MUSIC
February 18th 1564.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, the great sculptor,
painter and architect, dies at his home
in one of Rome’s poorest neighborhoods.
At dawn the following day, agents of the Pope arrive
at his workshop to search for anything of value
he may have left behind.
But they find almost nothing.
Before he died, Michelangelo set fire
to all the drawings and private papers in his possession.
Soon after, his corpse disappears,
carried off in secret to Florence.
The powerful Church Michelangelo
had served for half a century, is denied the opportunity
to honor him with a state funeral.
For four and a half centuries, the mysterious end
to Michelangelo’s life has inspired speculation and rumor.
But now, art historian Antonio Forcellino has made
a startling discovery that reveals a dark truth
about Michelangelo’s final years.
Strange inconsistencies from one famous sculpture
have led Forcellino on an investigation
that has turned up evidence of intentional deception,
and close contact with members of a clandestine fellowship
so threatening, its radical ideas
were punishable by death under the Inquisition.
It seems that even as Michelangelo was glorifying
the Catholic Church with his sculptures and artwork,
his heart and mind were leading him down
a dangerous road of heresy and dissent.
MUSIC
It is here in the heart of Rome, that Italy's most famous
artist created some of his best known masterpieces.
The frescoes that decorate the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel and his Last Judgement.
BELL RINGING
Michelangelo’s home and workshop are long gone,
but the neighbourhood is still dotted with churches.
Art historian Antonio Forcellino knows these churches well.
As a restoration expert, he has worked in many of them.
But his efforts in this one, San Pietro in Vincoli,
turned up some unexpected results.
Forcellino is a distinguished and well known
researcher of Michelangelo’s technique.
In 1999, he was appointed to restore
one of the artist’s most famous works: The Moses.
I came here one evening before we got started,
and I waited till all the tourists who come here
every day had gone and I felt totally intimidated.
I was afraid to touch an icon that was in the hearts,
in the photographs of people across the entire planet.
MUSIC
Michelangelo created the Moses in 1513.
He was 37, and had already made his mark
with two other masterpieces:
The Pietà for St. Peter’s Basilica,
and The David for the city of Florence.
He was a rising star, on his way to becoming
the Catholic Church's favourite artist.
His Moses was considered a museum piece in Italy
before it was even out of his workshop.
As Forcellino set to work on the statue,
he could see Michelangelo's artistic genius up close.
The finely rendered veins of Moses' powerful arms.
The intricate beard.
The strong, charismatic face.
And the horns, which are meant to signify
rays of divine light.
It’s extraordinary, it really looks like flesh.
The sculpture was exceptional, but during the months
of restoration, Forcellino and his colleagues began
to notice some serious
imperfections in the masterpiece.
The left leg was strangely angled,
and much smaller than the right.
There was a difference of almost three inches
in the diameter of one knee compared to the other.
Also, Forcellino noticed that on the left side,
the neck was oddly distorted,
though the right side looked fine.
And the beard was surprisingly asymmetrical.
On the left Michelangelo created such an intricate web
of locks that it was difficult for us to get in there
with the cotton swabs to clean, while on the right
the beard is totally flat.
As Forcellino worked on the statue, he began to suspect
that Michelangelo had radically altered it
just before it was finished.
And this wasn’t the only sculpture with inconsistencies.
The Moses is the centrepiece of a funeral monument.
The tomb of Julius the 2nd,
one of the greatest Popes of the Renaissance.
A patron of the arts, Julius understood how paintings,
sculpture and architecture could convey
the Church’s message to the masses.
He laid the foundation stone for St. Peter’s Basilica in 1506.
But it is for his achievements on the battlefield
and his fiery temperament that he is best remembered:
more of a volcanic warrior king than a holy father.
And yet, this is how Michelangelo portrayed him:
lying down in an upper niche, small and submissive.
I was immediately struck by
Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Pope.
Traditionally the Pope is shown either lying in state,
dead but sacred, or as a triumphant General.
This Pope seemed to speak another language.
He seemed fragile, vanquished.
MUSIC
No one had paid much attention to the Pope before,
because the statue had been dismissed as the work
of a second-rate sculptor, who Michelangelo
had sub-contracted to finish the statues
on the upper tier of the tomb.
