PART ONE
1
ON A FINE summer’s afternoon in 1491, the sixteen-year-old Michelangelo Buonarroti was sitting sketching in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. With a stick of chalk between his fingers and a sheaf of paper on his knees, he was busy copying Masaccio’s celebrated frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel with “such judgement” that all those who saw his drawings were astonished.
Even as an adolescent, Michelangelo had begun to grow used to such admiration. Despite his youth, he had already earned a degree of celebrity and had acquired a correspondingly high opinion of himself. Carrying a letter of recommendation from the artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, he had not only been accepted as a pupil of the sculptor Bertoldo di Giovanni at the artistic school that had recently been founded in the gardens of San Marco, but had even been welcomed into the household of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence’s de facto ruler. Enraptured by the young man, Lorenzo had ushered Michelangelo into the company of the city’s foremost intellectuals, including the humanists Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola. Michelangelo flourished. He nurtured those skills that were to characterize the art of the period. Studying anatomy with extreme care, he honed the naturalistic style that had been in continuous development since the innovations of Giotto di Bondone, two centuries earlier. And devoting himself to the emulation of classical sculpture, he set out on the path that later led Giorgio Vasari to claim that he had “surpassed and vanquished the ancients.” Following a suggestion made by Poliziano in this period, he carved a relief depicting the battle of the centaurs that was “so beautiful” it seemed to be “the work not of a young man, but of a great master with a wealth of study and experience behind him.”
Michelangelo’s fame and self-confidence were growing by the day, but as he was about to discover, so was the envy of his schoolfellows. Sitting next to him in the Brancacci Chapel that day was Pietro Torrigiano. Although three years older than Michelangelo, Pietro was another of Bertoldo di Giovanni’s pupils and was also recognized as something of a rising star. Competition between the two was almost inevitable. Under Bertoldo’s tutelage, they had been encouraged to compete, and they strove to outdo each other in imitating and surpassing the works of masters like Masaccio. Michelangelo was, however, too brilliant and outspoken for the rivalry to be entirely friendly.
As they sketched alongside one another in the chapel, Michelangelo and Pietro appear to have begun discussing who was better placed to take up Masaccio’s mantle as Florence’s finest painter. Given their surroundings, it was a natural subject. Despite being acclaimed as an artist of genius in his own lifetime, Masaccio had died before he could complete the frescoes in the chapel. His work had been completed by Filippino Lippi, although how successfully was a matter of personal opinion. Perhaps Michelangelo, who had spent many months studying the frescoes, observed that Lippi had been unable to match Masaccio’s talent and that he himself was the only person capable of attaining—if not exceeding—the master’s standards. He may simply have spoken derisively of Pietro’s sketches, as was apparently his habit. Whatever the case, Michelangelo managed to enrage his friend. Talented but hardly brilliant, Pietro couldn’t stand Michelangelo’s ribbing.
“Jealous [at] seeing him more honoured than himself and more able in his work,” Pietro began mocking Michelangelo. If his behavior in later years is anything to go by, Michelangelo might simply have laughed. Whatever the case, Pietro was furious. Clenching his fists, he punched Michelangelo squarely in the face. The blow was so hard that it “almost tore off the cartilage of [the] nose.” Michelangelo slumped unconscious to the floor, his nose “broken and crushed” and his torso covered with blood.
Michelangelo was hurriedly carried back to his home in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, where he is said to have been lying “as if dead.” It did not take Lorenzo de’ Medici long to learn of his plight. Storming into the room in which his stricken protégé lay, he flew into a towering rage and hurled every imaginable insult at the “bestial” Pietro. At once, Pietro saw the magnitude of his mistake: he had no option but to leave Florence.
