Michelangelo: The Making of David (Part 2)

0:02Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm James Fox. And I'm Alistair Souk. A mighty giant, stark naked and white-skinned, stands still, biding his time, waiting for the moment to pounce. His muscles are tensed, his sling loaded, adrenaline coursing through his dilated veins. He glances towards his adversary, brow furrowed with determination. He is ready to strike. Now, that, Alistair, is my very brief description of Michelangelo's enormous statue of David, which he completed in 1504 when he was just 29 years old.

0:45It's probably, don't you think, the most famous sculpture, at least in Western art history? It's one of those works of art where it's actually just really hard to see it, to look at it. It's so familiar. It's just there hardwired, you know, like your parents' faces or something in your brain. I wondered whether, I mean, there is this sort of... Look, I've been toying whether or not to say this. I need to confess something, James. You don't like it?

1:14No, no, no, no, no. We'll come on to... I mean, I have some sort of things that I may raise when we do discuss it, but I haven't actually seen it. Oh. So there is this... You haven't seen it? Does that invalidate this entire podcast? Have you not been to Florence and all your... Should I get my coat? That's the podcast done. We're just calling it an end. This can't continue from here. I basically am reminded of there's this famous literary parlor game called Humiliation that takes place in the David Lodge novel, Changing Places.

1:45And in that case, it's a group of people, they keep on trading literary works that they haven't read. And you have to keep on this one upmanship. And one academic eventually admits that he's never read Hamlet. And is promptly fired. And I'm slightly concerned. Hence my trepidation bringing this up. I mean, this is because, you know, this is obvious stuff. But what you see in... I have been to Florence. And I have been to the principal piazza where you see Michelangelo's David or you think it is.

2:11But of course, famously, it's a reproduction. Because the marble sculpture you described was moved in the 19th century to the academia. And to my disgrace... Well, that will explain why you were so reluctant to do this series for so long. I hadn't realised. What a shame on you, Alistair. Well, anyway, at least you have seen where it was originally intended to be displayed. So it was originally intended to be shown there. Well, I'm hoping that I can persuade you of...

2:39the beauty and the brilliance of the original. And hopefully that will prompt you next time you're in Florence to step inside the academia and to see it in that space. But it's an incredible work of art from this remarkable period in his career. I just thought we should do a brief recap to remind listeners where we've got to. So Michelangelo was born in Tuscany in 1475. grew up, I think it's very important, playing in the stone quarries just outside of Florence.

3:07His father wanted him to have a real job so he could support the family. Michelangelo didn't want to. He ended up taking an apprenticeship to a painting studio to the Ghirlandios. Then he enters through, by real luck actually, the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was the de facto ruler of Florence. But when Lorenzo's family, the Medici, are ousted from the city, Michelangelo eventually gets down to Rome and it's in Rome he makes his breakthrough work, the Pietà.

3:35And this is the story of what happens next. And one thing I should say here is that Michelangelo's life at this stage is so unbelievably eventful that, spoiler alert, this episode will cover just nine years of his life from his mid-twenties to his mid-thirties. And this is the beginning of what's sort of seen classically as the great heroic story. phase. So we hadn't quite reached that point last time because the Pietà with which we ended the previous episode still in some ways was a throwback in terms of art.

4:07But the David is a throw forward. It's a real hinge. It's a turning point, isn't it? And it ushers in this new heroism in Michelangelo's sculpture. Yes, this is an episode about peak Michelangelo and it's full of incredible stories. This then is part two of our four-part series on the life and work of Michelangelo. . Michelangelo has just completed the Pietà in Rome in 1499. He's famous. He stays in Rome for a few years after completing the Pietà, obviously hoping that he might get some commissions from other cardinals, perhaps even from the big daddy, from the Pope himself.

4:51They're all going to Gobbo, aren't they? Yeah, but they've all gone to Gobbo. So basically he doesn't get any of the commissions that he's hoping for. So in 1501, he returns to Florence. Now, a little bit of social context. Florence has changed again. Some listeners may remember that in the previous episode, we said how Florence, which had been ruled really for many decades by the Medici family, the Medici were ousted in the 1490s, in 1494, and Florence gets taken over by this friar called Savonarola.

5:24And he's very charismatic. you know, preaching to thousands of people. But essentially he becomes almost like a second tyrant, doesn't he, within Florence? He does, and it's not a propitious or decent environment for artists to operate. Artworks are being burnt on these bonfires of the vanities. But ultimately Savonarola comes to a pretty sticky end. He falls out with the Pope. Obviously the Pope's not happy with what he's doing. And ultimately in 1498, Savonarola is executed.

5:54And a new regime replaces Savonarola. And Florence becomes this rather civic, moderate, peaceful, quite modern republic. And it comes to be ruled by this man. I really like him, actually. It's interesting you say that. I don't know why. I've always warmed him as well. It's partly because I like his title. Yes, the Gon... Do you want to pronounce it? Gon Faloniere. Gon Faloniere, a man called Piero Sodorini, who is a... He's actually a very... a humane, moderate individual.

6:28He's a sort of technocrat. He's a kind of, I think of him as a sort of John Major figure. Oh, I like him less now. Oh, okay. Well, he's just a relatively boring, but quite decent man who believes in institutions, believes in civic virtues, just wants things to be nice and stable. Yeah, sorry, that's very unfair. He was an But he's in power, isn't he? Sodorini's in power for about 10 years. Sodorini comes to power. And the whole ambition for Sodorini is to re-establish Florence as a kind of nice, stable, civilised, civic-minded republic.

7:00And one of the aspects of this is he wants to start commissioning artworks again. There haven't been many artworks commissioned by Savonarola for obvious reasons. He thought art was luxury. Yeah. But Sardarini wants to commission public art on a civic basis. So rather than the art that was commissioned privately by the Medici, he wants to commission public art. And one of the big projects that he commissions is this enormous statue of... David. Absolutely.

7:28There's a big backstory. There is a big backstory. I mean, what's fascinating about what you've just said is that quite explicitly, art is being harnessed to politics at this moment. And that's the vision of Sodorini and the people in charge in Florence. But of course, this particular block of marble, which you're referring to and which eventually Michelangelo would carve to become the David, it was not intended at first decades earlier to be a piece of political art at all, was it?

7:57No. So the story of this block of marble, a very famous story in the history of art, and it goes back actually before Michelangelo was even born. Right. I mean, it actually, the whole project dates back to the 1460s. When there was a plan, remember, right in the centre of Florence, there's an enormous cathedral, the Duomo, with the great dome designed by Brunelleschi. Could be quite a good episode, actually. That would be brilliant. And there was a decision in the 1460s, a few decades after the dome was completed, to put these very big statues on the buttresses around the dome.