But on closer examination, it became clear to Forcellino
that the Pope could only have been created by Michelangelo.
In the statue of the Pope we don’t find the rigid
mannequin-like faces of the other statues,
but a very convincing human expression.
These hands are also typical of Michelangelo.
These pronounced knuckles and the wide and deep-set nails.
MUSIC
Other experts agreed, and it is now generally accepted
that the Pope is Michelangelo’s.
But we still had to understand why Michelangelo
had chosen to represent the papacy in such an unusual way.
MUSIC
Michelangelo first met Pope Julius the 2nd in 1505.
The Pope was impressed by the young man’s talent,
and appreciated his independent spirit.
The two would come to admire each other greatly.
Julius’s tomb would be the artist’s first papal commission,
the beginning of a relationship with the Holy See
that would define the rest of his life.
But their affection for each other makes
Michelangelo’s unusual portrayal of the Pope
all the more strange.
Other statues prove equally perplexing.
Michelangelo called these statues The Active Life…
…and The Contemplative Life.
The figures, which had been represented in Church art
since medieval times, normally symbolize
the two Catholic paths to salvation:
Faith by The Contemplative Life,
and Good Works or charity by The Active Life.
The art history books Forcellino consulted,
said The Active Life holds
a garland of flowers in her left hand,
and a mirror in her right.
But close up, Forcellino could see that the objects
were not as described.
The garland appeared to be a crown of laurel leaves.
And the mirror was some kind of torch.
We realized it couldn’t under any circumstances be a mirror.
It looked more like a torch or a small lantern.
Forcellino was shocked that no other art historians
had noticed the incongruities.
He researched other descriptions of the tomb,
and eventually realised that he needed
to go directly to the source for his information.
He turned to Michelangelo’s official biography,
which the artist had personally dictated to a young scribe,
Ascanio Condivi, near the end of his life in 1551.
Michelangelo paid very close attention
to the symbols in his works; every tiny iconographic detail
is precisely thought out, very carefully elaborated.
In the pages dedicated to the Pope’s tomb,
Forcellino made a surprising discovery.
Michelangelo himself was to blame
for the misleading descriptions.
The biography describes the Active Life,
and it’s Michelangelo who dictated the description
as a female figure who looks at herself in a mirror.
But it’s clearly visible that what she’s holding
is not a mirror but an object which I interpret to be a torch,
an oil lamp.
It seems like a minor discrepancy, but during
Michelangelo’s time, it was immensely significant.
Since none but the Clergy had access
to the written words of the Bible,
most people were heavily influenced by religious imagery.
So what motive could Michelangelo have had
for incorrectly describing the statue?
To find that answer, Forcellino would need
to dig into the historical records.
And so began an obsessive search
for the true meaning behind Michelangelo’s work.
BELL RINGING
Setting aside second-hand accounts of Michelangelo’s life,
and even the artist’s own biography,
Forcellino turned to the actual contracts written up
between Michelangelo and Pope Julius the 2nd.
Under the terms of the first document, dated 1505,
the tomb was to be a grandiose tribute
to Julius' imperial Papacy, a huge, three-tiered monument
featuring no fewer than 40 biblical and mythical figures.
Michelangelo was to be paid generously,
but it would be a long time before he finished the project.
Almost from day one, Julius distracted
him with other projects.
In 1508, he asked Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel, an enormous undertaking
that occupied him full time for five years,
and earned him universal recognition
as the world’s greatest living painter.
The Pope’s tomb was still just a project on paper
when Julius died in 1513.
In the years that followed, Michelangelo was routinely
pressured by successive Popes to ignore
his obligations to Julius, and work for them.
Julius’ heirs, meanwhile, accused Michelangelo
of embezzlement for accepting their money
but not completing the tomb.
In the end, it would be forty years before
the artist finished the project.
And the tomb’s final appearance was
a mere shadow of its original grandiose design.
It went down in history as a pastiche of odds and ends
with no particular meaning that an ageing Michelangelo
had cobbled together, simply to end
the 40-year wrangle with the Pope's family.
And yet, something told Forcellino
there was more to it than that.
He went back to Michelangelo’s biography
for an account of the final negotiations
over the tomb’s completion.