Unwittingly, the barely conscious Michelangelo was caught up in a moment that captured perfectly an important dimension of the world of late Renaissance art and that represented the fulfillment of what has become known as the “rise of the artist.” Although he was only sixteen years old, he had already begun to hone that unique combination of talents that contemporaries would later describe as “divine.” Skilled in sculpture and drawing, he was also devoted to Dante, learned in the Italian classics, a fine poet, and a friend to the finest humanist minds. Without any sense of irony intended, he was what we might now call a Renaissance man. What’s more, he was recognized as such. Despite his age, Michelangelo had been feted by Florence’s social and intellectual elite, and his ability had been honored with patronage and respect. The son of a comparatively modest bureaucrat from an obscure little town, he had earned the affection of the most powerful family in Florence because of his artistic skill. Lorenzo “the Magnificent”—himself a noted poet, connoisseur, and collector—treated him “like a son.” Indeed, Lorenzo’s son Giovanni and Giovanni’s illegitimate cousin Giulio—each of whom would later become pope (as Leo X and Clement VII, respectively)—would address him as their “brother” ever after.
Two hundred years earlier, it would have been unthinkable for any artist to have been honored in such a way. In the eyes of most contemporaries, a late-thirteenth- or early-fourteenth-century artist was not a creator but a craftsman. The practitioner of a merely mechanical art, he was largely restricted to the confines of a provincial bottega (workshop) that was subject to the often draconian regulations of guilds.
Regardless of his ability, the artist’s social status was not high. Although some early Renaissance artists occasionally occupied positions in communal government or came from magnate families, they were the exceptions rather than the rule. Most came from fairly humble backgrounds, as can be gauged from how little we know about their parents. Later biographers, like the snobbish Vasari, often skip over such details, and their silence suggests that carpenters, innkeepers, farmers, and even unskilled laborers may have sired some of the great names of early Renaissance art. What evidence we have seems to confirm this impression. Some artists were from very modest backgrounds and came from families engaged in the lowliest crafts. Giotto di Bondone, for example, was rumored to have been raised as a poor shepherd boy but was most probably the son of a Florentine blacksmith. For others, art—like carpentry—was a family business. Three of Duccio di Buoninsegna’s sons became painters, and Simone Martini’s brother and two brothers-in-law were all artists.
From the mid-fourteenth century onward, however, the social world of art and the artist had gradually undergone a series of radical changes. In step with the growing popularity of classical themes and the naturalistic style, artists were progressively recognized asautonomous creative agents endowed with learning and skill that set them apart from mere mechanics. When Giotto was made capomaestro of the Duomo in 1334, the priors of Florence acknowledged not only his fame but also his “knowledge and learning,” terms that clearly distinguished the artist from mere craftsmen. Similarly, writing in his De origine civitatis Florentiae et eiusdem famosis civibus (ca. 1380–81), the Florentine chronicler Filippo Villani felt able to compare painters not with mere mechanics but with the masters of the liberal arts.
Although still reliant on the favor of patrons and bound by contractual agreements, painters and sculptors had seen their social position improve dramatically by the mid-fifteenth century. With art coming to be seen as a status symbol, artists themselves attained a higher status. Now it was not merely those from families of craftsmen who became artists. Although some continued to come from humble stock—such as Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506)—artists were increasingly the sons (and, in very rare cases, the daughters) of skilled tradesmen, affluent merchants, and well-educated notaries. Even those who could lay claim to noble origins—such as Michelangelo—could take up the brush or chisel without undue shame. Their social standing was measured not against their birth but against their ability. They could treat with their patrons on the basis of mutual respect, if not always with perfect equality. And their achievements could be celebrated by historians like Vasari in a manner previously reserved only for statesmen. Indeed, so high had artists risen that Pope Paul III is reported to have remarked that artists like Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71) should “not be subjected to the law.”
But if Michelangelo embodied both the stylistic transformations and the social changes that had come to characterize the art of the period, he also exemplified another important dimension of the life of the Renaissance artist. Though the “rise of the artist” had improved both the esteem in which the visual arts were held and the social status of artists, it had not elevated artists themselves to a higher and more refined plane of existence. Artists like Michelangelo still had feet of clay. He had, after all, just had his nose broken in a childish brawl prompted by envy and exacerbated by arrogant boasting.
