The Sistine Secrets (7 page)

Somewhat similar is another effect called anamorphosis. This is an amazing technique that makes an image literally “morph” into another shape or image when the viewer looks at it from a different angle. Only highly skilled artists who had also mastered optics could create this effect. Of course, Leonardo da Vinci was one of these. His early work
The Annunciation,
which now hangs in the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, was until recently considered highly flawed because the Virgin’s right arm is disproportionately long, her legs seem mixed up with the bench on which she is strangely seated, and the angel is so far from Mary that they seem to be in two different paintings. In fact, when viewed normally or in any book of prints, the whole piece seems to be stretched out of shape. Only a few people who realized that Leonardo had concealed a giant anamorphosis were able to prove that this is indeed a unique masterpiece. In the brand-new guide to the Uffizi, Francesca Marini reveals: “Only by considering that the painting in its original setting would have to have been viewed from below, on the right side, the disconcerting anomalies fall away, to demonstrate an accord—which at that time was an uncommon study—of the perspective messages in the artwork in relationship to the location for which it was destined.”
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The only way to experience what Leonardo is saying in
The Annunciation
is to interact with the actual painting. When one stands to the right of the painting as close to the wall as possible and views the painting out of the corner of one’s eye, the whole work comes to astounding life. Mary’s arm is the proper length, the angel is much closer to her, and Mary’s legs are together—while her stomach appears to be much smaller and flatter; in other words, a true virgin. As one walks from right to left in front of the painting, her legs seem to open and her stomach seems to swell. By the time the viewer is on the left side of the painting, the angel has backed away from Mary, and the now-very-pregnant woman’s skirt resembles a birthing trough or the rough crib in the manger. We will see later on how Michelangelo used anamorphosis for one of his secret messages in the Sistine.

The last special effect that we need to explore here is trompe l’oeuil, French for “deceive the eye.” Simply put, it is the highly difficult technique of making a two-dimensional image, such as a painting or a fresco, seem to be three-dimensional. A trompe l’oeuil can be a false perspective, drawing the viewer’s sense of vision through the surface of the painting and deeper into the space beyond, sometimes seeming to go off into infinity. All of the niches of the popes painted in the original fifteenth-century decoration of the Sistine are this kind of optical illusion. Indeed, many visitors are surprised to learn that they are not real architectural niches.

Trompe l’oeuil can also be a protruding illusion, making the image seem to pop out of the surface of the wall or canvas. This is even more difficult to achieve, and thus there are only rare examples. One of the triumphs of this technique is Michelangelo’s
Jonah,
in a place of honor at the front of the Sistine. The effect he achieved cannot be perceived or appreciated or understood in any reproduction; it becomes clear only when the original is viewed inside the chapel itself. What it is, and why Michelangelo did it, will be explained when we discuss the Judaic secrets of the Sistine.

Since all these special effects required much extra time and energy, the artist would usually incorporate them into a piece of art for more than just a mere show of virtuosity. Careful study almost always leads us to an unexpected message contained within the image—again, for those in the know. Sometimes this would be to sneak in the artist’s signature, his lover, a sexual allusion or a joke, a rude insult to his patron or to those in power; sometimes to make a statement that was far more profound, usually forbidden, and thus far more dangerous.

We have taken this tour into the secret world of codes in art for one primary reason: to demonstrate that Michelangelo was following in the footsteps of Botticelli, Leonardo, and many other contemporaries when he filled his work with secret symbols. Michelangelo had many reasons to cloak dangerous ideas and camouflage daring messages, reasons we will amply clarify. But what makes this all the more fascinating and relevant to our theme is that the one place where he slipped in the greatest number of these hidden messages was also the most unexpected and perilous place in the world for such subversive acts—the private chapel of the papal court in the Vatican Palace, the Sistine Chapel.

Here Michelangelo best proved his genius. For the masses his frescoes provided—and still provide to this day—delights of incomparable beauty. However, for those perceptive enough to grasp the deeper messages imbedded in his multilayered masterpiece, there are far greater rewards in store.