8:33And the idea was that one of these enormous statues would be of David. And so in the 1460s, again, 10 years before Michelangelo was even born, They quarry this enormous chunk of marble from the Carrara Marble Quarry and they bring it at great expense over to Florence and they install it in the cathedral works yard in the centre of the town. And they commission an artist called Agostino di Duccio to try to carve a figure of David out of it. Doesn't go so well.

9:02Doesn't go very well. The block of marble is too big. There are flaws in the marble. Duccio's not really good enough. And so after a year, I think, or so, he's sacked. And the work is not even half finished. He's made some progress, but very little. Yeah. I think one of the things that was said is that in this sort of backstory to the block of marble, a hole had been hacked out in between the legs in a very awkward way. And there was this sense that this block, which comes to be known as Il Gigante, the giant, has been bungled.

9:32So there's this sort of sense that it's been, you know, as you say, hugely expensive to bring this thing here, all this promise, all this sense of optimism about what amazing work of art could be created. And it's been a total botched job. And it's a bit embarrassing. And it's just there. What are we going to do with this? Yeah. And they leave it there, just in the cathedral works yard for another 10 years. So it's lying there for 10 years untouched.

9:54And then 10 years later, they think the mid-1470s, Michelangelo still might not even be born by this stage. They commission another artist. They think hopefully this guy's going to be able to fix it. So they get a guy called Antonio Rossellino. And they get him to have a go. And he also fails. Because again, it's an enormous piece of stone. It's partly cut out, as you say, in an awkward position. There is a floor running right through the middle of the marble.

10:18It's a very difficult job. So he has a go. He also fails. So do you think the young Michelangelo, when he's growing up, obviously he loves sculpture, he must be aware of this specific block. Yeah, because the block is in the centre of the town. It's not disguised. It's right there lying on its side in the centre of Florence. He would have passed it regularly on his journeys through the town and everyone would talk about it. It was known, as you say, as Il Gigante.

10:43It was a kind of, you know, it was a white elephant in the heart of Florence. And he's so ambitious from the off. You just wonder whether already, as a sort of scheming, enterprising young artist, he's thinking, you know, one day, there's one person who can slay that giant, who can overcome the giant. It's going to be me. It's a good way of putting it, slaying the giant, actually. We're considering what the story that it ends up being is. And so the marble has now, two artists have failed at the marble.

11:12And so this block, Il Gigante, is still lying there in the cathedral works yard for everyone to see, like a kind of abandoned HS2 station or something like that. And 25 years pass. So basically a generation, a lifetime by the standard passes and the marble is untouched. And eventually, after Sodorini comes back to power and the Republic is starting to think, you know what, we need to commission some public art. There is a decision. Let's have a go at this again.

11:44Question for you, James. I've never quite got to the bottom of, at that moment, a Sodorini and the people who are saying, let's awaken the sleeping giant... Yes. Are they intending that the sculpture should go on the Duomo, or do they from the off know that they want to place it somewhere else? Well, I think that's an interesting question, because there are debates about the location later on. I think there is still probably an aspiration to put it up on a buttress, but they soon discover that's not going to happen.

12:11So... They make a decision, early 1500s, right, we're going to have another stab at this. And what's really interesting is Michelangelo's father, Lodovico, who is always on manoeuvres, always trying to find money, he writes a letter to Michelangelo, who's still down in Rome, and he says, hey, Mikey. Yeah. You might want to get back. Come on back. The David's up and running. There's going to be a big commission. It's going to be a lot of money. So that's one of the reasons why Michelangelo hurries back to Florence.

12:41And duly, he has given the commission because, I mean, who else could do this? I mean, there have been tales told in Florence of what Michelangelo has achieved down with the Pietà in Rome. He's the only guy who's capable of pulling this off. But don't you think this is another moment where you can see that charisma, that X factor that he had himself personally, even if he was tremendously difficult, as we've already alluded to, in that he can swiftly persuade powerful people, patrons, to give him work?

13:11Which, in this case, maybe it would have been... I'm sure it still would have been competitive. I mean, you can imagine that some artists would be like, there's no way I want to go and touch that. This is a poison chalice, if you like. But somehow he's managing to persuade people... very quickly, take a chance on me. And they do take a chance. He gets offered six gold florins a month, which is a lot of money. So this sculpture will make him wealthy.

13:33And in September 1501, he signs the contract and begins work. Do you know the first thing he does? Classic Michelangelo. No, he does. Tell me. First thing he does, he builds a wall around the marble block so no one can see what he's doing. He doesn't like being overlooked, does he, when he's working? He's so paranoid. He's such a conspiracy theorist and a very secretive man that the first money he gets from this commission is to build a wall so no one can see.

14:01Do you think he's scared that people are... How are they going to rip off his ideas with a block of this size? Surely it's more to do with just that sensitivity of... creativity is a weird thing and he obviously feels put off his game if you've constantly got people coming in checking commenting he just wants to be left in peace yeah i get it that seems yeah not so bad that's probably the more accurate interpretation maybe i'm too uh unfair on him but anyway he works obsessively from dawn till dusk for more than two years chipping and hacking away at this marble until eventually he's pretty much finished um Have you heard the story of the nose?

14:39Ah, this is rather nice. This is a story, actually it's very close to my heart, because when I was at primary school, we had a head teacher, a headmaster, a wonderful man called David McPherson, who died only a couple of years ago. And almost every assembly he told the story of the nose. It was one of his most favourite stories. Well, you must channel him in his honour. Yeah. OK, I will channel him for this. And this is in honour of my old headmaster, David McPherson.

15:04But basically, the story is told by Vasari that Michael Ainslow has virtually finished David And Sodderini, John Major, he turns up at the works yard and looks at the sculpture and he says, oh, this is fantastic, Michael Lynch. You've done a superb job. However, may I make one comment? Michael Lynch says, yes. And he says, I just think maybe the nose is a little bit too big. And Michelangelo knows the nose isn't too big. But anyway, he decides to humour Sodorini.

15:35So he takes a handful of marble dust and his chisel, climbs up the ladder, and he pretends to hack away at the nose, releasing the marble dust from his hand as he goes. And when he comes down, obviously nothing has changed at all. He says, so, Sodorini, what do you think now? And Sodorini says, oh, it's improved immeasurably. This is perfect. Yes. So that's the story that was always told to me by David McPherson. It really crystallises several things.