It was typical of his life. Entirely at home in the reception rooms of the mighty, he could be kind, sensitive, courteous, and funny. But he was also proud, touchy, scornful, and sharp-tongued. He was a frequenter of inns and no stranger to fights. Indeed, despite being a friend to popes and princes, he was no refined gentleman. As his biographer Paolo Giovio recorded, he was notoriously slovenly in his appearance and seemed almost to rejoice in living in the most squalid conditions. Scarcely ever changing his clothes, he was constantly accompanied by the noxious smell of the unwashed and seldom, if ever, combed his hair or cut his beard. He was a man of undoubted piety, but his passionate nature inclined him toward relations with both sexes. Although he later enjoyed a long and apparently romantic relationship with Vittoria Colonna, marchesa of Pescara, his surviving poems also address homoerotic themes. One of the many poems addressed to Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, for example, begins with a striking and faintly blasphemous verse:
Here in your lovely face I see, my lord,
what in this life no words could ever tell;
with that, although still clothed in flesh, my soul
has often already risen up to God.
As arrogant as he was talented, he was a dirty, disorganized, and tormented individual who was as easily embroiled in fights as he was bound to the will of popes, and as susceptible to Neoplatonic homoeroticism as he was to the reassurances of the Church and the blandishments of a cultured and elegant lady.
Michelangelo was not unusual in this respect. A devotee of illicit magic, Leonardo da Vinci was accused of sodomizing a well-known gigolo named Jacopo Saltarelli on April 9, 1476. Benvenuto Cellini was convicted of the same offense twice (in 1523 and 1557) and was only narrowly saved from a lengthy prison sentence thanks to the intervention of the Medici; on top of this, he killed at least two men and was also accused of stealing the papal jewels. So, too, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)—often described as the father of Renaissance humanism—fathered at least two children while in minor orders, and the music of the aristocratic composer Carlo Gesualdo reached its most sublime heights only after he had murdered his wife, her lover, and possibly also his son.
When its implications are unpacked, therefore, Michelangelo’s broken nose appears to present something of a challenge. Superficially, it seems difficult to reconcile the idea of Michelangelo as the paradigmatically “Renaissance” artist with the image of Michelangelo the cocky and arrogant kid fighting in church. There is no doubt that these represent two sides of the same man, but the question is, how should the peculiar and apparently contradictory nature of Michelangelo’s character be understood? How could the same personality create such innovative, elevated art and indulge such base habits? How, indeed, can Michelangelo’s broken nose be reconciled with familiar conceptions of the Renaissance itself?
THE RENAISSANCE PROBLEM
The problem lies not with Michelangelo and his nose but with how the Renaissance itself is viewed. This might seem rather surprising at first. The word “Renaissance” has become such a commonplace that its meaning might appear obvious, even self-evident. Imaginatively linked with a time of cultural rebirth and artistic beauty, the very term “Renaissance” conjures up images of the rarefied world of the Sistine Chapel, Brunelleschi’s dome, the Grand Canal, and the Mona Lisa and visions of artists like Giotto, Leonardo, and Botticelli.
Despite its familiarity, however, the word “Renaissance” is a very slippery term. Since the very beginnings of modern critical scholarship, historians have agonized over how best to understand this “rebirth,” particularly with respect to the visual arts. A whole variety of different interpretations have emerged over the years, each of which speaks to a different aspect of our snapshot of the young Michelangelo.
