In Our Time - The Sistine Chapel

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing work of Michelangelo (1477-1564) in this great chapel in the Vatican, firstly the ceiling with images from Genesis (of which the image above is a detail) and later The Last Judgement on the altar wall. For the Papacy, Michelangelo's achievement was a bold affirmation of the spiritual and political status of the Vatican, of Rome and of the Catholic Church. For the artist himself, already famous as the sculptor of David in Florence, it was a test of his skill and stamina, and of the potential for art to amaze which he realised in his astonishing mastery of the human form.WithCatherine Fletcher Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan UniversitySarah Vowles The Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings at the British MuseumAndMatthias Wivel The Aud Jebsen Curator of Sixteenth-Century Italian Paintings at the National GalleryProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, in 50606, Pope Julius I second gave Michelangelo the chance to create arguably the greatest work of art in his time or since, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. For the papacy, his achievement was a bold affirmation of the spiritual and political,

political status of the Vatican and of the Catholic Church. For Michelangelo, famous then as a sculptor of David, it was a test of skill, of stamina, and of the potential for art to amaze realized in his astonishing mastery of the human form. With me to discuss the Sistine Chavillard, Sarah Vowles, the Smyrnaff family curator of Italian and French prints and drawings at the British Museum,

Mathias Wivel, the Audit Jepsen and curator of 16th century Italian paintings at the National Gallery, and Catherine Fletcher, Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University. Catherine Fletcher, who built the Sistine Chapel and why did he build it? The chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who was the uncle of Julius II. So we're actually going back to the papacy that runs from 1471 to 1484. And Sixtus was one of a series of popes in later Renaissance Rome, who was interest in really glorifying the city.

Now, the Vatican complex has obviously been around for some time. The old Capella Majore was not in a best state, and Sixters decided to build a new magnificent chapel to replace it. Now, this would not only be a chapel for himself and the papal household to worship, but it would also be a location for conclaves. So it has an important political function in terms of electing the Pope. It's got a role for the papal mass. Of course, it's a place where Sixters can show off his wonderful commissioning skills

as a commissioner of architecture, but also as a commissioner of art. So he gets in some of the leading painters of his day, Perugino, and then a group of Florentines, including Botticelli and Gil Andio, to fresco the walls of the chapel well before Michelangelo is even involved. In fact, when Michelangelo is still a toddler. So this is a project that is going to take decades to come to fruition. Can you tell us something about Sixtus' is family and the names of the popes and how that was working into our programme?

Yes. Well, Sixters came from not a terribly important family in Liguria, which is the area around Genoa. They're the Delovae family. And he had some noble cousins. They didn't pay a lot of attention to Francesco Delovavera until he was. became head of the Franciscan order, was elected a cardinal, and then rather surprisingly became Pope.

He was a compromised candidate when he was elected. He was a learned man. He was a theologian. He taught at a number of universities. And we can see in the chapel, I think, some of those intellectual interests, becoming represented in the art and coming out in those negotiations

that he has with the artists about exactly what it is they're going to paint. So I wanted to make this a showcase? It was absolutely a showcase. It was a showcase for the popes who had returned to Rome in the middle of the century. You have to remember that in the 14th century, the popes hadn't been in Rome at all. They'd been in Avignon, they'd been the schism. There'd been a very painful period when they were trying to reestablish themselves in Rome

after those very difficult decades. And building projects, showing off their magnificence as princes and as princes who rule a territory as well as being the representatives of Christ on earth, that was terribly important to really secure it. their own position in European politics and beyond. Sarah, Sarah Vals, you spent more time in the Sistine Chapel than the rest of us poor tourists are ever allowed. We're 15 minutes of Kriknecker.

Out we go. Can you remember the first impression you had? Well, when you go around the Vatican as a tourist, you are actually brought into the wrong end of the Sistine Chapel. You emerge through this tiny doorway at the side of the altar, which actually brings you into the area that would have been reserved for the clergy. There's a choir screen halfway down,

and beyond that is the place where the laity would have been allowed. And whenever I go in, even now, the first impression that I have is that of walking into a jewel box, really. All around you, there is the most incredible colour and pattern. The first thing I think you notice is the 15th century frescoes on the wall that Catherine just mentioned. And then, of course, you look up, and the ceiling just completely routes you to the spot.

The initial impact, I think, of the ceiling is almost one of geometrical abstraction. You see a series of rectangles and triangles, and then gradually they resolve themselves into these figural scenes, completely stuffed with figures and with certain colours that come up again and again almost rhythmically, so oranges and pinks and purples and blues. I think people might also feel that the chapel is smaller, than they've been expecting, because it looms so large in the popular consciousness.