Chapter Three

A REBEL IS BORN

I live and love in God’s peculiar light.

—MICHELANGELO

W
HAT SHAPES A CHILD of fifteenth-century Italy to become the most revolutionary artist and the most artistic revolutionary of his time? Is the answer determined by family, by one’s name, or is it fated by horoscope?

Those who stress heredity must acknowledge that, sometimes, the fruit does indeed fall far away from the tree. The Buonarroti family tree was filled with anything but artistic types. An early ancestor had been a city councilman in Florence, another a Dominican monk, yet another a moneylender, and then there was a great-grandfather, Simone di Buonarrota, who was a wool trader and money changer. This Simone was perhaps the loftiest branch on the tree: he became rich and was a social success, gaining many honors for the family by lending money to the Florentine city government. His son Lionardo, however, was the undoing of the family. He was not a great businessman, and sired so many daughters that their wedding dowries more or less bankrupted the family. They lost their prestigious home in Florence, and Lionardo, in order to pay his debts, had to accept demeaning magistrate positions in rural villages far from the fashionable streets of Florence. His son, Ludovico, inherited his bad luck and poor business acumen. He was relegated to being the local magistrate for far-flung Caprese, high in the rocky Tuscan mountains near Arezzo. Caprese means “goat-filled,” since the rustic area probably had more mountain goats than human inhabitants. This represented a precipitous drop in the status of the once-wealthy Buonarroti line.

It was here, amid the rough stony mountains and the rough, stoic stonecutters who toiled there, that Ludovico’s wife, Francesca di Neri, gave birth to their first son in the predawn hours of a winter’s day. Ludovico, ever the precise functionary, diligently recorded: “Note as today, the 6th of March 1474, there was born to me a male child, and I have placed upon him the name of Michelagnolo…. Note that the 6th of March 1474 is according to the Florentine calendar, which counts from the Incarnation, and according to the Roman calendar, which counts from the Nativity, it is 1475.” Even at what would normally be a time of elation for a new parent, Ludovico was evidently still very much concerned with demonstrating his “noble” Florentine roots.

Florence and Rome have always had two very divergent mentalities, but it was especially so in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Back then, the Florentines based the year one of their calendar on the Incarnation, when according to Church tradition the Holy Spirit impregnated the Virgin Mary, thus uniting the divine Jesus with the human Jesus in her womb. The Roman calendar, however, was based on the Nativity, or the birth year of Jesus, just as it is today. This is an apt metaphor for the two ways of thinking in the time of Michelangelo: Renaissance Florence was a place of inclusionary, humanistic philosophy (e.g., the union of the holy and the carnal in the womb), whereas Rome was the center of exclusionary, supremacist teaching (e.g., the
partum,
the baby being separated from the womb). Even at birth, Michelangelo was already caught in the middle between these two cities and their two mind-sets.

Ludovico does not even mention his wife, the boy’s mother. It was obviously a difficult birth, as were most back then. The choice of the newborn’s name is a clue. The archangel Michael was considered in the Catholic tradition to be the angel of healing and to hold the keys to life and death. Naming the baby Michelagnolo (the Florentine dialect for “Michelangelo”) meant that the mother’s health—indeed probably her life—was in question. What Ludovico probably did not know is that Jewish tradition teaches that Mikha-el ha-Malakh, the angel Michael, is the defender of the Jewish people from its deadly enemies. Michelangelo undoubtedly learned this later on in Florence, and, as we shall see, it had a deeply resounding effect on the rest of his long life.

Ludovico quickly turned the infant over to a wet nurse, a young village woman from a local family of stonecutters. Decades later, Michelangelo would joke with his friend and biographer, the artist Giorgio Vasari: “Giorgio, if I have any intelligence at all, it has come from being born in the pure air of your native Arezzo, and also because I took the hammer and chisels with which I carve my figures from my wet-nurse’s milk.”
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Michelangelo was raised with little affection from his family. His father was distant, and his sickly mother died when he was only six. Michelangelo would remain forever obsessed with the idea of family, without ever being emotionally close to his father, his stepmother, or his siblings. The only connection he felt with them stemmed from the stories he had heard of the family’s supposed ancestral glory. For the rest of his life, he would spend his considerable earnings on restoring his family’s lost fortune, properties, and social standing. This would put him into direct competition with his own father as the acting head of the family, and would be a constant source of friction between them.