For some, the defining characteristic of Renaissance art from Giotto to Michelangelo lies in a pronounced sense of individualism. While the Middle Ages could be thought of as a period in which human consciousness “lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil” of “faith, illusion, and childish prepossession,” the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt argued that the Renaissance was a time in which, for the first time, “man became a spiritual individual,” capable of defining himself in terms of his own unique excellence, free from the constraints of the corporation or community. Although Burckhardt’s words are heavily colored by the now-unfashionable spirit of nineteenth-century Romanticism, this interpretation has proved remarkably enduring. Even though more recent scholars have placed greater emphasis on the social contexts of artistic production (workshop, guild, and so on) than Burckhardt, Stephen Greenblatt has recast the essence of his argument in terms of the Renaissance capacity for “self-fashioning” and has thus not only demonstrated the continuing attraction of Burckhardt’s reading but has also given renewed impetus to his understanding of the character of the Renaissance artist.
For other scholars, the distinctiveness of the “Renaissance” is to be found in the achievement of a greater naturalism in the arts. Proponents of this view need only point crudely to a comparison between the figures in Michelangelo’s youthful Battle of the Centaurs, for example, and the facades of Chartres Cathedral to underscore the attractiveness and force of the definition. Within this interpretation, the elaboration of a complete theoretical understanding of linear perspective—the mathematical and practical expression of which was pioneered most especially by Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi—represented a decisive change not only in the techniques of painting but also in the manner of sculpture.
For others still, the “Renaissance” consists in what is thought to have been a new interest in ornamentation, embellishment, and decoration. This explosion of enthusiasm for visual exuberance and overelaboration was, it is claimed, the framework within which both individualism and linear perspective emerged.
Yet by far the most important and influential school of thought views the “Renaissance” as a far more literal and even straightforward form of “rebirth” and presents all other developments—individualism, naturalism, exuberance—as the prelude to or corollary of the comprehensive rediscovery of classical themes, models, and motifs that appears to be evidenced by the artful trickery of the young Michelangelo’s lost Head of a Faun. As one might expect from a cursory glance at Michelangelo’s close links with the circle of humanists that gathered around Lorenzo de’ Medici, this interpretation presupposes a close—and even incestuous—relationship between the visual arts and the literary culture of the humanists.
In that it relates most clearly to the literal meaning of the word “Renaissance” and seems to encompass so much that could be described as characteristic of the period, this interpretation is understandably the most attractive. Yet insofar as Michelangelo’s crushed proboscis is concerned, this is exactly where the problems begin.
As a number of eminent scholars have observed, one of the merits of this interpretation of the Renaissance is that it is precisely how the leading intellectuals of the Renaissance saw their own times. The self-conscious writings of “the artistically-minded humanists and the humanistically-minded artists of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries” appear to betray a clear and unambiguous sense of living in a new period defined by the revival of the culture of classical antiquity.
The origins of this self-conscious sense of cultural rebirth can perhaps be traced back to the very beginning of the fourteenth century. While Dante Alighieri celebrated the renown of Cimabue and Giotto in the Purgatorio, it rapidly became common for readers ofHorace’s Ars poetica to employ the language of “darkness” and “light” to describe what they perceived to be the parallel revival of painting and poetry. Petrarch is often thought to have inaugurated the idea of a transition from medieval “darkness” to the pure “light” of antiquity in his Africa, and it was for his perceived revival of classical Latinity that he was celebrated alongside Giotto as one of the two harbingers of the new age by his friend Giovanni Boccaccio.
It is, however, during the fifteenth century that Renaissance “self-consciousness” really comes to the fore and that we see full expression being given to the sense of living in an age of classical “rebirth.” The feeling of pride that accompanied the idea can be glimpsed in a letter written to Paul of Middelburg by Michelangelo’s friend Marsilio Ficino in 1492:
Our Plato in The Republic transferred the four ages of lead, iron, silver, and gold described by poets long ago to types of men, according to their intelligence … So if we are to call any age golden, it must certainly be our age, which has produced such a wealth of golden intellects. Evidence of this is provided by the inventions of this age. For this century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts that were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, the ancient singing of songs to the Orphic lyre, and all this in Florence.