16:01One, Michelangelo's complete arrogance when it comes to it. He will not be told. Secondly, his total suppleness when it comes to patrons, because he also recognises that he needs to humour Soderini's remarks and he does so in a very ingenious way. And I think third, and it's related to that second point, the mythology of Michelangelo is he's always kind of sticking two fingers up at his supposed betters. Yes, absolutely true. But anyway, he completes the sculpture.

16:31And when it's finally revealed, the David, people are astonished. And this, to go back to the thing you mentioned earlier about whether it goes on the buttress, there is a question about, right, what do we do with the sculpture? You see, I find this whole part of the David story fascinating because my understanding is, and this is before it's even finished, there's a recognition that there's something great that has to be displayed. Yes. And there's an assembly which is convened of officials, but also artists, including...

17:00Yes. It is one of the most incredible documents in the history of art. Yeah. Because in January 1504... a committee is formed to discuss where to put this enormous sculpture. And there are about 30 men attend this meeting, including Leonardo da Vinci, as we call him, Botticelli, Filipino Lippi, all the great and the good of the Florentine art world are there. And we have the minutes of the meeting. It's astonishing. They're all saying, well, I think it should go here and I think it should go there.

17:34Well, specifically with Leonardo, we know which position he favoured. Yes. And the fascinating thing to me about this whole chapter is inevitably you have rivals between big egos, major talents all together who have skin in the game. And it's quite possible they don't have Michelangelo's best interests at heart when it comes to its positioning. Leonardo wants it to go in the lodger. So in the centre of Florence, you've got the Piazza della Signoria, which is right in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

18:03It's the main square, isn't it, in Florence? There's also a lodger there, which is a sort of open courtyard. Leonardo thinks it should go in there. Other people think it should go on the step. Botticelli thinks it should go at the steps of the cathedral. Other people think it should go in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Yes. And a decision is made that it should go in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. I think there's a parapet, isn't there, called the Ringiera.

18:28Yeah. I think it's a disastrous choice. Right. You've seen David in its outdoor location. It's dwarfed. They should have listened to Leonardo. They really should, because it would have looked fantastic. Framed in the lodger. The shelter in there do look gorgeous. But it doesn't look good where it is. But anyway, the decision is made that it will go in front of the Palazzovici. And remember, this is public art. It's relatively propagandistic in function.

18:50It's trying to promote particular values of Florence. And so there is a rationale for it politically... in terms of its civic identity, but aesthetically it doesn't look good. But you see, it's interesting because you've just been quite charitable towards Leonardo. You're sort of suggesting that he had his aesthetic interests at heart and he's suggesting this is the place where your wonderful work of art would look best. But of course you could argue it the other way.

19:16That Leonardo, who's much older, he's got this new young rival, and they're about to, shortly we'll find out, they're going to be competing on some other works of art quite explicitly. He's recognising that the powers that be in Florence are privileging Michelangelo to such an extent that they want to place the David by the palace itself. Yes. And perhaps he's trying to undermine that as an outcome. I'm sure you're probably right, but the result visually isn't all that successful.

19:48But this is an amazing thing. In May 1504, the sculpture has to be moved from the works yard, the cathedral works yard, to the location in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. I'm just going to read, if I may, a little extract from the diary of Luca Landucci, which is quite a remarkable passage. This is what it says. On the 14th of May 1504, the marble giant was taken from the opera, which is the worksyard. It came out at midnight, and they broke the wall above the gateway enough to let it pass.

20:20That night some stones were thrown at the Colossus to harm it. Watch had to be kept at night, and it made way very slowly, bound as it was upright, suspended in the air with enormous beams and a complicated mechanism of ropes. It took four days to reach the piazza, arriving on the 18th at the hour of 12. More than 40 men were employed to make it go, and there were 14 rollers joined beneath it which were progressively transferred. Afterwards, they worked until the 8th of June 1504 to place it on the platform where the Judith used to stand.

20:55The Judith was removed and set up upon the ground within the palace. The said giant was the work of Michelagnolo. Bonarotti. It's a very powerful evocative thing. The translation I've got refers to the fact the logs were greased. Greased, OK. But the thing that I find fascinating about that document is, first of all, it reminds us of the ingenuity required to move something just so big. And actually, funnily enough, if you read Vasari, he's almost as excited by the schemes and mechanisms and the pulleys and the systems that are created to transport the block as...

21:31as he is by the sculpture itself, seemingly. So the other aspect about that passage, which is so important, is the fact that people are throwing stones, because it's a reminder of how politicised art has become, which I think requires a little bit of unpacking. But... Clearly, in Florence at this moment, you have different factions and the Medici had been in power for some time, but then they were driven out of town. You then had Savonarola. But you still have, I guess, people who would we call them traditionalists, people who are still supporting the Medici cause.

22:02And eventually the Medici come back and are reinstated in Florence. And that's important for later parts of Michelangelo's career. And there is a sense that already at this moment, before the sculpture has found its final resting place for the next few centuries, that at this moment it is seen by Michelangelo's contemporaries as a political work of art, which is about slaying the tyranny of the Medici. Therefore, it symbolises the Republic. And consequently, those people who are not so pleased with the Republic and would quite like the Medici to come back, when they see it, they are literally chucking stones at this sculpture.

22:37Yeah. It's really interesting. Well, let's talk a little bit about the sculpture itself. Let's take a few minutes to do that. I think, first of all, let's just tell the story of David. I mean, some people, of course, will know that story, but it's a biblical tale from the book of Samuel. And basically, it's a moment in which the Israelites are at war. with the Philistines, who are a sort of ancient pagan people who are living around modern-day Gaza.

23:02So it's rather contemporary parallels going on there, Israel fighting a war in Gaza. The Philistines have a mighty warrior in their army called Goliath. terrifying, formidable individual. And every single day he is challenging the Israelite army to send someone to fight him. And no one dares to do it. The soldiers don't want to get involved. And one day a little boy, a shepherd boy called David, he comes to the battlefield, simply I think to give his brothers a sandwich or something.

23:31And he says, well, I'll fight him. And the people say, you can't fight him. You're a little boy. And he's enormous. David says, I can do it. And they said, well, have some armour. I don't need armour. David goes up to Goliath. And he has a little sling. And he loads his sling with a stone. And Goliath starts ridiculing him, saying, you little boy, you can't take me on. At which point, David puts a rock in his sling. He chucks the rock. The rock lands right into Goliath's forehead.

23:56and kills Goliath. And then he goes up and he takes Goliath's sword and he beheads him. And the Philistines run away and the Israelites win the war. So that's the story of David. Most artists previously... had depicted the moment after David's triumph, hadn't they? Which is itself fascinating because it's a little bit like when we discussed the Pieta in the earlier part. Michelangelo deviates from earlier precedents in terms of the treatment of that subject.