Forcellino noticed that Michelangelo had highlighted
the role of an obscure Cardinal, Ercole Gonzaga,
in establishing the final design of the monument in 1542.
Condivi’s biography mentioned in passing, a person
who had never been studied in relation to Michelangelo before,
the Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga.
Condivi says Gonzaga had seen the Moses
in Michelangelo’s workshop and said that that sculpture
alone would be enough to honour Julius II.
Michelangelo had originally created the Moses
for the Pope’s tomb back in 1513.
But as the project was scaled down,
the sculpture had been set aside as too large.
It reappeared in the plans in 1542, at Gonzaga’s suggestion.
MUSIC
Gonzaga was a distinguished political and religious figure
during the mid 16th Century,
and a close relative of Pope Julius the 2nd.
The Cardinal had been a mediator in the tense
negotiations with Michelangelo for years.
He came from a wealthy family that governed
the city-state of Mantua, one of the most
refined and forward-thinking courts in Italy.
His papers are preserved in the city’s archives.
MUSIC
Gonzaga corresponded with the Pope, with the Emperor,
Charles V, and with the ambassadors
of the great European powers.
He was a major player.
Among his papers I found a number of letters
about Michelangelo, and they’d never been published.
The letters featuring Michelangelo were to two
leading European personalities of the time:
A powerful English Cardinal named Reginald Pole,
and the Roman noblewoman and poet, Vittoria Colonna.
Gonzaga, Pole and Colonna were evidently close friends,
they corresponded and met frequently.
Michelangelo was clearly well-known to them,
his name is mentioned often.
Gonzaga’s private letters ushered me into
this obscure and insidious realm, this web of relations
among a group of people who were close
to Michelangelo around 1545.
Gonzaga and the others admired Michelangelo,
but they were also involved in much bigger matters
than sculpture and art.
They were part of a religious renaissance
that was threatening the very foundations
of the Catholic Church.
The conflict centred around the ever-widening
religious battle between the Church,
and reform-minded Protestants.
Martin Luther and his Protestant supporters
railed against the moral decadence of the Church:
the sale of forgiveness or Indulgences,
the ostentatious wealth of the Papacy,
and the corruption that was rife among the clergy.
For the first time in 1500 years,
the Catholic Church was in deep crisis.
Colonna, Pole and Gonzaga were on the front lines
of this religious debate.
They were among an increasing number of loyal Catholics
throughout Italy who embraced the idea
of a profound renewal of the Catholic faith.
They wanted reform, but believed it could be achieved
from within the Church, thus preventing
a split with the Protestants.
But the Church orthodoxy was threatened
by the idea of reform, and the conservatives
were willing to go to extreme measures to prevent it.
MUSIC
At this point, the story of the group around Michelangelo
when he made the tomb became more important
for me than the story of the tomb itself.
Historical sources confirm that Gonzaga, Pole and Colonna
were prominent Italian reformists,
and their letters demonstrate that
they held Michelangelo in high regard.
But were they simply art enthusiasts,
or was there more to their admiration?
To try and find out, Forcellino sought out Alexander Nagel,
an art historian who has studied how Michelangelo
was influenced by the religious debate of his day.
Nagel believes that Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna
had a friendship that transcended art.
It’s not known exactly when Michelangelo
met Vittoria Colonna but it probably occurred in the 1530s.
Every account that we have of their relationship
suggests that it was a very powerful one.
Michelangelo...
A celebrated poet in her lifetime, Colonna came
from one of Rome’s most established noble families.
We have several letters between them and they are rich
with information about how they felt about each other
and how they felt about art and poetry and religion.
From their writings, it emerges that Michelangelo
and Colonna, though both devout Catholics,
yearned for religious reform.
In one letter, the artist supports an idea
central to Luther’s attack on the Church.
He says “La grazia divina non Si può comprare”,
that means divine grace cannot be bought;
which is to say it cannot be earned,
you can’t do good things or pay money to have
a chapel founded in church or pay money to have
masses said for your soul and expect that
that’s just going to save you.
Michelangelo's letters, reveal that he was increasingly
concerned about what would happen to his soul
after he died. The Catholic Church told him
he could earn his place in heaven by having faith
and doing Good Works, like going to mass,
giving to charity and supporting the Church financially.
