Ross King - Michelangelo and The Popes Ceiling

Ross King is the author of Brunelleschis Dome, a highly praised account of how the Renaissance architect Brunelleschi constructed the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (voted Non-Fiction Book of the Year by American Independent Booksellers in 2001). He has also written two novels, Domino and Ex Libris. He lives in Oxford.

BLACK AND WHITE ILLUSTRATIONS

The Piazza Rusticucci, detail from View of the Borgo Alessandrino, by G. A. Dosio (Uffizi, Florence)

Michelangelo, by Nicolas de Larmessin (Mary Evans Picture Library)

A sixteenth-century copy of the lower portion of one of Michelangelos designs for the tomb of Julius II (Uffizi, Florence)

Giuliano da Sangallo, by Piero di Cosimo (AKG, London)

Donato Bramante, by Nicolas de Larmessin (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Pope Julius II, by Locatelli (Getty Images)

The Vatican at the end of the fifteenth century, by Wolgemut, from Hartmann Schedels Liber Chronicarum Nuremberg 1493 (Fotomas Index)

A plan of the Vatican showing Bramantes improvements, by Reginald Piggott

A reconstruction of the exterior of the Sistine Chapel, from Ernst Steinmann Die Sixtinische Kapelle (Tafeln, Erster Teil, Munich, 1901)

A reconstruction of the interior of the Sistine Chapel, from Ernst Steinmann Die Sixtinische Kapelle (Tafeln, Erster Teil, Munich, 1901)

The Battle of Cascina after Michelangelo, c.1542 (oil on panel) by Antonio da Sangallo, the elder (Collection of the Earl of Leicester, Holkham Hall, Norfolk/Bridgeman Art Library)

A sketch for The Battle of Anghiari, by Leonardo da Vinci (Accademia, Venice)

The ceiling of the Camera degli Sposi, Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, by Andrea Mantegna (Scala)

A sketch of what the scaffold for the Sistine Chapel might have looked like, by Michelangelo (Uffizi, Florence)

Drawing of a ceiling from Hadrians villa at Tivoli, by Giuliano da Sangallo (Biblioteca Comunale, Siena)

A detail from an early design for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo (British Museum, London)

Francesco Granacci, from Vasaris Le vite de pi eccelenti pittori, scultori e architettori, ed. Bettarini and Barocchi, 6 vols (Florence: Sansoni 196687)

Sketch for the Libyan Sibyl, by Michelangelo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1924)

Girolamo Savonarola, by Esme de Boulonois (Mary Evans Picture Library)

A plan of the Vatican Apartments, by Reginald Piggott

Self portrait, by Raphael (Scala)

The Temptation, by Raphael, from the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura (Vatican)

Leda and the Swan, by Raphael, after Leonardo da Vinci (The Royal Collection Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)

Apollo and Marsyas, by Sodoma, from the ceiling of the Stanza della Segnatura

King Louis XII of France, engraved by Allais after Chasselat (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Study for the head of the Prophet Zechariah, by Michelangelo (Uffizi, Florence)

Drapery study for the Erythraean Sibyl, by Michelangelo (British Museum, London)

Study for a female figure, by Michelangelo (Casa Buonarroti, Florence)

Sketch of a male nude, by Michelangelo (Louvre/Photo RMN C. Jean)

The Laocon, engraving by an unknown artist (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Manuscript of Michelangelos poem to Giovanni da Pistoia (Archivio Buonarroti, Florence)

Desiderius Erasmus, by Andre Thevet (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Frontispiece to the German edition of Desiderius Erasmuss Julius exclusus (1st Latin edn. 1517), 1523 (Bayerische Staatsbibliotheck, Munich)

Cartoon for The School of Athens, by Raphael (Ambrosiana, Milan)

Alfonso dEste, Duke of Ferrara, by Andre Thevet (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Lodovico Ariosto, engraving by an unknown artist (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Frontispiece to a 1524 edn of Ariostos Orlando furioso (British Library, London)

Martin Luther, by Theodore De Bry (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Study for Adam in The Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo (British Museum, London

The pensieroso, Raphaels addition to The School of Athens (Vatican)

The Creation of Adam, by Paolo Uccello, in the Chiostro Verde, Santa Maria Novella, Florence (Alinari)

The Creation of Adam, by Jacopo della Quercia, on the Porta Magna, San Petronio, Bologna (Alinari)

The Battle of Ravenna, by the Maestro della Trappola, 1530 (Gabinetto Nazionale Delle Stampe, Rome)

Booz, by Michelangelo (Vatican)

A detail showing the Swiss soldiers from The Mass of Bolsena, by Raphael (Vatican)

Niccol Machiavelli, engraving by Hinchliff after Brunzoni (Mary Evans Picture Library)

Studies for the crucified Haman, by Michelangelo (British Museum, London)

Tomb of Julius II, San Petronio in Vincoli, by Michelangelo (Alinari)

COLOUR PLATES

A plan of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Reginald Piggott

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo (Vatican)

The ROBOAM/ABIAS lunette from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo (Vatican)

The Giving of the Keys to St Peter, by Perugino (Vatican)

The NAASON lunette from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo (Vatican)

The JOSIAS/JECHONIAS/SALATHEIL lunette and spandrel from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo (Vatican)

The Prophet Jonah, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo (Vatican)

Portrait of Pope Julius II, by Raphael (Scala)

The Dispute of the Sacrament, by Raphael (Vatican)

The School of Athens, by Raphael (Vatican)

The Expulsion of Heliodorus, by Raphael (Vatican)

The Mass of Bolsena, by Raphael (Vatican)

Triumph of Galatea, Villa Farnesina, by Raphael (Scala)

For Melanie

ROSS KING

THE PIAZZA RUSTICUCCI was not one of Romes most prestigious addresses. Though only a short walk from the Vatican, the square was humble and nondescript, part of a maze of streets and densely packed shops and houses that ran west from where the Ponte SantAngelo crossed the River Tiber. A trough for livestock stood at its centre, next to a fountain, while on its east side was a modest church with a tiny belfry. Santa Caterina delle Cavallerotte was too new to be famous. It housed none of the sorts of relics bones of saints, fragments from the True Cross that each year brought thousands of pilgrims to Rome from all over Christendom. However, behind this church, in a narrow street overshadowed by the city wall, there could be found the workshop of one of the most sought-after artists in Italy: a squat, flat-nosed, shabbily dressed, ill-tempered sculptor from Florence.

Michelangelo Buonarroti was summoned back to this workshop behind Santa Caterina in April 1508. He obeyed the call with great reluctance, having vowed he would never return to Rome. Fleeing the city two years earlier, he had ordered his assistants to clear the workshop and sell its contents, his tools included, to the Jews. He returned that spring to find the premises bare and, nearby in the Piazza San Pietro, exposed to the elements, a hundred tons of marble still piled where he had abandoned them. These lunar-white blocks had been quarried in preparation for what was intended to be one of the largest assemblages of sculpture the world had ever seen: the tomb of the reigning pope, Julius II. Yet Michelangelo had not been brought back to Rome to resume work on this colossus.