24:27So what you would often find in a David sculpture before Michelangelo is you would see the sword, Goliath's sword, you would see David posing with the decapitated head of Goliath, probably at his feet. And you'd have artistically something very interesting going on, which is this contrast between sort of beautiful youth. Yes. Who's looking quite introspective. It's the moment of victory, but he's not really that pumped up. He's sort of almost quite contemplative, possibly leaning on the sword and then grisly, monstrous, oversized, human, decapitated head at his feet.

24:59And you would have a sense of the victory, the surprising against the odds victory of this young hero with whom the Florentines identified as seeing themselves as kind of underdog. Michelangelo doesn't do that in the sculpture, does he? I mean, you don't see any decapitated head at all for one good reason. This is the moment before he's actually thrown that rock and killed Goliath. I think it's a masterstroke. And Michelangelo often does this. He chooses not the moment after, but as you say, the moment before.

25:29And by choosing the moment before, he fills this sculpture with pregnant tension, with suspense, with what's going to happen. And that, I think, is absolutely brilliant. I mean, that's what you're seeing. You described the furrowed brow. Possibly he's turning his head and you could even imagine this is the first glimpse. He really sort of possibly locks eyes with Goliath. And it's important, he's got his left hand is gesturing up at his shoulder.

25:55It's often quite hard to see when you see it in a photographic reproduction of the sculpture, but the sling is resting on the shoulder and there's this thing in his body, which is entirely nude, where it's part tense, part tense, part relax and it's as though he's about to wind up yes to start unleashing this onslaught do you know what for me the moment is you know there's this trope in hollywood cinema in westerns in particular yes where you get the the hero the goody and the baddie and they meet each other and the goody walks away and as he's walking away the baddie says are you chicken yeah and then and then you know the the goody stops and then you you you cut to the close-up and then there's this And he looks around and he says, what did you call me?

26:41That is this sculpture. And once you see this sculpture through that lens, you cannot ever unsee it. But it's fascinating you say that in part because there are some aspects of the sculpture that we should discuss. And it's a very classicising work of art. It's a classical nude. It's a heroic male nude. It's completely wrong. Yes, but some of the peculiarities are, one, the enormous, weirdly big right hand, but secondly, the head. It does have this totally different spirit to that sort of pagan antiquity, the kind of sculpture that would have been excavated at that moment.

27:17Sort of 1980s haircut, in a way. I mean, it's just very, very sort of permed. Permed. Absolutely permed. and oversized. But a lot of attention goes there, which is why I think your analogy with the close-up is brilliant, because you are focusing very much on that. That gives the drama. It gives the animation, in a sense, of the sculpture. To go back to what I was saying earlier, there are a lot of... liberties that Michelangelo has taken with this work.

27:42So a few things that he's got wrong in some ways. First of all, David is a boy, and this is not a boy. I mean, he's clearly gone through puberty. We can see that. He is not small, but he's shown an enormous scale. He is nude. I mean, there was no evidence that David was nude and he wouldn't have been nude. But... And finally, David was Jewish and this figure is uncircumcised. So there are a great deal of inaccuracies here. I mean, there's even, I came across when I was sort of reading up before we were going to record this episode.

28:15There's a Swiss art historian called Heinrich Wolfflin. He has these brilliant words, which he described Michelangelo's David as a hobbledehoy, which means a clumsy or awkward youth. And I think there's something to that. There is a slight oddness to the sculpture. Yes. And it's surprising because, as we said at the start, this is so well known, it would be easy in our minds to just see this as shorthand for the apogee of Western male beauty. Here it is.

28:44But it kind of isn't. It's much weirder than that. Why do you think that? You mentioned the size of the head and the size of the right hand. Do you think that's just a mistake? It is possible that the constraints of the bloc are dictating certain things that he has to do. I like to think, though, that the head and the hand, they're what give it the sort of, how would you describe it, the surging new Renaissance self-confident power. Because if you didn't have those aspects, what you have is a pastiche of an ancient work of art.

29:16Totally just a sort of, you know, classicising thing where the technical term that's used to describe this particular pose, which you often find in ancient statues, is contrapposto. And it's this pose which... animates a sculpture. So instead of having someone just staring with their weight evenly distributed on two legs, all of the weight is on one leg and then it means that the other leg is relaxed and you have this kind of play of tension and relaxation in the muscles in the pose, which is then played through in his abdomen, in his torso.

29:48And he completely understands that, looking at ancient sculpture. But if you did just have that, you might just have something which feels a bit like the sleeping Cupid which has been lost. It's just a kind of, it's a fake antique work. But there's something here about a sense of, I don't know, surging deeper passions and emotions, which are conveyed by that almost monstrous carbuncle of a hand attached to the leg and the head with the huge hair.

30:15I mean, the hair itself is expressive. and it's that sense of expression that I think is announcing the new heroism you find in Michelangelo's art but it's the spirit of an age as well isn't it yeah I you know what I didn't used to like this sculpture I felt it was rather Caesar's palace do you know what I mean but then I've spent a lot of time standing in front of it and actually if you go to the academia I do encourage you to go to the academia Alistair if you go and you stand in front of this work and there's a bit of a trick and I encourage listeners if they're if they're going to the academia to do exactly this, if you stand in front of the David and you look up at his face and then as you're looking at his face, you walk around the sculpture, you don't take your eyes off his face, what you actually see is something truly amazing happen.

30:59You see the whole facial expression, the mood of the piece transform in front of your eyes. So you see this relatively placid, peaceful, innocent-looking boy suddenly become filled with joy. rage and formidable strength and terror. It's an extraordinary thing as you move around the sculpture. And how Michelangelo pulled that off, I do not know. It is, I think, a justly famous work. It's one of the most famous sculptures now, isn't it? I mean, you see it in adverts and films, everything all over the world.

31:29I mean, that's why it has become Caesar's Palace, because the definition of kitsch is you're ripping off great works of art. It's so reproduced. It's so familiar. And it's actually quite hard for us as modern viewers to not see it through that prism. You know, think of all the different contexts as well. This block was originally created for a cathedral. It doesn't end up in a cathedral. It ends up in public display as a political work of art. It's been ripped off by popular culture endlessly.

31:53And of course, now today, for those of us who are fortunate enough or have done their homework properly and have seen it, it's in a museum, a completely different context again. Yeah. Well, I mean, one thing is certain, it's an extraordinary achievement. It would be the climax of any artist's career. But remember at this stage in 1504, Michelangelo's still in his 20s. He's still a young man. He's still got another 60 years or so of work ahead of him.