And when you go in, it's only 134 feet long. It's 44 feet wide, 68 feet high. And so it actually is quite a small space, especially when you think there's 12,000 square feet of painted surface in that chapel. So that gives you a sense of what an amazing, condensed mass of incredible decoration you find. Would you like to add to that? Dawn. The thing I always found fascinating about going into the Sicilian chapel today is that when we walk in today, you're always told you mustn't sit down. No sitting down, no flash, no taking pictures. And yet, actually, back in the day, the cardinals used to sit round on those steps. So we ought to be sitting down to understand how it was actually seen. And yet it is a fascinating to think of this original chapel filled up with people, but filled up with people in a very different way to the tourists flowing through and push to move, to do it. day, you would get to sit down and you would get to look up from your little seat on the steps.

I agree. You really need time to take it in. It is such a complex decoration that it really opens itself up when you spend time in there. Obviously, the thing that we haven't mentioned is that the altar wall is an enormous painting as well by Michelangelo, the last judgment, which you don't generally see if you come in that way. You see it when you turn around, of course. And that is almost shocking because of its magnitude and because of the just the amount of bare flesh on display there. It's really quite something. It's quite shocking in some ways remains shocking today. Does it still shock you today, sir? I think it does. One does perhaps get used to it the more one looks at it. But as you say, Matthias, it's actually an incredibly unusual representation of the

subject to have on the altar wall of the most important chapel in Christendom. So yes, it is very shocking for that reason and also just so overwhelming. It occupies the entire altar wall and it's dominated by this really vivid shade of blue. You mentioned colours in your first contribution and so, but actually it was cleaned up, wasn't it, and all the candle soot of centuries, literally was wiped away and the colours were far more lurid, vivid, bunfire like than anybody had ever thought they could be. Absolutely, and I think that surprised a lot of people

because before then the colours were quite muted and quite, well, toned down, as you say, by all the soot and the dirt that had accumulated. And yes, when these original colours came out, everyone was just ravished by how incredibly bright and intense they were. Can you give us a brief summary of his earlier life, Michelangelo? Yes, so Michelangelo was born outside of Florence

and is essentially a Florentine artist and man, he very clearly and very early on began pursuing a career as an artist. And he was particularly in and around the Medici household in Florence, where he sort of got his education, both in sort of in the intellectual milieu around that, which was most sophisticated in Italy, but also in the sculpture garden there, with sculptors of earlier generations had worked.

And so he started as a sculptor, but he was also apprenticed early on to Domenico Gellendaya, the painter. So he also had an education in painting. And very quickly, his talent, his outsized talent, becomes apparent. And his real breakthrough is in 1504

when he carves the David, the massive David. There was just a rock of marble, wasn't that? Yes, that it sat around. So he discovered David famously, there's the rock of marble, half as big as the studio, perhaps.

And inside that was David. And he hammered that out. Earlier sculptures had tried and failed to do something with this enormous block of marble that sat behind the Basilica of Florence. And it's meant for a monumental sculpture to go on top of the Basilica. It's an old block of marble, which means it's brittle and harder to carve. So it was a real feat of carving as well as an intellectual feat in terms of how he conceived of this sculpture, which has become emblematic of the particular enlightenment of the Renaissance. This figure has become to us one of the iconic images of that period.

Yet he was being asked by the Pope to paint. Would that surprise other painters when they say, why didn't they ask us instead of him? It did. It did. He was called to Rome in 1505 after having carved to David. I mean, he had gotten the attention of Pope Julius II. And initially he was brought to Rome to work on Julius's tomb. He was already planning for his death and his afterlife, so to speak. And that was a very ambitious project for a tomb to go inside of the new basilica of St. Peter's that Julius had commissioned. And then, for reasons we don't quite know exactly, he was diverted onto painting the ceiling.

He was sort of slightly being goaded into it in some ways. There's a letter to him where one of his friends writes and says, Bramante, who is the architect of St. Peter's, the great architect. He says, don't employ Michelangelo. He won't be able to paint this. I mean, he's not able to do the foreshortenings that are necessary for a ceiling painting. And that clearly, of course, was like raised Michelangelo's hackles, I'm sure.

Although he writes that sonnet, doesn't he, where he's complaining, he's actually not a good painter. He himself is worried he's not up to. It's got a lovely little cartoon of Michelangelo painting this figure on the ceiling, which is marvellous. And I think the fact that he is also writing about those doubts, suspect that, you know, perhaps that was going through his head. Am I really up to it?

Can I do a good job here? He was clearly miserable doing the process of painting at times very miserable. But he got the job. Catherine, the ceiling. How did he set about it? How did he set about painting the ceiling? Well, it involves a lot of scaffolding for a start, but perhaps one of the art historians here might like to tell us a little bit about the practicalities of doing that work.

