The Sistine Secrets (34 page)

The column at the top of the male tablet of G’vurah is decidedly male. On careful inspection, we can see that the artist purposely exaggerated the muscular back of the angel raising the base of the column so that the rounded, divided back looks just like a scrotum, complementing the phallic angle of the column. Viewed as a whole, it is very clearly the male symbol of the war god Mars:
.

To achieve proper balance in the universe, there must be a center as well. According to the Kabbalah, there is indeed a central point to the universe: it is the Ladder of Jacob. In Genesis 28:12, Jacob dreams of a divine ladder, by which the angels descend to earth and ascend to heaven. This is the link between heaven and earth, humanity and angels, the material and the spiritual worlds. The Kabbalah teaches that the entire creation revolves around this ladder. Most people who view
The Last Judgment
fresco think that Jesus is the center of the painting—but they are mistaken. The true center is just below Jesus, where Saint Lawrence is sitting with his grill. Down through the centuries, critics have complained that the martyr’s grill has no legs and that it resembles a ladder more than a grating. They are right. It
is
a ladder—Jacob’s Ladder, to be exact. The bottom rung of the ladder is at the
exact center
of the huge picture, and if you look carefully, you will see that the dynamic motion of the painting revolves perfectly around the angle of the ladder. Once again, Michelangelo embedded a central teaching of Jewish mysticism in one of the most famous Catholic artworks of all time.

This time, Michelangelo managed to incorporate a significant number of daring ideas into his work. He found a way, as we have seen, to include his male lover, respect for Jews, contempt for the Vatican’s corruption and immorality, experimental painting techniques, and his underground, subversive neo-Protestant faith. This last is possibly the biggest secret of them all—that while Michelangelo was creating this masterpiece for the Church, he had left the Church and personally subscribed to another faith.

Amazingly enough, the millions of visitors to the Sistine Chapel each year do not notice any of this. The clever Florentine once again succeeded in overwhelming the visitor with so much color and imagery that only those who are lucky enough to spend a good deal of time inside have a chance to notice any details. One man who did spend much time inspecting the fresco was the pope’s
cerimoniere,
or master of ceremonies, while Michelangelo was toiling away on it. The
cerimoniere
is basically the papal chief of staff, running the day-to-day operations of the Vatican for the pontiff. In the time of Paul III, the master of ceremonies was a pompous, self-important cleric by the name of Biagio da Cesena. He reviled Michelangelo publicly, even before the fresco was finished, for filling the holy papal chapel with an “orgy of pagan obscenities and heresies.” The artist replied with the quote at the top of this chapter, and then followed it up with paint. In the bottom right-hand corner of the fresco, just over the exit door (through which the public enters today), is the damned soul in hell, King Minos of Greek mythology. Minos loved gold and despised human beings, thus assuring him eternal damnation. He is depicted here with donkey ears, crushed by a huge serpent that is chewing his genitals forever. The cursed king is the very last figure that Michelangelo painted at the end of his seven years’ toil on the wall fresco.

When the work was finally unveiled in 1541, all Rome came to see the latest marvel of the great maestro. Immediately, the reactions split the city in two; half of the viewers thought that this was one of the most inspirational, deeply religious, and artistic works ever seen; the other half thought that it was pagan and obscene. While the debates raged in front of the painting, one person suddenly started giggling…then another…and another. Soon all of Rome was laughing hysterically because, sure enough, the flabby body and ugly profile of King Minos was an obvious portrait of none other than Biagio da Cesena, the master of ceremonies who was second only to Pope Paul III himself. According to contemporary reports, Biagio had to prostrate himself in tears in front of the pope, begging the pontiff to get him out of the fresco. The pope, who respected Michelangelo (and who was probably also fed up with Biagio’s pretentiousness), replied: “My son, the Almighty has granted me the keys to rule over heaven and earth. If you wish to get out of hell, go talk to Michelangelo.” Obviously, they never made their peace, and now Biagio is stuck in hell forever.

Chapter Sixteen

LATER SECRETS

Many believe—and I believe—that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up;
I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him.

—MICHELANGELO

P
ERHAPS MICHELANGELO had covered his angry messages
too
well. Immediately after finishing
The Last Judgment,
the artist was commanded by a very proud Paul III to fresco an entire chapel, the brand-new Cappella Paolina, commissioned by Pope Paul III Farnese and named for himself. Buonarroti unhappily consented, but on the condition that he would be allowed to sculpt as well. He wanted to finish the often-postponed, on-again-off-again funeral monument to Pope Julius II. Michelangelo longed to get this unfinished commitment off his conscience—and Julius’s surviving relatives off his back. Pope Paul did some hard negotiations on behalf of the artist, with the result that the tomb contract was reduced even more, down to a requirement of only three statues from the hands of Michelangelo himself. This was quite a comedown from the original forty-plus statues and the monumental pyramid that Julius had decreed almost four decades earlier. Yet it was clearly still a considerable labor for a sculptor in his late sixties.

Buonarroti immediately started planning the final tomb designs, while also designing his fresco cycle to cover every inch of a completely new chapel. Just as when he got out from under the burden of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo now exploded in a burst of sculpting energy. Strangely enough, he easily had enough finished figures to satisfy the terms of the contract. He could have followed the original design and flanked Moses with two of his prisoner or slave pieces. Instead, he petitioned the pope for permission to do two new figures that he felt would better suit this more modest tomb. According to contemporary reports, he carved the two new full-size statues in just one year. Also, as before, he eagerly returned to images from the Jewish Bible. This time, he picked two matriarchs from the Torah: Leah and Rachel.