But the Protestants said he could do nothing
to earn his salvation, because salvation came
from faith, and faith alone.
It is clear from their exchanges,
that at least in private, both Michelangelo and Colonna
took the Protestant view on this extremely delicate question.
But if Michelangelo was questioning the theology
of the Church, he must also have struggled
with his own role in furthering it.
Artists were very much part of the problem,
most artists in this period made religious art,
you would have fresco paintings made for the chapel
you might put your tomb in the chapel,
have it nicely decorated. This is the work that artists did.
For Michelangelo, the problem was uniquely acute.
His main client was not just any church but the Holy See itself,
which saw in his art a powerful instrument
of mass communication.
Michelangelo created masterpieces
glorifying the Church, but Forcellino also found
references to very different drawings
the artist made for Vittoria Colonna.
Their message was more personal
than his paintings for the Vatican Palazzos.
They don’t cost a lot of money in any material sense
but they’re filled with meaning.
And it is in discussing those drawings that Michelangelo
makes his most trenchant comments about the system
of religious art, of church art, which is also
the business of indulgences, of endowments,
of good works essentially.
We needed to return to Christ and these drawings
do that in a very powerful way.
The drawings leave the Church completely out of the picture,
bringing Christ directly to the people.
They circulated among Gonzaga’s friends,
and Michelangelo appears to have dedicated one
to Reginald Pole, the English Cardinal destined
to have a central role in the religious clashes
that were about to occur.
Pole was among the most powerful
and respected cardinals of his day.
For help understanding his reformist ideas,
Forcellino turned to Professor Thomas Mayer.
It's important to think that he is a scion
of the very highest English nobility.
Pole is, although not first in line for the throne
when he was born, close; and he is sent to Italy by Henry VIII,
to Padua, he gets the best imaginable education,
he meets everybody, he goes back to England,
expected to become arch Bishop of Canterbury,
that's the spiritual head of the English church.
So, he is right in the middle of that.
And then he leaves England in 1532.
Pole returned to Italy at a critical moment.
Pope Paul the 3rd, elected in 1534, inspired great hope
among Italian reformers.
He made Pole and other progressive men Cardinals,
but ultimately, his commitment to change would prove limited.
By 1541, Pole had become Papal Governor of Viterbo,
a town near Rome.
His personal charisma made him the focal point
for a network of reform-minded Bishops,
theologians and humanists, as well as poets and artists.
Among them were Vittoria Colonna and Ercole Gonzaga.
Forcellino’s references call the group The Spirituali.
They were for the most part extremely privileged people,
extremely well educated people, who had a very spiritual
conception of religion, which now we recognize
as sympathetic to Protestantism.
But in the moment their positions were not
protestant positions, they were positions that were possible
within traditions of thinking about man’s relationship to god.
Loyal Catholics, they saw in Pole a leader who could define
a middle ground, heal the divide with the Protestants,
and lead the Church into a more spiritual era.
Michelangelo is very close to this group in these years.
He is clearly a member of the group,
and produces images that mirror its ideas.
MUSIC
In the early 1540s, the Spirituali were at the height
of their power and popularity,
in Italy and within the Church itself.
A profound renewal of the Catholic faith seemed at hand.
But deeply worried by the Spirituali’s growing influence,
Conservatives within the Church
joined forces to defend their authority.
Their leader was Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa.
In a 17th Century biography, Forcellino comes across
an astonishing description.
Carafa is described as the greatest, most glorious
and pitiless persecutor of heresy in Italy
and the greatest, most glorious and pitiless persecutor
of the most important group of Italian heretics,
that of Reginald Pole and Vittoria Colonna.
Carafa came from an illustrious and noble Neapolitan family.
He had personal designs on the Papacy and saw in Pole
his main competitor.
Their destinies would become closely intertwined.
They become Cardinals at exactly the same time.
They both aspire at some point in their career
to very high status. Carafa I think much more actively
than Pole did. But other than that they are from
very similar backgrounds, I think that’s very important.
They are a generation apart in age, and I think
that’s very important, cause Carafa assumed on some level
a degree of deference from Pole, that Pole was not
prepared to give him just because he was older.
So Carafa is a personality, I think it matters,
that his personality is not shall we say flexible.