Oh, the scaffolding. It's a very complicated question. The scaffolding put up before he starts by one of his colleagues. he brings in a team because he is trained. He does complain that he's not a painter, but he actually is. He's trained. He knows how to paint. He brings in a team from Florence,

and they start working. And very quickly, the process is frustrated by some technical difficulties with mold in the ceiling and so on. He gets frustrated, and he expels his colleagues from the chapel and takes over full management of the decoration. And the legend is,

and Michelangelo is very good at generating his own legend, is that he painted it all himself. The restoration work demonstrates that this is not completely untrue, that it does seem to be largely done by one hand, except in certain parts. Relatively minor parts are done by assistance. Obviously, he would have had assistance prepare the ground, the several layers of ground that you put on

before the layer of plaster that you actually paint on. And so you can follow his progress across the ceiling from the beginnings where there are all these technical problems, there are some parts that are not painted by him. What he does is that he designs it. He starts with sketching. Then he does full figure studies. And then those are converted to cartoons,

which are full-scale drawings one-to-one that have the outlines on them. And then those are transferred onto the wet plaster, either through Spolverro, which is the more sort of elaborate process where you have little prick-holes around the outlines, and then you use a bag of charcoal, an open bag of charcoal,

that you pounce against the holes and then that leaves it marks on the ceiling that you can then join up to get the figures right. And increasingly, he started using the other method, which is direct incision where you have, again, you have the cartoon and you incise through the cartoon so you leave an incision in the wet placer

that you can then paint on top of it. And towards the end when he's painting the lunettes, which is on the vertical part of the wall. He is working without cartoons. He is working from drawing, from sketches and drawings directly onto the plaster, which is quite remarkable and possibly unprecedented, at least at this scale.

Sarah, looking up at the ceiling, what story does it tell? The main part of the ceiling is divided up into nine different compartments, and these can basically be split into three groups. And using those, he chronologically tells the story of Genesis. And he actually started painting from the end of the story going back. But if we look at it chronologically, So all of the scenes are oriented towards the priest standing at the altar, who, of course, would often have been the Pope.

And the first three scenes show the creation of the world. So you have God separating light from darkness and then creating the sun and the moon, and then creating the fish and the creatures that swim in the waters. The second group of three is perhaps the most famous, because it starts with the most iconic image in the entire chapel, which is God creating Adam. And so that is God. Their fingers almost touching. Exactly, exactly.

God infusing man through his finger with the intellect and the breath of life. Then you have the creation of Eve and that set concludes with the temptation and the fall of man and the expulsion from Eden. And then Michelangelo jumps to the story of Noah. And here he actually swaps around two of the scenes because there are two smaller panels and one big one in this group. And he wants to use the big one for the flood for the drama. And he therefore paints the sacrifice of Noah first. And then the flood, which actually came before that. And he finishes up with the drunkenness of Noah.

And the story of Noah is all about God making a covenant with mankind. After the Great Flood, he promises that this will never happen again. And this, in a way, is a forerunner of his promise to send his son, Christ, down to save people. And one thing which has always amused me about the ceiling is, I mentioned that there was a choir screen separating the space for the laity and the space for the clergy. That's no longer in its original position. And originally it was placed directly underneath the scene of the fall of man. So as a layperson, you wouldn't be able to get any closer to the altar than the fall of man, original sin.

Only as a clergyman could you then go back and experience the increasing purity of creation. And the thing about the ceiling is that it is part of a much broader narrow. As we mentioned earlier, the entire chapel is actually one whole narrative. So the ceiling is in a way like the prehistory of Christ. And then coming down, Michelangelo paints Sybil's and prophets who predicted the coming of Christ, the ancestors of Christ. And then going further down to the 15th century frescoes, they tell the complementary stories of Moses and Christ,

drawing direct parallels between Old and New Testament. And then originally, of course, there would have been tapest. underneath designed by Raphael and these showed the acts of the apostles so after Christ. And the story of mankind's salvation then comes to this incredible climax with the last judgment on the altar wall. So it is all part of one enormous intellectual project and it should be seen as a whole. What's interesting is that these different bits come at quite some time removed from one another. So this isn't one person's master plan right at the start. It's a cumulative project as one pope after.

to the other. So Julius the 2nd and then Pope Lear the 10th with the Raphael Tachistries. I'm suggesting that the popes are saying this is what it's got to be like. Are they directing the themes and the notions of it? But I think they and their advice have an input and have discussion with the artists about exactly what's going to go on here. So there's a whole series of experts. Sorry, you said what you think. Is there proof for that? There's no real direct evidence. What we do know is that Michelangelo claims that when he's painting the ceiling, he goes to the Pope and says, this plan that you've suggested to me is a poor idea. I'm going to do something better. And he claims that he is then given free reign to go away and do whatever he wants.

Now, this just is not plausible. Because at this date, we have other contracts for other commissions like Girl and I was torn to Borony Chapel in Florence. And there it is specified very clearly how many figures you have, what's going to be happening. And I don't know about Catherine and Matthias, but I find it very hard to believe that in this chapel at the heart of the Vatican, and the Pope is going to let an artist come up with the ceiling for himself.

I think it's more plausible that Michelangelo has given subjects that he then interprets in his own way. The debate is to what extent he was advised by humanists at the court and theologians. But the very fact that, as Catherine pointed out, that the whole chapel has an overarching plan indicates very strongly that there was a plan, that they were following a plan, of some sort of plan. And it was modified as they went along, but there was somebody watching over. Have we any idea who formed the plan who said God will be there and Moses will be there? Is there any trace of who? The thing is it starts out under Sixth as the Fourth, who is elected in 1471.