32:18But I think it's quite clear that he's now established as a towering figure in Florentine art. There is only one man to match him. We've mentioned him very briefly, but we'll talk about him more after the break. A reminder that if you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time. And if you're enjoying this episode, please consider following Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.

32:59Welcome back to Stories of Art. We're in 1504. Michelangelo is the talk and the toast of Florence. But he's not a particularly comfortable celebrity, is he, Alistair? And I thought that now he's a proper adult, we should probably spend a minute or two discussing the kind of character he is and painting a little picture of him. I think the first thing to say is his appearance. He's quite short, even by those standards. He's five foot two. stocky, muscular.

33:31We know the colour of his eyes. What colour of his eyes? Horn-coloured eyes, flecked blue and yellow. Ah, well, that's lovely. He had a sparse beard. A sparse beard? That's all I've got on his appearance. Well, what about the nose? The nose is very famous. Well, the nose... I can't believe we didn't bring this up in the last episode. No, we should have done. There's a wonderful anecdote. Partly I love this because there's just a phrase that gets used, which I think is so evocative.

33:54But if we think back to his youth, we discussed this in the previous part. Michelangelo was at this wonderful academy, the garden of San Marco that was overseen by Lorenzo the Magnificent. There was a sculptor, Bertoldo, who was possibly his teacher. And there are these wonderful works of antiquity. There are paintings. And this is where Michelangelo is schooled. There were other artists in this academy. And there was one artist called Pietro Torrigiano, who's probably quite familiar, in fact, to a British audience, at least, because he does work in England.

34:26In Westminster Abbey. He creates the tomb, the monument to Henry VII and his Queen, which is in Westminster Abbey, sort of bringing the Renaissance over to this country, in part. And they're both there at this academy in Florence in, what would this be, in around about 1490? Yeah. About, yes, I guess, 1490. And to begin with, they're quite friendly, but there's a sense of also being rivals. And the way that supposedly Torrigiano talks about what happened next, we have supposedly, these are his words, right?

34:57Later recollections. He refers to this Buonarroti and I, obviously referring to Michelangelo, we used to go along together when we were boys to study in Masaccio's chapel in the Church of the Carmine. So studying great artists in Masaccio, there's sort of precedent interesting in itself that they're actually going to look at earlier artists. And that's the important part of their training. Buonarroti had the habit of making fun of anyone else who was drawing there.

35:21And one day he provoked me so much that I lost my temper more than usual. And clenching my fist gave him such a punch on the nose that I felt the bone and cartilage crush like a biscuit. I love that, like a biscuit. So that fellow will carry my signature till he dies. And he did. He absolutely did. He did. So Michelangelo had a flat and bent nose for the rest of his life, defining feature of him. Do you think this justifies his paranoia? I mean, very early on, he was smacked in the face.

35:51I mean, definitely suggests that he had a difficult, provocative temperament and could rub people up the wrong way. Yes, I think he absolutely did run rugby people up the wrong way. So he looked a bit like a rugby player, so a front row rugby player in that sense. He was also filthy. So his father said to him, Michael Angel, whatever you do, never wash. Right. He hardly ever changed his clothes, even by the standards of the day. Do we know why he passed on this advice?

36:15I don't know. I think it was, you know, God knows why. But anyway, what we do is he never washed. He very rarely washed, very rarely changed his clothes. His biographer Condivi, have you read this? He said... He often slept in his clothes and in the boots, which he was always worn. And he has sometimes gone so long without taking them off, but then the skin came off like a snake's with the boots. So gross. Disgusting. You see, that really puzzled me.

36:41A couple of reasons. One, I wonder whether... Is there something about mortification of the flesh? Could there be on some level his faith is a factor in this? It's always like a hair shirt, but for boots? Well, that is interesting because I think one of the things we see throughout Michelangelo's life is that he was very greedy, just like his father, and was constantly trying to amass money. He was a kind of cowboy builder as well. He would often sign a deal and with no intention of completing it, would move on to the next commission to try and build up the kind of deposits.

37:13He got a lot of criticism for that. And in fact, some of the biographies were written to try and correct that sort of charge. Yeah, but although he was very greedy and money-minded, and his letters are just, he's obsessed with money. That's all he writes about. He's not a materialistic person at all. He's not interested in nice clothes. He's not interested in... I mean, this was the other thing I was going to say about the boots, is I wonder whether it's to do with part of the Michelangelo myth-making.

37:39Because, of course, you are right. He has this very simple Spartan existence throughout his life. But there is one detail about him in later life, which I find fascinating on this front, because he dresses in black doublets. And you might say, so what? Yeah. Black was a really expensive dye during the Renaissance. So it seems that certainly later in life, of course he could have spent way more on finery and sumptuary and looked at the dog's bollocks, whatever.

38:11But he is wearing clothes to signal status. And it does suggest on some level a materialism that perhaps runs slightly counter to that idea of here's the guy who sleeps in his clothes, he's so obsessed with his work, that's all he can think of. I don't know. I did not know about the Black Doublet, so I stand corrected. But it is true that when he dies, and we'll encounter this in a couple of episodes' time, he has very few possessions in the house.

38:34But the money that he is amassing is... effectively for the family. So he ends up bankrolling his brothers. He's got quite a few brothers, all of whom are useless. He's bankrolling his father, who doesn't really work. He's also useless. He's bailing them out. The father is often taking money out of Michelangelo's bank account and living high off the hog. So although he's constantly trying to accumulate money, most of that money is being used to support his family members.

39:04The thing that I find fascinating about the family stuff is it actually paints him in a different light. And I've so far in the course of this series have been rather mean about Michelangelo. Famously, he's prickly, he's taciturn, he can be suspicious of others, he's paranoid, he's quite introverted, he can be anxious, he's arrogant, he can be tempestuous. He just sounds like not a nice guy at all. On the other hand, he does through his life have a number of friendships with people in whom he is inspiring really deep, fierce loyalty.

39:36And later in life, when he's living in Rome, he has a kind of surrogate family with this wonderful servant. And the servant's called Urbino. I mean, since we're doing a bit on character now, I thought it might be OK to throw forward. But Urbino dies quite young. The old Michelangelo is really upset. And Urbino had a wife called Cornelia. She had a son, an elder son, who was named after Michelangelo. And Michelangelo even writes to her and says, I would like to take my namesake into my care.

40:07And he says, I'll cherish him in Florence with more affection than the children of my nephew. Leonardo. And it's like this little insight into his own... because of course, whether he was celibate, we don't quite know. But despite telling his nephew, Leonardo, to marry and further the line of the family, he never marries. He doesn't have children. But he has this little surrogate family. It's quite sweet. Yes, he was greedy, but also generous simultaneously.