Unlike Pole, who was open to Lutheran ideas,
Carafa considered Lutheran synonymous with Heretical.
Austere and rigid, he became the Spirituali’s fiercest enemy.
MUSIC
Carafa makes common cause with
the most conservative faction in Rome.
The ones who want to keep business absolutely as usual.
They have tremendous power. That’s a brilliant move.
Pole has poets and artists and people
who are not used to discipline.
So Carafa has an advantage there.
With Carafa out to destroy the Protestants and the Spirituali,
Michelangelo was caught in the crossfire.
Since 1536, the artist had been on salary
as the Vatican’s supreme architect, sculptor and painter.
In 1541, he finished the Last Judgement,
a fresco representing Christ’s Second Coming
for the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
But Carafa led an assault on the work,
declaring the masterpiece’s naked bodies
obscene and immoral, totally inappropriate
for a Christian chapel.
MUSIC
Michelangelo was devastated.
He wrote in anguish: “What judgement shall be
so barbarous as to deny that man’s foot is nobler
than his boot? And that his skin is nobler than
that of the sheep with which he covers himself?”
His sensibility was the essence of the Renaissance.
The focus was on man, not on the Church.
Fortunately for Michelangelo, Pope Paul the 3rd
immediately came to his defence.
He showed his support by offering the artist
another high-profile, Papal commission.
Despite the scandal over Michelangelo’s nudes,
Pope Paul III practically forced him
to decorate his private chapel,
the Pauline Chapel, where Michelangelo would paint
nude angels that are even more beautiful,
more sensual, than those in the Last Judgement.
Carafa denounced Michelangelo’s frescos as indecent,
but in truth, the nudity was only a secondary offence.
What Carafa and his fellow Conservatives really opposed
was the lack of concessions to the Church hierarchy.
There are no depictions of Popes or Bishops
in their ritual vestments.
Christ speaks directly to St. Paul.
Forcellino believes Michelangelo drew his inspiration
for the piece, from a passage that formed
the foundation of Protestant belief.
Christ says to Paul “whoever believeth in me shall be saved."
It’s not a stretch to assume Michelangelo knew the verse.
We know from his contemporaries that the artist
owned a bible, and since he didn’t read Latin,
his copy was likely the illegal Italian version.
The first translations were into German by Martin Luther,
but other editions, including the Italian, soon followed.
Possession of any bible by non-Clergy
was considered a crime against the Church.
In March of 1542, 40 years after he began,
Michelangelo finally dedicated himself to finishing
the tomb of Julius the 2nd.
MUSIC
But once again, he was caught up in the religious conflict.
That summer, Carafa went on the offensive,
convincing Paul the 3rd to reinstate the Inquisition
as a means of attacking Protestants,
and their sympathizers within the Church.
The Pope appointed Carafa Inquisitor General,
but initially gave him no funds,
a balancing act typical of his Papacy.
Carafa could attack the Protestants openly,
but he had to be more careful with the Spirituali,
since the Pope still held Cardinal Pole in high regard.
So Carafa bided his time, slowly gathering evidence
against Pole while using his prosecutorial powers
to go after less well protected reformers.
His first victim was Bernardino Ochino,
an itinerant preacher from Siena,
famous for the beauty and power of his sermons.
Ochino was a close friend of Vittoria Colonna,
and had a strong following throughout Italy.
Carafa summoned Ochino to Rome,
to justify some questionable themes in his sermons.
Fearing arrest, Ochino instead decided to head north,
towards safety in Protestant Switzerland.
Gonzaga saw him off at the frontier.
On the run, a scared but liberated
Ochino wrote to Colonna,
“I’ve decided to flee, as it is clear that in Rome
they want to reform the Church, starting with my death.
Now I can finally take off the mask and say the truth.”
Concerned about Colonna’s safety, Pole persuaded her
to hand the letter over to the Inquisition,
and dissociate herself from her friend in trouble.
MUSIC
She did so, but Ochino’s letter and flight
gave Carafa just the ammunition he needed
to build internal support for his crackdown
against Pole and the Spirituali.
The threat continued to build.
The Spirituali were forced underground,
where they continued to work on their reformist manifesto:
The Benefit of Christ’s Death.