And it doesn't finish until 1541, a full 70 years later. So this is 70 years of really thinking and work of multiple people, of multiple different generations cumulatively. adding their interventions. Now, whether anybody back in the 1470s or 80s thought, aha, you know, it'd be great to have a chapel that did this whole sequence. Well, we know that something's got changed. We know the ceiling started out blue with gold stars, and later on, there was a change, and then Julius II brought in Michelangelo. We know that originally there was something entirely different on the wall where the last judgment ended up. So they do change their minds as they go on over the course of these, you know, two, almost three generations.

However, that said, it makes sense. It's a logical sequence that they add to, and that says to me that there are people talking and discussing and thinking about what would make most sense to go into the next layer, even though they don't actually stick to the original sixth-as-the-fourth scheme with the ceiling and so on. Matthias, can you tell us about one or two of the highlights,

particularly the most famous of all God and Adam? You can't escape that that central image of God, creating Adam, the creation of man, where you see the inert, the mostly inert body of the first man, Adam lying and coming to life, stretching out his hand that almost touches the hand of God who's floating in the air, and within his cloak is an abundance of souls, maybe, like some kind of figural representations of what it is that God is bringing to the world. He is giving man not just a physical form but a soul. I think this is very important.

Behind God, and this is something that you only notice a little bit afterwards, is a woman who is often thought to be Eve before she's created. She's still in God's repertoire behind him. And she looks extremely aware of what's happening, very intelligent and is looking with great awareness at what's happening, whereas Adam is more languid. And this is what God is. giving him a soul, but he's also giving him the ability to choose, to distinguish, giving him free will.

And that's, I think, what she really personifies. Kenneth Clark read a lot into that image, didn't he? He said, this was the beginning of civilization, this was philosophical, and layer after layer. Would anybody like to comment on that? This is why the chapel stays with us. It gets to the core of the questions we have about why we are the way we are, why we are embodied in the world, and why we have the freedom to choose or feel that we have the freedom to choose.

And it starts cosmically, which is another absolute highlight, I think, in the sequence of narratives at the top, the God separating light and darkness, which he painted in one day. I mean, it's like one very inspired moment, very simple. It's sort of the cosmic engine that you see there. It's where the entire cosmos is giving form and spirit. Catherine, outside the chapel,

there are warring states. Spain and France are fighting over Italy, but the individual states in Italy are fighting back at the French and Spanish and at each other and so on. That turmoil, and the popes are taking part, there are warrior popes and so on. That turmoil, does that seem to enter into the painting or enter into the chapel being made in any form?

I always feel that this particular chapel is quite separate from some of that feeling of conflict, that goes on outside. It almost seems to me like a place that Julius II and his successors would be able to come and think and engage with the artwork above them and around them as a way of reflecting on their greater purpose away from the immediate conflict. On the other hand, I think we do see conflict creeping in in the practical day-to-day usage of the chapel, particularly when it comes to conclaves, this is the place where the new popes get elected, and that's an enormously political matter with Spain and France backing different candidates,

the Italian states lining up their particular parties for who should be the next pope. So there are times in the Sistine Chapel's existence when we need to elect a new representative of Christ on earth, when it becomes a youth hostel, if you like, because all the cardinals have their little cubicles put in there, They sleep there, they're locked in, conclave, meaning with the key, and they have to decide who is going to be the successor. And all that is taking place in this space too. And it's this incredible sort of clash of realpolitik on the one hand and this wonderful inspirational space on the other.

I think some cardinals probably take more inspiration than others do. Meanwhile, next door some of the time, Sarah, Raphael was working. Raphael comes to Rome in about 5008 and he... How is that significant? When in Michael Angela, we've forgotten to say when Michael Andrew, what was it 5040? He starts on the ceiling in 50808 and then he works on that until 1512. And those, ironically, are exactly the same dates that Raphael is working just a few hundred yards away.

He initially joins a team of artists probably through the good offices of Romante, the architect who mentioned earlier, who is a country. of his and a friend of his. And then rapidly he actually takes over the project, which is to paint a sequence of rooms, which are Pope Julius II's new apartments. And Julius has essentially said that he's not going to spend any more time living in the apartments of his predecessor, the Scandalous Borgia Pope. And so he wants a new sequence of rooms that he can have for his own apartments. Is there any conflict between Raphael and Michelangelo? I think it depends whether you ask Raphael or Mangalangelo.

Raphael was, yes, very much younger than Michelangelo. And I think Michelangelo did see him as a threat. And this is something which comes through very strongly in Michelangelo's memories of what happened, which I think also bring in a lot of what happened later on. So at the time, we know that Raphael drew inspiration from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. When it's unveiled,

he actually comes back and adds into the School of Athens a figure representing Michelangelo, the philosopher Heraclitus, the brooding philosopher sitting on the steps. And this is seen as a kind of tribute. Whether Michelangelo saw it in that way, I'm not sure. But there is certainly a lot of interest in each other's work. And Matthias, I think you...