Ficino’s reference to “golden intellects” is particularly important. Throughout the Renaissance, the idea of a “golden age” relied entirely on the contention that a few “golden” individuals had “restored to light” the cultural achievements of antiquity. Ficino’s sense of pride demanded the celebration of a whole pantheon of great men. Thus, some sixty years earlier, the Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni hailed Petrarch (at Dante’s expense) as “the first person with a talent sufficient to recognize and call back to light the antique elegance of the lost and extinguished style.” Not long after, Matteo Palmieri acclaimed Bruni himself as having been sent into the world “as the father and ornament of letters, the resplendent light of Latin elegance, to restore the sweetness of the Latin language to mankind.” So, too, in the arts, Palmieri observed that
before Giotto, painting was dead and figure-painting was laughable. Having been restored by him, sustained by his disciples and passed on to others, painting has become a most worthy art practiced by many. Sculpture and architecture, which for a long time had been producing stupid monstrosities, have in our time revived and returned to the light, purified and perfected by many masters.
This intimate relationship between a self-conscious age of “rebirth” and the creation of a pantheon of “golden intellects” was picked up and refined yet further in the sixteenth century by Giorgio Vasari. Vasari—who coined the word rinascita (rebirth; Renaissance)—set himself the task of assembling a series of biographies of “the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architects” responsible for restoring the long-forgotten “pristine form” of antiquity. But Vasari also went one step further. His goal was not simply to formalize a canon of great men who had created and defined an age of “rebirth” but also to fashion an ideal of the artist as hero. Although he criticized many artists for their unpleasant or “bestial” habits (such as Piero di Cosimo), Vasari left no doubt that the truly important, heroic artist—who was in part responsible for giving shape to the new age—was the artist whose life itself was a work of art. Michelangelo—whom Vasari knew personally—was just such a man.
The implications of this sort of evidence are significant. To say that such testimonies are the bedrock of our view of the Renaissance as a whole is not to say that we trust them absolutely. Indeed, precisely because they are so effusive, the self-conscious and self-congratulatory remarks of individuals such as Bruni, Ficino, Palmieri, and Vasari automatically arouse the suspicion of any self-respecting historian. Although Erwin Panofsky adamantly defended them as self-conscious affirmations of a verifiable cultural shift, there can be little doubt that such statements were perhaps more reflective of a tendency toward rhetorical hyperbole and wishful thinking than they were indications of contemporary cultural realities.
At the same time, however, these proclamations of a new age of cultural rebirth can’t be ignored altogether and are actually the best guide to the period we have. Rose tinted and propagandistic though they may be, they provide the historian with a viable working definition of the “Renaissance” that can serve as the springboard for research. Even if it is possible to question whether Petrarch actually did revive the brilliance of Cicero’s Latin in quite the way that Bruni claimed, for example, the idea of “rebirth” can still be used as a lens through which to view (and question) his works. Similarly, even if it is accepted that Giotto’s campanile lacks any clear parallels in ancient architecture, it is nevertheless possible to acknowledge that contemporaries believed they were trying to revive antiquity and use that goal as the yardstick against which to evaluate the art of the period.
Yet if historians have been careful to avoid trusting the words of men like Ficino and Palmieri too much, they have nevertheless continued to indulge one vital part of the Renaissance “myth” in their quest to understand the period as a whole. Although the concept of rebirth has been the subject of incessant, critical scrutiny for well over a century, the Renaissance still tends to be thought of in terms of the works and deeds of “great men.” More important, even if Vasari’s often lavish praise has been viewed with skepticism, it has nevertheless proved almost impossible not to succumb to his vision of the Renaissance artist as a purely cultural figure. Despite the proliferation of studies on the social and economic history of the Renaissance, for example, there is still a tendency to think of the period as a litany of “big names,” as a list of “golden boys,” each of whom is viewed principally—even exclusively—as an agent of cultural production.