According to Vasari, even the stars and planets had marked Michelangelo for a unique destiny. Vasari’s opening of Michelangelo’s biography sounds almost like the Gospel of John describing the birth of Jesus. Vasari depicts the Holy One gazing down from heaven upon all the world’s artists, poets, and architects laboring in error, and mercifully deciding to send down a spirit of truth, talent, and wisdom to show them the way. No wonder that in the sixteenth century, people talked and wrote about the “divine Michelangelo.” The biographer points out that Michelangelo was born under the sign of Jupiter (i.e., a Pisces), with Mercury and Venus ascendant. There is also a Jewish oral tradition about the influence of the stars and planets. According to the Aggadah, the legends of the sages, one born on the second day of the week (Monday, when Michelangelo was born) will have a bad temper, since it was on the second day of creation that the waters were divided and division is a sign of disputation and animosity. It goes on to say that one born under Jupiter (named
Tzedek,
or “righteousness,” in Hebrew) will be a
tzadkan,
a righteous seeker of justice, while Venus’s influence imparts wealth and sensuality, and Mercury brings perception and wisdom. This is an accurate prediction of Michelangelo’s life and career: he had a hot temper, would often stand up for the underdog, became wealthy and famous from his sensual portrayals of the nude (most often male) body, and showed a deep understanding of esoteric spiritual truths.

Two other vital traits help us understand the inner Michelangelo. He had both an extraordinary visual memory (today we would call it photographic recall) and a rock-solid emotional tenacity. This last characteristic made him a loyal friend, a passionate artist, and a long-suffering romantic. In Talmudic and Kabbalistic thinking, almost everything has a positive and a negative aspect. The ancient sages would often say, “On the one hand…on the other hand…” In Michelangelo’s case, on the one hand, his unbreakable ties to cherished ideas, people, and images would make him an unparalleled artist and a lifelong seeker of Truth. On the other hand, the same unbreakable ties would make him a lonely, melancholy, obsessive neurotic.

At only thirteen years of age, Michelangelo was already in a war of wills with his father. Ludovico wanted him to learn grammar and accounting so that he could become a member and official of the Florence wool and silk guilds—not a high ambition in life, but something respectable that the family could rely on. But Michelangelo’s love of the visual had already led to a fixation on the stonecutter’s craft, and he spent his time in the classroom sketching instead of doing his grammar and math exercises. Ludovico often punished and beat the boy but to no avail—little Michelagnolo could think of nothing other than becoming an artist. His disgusted father gave up and took him to Florence, to have him accepted as a fledgling apprentice in the
bottega,
or artists’ workshop, of Domenico Ghirlandaio, who had already been part of the team that had frescoed the new Sistine Chapel for Pope Sixtus IV. Ludovico’s only consolation was that his son would get twenty-four gold coins (florins) over his three-year apprenticeship, and that he himself received a small payment on the day he delivered his son to the
bottega.
It was a sort of paid servitude, but at least this boy who refused to learn a “useful profession” would bring a little bit of income into the family.

At thirteen, at an age when Jewish boys take on the religious responsibilities of an adult, the young Catholic Michelagnolo Buonarroti’s childhood ended. For the next several years, he was contracted to grind colors, mix plaster and paints, fix brushes, haul ladders, and do whatever else his masters required of him. His family had cast him out for a few coins. However, to his great good fortune he was now in Florence. In fifteenth-century Europe, he had arrived in the exact center of the world of culture, art, and ideas. He was entering into the heart of the Renaissance. On the one hand, his journey had just begun. On the other hand, he was home.