I can tell a story about what Raphael probably did. Raphael is aware that Michelangelo is working next door. We have, from Vasari, who writes a generation, and writes an account of their lives, he says that Bramante, the architect we discussed, led Raphael into the chapel when Michelangelo was away. Michelangelo was notoriously secretive about his work, did not want to show it to people who should not see it.

But Raphael sees the ceiling, and he starts adapting Michelangelo's figural language, which he'd already been doing. They had known each other in Florence before. They'd both been in Florence at the same time. They'd probably been quite friendly, but already there he'd started pilfering from Michelangelo. Raphael was a great art thief in that sense.

He stole the ideas that he could use and absorbed them into his own idiom, transformed them and did something with them that the original artist could not have thought of. And that's what he also does with Michelangelo. I think that's what's so irksome to Michelangelo. But in one of the other frescoes, there are two figures,

which are clearly based, to me, clearly based on figures Michelangelo painted on the Sistine ceiling. However, this painting is executed before Michelangelo was able to paint those figures. It's Adam from the creation of man and it's one of the inuity, one of the nude figures

that sit around it. Those two figures were only painted in 1512. Raffaul paints figures derivative of them in 1511. How is that possible? What he must have had is access to Michelangelo's drawings, which is something Michelangelo would not have allowed. It's something that he managed to do without

Michelangelo's consent. And I think that is part of why Michelangelo was so angry. 30 years later, Michelangelo is still fuming. There is a letter where he says everything Raphael had an art he had from me. Catherine, after Michelangelo and Nicol finished the ceiling, what changes were that Michelangelo's life? What's interesting at this point?

I mean, the bigger political change that is going on at this point is obviously the Reformation. Outside of Rome. 1517, yes. In 1517. So we have Martin Lutheran. We have a gradual, a very slow response, in fact, I think from the popes. At the time, perhaps not quite recognising the full scale of threat, we have a whole series of further wars going on in Italy, particularly in Florence,

which affects Michelangelo very badly, particularly also in Rome, where Rome is sacked in 1527. And so it's a very, very, very turbulent time to be working as an artist. It's also a very, very turbulent time in terms of religious belief. And there's a lot of debate within the Italian church about how exactly to respond to Protestantism. And Michelangelo is one of the people associated with a group of Italian thinkers called a spirituality, who are not Protestants, however somewhat sympathetic to some aspects of Protestant theology. And he, along with correspondence like Victoria Colonna, starts to discuss these ideas.

And it's quite fascinating to me that this great chapel at the heart of the Catholic Church now is actually painted in large part by somebody who has certain sympathies towards the other side of that debate. Of course, because it takes so long for the Catholic Church to work out how it will respond, I mean, the Council of Trent doesn't open until 1545, well after the last judgment is finished, doesn't close until 1563, there's a lot of space. in the 1530s and 40s for religious discussion. And Michelangelo is very much part of that. So I think that perhaps gives the Sistine Chapel a particular quality

of having been painted by somebody who is influenced by that fluidity of thought about exactly what is correct religious ideas at the time. We mentioned the last judgment two or three times. Let's face up to it, Sarah. When you tell listeners about the last judgment and the scandal it caused and the counter-scandal and the serpent around and all of that.

Let's go for the last judgment. This is a huge wall. So it's just two side walls, the ceiling, and then this last big wall, the last judgment. Absolutely. So the last judgment is painted 25 years after the Sistine Chapel ceiling. So Michelangelo is really coming back

and coming face to face with his younger self. How old is it then? He's about 60 when he starts work on the last judgment. Yeah. And I think that the fact that he's that age, which in the Renaissance was already considered old. He is actually grappling with a lot of concerns about mortality and this, I think, feeds through very powerfully into The Last Judgment,

which has a very different character to the ceiling. The ceiling is quite orderly, it's quite structured. The Last Judgment is just an entire wall full of blue and tumbling, twisting, falling bodies. It's... Mostly naked? Mostly naked. Mostly male?

Mostly male, yes. and obviously it was the male figures who were predominantly naked. The women, well, certainly the Virgin Mary, would have been clothed. And so Michelangelo paints this as a way of sort of exploring his own ambivalence about what might happen at the end of days when the bodies are resurrected from the dead. And bodies are resurrected so they can turn into souls? You are bodily resurrected, so you transcend the physical world

and you become almost a divine body, and that's what we see. there are figures in these incredibly complex poses and really daring and foreshortening because he is experimenting with the idea of what the body does when it transcends physical laws. It has been described as homoerotic art, hasn't it? Yeah, there are some groups of male figures who are embracing in the upper part showing heaven

and a lot of people were disturbed by the nudity right from the very beginning. For example, the Pope's officer, Biadio da Cez, who comes in just after it's finished or at the very final stages and disapproves strongly of all this nudity going on and complains to the Pope about it. This is the master of ceremonies. The master of ceremonies complains.