40:32But as you say, very difficult personality. He had some very, very close friendships, especially later on in his life. But he also has a lot of enemies. Yeah, he does. One of those enemies, or at least we should say rivals, in this period, in this heroic phase in his career, is Leonardo. Ah! Some people call him Leonardo da Vinci. And so I think we should have a little bit of fun with this relationship. So Leonardo, I think you've mentioned it already, he's significantly older than Michelangelo.

40:59So we're in the period straight after David has been made in the early 1500s. Michelangelo by this stage is, what, 29, 30? Yeah. Leonardo is in his 50s. They could not be more different, could they? Well, both from Florence, it's important to say. But then, and actually, interestingly, both make their names away from Florence. Yes. So Leonardo spends a lot of time in Milan working for Ludovico Sforza e Lomoro, the swarthy one, the ruler of Milan.

41:28And that's where Leonardo paints his Last Supper. Michelangelo, of course, we've established, actually makes his name in Rome rather than in Florence. I mean, Vasari speaks about, what's the phrase he uses, this strong resentment between them. How do you pronounce it? Do you know how to do it? I don't know. What's the word? The word is S-D-E-G-N-O. So this strong resentment. So there is a sense of rivalry despite the age gap. But there is this incredible moment in the history of art where in 1504, when Michelangelo is finishing the David, and we've already established that Leonardo is in town, having been in Milan, he's come back to Florence, and he's part of that committee to work out where the David should be placed.

42:11At the same moment, a young Raphael turns out. I know. You have all of the, well, almost all of the... The turtles in place, in situ, at one time, all looking at each other's work. And that's hugely influential. And it's fascinating. We don't have time to get into it in this, but it really is interesting to see in drawings, studies, compositional works. You can see the influences. You can see a younger Raphael. He is literally drawing the David. He's drawing other works by Michelangelo and Leonardo.

42:41Oh, yeah, he's stealing ideas. That's what Michelangelo thinks. Yeah, and he has a good point. I mean, the kind of, like, the more chattelways, he assimilates. Raphael assimilates. Not Raphael just plagiarises. But there is an element where he really does take. But there's such different personalities, Leonardo and Michelangelo. They are, they are. Leonardo is, he's very good looking. He's suave. He's urbane. He's well-dressed. He's well-groomed.

43:04Part of his big shtick is to prove that artists can be gentlemen, that artists can mix and be a great personality at the dinner table. He would be fantastic at a dinner party, actually, Leonardo. Yeah. It's why he loves painting. He privileges painting more than sculpture. Because sculpture is messy and noisy and you need to be someone like Michelangelo who enjoys spending many months in the quarries at Carrara sleeping in his clothes. That is not Leonardo's bag at all.

43:27You can be dressed in a really beautiful outfit and paint. And he actually says that. Yes, he does. And have you heard the little story about Dante? There's a great little story. So Leonardo is in a piazza in Florence. And, you know, he's looking great. He's with some very well-connected people. And he's talking to them about Dante, the great Italian poet. And then in the background, the other side of the piazza, he sees Michelangelo staggering away, covered in marble dust, maybe in a filthy black doublet.

43:56Yes. And he says, oh, Michelangelo, come over here. Come over here, my boy. And so Michelangelo staggers over to him. And he says, we're talking about Dante. I'm sure you have very strong views about Dante. To which Michelangelo says, aren't you the guy who tried to cast a horse in Milan and didn't do it? Ah, yes. Mic drop, walks away. Leonardo left incredibly embarrassed. So there was this great project in Milan to cast an equestrian monument to the Sforzas.

44:22And Leonardo, he had this gig. He did a lot of work on it. It never quite came about. And Michelangelo is mocking him for that, which is weird as well, because Michelangelo, we haven't talked about this. He loved Italian poetry. He did actually know a lot about Dante. Exactly. He could have come in at that point and had a lot to say. He could have trumped him in another way, but instead he went for quite a blunt put-down. It's a low Trump blur, isn't it, really, rather than actually engaging in the subject.

44:50But, you know, it may be exaggerated, but I think there is no doubt that there was a rivalry between them. Artists were competing for a small number of commissions. They had to be rivals. And so in 1504, Alistair, soon after completing David, the Florentine authorities set both of these artists on collision course. So Leonardo has already been commissioned to paint a mural. for the Palazzo Vecchio, the building that David is in front of. So there's a big new council chamber in the 1490s, post-Medici rule.

45:26There's this big new council and it's so large they have to construct a new chamber, which is the kind of heart of political life in Florence. And that's the setting, isn't it, for this face-off. between Leonardo and Michelangelo. Because after Michelangelo has completed David, they said, well, why don't you do the one on the other side of the wall? So you've effectively got these two greatest artists of the time in Florence being set against each other.

45:48And so they both go off into different parts of the city. They're given working spaces as far apart as possible so they don't encounter each other. And they work away on these two cartoons, which are the full-size drawings that will be the basis for the murals. And they're both asked to do different battles, aren't they? So two important moments in Florentine history. One which is the one that Leonardo is going to depict or wants to depict, because, of course, we should say from the outset, neither mural gets that made.

46:19Neither is executed. It's incredible how influential these murals have been, given that they don't exist and never did. But Leonardo is representing the Battle of Anghiari, which was an important moment in Florentine military history, a victory for the Florentines. Against Milan, I think. Against Milan. And then Michelangelo, a little later, is meant to be commemorating the Battle of Cascina. Mm-hm. which was an earlier victory of the Florentines over, I think, the Pisans.

46:51Yes. The fascinating thing is that you can see these two contrasting artistic visions and approaches in the two different murals by Leonardo and Michelangelo. And Michelangelo does something which, again, is immensely wrong-footing because... I'm sorry to pause. It's a complicated story because we don't actually have the murals to look at. There are preparatory studies and there are copies by artists of the cartoons created by Leonardo and Michelangelo which allow us now to have a sense of what each composition would have been.

47:26Leonardo's composition... Military leaders on horseback in the middle of this great melee, contorted, twisted faces. That's what you're seeing, this great knot. He was a master and a brilliant artist of depicting horses. You see these horses in this knot of cavalrymen who are fighting. It's an incredibly modern image, actually, isn't it? Because, you know, we've done an episode on Jericho. It feels like something from that period. It feels like something Napoleonic, doesn't it?

47:53And it starts unbelievably dynamic. Yeah, it does. Michelangelo does something very different because he doesn't depict, at least in the surviving copies of the cartoon that we know about, he doesn't depict the battle itself. Instead, he's representing the Florentine soldiers lounging about on the banks of a river on a scorching Sunday at the moment where someone sounds the alarm immediately. to let them know that supposedly the Pisans might be coming and it's time to get in your armour.

