I was constantly logging on to the internet to get pictures of parts of the ceiling to get a clearer idea of what King was talking about. In fact, I recommend that you find a book with professional pictures of the work to keep by you as you read.

Whether your interest is art, history or both, you'll find a great deal in this book. It's not a long or difficult read, but it sure is a good one.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful Work of History and Art
Review: The Sistine Chapel is probably the most recognizable piece of art in the entire western world. It defies so many conventions as to make it almost divine in nature. First, the pictures themselves are so lavish and monumental that they seem to defy terrestrial origin. In addition to this amazing display, the actual location of the artwork makes it even more amazing. For, this work of art is on a ceiling, hundreds of feet in the air. How could a human paint at that angle, in one of Christendom's holiest places, with such precision and beauty? Ross King's book seeks to answer this in a book that is a wonderful combination of history, art, and personal politics in Renaissance Italy. It is absorbing, enlightening, and eminently entertaining.

Much of the book is centered on the amazing and fascinating life of Pope Julius II. Known for all time as the "Warrior Pope", Julius is probably one of the most influential Popes of all time. Managing to survive the murderous reign of the Borgias, Julius rose to power through his own cunning and guile. Once he was firmly installed at the Vatican, Julius went on a campaign of power consolidation. The papal states that had strayed from the Church's control, and the other powers of Europe would be brought in line with Julius' new Roman power base. To accomplish this expansion of Holy power, Julius, a very educated quasi-secularist, sought to improve the Vatican area of Rome. As part of this improvement, Julius sent for a whole host of artists and architects to build glorious new monuments to the power of the Catholic Church. As part of this grand plan, Julius sent for one of Europe's best known artist, Michelangelo.

Michelangelo was given an extremely daunting task. Creating large frescoes was hard enough, but Michelangelo has to produce one on the ceiling of a building that was structurally weak in the first place. Together with a group of unheralded assistants, the master went to work. The project is far removed from many fictional propositions held by some modern people. Michelangelo did not lie on his back while painting, nor did he work alone. Even when this amazing work of art is being put together, King reminds us that this was an equally fascinating time. Nearby, a young artist known as Raphael was working hard on the glorious paintings that would decorate Julius' new apartments. The two artists were extremely different. Michelangelo was an anti social, unattractive, distant man, while Raphael was very handsome and a man about town. This contrast created a very real rivalry. Even more interesting than the actual painting was the politics of Italy, where Julius launched war after war to bring his empire together. He would lose, come close to death, but almost always rose up to meet the new challenge.

This book is just a beautiful piece of literary art itself. It paints a wonderful picture of Italy at the time, describing how people lived and how nations clashed. We see into the inner workings of Michelangelo, seeing what he saw as he created his immortal masterpiece. The inner workings of the Vatican are described, as is the community of artists that constructed so much of Western Europe's beauty. The only complaint I would have is that some of the art descriptions can get a little too complex for the average reader, but overall the book is just a great read. For fans of any kind of history, a must for those who love Western history.