Exactly. And obviously someone quite powerful. And Michelangelo responds to this in typical Michelangelo fashion by then painting Villadio d'Achesana into the fresco as Minos, who is the judge of the damned in hell. And he paints him naked with a snake wrapped around his hips and covering his genitals, biting his genitals, as a response to his criticism of the nudity.

So that is his reaction to the initial criticism. But the criticism continues. It goes all the way through. And immediately... All the way through what? Well, all the way through the 16th century. So almost immediately after Michelangelo dies, they then bring in his friend and assistant,

Daniela de Valterra, because the climate has changed a lot by that point. You've heard the Council of Trent. And there are new rules about art, which may or may not have been influenced. directly by concerns over this nudity. And Daniela de Valtera is employed to essentially paint trousers on a lot of the male figures, and he gets the nickname the Breaches Maker because of this.

And ridiculed. And ridiculed, yes. And later in the century, El Greco, who's in Rome, says to the Pope, you know, this is indecorous to have this on the wall. I'll paint you something better. Knock it down. Knock it down. So the idea that this happens.

It's almost knocked down. This is the wall, not the whole. Caboodle. No, no, just the wall. Because there's also talk about moving the wall, which is what it eventually leads to the moving of the screen rather than the wall under Paul IV, where they're talking about demolishing that wall

and getting rid of that obscene painting. But it doesn't happen, thankfully. I mean, I think if I may just add to this that this is... So we talked about the plan for the chapel, and nobody had imagined the last judgment at the time. Michelangelo actually has to destroy

both some of his own work and some of the work of the 15th century in order to paint this. It was part of the existing program. It was a chapel devoted to the Assumption of the Virgin. There was an altarpiece by Perugino, and above that, he had himself painted the ancestors of Christ, and Peter and Paul had the first two popes. And so he had to destroy that in order to, and it's very much how Michelangelo works. He starts on something. He's not intending to destroy all of it. He's tending to paint around it, and then he gets carried away. And of course, it has to all come down. And so he opens the entire wall. There's no architecture, no painted architecture. There are

It opens, it's like you look into this vision. And it becomes, in a way, the end point of what he started in the ceiling. The creation of the cosmos, the God-giving spirit to man, and then the spirits rising on the final day in their spiritual form to be judged in these weird clusters of bodies. And I think there is no escaping the fact that Michelangelo's art is very erotic. I mean, it is very clearly erotic. And I think that's part of his struggle with being,

physical. He is struggling with his erotic drive. I think that's very much part of his work and essential to it. He's struggling with his physicality and he is perhaps the artist's most profoundly interrogates, at least of the Renaissance, interrogates the fact that we are embodied in the world and we feel that. And you see even the spiritual bodies in that

painting are heavy. They're sort of being dragged up by the angels and pulled by their genitals down to hell, the ones who go to hell and so on. There They're very physical. And you see the anxiety as well, I think especially in the figure who sits and suddenly realizes he's sort of crouched forward and just looks out with this thousand yards stare and he realizes that he's damned. And this is, this is Michelangelo's concerned. Are we damned? We don't know.

Yeah, I think that feeling of uncertainty is completely central to the painting. And the uncertainty about are we saved, are we not saved, which explains the turbulence not only in damned, but also in heaven, which. is very unusual when you think of earlier last judgments when the saints are arranged very neatly in little circles around Christ. That is not the case here. And Michelangelo's blend of hope and salvation, but also fear that it might not happen is, for me, epitomized in the fact that he puts a self-portrait in

as the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew, that's sort of a mixture of humility and hope. Catherine, you want to go in here. What also strikes me in this chapel, both on the ceiling and in the last judgment, is the sense of movement. It's the sense of action. It's the sense that you've walked into a scene and things are happening.

They're live. It's almost like a snapshot. And these bodies are there and they're falling and then they're rising on the other hand. And it's just, I mean, it's astonishing. And I think that, you know, people like Gertr who walk in centuries later and are just struck by, you know, the human achievement there in the chapel. He says, well, this is, if you want, this is what a human being can achieve. Yes, exactly.

He says it much better than that needless to say. I'm sure I probably can tell you exactly. Until you have seen the Sistine Chapel, you can have no adequate conception of what man is capable of accomplishing. That's it. That's the quote. When he finished it,

if you want to continue, but let's go around. What did people of the time think of it? It was widely considered to be the school for all artists to follow. Right from the very beginning, you have artists in there who are drawing from it and drawing inspiration. copying it. In the 1520s you have a set of prints made of it which replicate all of the

compositions and so suddenly the fame becomes international. And so you have artists in the north of Europe who are drawing on the same compositions as their compatriots sort of in Rome who were there actually drawing from it in the flesh. And it is immediately and ever since I think considered one of the great achievements of art and it's something which should be studied and learned from. Catherine? Well, if I bet, I just wanted to pick up on Paul III's reaction to Biagio da Cezena, because Biagia de Cisina is said that the master of ceremonies who objected so strongly

is said to have gone to Paul III and said, can't you do something about the nudity here I object? And I joke to my own portrayal. And Paul III is alleged to have turned around and said, well, I'm afraid I'm not responsible for what happens in hell. And this is Paul III. but Pope Paul III defending what Michelangelo has done against the critics. I think that's also quite telling that right from the top of the church,