48:22And you suddenly see this tremendous activity and energy going on as these men are suddenly thinking, basically, shit, we've got to fight! And someone is in the foreground trying to, I think Vasari picks this out in the biography, trying to put on a stocking, but it's quite hard because his leg is wet or the clothing is wet, something like that. And, of course, what is going on here is Michelangelo is... Unlike Leonardo, he's interested in not faces, but bodies and male bodies.

48:52And you see, this was so celebrated in his lifetime, even the cartoon, that full-scale one-to-one preparatory drawing, which would have been transferred to create the mural, because... It's almost like he's showboating in the way that he can depict the male form with these so-called difficult foreshortenings in every which way. And it's the beginning of this sense where the human body has this expressive power itself, which is the foundation of his art.

49:23Yeah. Which do you prefer? Yeah. Probably Leonardo. Yeah, me too. I mean, it's interesting you say that. I mean, you know, because it's sort of like grotesque face versus the sort of idealising male nude. I love the concept of Michelangelo. I love the wrong footing. I'm not going to depict the battle. It's possible the battle would have somehow been depicted in another part of the mirror, I think. In this surviving cartoon, I love the fact that it's the moment before the battle.

49:52In the same way that David is the moment before the battle. Yeah, he doesn't quite pull it off, I think. Anyway, based on the drawings that survive. Anyway, neither of these paintings ended up, as you say, being made. So I think Leonardo started, but just as he had with the last supper, he experimented with techniques and the paint started to run down the wall. Yeah, it goes a bit wrong. It goes wrong. Classic Leonardo. And Michelangelo is about to start painting when he gets a summons.

50:20Yes. He's summoned finally by the big dog, by the Pope in Rome. There is a new Pope in Rome, a man called Julius II. Yeah. I think if there is any man in Italy who has a bigger ego than Michelangelo, it's Julius II. He's only been Pope for a couple of years, hasn't he? What do we know about Julius II? Well, as you say, he's a megalomaniac. He has unbelievable, vaunting ambition. And he's also the great patron of the High Renaissance. He's known as the Pope in armour, the warrior pope.

50:52I think earlier in this series, you've alluded to the fact that Rome was actually a bit down on its luck. But he is the man who he wages a series of military campaigns and sort of restores, if you like, the greatness of the papal states. His uncle had been Pope, Pope Sixtus IV. He spent some time in France before his election as Pope in 1503. And he takes the name Julius, Julius II, to refer to, of course, Julius Caesar. So his choice of papal name, exactly.

51:19But, you know, a great general, a great military commander, signalling what he wanted his papacy to be about. And he is the guy who decides to rebuild St. Peter's. He also hires Raphael to decorate the papal stanza, the rooms, the apartments in the Vatican Palace. So he is synonymous with that unbelievable, brilliant moment of the high Italian Renaissance. Yeah. So he's been Pope for only a couple of... This gives you an indication of what an ego he had.

51:51He'd only been Pope for a couple of years. He was already starting to plan his tomb. And not just any tomb. He wanted to have the largest tomb since the time of Hadrian and Augustus. And so he knows, he has seen the Pieta in Rome, he has heard what Michelangelo did up with the David, he knows Michelangelo is the man for the job. And so he summons Michelangelo down to Rome in 1505. He offers him staggering sums of money. Right. So he offers him 100 gold florin advance, which is a year's salary for a craftsperson, just to sign the deal.

52:27And then 1,200 ducats a year, which is 10 times the average artist's salary. every single year to make the piece, plus 10,000 more when he's finished. And so Michelangelo can't believe his luck. Yeah, but you know what's so fascinating about this is that the tomb, it's almost like, well, it was an impossible task to pull off. what we need to make clear from the outset is that that original vision for the tomb is so big it's so ambitious involving so many like more than 40 possibly even 47 statues and it's a freestanding building it's a basically a like a a building on its own right with arches and architraves and columns and niches and it's filled with as you say 40 plus life-size sculptures it's it's a life's work And it occupies him for the next few decades and it becomes this great millstone around his neck.

53:23I mean, the biographers refer to it as the tragedy of the tomb. Yes. And we have elements from that tomb. There are particular figures, very famous works of sculpture in their own right, which I'm sure at some point we'll talk about. But that tomb as originally conceived at that moment you're describing when it's kind of like have all the money in the world to do it. Yeah. It never comes to pass. No, but at the time, you know, 1505, Michelangelo can't believe his luck.

53:47He's got a commission from the Pope. It's a massive, game-changing commission, far bigger than David. There's an enormous amount of money, which, as we've said, matters greatly to him. He can't... He's rubbing his hands together. He heads off to Carrara, to the marble quarry, to start... quarrying this stone. I suspect this is the happiest time in his life. He's in his pomp, he's got a lot of money, he's doing this extraordinarily ambitious work, he's in a quarry with the stonemasons just where he likes to be.

54:15It's like being in childhood again. He spends a long time there, doesn't he? Eight months. He spends eight months in Carrara, he acquires 100 tonnes of stone, He has to actually take out, even though he's been paid quite a lot of money, he has to take out a bank loan to pay for this stone to return to Rome. However, Alistair, while Michelangelo is in Carrara quarrying the stone, Pope Julius changes his mind. He decides he doesn't want the tomb after all.

54:45Quite a complicated reason. I think the reason is that Julius wanted the tomb to be in St Peter's. St Peter's is not the building it is today. It was a kind of old, decrepit building. There was subsidence. It was falling down. Well, it's a basilica. I mean, it was the building that was built by Constantine. And it was built over the supposed spot where St Peter had been martyred. And there's his tomb. And actually, I mean, think how radical this is in itself.

55:09There's a building which at this point had been there for centuries that was synonymous with the very heart of Christianity. And Julius comes along and is like, you know what? I'm going to build something else. Well, yeah, this is what happens. So he commissions this tomb. And when he starts to look into it, the tomb he wants to put in the basilica, he realises the basilica isn't fit for purpose. Well, as in it's not big enough. It's not big enough.

55:32The walls aren't straight. You know, it's not going to work. So he decides, well, I've got to spend my money redoing the basilica. I can't spend money on both of these projects. But he doesn't tell Michelangelo. And so this is my favourite story in the whole life of Michelangelo. It's absolutely extraordinary. And we know it blow for blow because Michelangelo wrote about it in multiple letters. So what happens is Michelangelo out in Carrara, the Pope's changed his mind but hasn't told Michelangelo.

