The Mysticism of Michelangelo

The above is my inexpert copy of a the Libyan Sibyl, a later-stage part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, probably the best known work of the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarotti.  I had long been interested in his work, having included mention of him in an essay which was published when I was about 19, called “Art and Religion”.  Learning to paint late in life, I began to wonder how he had managed to complete such a large painting in such trying circumstances.  In this picture, all the colours have a small tint of ultramarine blue, even the flesh.  Painting this very modest sketch at a leisurely pace was a trivial exercise compared to the Herculean effort of creating the original figure four times this size, on a curved surface, while leaning back at a steep angle in the freezing loft of an insect-ridden chapel, hurrying before each day’s plaster set and became impossible to modify.

Repainting the Sistine ceiling, formely an uninspiring geometric pattern of stars, was first suggested to the Pope by rivals of Michelangelo.  They considered the upstart sculptor a threat to their papal privileges and were fairly certain he would either fail, linking his name forever afterwards with the disaster, or take so long that he would tax the patience of the Pope beyond any hope of future commissions.

Despite his protests, the Pope ensured he got started.  His workmen were instructed to remove the existing plaster well before the coming winter, which they did, creating such a noise and commotion that the priests complained to the Pope – which only made them shower ever larger quantities of noise and dust onto the chapel below.

The fabulous Moses. Michelangelo was said to have been so obsessed with its realism, that he once struck it with his hammer and shouted, "why will you not speak?!"

Michelangelo never considered himself a painter and signed the ceiling “Michelangelo, the sculptor” to express his dislike of the job which ensured his legendary status.   He was not well prepared for the fresco, which was to cost him years of his life.  The first section completed, Noah and the flood, had to be redone at least once and does not read well from the floor below.  He had forgotten that the viewer would be trying to decipher the image from a distance of thirty feet; as he progressed, his characters became more heroic in scale, heavily emphasised and dramatic.  Much later in life he was invited to complete The Last Judgement, a colossal painting on the far wall of the chapel.  Criticism from a Papal sycophant about the nudity of the figures prompted him to paint this man as a condemned figure in Hades, with a serpent chewing off his manhood.  Despite desperate pleas, the amused Pope refused to have it removed.  He did later bow to pressure and have another artist paint wisps of cloth on some of the figures, to which Michelangelo was reported to have said, “I’m showing mankind being judged for all of eternity and all they care about is what we’ll be wearing.”

The only known still life by Michelangelo - on an upturned table - from the Deluge, the first panel completed for the Sistine ceiling. He wisely started work above an area near the entrance, so that whatever happened, his practice attempts would not be the first thing seen when entering the chapel. Some of the swimmers are clearly by another hand, and the plaster shows signs of repeatedly being hacked off as he attempted to master the difficult technique. As he progressed, he grew to love the job - despite his continual complaining - and to further antagonise the increasingly jealous clique of artists surrounding the Pope, signed it as a sculptor - as if to show he could excel in their field despite being a stranger to it. In fact he already had experience of fresco at a studio he apprenticed at, and was already a very proficient painter. To his fury, someone secretly let his rival Raphael in to climb the scaffolding and have a look, after which Raphael immediately started to incorporate the ideas in his own works. In all, a heroic achievement, and probably the most remarkable painting ever likely to be created on this planet

The panel also congealed with mould after completion, at which point a dismayed Michelangelo begged to be released from the tedious project he was clearly failing in: the Pope would have none of it, and brought in an experienced architect who advised that the plaster base, made from a volcanic ash, had been mixed with too much water.  The problem was solved and the work continued.  Although Michelangelo encouraged Vasari to write that he carried the work out alone after dismissing his assistants, this is far from the truth.  He had several assistants, one of whom mixed colours, and at least two of whom painted the surrounding fictive marble, using a reversible template for the columns, and lengths of string to establish the geometry.  In places, the stepped perspective in some of the column’s profile have become jumbled and confused; in other places you can still see the exact length of brush stroke from fully loaded to completely dry: this was a high pressure job.  One specialist was required to mix the plaster for each day’s work.  Michelangelo’s bank account shows regular payments to at least four artisans for the length of the project, as well as outlays for paint – he used only seven colours for the ceiling and was pleased to have spent only a modest amount on paints, although he insisted on the best quality he or his father could find.  Years later, with vastly more self-assurance, when executing The Last Judgement, he had satisfaction in ordering that the Pope pay for vast amounts of ultramarine blue – a handmade pigment so expensive to produce that it was more valuable than gold.

I studied large photographs of his work carefully and realised that historians had missed some important points.  Firstly, they claimed he had used brushes with widely spaced bristles.  But this could not have been true: his first panels show no sign of such a brush.  However, successive panels show that the hatching is all in series of four exactly spaced parallel lines.  Clearly, he had strapped four brushes together, which is the only way they would have remained completely separate; one has even slipped in places so as to be slightly longer than the others, giving a unique signature of one heavier and three lighter impressions, as he twisted and twirled the brush.