Michael Angelo had backing. Yeah, so I think it's a testament to Michelangelo's great fame while he was alive, that first Clement the 7th who commissioned the last judgment, and then Paul III, who saw it through, protected him and let him do, let him knock everything down and do this obscene painting. and then you get the afterwards, you get the whole, the controversy afterwards endures where you have people at the papal court

criticizing it but also realizing that Michelangelo is so great that we have to keep this. And so often the criticisms become, they're all rooted in the fact that it's nudity or most of them, but they become theological in that actually, and there's this very severe atmosphere around the counter-reformation, of course, they become very rooted in the fact that Michelangeload. is not observing the decorum

that one should observe when doing a religious painting. There's a correct way of doing it in a wrong way. It would be correct if it was a mythological story or something else, but not this. But it's not knocked down. It's there. It endures and it attracts people and they also think it's great.

Just carrying on from that and also from what Catherine was saying, the idea that these senior people are defending it, you have the example where Veronese is brought before the Inquisition to defend his last supper slash feast in the House of Levi. And what Veronese says is, well, it's all right for me to use these

indecorous elements because, of course, Michelangelo shows all of these figures nude in the last judgment. And it's the Inquisitor who actually says to him, oh, but that's totally different. Because of course, you know, the last judgment, people being raised from the dead, of course they're not going to be clothed. And so you have this bizarre situation where the Inquisition are defending Michelangelo's nudity. Well, I think that says it all, really. I think it's that fundamental contradictions.

It's a marvellous painting. Visitors come and see it. They are impressed. It's a work of genius. It's an acknowledged work of genius across Europe. Would any Pope really want to get rid of such an asset? Maybe they think about it. Maybe they know it's problematic in terms of decorum.

But really, would you destroy Michelangelo? Well, what do you think the status of the painting is now? I think it remains one of the questions. quintessential works of art of the Western tradition, exactly because it addresses fundamental concerns about being alive, having free will, and having to die at some point, and what happens after that. I think it is probably the strongest visual summation that I can think of,

of all those issues. Catherine? Of all the things in the chapel, I think the thing that I would pick out as most iconic is actually the, it's the fingers not quite touching. It's that sense that they're about to touch, or they've just touched. And that is one of those handful of paintings that you see absolutely everywhere that is referred to everywhere in popular culture.

It stands alongside the Mona Lisa is possibly the only other painting from Western art that has quite that iconic level. And, you know, so many people repeat it. I think, you know, it's hard to think of something else that competes in quite the same way. And finally, Sarah? I think that in order to understand the impact, you just have to go to the Vatican, you know, on any ordinary day and just see how many people are in the chapel, you know, whether they are there to meditate on what it says about us as humans or whether they're simply there because it's an icon that they feel they have to see.

I think it just has this incredibly powerful presence in the popular mind. And I don't see that changing. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Catherine Fletcher, Sarah Bowles and Matias Wivor. And to our studio engineer, Donald MacDonald. And next week we'll be discussing the vampire by Polly Dori, the forerun of Dracula, Nosferatu, and Edward Cullen. Thanks for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Over to you, Matties. I can add something about the fingers. Yes, no, that would be interested. I think this thing about the fingers is really very important. It's because they're not touching, they suggest potential. They suggest something like the possibilities that are now being given to us.

And that is, I think, what's so inspiring about that. Life and free will, spirit and free will. And it is... And alternative possibilities, what if they didn't touch? Yeah, yeah. Do we absolutely know that in the next few moments they do touch? It's that, yeah, it's also the what if, but also, you know, the other possibility. We didn't ever talk, we didn't talk very much about Michelangelo's influences,

but I'm really interested in the relationship between this last judgment and the one in Orvieto. I don't know if you've seen the one in Orvieto, the Signorelli last judgment in Orvieto, which is a tiny, tiny chapel by comparison, but it's also, it's very, very beautiful. it's quite experimental. You have these ghost-like figures. It's a very different sort of sequence. But I don't know if you have thoughts on Bruno. Was Michael Angelo entirely original?

Where was he getting his ideas from? I think he may well have been influenced by Signorelli. The sheer violence and power of Sinirelli's depiction, I think, finds a parallel in the way that Michelangelo tackles the subject. And perhaps also in the use of those sort of colourful devils that Biadjuda-Cezana figure has some parallels perhaps. I think we have to accept that Michelangelo was drawing on previous influences, that he doesn't just pluck this out of the air.