The group met in Viterbo to prepare
the book for publication.
They printed 40,000 copies, although the manuscript
was already circulating widely among Italian reformers.
It’s written in pretty direct prose.
And it’s stuffed with quotations from
the fathers of the Church with a just slightly
off twist in the emphasis.
The crucial point about the emphasis
is that the institutional Church is not there at all.
The text embraced the Protestant view
that Faith in Christ’s sacrifice was the key to salvation.
Although Pole made sure that Good Works
were given some weight, the implication was that
the Church and its sacraments played no role
in the salvation of mankind.
It’s published anonymously of course
and it’s immediately targeted by the Inquisition,
which begins to hunt down the authors
and takes the book out of circulation.
Carafa declared it heretical and censored it.
Reginald Pole and Vittoria Colonna, suspected of being
among the publishers, were brought before
the Inquisition for interrogation.
BELL RINGING
MUSIC
Four hundred and fifty years later, Forcellino believes
there may still be records of the Inquisition proceedings
against the members of the Spirituali.
Many of the transcripts and files have been destroyed,
but in the Vatican Archives, he digs up a number
of letters from Pole and Colonna that had been
intercepted by Carafa’s spies.
MUSIC
One of these letters contains
an unexpected reference to Michelangelo.
Written by Vittoria Colonna, it mentions the 1543 meeting
at which the Spirituali prepared
their manifesto for publication.
The document clearly states that Michelangelo was in attendance.
The artist apparently brought one
of his drawings for Colonna.
His presence at such an important meeting
proves that Michelangelo not only shared his friends’ ideals,
he had direct access to the illegal Spirituali manifesto
at the very time he was completing
the tomb of Julius the 2nd.
To Forcellino, the historical evidence is adding up.
He believes he can see the influence
of the Spirituali religious ideas
in Michelangelo’s tribute to the Pope.
It’s this torch, this source of light in the hands
of the Active Life that goes right to the heart
of the devotion expressed in the Benefit of Christ’s Death.
In the group’s manifesto, the Spirituali reaffirmed
the Protestant belief that only Faith in Christ’s sacrifice
could open the doors to paradise.
But to try and placate the Church, they were careful
to say that Good Works such as charity were also important.
Good Works were the burning flames
that illuminated the true faith of the good Christian.
This figure representing good works,
which we see here holding a torch,
she doesn’t have the power to save but is able
to enlighten, to bring to light the power of faith.
Forcellino believes the Spirituali also inspired
Michelangelo’s unusual representation of the Pope.
The statue of the Pope, which seemed to me
inexplicable at the beginning, in the end it’s perfectly clear
in light of the ideas that this group
was cultivating and that they expressed
in the Benefit of Christ’s Death.
For Michelangelo this was the best
possible expression of the Papacy.
A Papacy that would distance itself from imperial grandeur
and finally dedicate all its energy
to the private and urgent meditation of faith.
Forcellino thinks the flaws in the Moses
can also be explained by the Spirituali influence.
Supporting his earlier deductions,
he finds a record from an anonymous source
close to Michelangelo, that the artist had re-carved
the statue at the last minute
to turn its head to the left.
This could explain the strange shoulder, beard, and leg.
We know Michelangelo was capable of doing this
because we can see it clearly in the Pietà Rondanini,
where Michelangelo repositioned the face
of the Madonna by 90 degrees.
MUSIC
But we didn’t know he’d done it on the Moses.
MUSIC
When Michelangelo first created the Moses in 1513,
the statue looked straight ahead,
towards the altar, where the parish Priest holds mass.
But decades later says Forcellino,
the artist no longer wanted Moses gazing
at the instruments of the Catholic Church
Christopher Frommel, acclaimed art historian
and Forcellino’s mentor, agrees.
He could have finished it like it was and be done with it.
In the original grand project it was supposed
to be one of several statues on the highest tier.
It now becomes the protagonist at a time
when Michelangelo has great doubts about
the official Church, and so he doesn’t have him
look towards the altar as we would expect;
he has him search for the light, he hasn’t found it yet
but he’s searching for the light,
for a direct contact with God.
By shifting the statue’s gaze away from the altar,
Michelangelo reinforced his belief
that man’s direct relationship with God
is what mattered, not the role of the Priests.