In the book of Genesis, they are the sisters who both marry Jacob, the third Hebrew patriarch. The two sisters, along with their two maidservants, become the mothers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Here, in his fifth and final design for Julius’s tomb, Michelangelo put them on either side of the monument. In a letter to Pope Paul III, Buonarroti, in what for him was an uncharacteristic move, explained some of the symbolism of his design. The secretive artist for once was constrained to give an explanation, since he was petitioning the pontiff to order the della Rovere family to allow this one last change in the tomb design. In this private letter, Michelangelo quoted from Dante’s
Purgatory,
in which the poet encounters Leah. Leah, whose Hebrew name means “weak eyes,” complains to Dante that she must constantly check her looks in her mirror and weave garlands of flowers to make herself attractive, while her younger sister Rachel does not have to do anything, being naturally graced with beauty. For this reason, Leah symbolizes Active Faith—a faith that requires human initiative in order to make oneself more attractive before God. Leah stands in contrast to Rachel, graced with beauty bestowed without any effort on her part. Rachel is the paradigm of Contemplative Faith, a faith that requires no further action. In the finished pieces, we clearly see Leah holding her garland and pensively glancing at her mirror, while the beautiful Rachel simply looks up to heaven to receive her blessing. In this, too, Michelangelo is again illustrating a powerful mystical idea of the duality of the universe: Mercy versus Strength, and active versus receptive meditation. In the middle, in the place of cosmic balance, he placed his statue of Moses, carved almost thirty years earlier. One side of Moses—his right, next to Rachel (Contemplative)—is seated, while the other side, next to Leah (Active), is in motion, in the act of turning to stand up.

The final location for the monument was not to be the Vatican, however. The della Rovere clan had been out of power and out of favor for a long time. Moreover, Julius had not been forgiven for destroying so many tombs of previous popes when he ordered the demolition of the first Basilica of St. Peter. Thus, his body and his monument ended up in a much more modest place—his family church of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains), tucked away on a hilltop overlooking the Colosseum area.

This new setting, of course, gave the artist a fresh problem. His original
Moses
was meant to interact with its setting, perched high up in the center of St. Peter’s, directly beneath the light that would enter from the windows of the dome above. As we discussed, Buonarroti had made two nodes on the top of the statue’s head and buffed the face to a reflective finish, in order to make it seem that the divine light was emanating from the head and face of the great prophet. Now that the
Moses
would be sitting at floor level, in a niche off to the right side of the altar, this brilliant special effect would no longer work.

Once more, Michelangelo broke the rules. He actually
recarved
his favorite statue that he had finished three decades earlier. He moved Moses’s left foot and lower leg back a pace and lowered the left thigh (on the viewer’s right), to make the statue seem about to stand up and walk out the door to bring the
luchot
to humanity—the same two Tablets of the Law that he had just completed on
The Last Judgment
fresco. In this way, he conceptually linked this side of Moses to the Active/G’vurah symbol of Leah. Even more incredible than this, however, is what he achieved with Moses’s head. Michelangelo made the statue’s head
turn
ninety degrees to its left by carving a brand-new head within the already-completed head. This is the reason that the head of Moses seems a bit misshapen and the so-called horns twisted. He was adapting the old statue to interact with its new environment, in order to salvage his cherished special effect. After making the statue change its bodily position, Buonarroti cut a rectangular hole in the ceiling of the church to funnel the sunlight onto the new face and the reconfigured nodes on the head that he twisted around to better reflect the descending rays of light.

Once the monument was set in place, reports from the time describe how the Jewish families of Rome would come on Sabbath afternoons to gaze at Moses and recount to their children the stories of the great prophet and the righteous matriarchs Leah and Rachel. We do not know if it was because of too much attention from the Jews, or if it was because the Catholic visitors were ignoring Saint Peter’s chains in the main altar and just admiring the Jewish-themed statues on the side—but for whatever reason, the Church authorities decreed that Michelangelo’s hole in the ceiling be sealed up forever. Now, just as with his
David,
the
Moses
statue no longer performs its special optical effect. For centuries, people thought that Michelangelo was actually anti-Jewish, or had misunderstood a faulty translation of the Torah, and purposely gave a pair of horns to poor Moses. They could not have been more wrong.

There is one more secret that was only recently discovered about the tomb. The reclining statue of Julius II above Moses has at last been decisively attributed to Michelangelo himself, and not one of his assistants. After the sculpture was cleaned and restored, it became evident that only the great maestro could have carved it. There is one more proof—the face on the statue is not that of the late pope, but a self-portrait of Michelangelo, gazing proudly down on his gnarled sculptor’s hands and on his favorite statue. In the end, the artist got the better of the pontiff.

Back in the Vatican, he painted two big frescoes in the new Cappella Paolina—the
Conversion of Saint Paul,
facing the
Martyrdom of Saint Peter
across the room. Since this chapel is off-limits to the public, we will not go into the various secret messages that Michelangelo embedded in these two works. Suffice it to say, they made Pope Paul and his court so uncomfortable that they canceled the rest of Buonarroti’s contract and never asked him to paint in the Vatican again. There is no record that this turn of events upset the artist at all.

After this, Michelangelo was entrusted only with architectural projects for the Vatican. The Church hierarchy must have reasoned that there was no way to hide an insulting or subversive messages in buildings. Of course, they were mistaken.