56:01Michelangelo is now in debt because he spent so much money getting stone. So he returns after eight months to Rome to get some more money. Can I interrupt for one second before you launch into the brilliant story? Yeah. Because there's just a moment in Carrara that I find fascinating, which we haven't touched on. And I just wanted to get your take on it because Michelangelo is spending many months there. And there's this other story about how he spies a mountain and he kind of wants to carve it into a colossus, like a colossus that the ancients would have created.

56:33What do you think that's telling us, that story? I mean, I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but I mean, it certainly is expressive of these megalomaniac ambitions that he has. So he's got them as well as Julius. That's the thing. I think so. You have these two megalomaniacs, really. Yeah. And we will see over this episode and the rest of this episode and the next episode how they repeatedly clash. But there's also a sense, you know, something that people talk about a lot with Michelangelo is that with his sculptures, he feels the form is inside the stone.

57:03And his job is to remove the excess stone and to reveal the form that has always been there. So maybe he's up in the mountains, maybe he's drunk too much Chianti, and he sees this great gigantic figure in the mountains. Anyway... Carrara for eight months decides after eight months, so this is now the spring of 1506, to come back to Rome to get some more money from Julius so he can carry on the projects. And he goes to a dinner in the Vatican, and he's sitting at the table, and there's a nice dinner.

57:30Lots of people are there. And he overhears, at the end of the table, Pope Julius saying, well, I'm not doing the tomb anymore. And my pantry is like... What? And so Michelangelo, who's never backward in terms of coming forward, he just stands up and he walks over to the Pope and he says, Your Holiness, so this tomb that I'm working on, I do need some more money for more stone. And Julius just says, oh, Michelangelo, let's not talk about it. We're having dinner.

57:54Let's not talk about it now. Come back on Monday morning. We'll resolve everything then. So Michelangelo goes home. He stews over the weekend. And on Monday morning, as requested, he returns to the Vatican And he waits in the waiting room and eventually someone comes out and says, I'm very sorry, the Pope's too busy to see you. Can you come back tomorrow? Then he definitely will see you. So Michelangelo stomps home and he comes back on Tuesday and the same thing happens again.

58:19Sorry, Pope's too busy to see you. Please come back on Wednesday. He's very keen to see you. So Michelangelo returns on the Wednesday, and again, the same thing happens. The Pope is ghosting him. He goes back on the Thursday, the same thing happens. On the Friday, he returns. He's actually not even allowed in the building. He's kicked out. So Michelangelo, he now knows the writing is on the wall. The tomb is not going to happen. He is furious. He's a very petulant man.

58:42So he runs home. He packs up all his belongings. He gets on a horse. and he rides out of Rome, vowing never, ever to return. But one thing you do, if you're employed by the Pope, you do not leave Rome without permission. And the Pope's men are standing at the city's walls, and they see Michelangelo leaving, and the Pope sends five horsemen to chase him. And so Michelangelo riding through the villages and the lanes and over the hills to get out of Rome as quickly as possible.

59:08We're back into your Western territory. Yes, exactly. And the five horsemen are following him. And he's going as fast as he can. Every couple of hours he's changing horses, you know, trying desperately to cross into Tuscan, into Florentine territory. Eventually, at two in the morning, he gets into Florentine territory at a village called Pogibonsi. I don't know if you've ever been to that. I have. Lovely named Poggi Bonsi. And the guys catch up with him and there's an enormous argument outside an inn when they say the Pope needs you back, you cannot leave without permission.

59:36Michelangelo threatens to murder these five horsemen. They wake everyone up in the village with the screams and the shouts and eventually he refuses to go and he heads off back to Florence and those guys return, tails between their legs, back to Rome. Is this an instance of this famous terribilità? I think so. I mean, it's kind of unbelievable that essentially one of the most powerful men in the world is saying, what are you doing? Come back. And you say, no way.

1:00:04I'm off. Yeah. I mean, and Michael Andrews says, you know, we made a deal. You know, the deal was to do the tomb. You know, I'm not coming back unless you do the tomb. I mean, it's amazing that he has the strength of will and the bravery to do this. So he heads back to Florence. And the Pope, meanwhile, is constantly writing to him saying, please come back, please come back. And Michelangelo at this stage, he's not just annoyed with the Pope. He's actually now scared that he's going to be killed.

1:00:33He's scared that if he returns to Rome... that he will be imprisoned and will ultimately be executed. So he refuses. Request after request after request after request. Eventually, the Pope has to write to John Major, to Sodorini, to say, please, can you sort this out for me? And I've got the letter that the Pope, I think it's a lovely letter, that the Pope writes to Sodorini, to the Florentine government. And he says, Beloved sons, greetings and apostolic benediction.

1:01:05We hear that the sculptor Michelangelo, who left us without reason and by caprice, now fears to return. Although we bear no grudge because we know the natural disposition of men of this type. However, to belay all suspicion, we call on the affection that you have for us and ask you to promise him on our behalf that if he returns, he will neither be touched nor be touched. nor insulted, and we will restore him to the same state of apostolic grace that he held before his departure.

1:01:34Rome, 8th of July, 1506, in the third year of our pontificate. You see, I think he really actually respects the way that Michelangelo is just saying, you know what, I'm not going to do It's made him much keener. I mean, he really wants him to come back. He does. Well, and eventually, in 1508, Michelangelo is persuaded, partly by John Major, to return to Rome. He does. And the meeting takes place in Bologna, which is where Julius is waging a military campaign.

1:02:05And there's this wonderful moment in the sources where they finally come face to face. we would have you come to us, but instead we have come to you. In other words, I kept on ordering you to come to Rome and look, I'm the Pope. I've had to come to Bologna to get this meeting. This is kind of madness. And he actually, there's a rapprochement. He asks Michelangelo to do a different work for him, not the tomb, although the tomb can be ongoing, but he says, I want you to make a life-size bronze of me.

1:02:41This in itself is quite a wonderful mini story because the bronze that Michelangelo creates, Michelangelo asked the Pope, you know, do you want to be shown with a book in your hand in this sculpture? And the Pope, Julius II, replies to him, no, give me a sword. I'm not a man of letters. This is the warrior Pope kind of idea. Eventually, that bronze gets melted down and turned into a piece of artillery, so it's lost. But yeah, ultimately, Michelangelo is then brought back into the Roman fold.

1:03:14Yes. In 1508, Michelangelo returns to Rome. At which point, Alistair, he is given the commission for which he is perhaps most famous of all. A work that will turn out to be not just one of the most celebrated artworks in Western history, but one of the great achievements in human history, the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And that, dear listener, we will be discussing in the next episode. So stay tuned. Goodbye. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.