Paintings this beautiful are virtually impossible to create, let alone via fresco; da Vinci's gloomy and overwrought works cannot compare. Lines made by the time-saving "four-brush" can be seen in the hair, facial shading and the hatching on the headwear; the changing angle of the brush rotates the painted item and adds depth. Such a tool would have greatly pleased Michelangelo who, despite being a consummate artist, loved tricks and shortcuts, and started his professional life as a forger. For a sculpture he would first make a model in clay, and place it inside a cannister of darkened oil. As each day progressed, he would drain a small amount of oil from the cannister, revealing the relative contours to be carved that day. To observers at a distance, it seemed he was confidently freeing a living being from stone without the benefit of preparation. Among such highly competitive rivals, he refused access to his studio to protect some of his techniques. After the ceiling was finished, he destroyed nearly all his drawings to encourage the belief that he created the entire fresco in one continuous imaginative burst. He would use small models of sculpted clay hands for reference, which are seen repeatedly throughout the ceiling and on his Medici sculptures; most were destroyed or given away, but some have ended up in a Vancouver museum.

Later portions show a huge problem with the alignment of certain painted borders; one is off by about five degrees – but this is one of the last he painted, at a time when the Pope was furiously demanding the work be completed, and Michelangelo starting to hurry his own work, and the mistake was left as it was.  The ruling of lines and the painting of marble effects was carried out by assistants and is of variable quality; clearly the measurements, made with string, occassionally suffered from haste.

A quite extraordinary joke is contained in the medallion painted for the creation of Eve panel. But this has never been pointed out by historians - perhaps for reasons of embarrassment, or a lack of observation. The rider to the right is shown atop a giant phallus complete with testicles - with another character seemingly in an inviting position

I also attempted one of his ignudi - unfinished, as I grew disappointed with it, and realised it was something of a failure. But what the Hell, here it is. The vertical blank part to the left would have been Adam's leg, resting on the green ground. The lighting to the left of this figure is therefore a greenish tinge. Notice how the colours from up, down, left and right all inform the various shaded colours of the skin; God's hand looks pretty good up close but it was a little depressing doing this work and seeing how far short it fell from the original

It was said that while sculpting a large work of marble, he would attack the piece of stone so ferociously and with so little apparent plan that onlookers feared that each blow of the chisel would ruin the entire piece; in fact, there are surviving works which show how dissatisfied Michelangelo was with the result; in one the arm of Christ seems hopelessly out of place; a crack running across it bears out the story of how in desperation he hurled the chisel against the offending limb, until the statue lay in ruins before him.  The Pieta was later finished by another sculptor, a competent but uninspired artisan who mended the arm of Christ and added a rigid looking Mary Magdalene, not only stylistically out of place among the fluid figures, but completely the wrong scale as well.  Clearly no artist enjoys finishing another’s work, no matter whose it is!

Michelangelo had little sympathy for the female form, as historians have politely noted.  He was a brash, innovative, energetic and uncompromising artist who, in his own lifetime, mastered painting, sculpture and architecture, but left much work unfinished.  His statue of David, the Pieta, and of Moses, reflect new ways of looking at religious icons, formerly depicted as stiff and distant figures, but now brought vividly to life.  In his work, their humanity and motivation, and even their sexuality, is brilliantly emphasised; embarrased scholars usually overlook the compromising position Eve is in with her face a few inches from Adam’s anatomy.

Michelangelo's knowledge of anatomy was very advanced for his time, and forms part of his vision of creation. It is said he would study and dissect cadavers until the stench drove him vomiting from the morgue. Other visual puns include God emerging from a kidney, and part of the voice box and spine in one of his final panels of God, painted freehand in a single day when pressure to finish the job was extreme. Elsewhere the cherubs can be seen to be showing rude hand signals, expressing Michelangelo's deep resentment at a Pope who once vanished off to war without paying the required money for paints - forcing the artist to ride all the way to Florence to collect on his bill.

The inspiration which guided this man to create some of the world’s most enduring images was solely religious.  In his lifetime he would know nothing of science’s busy world, which today presents a strange kind of emptiness.  As a work of art, the Sistine Chapel is unparalleled; it is said that no idea can be formed of what one man can achieve in his life until one has seen it.  But as a work of inspiration, it is somewhat greater; the man who threw pots of paint off his scaffolding to discourage regular inspections by the pope and who declared himself “friendless, and better for it” while creating his masterwork, paid homage to a spirit of the soul, one that gave him reason to live.

Near the end of his life, he was asked if he feared death.  By now the most famous craftsman in all of Italy, he was beset by poor health, and memory problems which plagued his architectural plans, and caused him to take on and then abandon or even forget many commissions.  The resigned, abrasive loner replied, “If one has been pleased with life, then death, from the hand of the same master, ought not to displease us.”

For me, he sums up religion’s greatest asset: an enlargement of our receptive sense for something bigger than ourselves.  Something worth living for.