It is not difficult to see the allure of this idea of the Renaissance or to understand why it has become so familiar. On first arriving in a city like Florence, one finds it very hard to avoid. When one stands in the Piazza della Signoria, it’s easy to imagine that the Renaissance was more or less exactly as Bruni and Palmieri described it. Surrounded by the classical elegance of the Loggia dei Lanzi and the gallerie of the Uffizi, and with statues by Michelangelo, Donatello, and Cellini looking down on the square, one is all too tempted to think of the Renaissance as a time in which heroically talented artists revived the culture of antiquity to create both cities and societies that were themselves works of art.
But this is exactly where the paradox lies. It’s not that the implication of cultural and artistic “rebirth” is necessarily useless or invalid but rather that attempts to define the Renaissance in such terms inevitably exclude more than they include. In succumbing to the “great men” myth, the familiar definition of the Renaissance tends to exclude the everyday, the visceral, the sordid, and the distasteful. It tends to abstract literature and the visual arts from ordinary existence, as if it were possible to regard them as entirely distinct spheres of existence. It overlooks the fact that even the greatest artists had mothers, got into scrapes, went to the toilet, had affairs, bought clothes, and were occasionally very unpleasant people. It ignores the fact that Michelangelo had his nose smashed in for being cocky.
The result is a one-sided and incomplete image of what was undoubtedly a rich and profoundly “human” age. It effectively misrepresents entirely consistent human beings as conflicted or paradoxical figures when their artistic achievements appear to clash with decidedly down-to-earth characters. It leaves historians anxious for order and meaning with no option but to set aside whatever traits seem inconvenient—usually the most ordinary. In other words, by giving way to our comfortable old view of the Renaissance, we end up accepting Michelangelo the artist but dismissing Michelangelo the man.
There is no immediate need to offer a completely new definition of the Renaissance as a whole. But if Michelangelo’s broken nose illustrates anything, it shows that the Renaissance can really be understood only when it is viewed as a whole—vicious brawls and all. In order to comprehend how Michelangelo was able to create so perfect a synthesis of classical and naturalistic elements in his sculpture at the same time as he was having his nose broken in idiotic fights, it is necessary to recognize that these were two interrelated dimensions of the same, all-too-human person and that the age in which he lived was similarly composed not just of soaring cultural achievements but also of seamy, boorish, violent, and deeply unpleasant trends. Put simply, if the Renaissance is going to be understood, Michelangelo must be put back into his real-life social context, and the swirling social world that gave birth to the man and the artist must be brought into focus. The “Renaissance” needs to be viewed not as it is conventionally seen but as the uglyRenaissance it was.
Returning to the beginning, therefore, it’s clear that a pause needs to be made at exactly the moment at which Pietro Torrigiano’s fist crashed into Michelangelo’s nose. The bloodcurdling sound of bone and cartilage cracking is an occasion to stop and reconsider. As Michelangelo is left slumping to the ground, familiar ideas of the Renaissance also begin to fall away as a search is launched for the world that made it possible for this adolescent both to scale the heights of artistic genius and to plumb the lows of public brawling. This key moment must be approached afresh by imaginatively zooming out of Santa Maria del Carmine. First, it is important to look at Florence as a whole, and uncover the sights, sounds, and smells of the streets and squares. Only then will the dramas of social life that provide the immediate context for Michelangelo’s fight gradually come to light. After a survey of the dramatic history of the institutions that frame the world of Renaissance art—business, politics, and religion—the world of home life and the inner workings of everyday existence in contemporary Florence will be examined, and the surprisingly ordinary, often rather sordid, concerns that filled Michelangelo’s thoughts as he embarked on his career as an artist can be reconstructed. And finally, Michelangelo’s mind itself can be opened up to examine how the swirling mass of daily experiences combined with beliefs, hopes, and systems of thought to produce the intellectual framework on which his art—and his broken nose—relied.