Forcellino is convinced that the artist transformed
a monument intended to celebrate a Pope,
into the political and religious manifesto of the Spirituali.
MUSIC
Pope Paul the 3rd, who had long protected
the Spirituali and Michelangelo,
even while giving Carafa power to pursue them, died in 1549.
Before he passed away, the Pope indicated
that Pole was his choice for succession to the Papacy.
But the Englishman was one vote short of a majority.
We are still in time to avoid a traumatic solution
to Europe’s religious crisis, but that hope is dashed
by Cardinal Carafa, who intervenes during
the Conclave saying he has proof of Pole’s heresy.
LOUD BANG
The proof is Pole’s involvement in the publication
of The Benefit of Christ’s Death.
MUSIC
Pole was defeated.
The Spirituali’s dream of reforming the Church was dashed.
MUSIC
Then, in 1555, Carafa himself became Pope,
and the Inquisition became a priority for the Church.
One of Carafa’s first decisions
was to suspend Michelangelo’s pension.
The artist was now isolated and alone.
Vittoria Colonna had died
under mysterious circumstances a few years earlier.
Reginald Pole had fled to England.
His allies secured him a position as Papal Ambassador,
but Carafa repeatedly tried to extradite him
and put him on trial.
Like Michelangelo, Ercole Gonzaga
was intimidated into silence.
The names of practically all the Spirituali
made their way into the Inquisition registry,
and some of Michelangelo’s closest friends were imprisoned.
MUSIC
Forcellino believes the artist realized
that the reformist symbolism he had carved
into the Pope’s tomb, done at a time when
the Spirituali movement was strong,
could now cost him his life. He needed a way to mask
the true meaning of his work.
At this point anything that openly expressed
the ideas of the Spirituali becomes dangerous.
The tomb, which set them in stone,
born of the enthusiasm that these ideas would win the day,
becomes deeply compromising.
And this explains why a year later,
dictating his biography to Condivi,
Michelangelo gives that absurd and misleading description.
Michelangelo’s words carefully concealed
the true meaning of the sculptures.
The torch and the laurel crown, which Forcellino believes
originally symbolized the Spirituali notion
that Charity was important but could not save,
became a flower garland and a mirror, representing prudence.
The references to prudence were undoubtedly double-edged.
Prudent religious thought for all, and prudent actions
for himself given his dangerous circumstances.
Incredibly, the artist's cover-up
held for four and a half centuries.
MUSIC
Michelangelo lived the rest of his life
in a climate of fear and intimidation.
As Pope, Carafa threatened to destroy the Last Judgement.
And the Church later veiled his nudes
in both the Sistine and Pauline Chapels.
MUSIC
But perhaps fittingly, even as Carafa tried
to tear Michelangelo down, others within
the Church were still asking him to help
protect the Papacy’s image.
He was called upon to salvage the Basilica of St. Peter,
which had been under construction since 1506.
The enormous Basilica was to be a living symbol
of the unassailable power of the Popes.
But the construction had gotten mired
in corruption and scandal,
and the Church believed Michelangelo was the only
one who could restore order and get the project finished.
So under Carafa’s oppressive rule,
the artist struggled with this last, overwhelming obligation.
In his final days, Michelangelo also worked
on a sculpture for his own tomb.
He portrayed himself as Nicodemus:
The man who visited Christ on the cross at night,
because he didn’t have the courage
to worship him openly by day.
In this very personal sculpture, the artist clearly
lamented his own torment at being unable
to express his true faith in public.
MUSIC
As Michelangelo felt death approaching,
he burned almost all the drawings
and letters he had left.
He wanted no one to know his most intimate thoughts.
Comforted by his bible, he died in bed
on February 18th 1564.
His body was shepherded out of town under bails of hay.
MUSIC
In Florence, Michelangelo’s native city,
hundreds of his fellow citizens gathered in tears
to pay homage to the man they called the Divine Artist.
Only in death did Michelangelo finally escape
the city at the heart of his inner turmoil.
He spent a lifetime serving and memorialising
the Church as a loyal and devout Catholic.
But all the while, the remarkable artist,
sculpture and architect was struggling for the courage
to openly represent
what he believed the Church should become.