He would like us to think so. He would like us to think so, yes. And actually that's something else that I wanted to bring up. You know, how much can we trust the stories that we know about the creation of the Sistine Chapel? Because a lot of them go back to Michaelangelo's authorised biography by his people. Which is not depend on. Which is not reliable at all. and the fact that Vasari, when he comes to publish the second edition of his lives,

actually changes a lot of what he says based on Condivi. So Michelangelo's own biases and prejudices and trying to make himself look good have actually coloured what we think we know about it. It's quite interesting that a manager's genius should try to make himself look good. He was insecure. He had a massive chip on his shoulder. He had a massive chip on his shoulder about many things.

but he was an artist who was deeply aware of what came before him and when he'd finished the ceiling and Raphael had painted upstairs Michelangelo was commended for his figural invention which is like without par

you know it's it is the most and it's so unbelievably inventive every figure is in a memorable position that's new and he was incapable of doing a figure that was boring it's just always like there's something but his coloring. They separated the invention and the coloring. The coloring Raphael was better because

Raphael painted things as if they were real. Whereas Michelangelo has this strange, very, and we talked about it initially. Like when you come into the chapel, you see this intense coloring, which is not naturalistic, which is like very bright colors that often are combined in ways that you don't see in real life. You see yellow shaded with green, for example. You could argue that he's not trying to represent reality. He's representing the spiritual world. He is. It's a visionary way of coloring.

And he's basing that on, and it was described as such. It was retrograde. It was old-fashioned. He's based it on centuries of Florentine painting. When you look at a 14th century painting and early 15th century painting, when you go Frangelico,

you see this intensely visionary imagery that uses these kinds of colors. And I think he's working on that. And the innovation of, combining colors that change in ways you would never see. It's often been described, but yeah, well, he's imitating shot silk that changes with the light and so on.

But shot silk doesn't change like that. I mean, these are colors that don't go together, and they're also in the cast shadows. He has green shadows and purple shadows and so on. It is extremely inventive coloring. And I think it appeals to a modern sensibility in that sense, that it's not naturalistic, that it's expressive and visionary. So McAllagulletola as a colorist, I think, is underrated.

it's important to remember that... And this is why it was so shocking. When it was cleaned, nobody had imagined it. I guess I think some people had imagined, the conservators and so on, but like most people hadn't imagined that it would look like that. It was shocking.

It was, in the 20th century, it was shocking to see this. Had nobody thought of doing it for 500 years? I mean, did it take them by surprise? No, it's quite interesting. Did anybody ever say, sort of 200 years on... There's real colours under there where we can clean off a bit of soot. I'm not trying to be joking.

I just want to why. took that long to get back to the real colors? There were efforts to do this. I forget exactly at which times, but at several moments, rather than cleaning it, it was treated with oil or with some kind of compound

to make the colors appear more clearly. And over time, that had the opposite effect. So it's also treatments that, yeah, it sort of attracted and change the chemical composition of this treatment went darker. So it actually had the

opposite effect. And at some point the Claristorre stained glass was taken out to get more light in. And so the original light as it was intended and I think that's in the 20th century, it's like in the 30s or something, it was taken out. And so to admit

more light. And so we don't have the original sort of light on the interior. We're just used to a sort of period drama aesthetic that makes everything look very, very faded. If it's in the past, it must look faded and forget, I mean, both with the ancient world as well, which has that where there's exactly the same problem

that the popular image of it is that it's all white marble. And in fact, these would have been painted in very, very bright colors. And in a way, what Michelangelo does is it kind of recreating some of that Renaissance sense of the actual bright ancient world, even into the paintings that he makes in the Sistine chapel. But yet that sense of loud colour, and you have to think about all the cardinals in red, parading through in the colour scheme of the papal vestments as they changed throughout the liturgical year. This is an incredibly bright, loud, showy space.

And I think perhaps we don't always quite appreciate the sense of that and the sense of how the people fill it as well. I never always quite try and stand in the middle of these tourists and imagine how might this have looked with the lords in their doublets and the cardinals in their red hats. and the cloaks and so forth, what does this place, how does this place appear when it's working and it's full of life and it's full of music and singing? We haven't talked at all about the sound of the Sistine Chapel,

but this is a Sistine Chapel choir there is to this day. And the popes who are commissioning Michelangelo were also very, very keen to build up their choir with the top choristers, with the top music masters and create a vocal effect. in a Sistine Chapel to match the quality of the art there. Following on from that idea of trying to imagine what it would have been like, of course, something which would have been there,

well, not when Michelangelo was painting the ceiling, but when he was painting the last judgment and isn't now, the tapestries, which we mentioned in passing earlier. And you, Matthias, were lucky enough to see them in situ quite recently. They were kept in the Vatican. So these are the tapestries that Leo the 10th commissioned from Raphael in 1515. series of tapestry with stories taken from the acts of the apostles

so the life of Peter and Paul the two originated the fathers of the church and as Sarah mentioned earlier this is the world after grace so that complements the entire scheme and these tapestries

were meant for special occasions and not always there and they're Raphael's most elaborate inventions they draw deeply upon his growing knowledge of classical antiquity because he was in charge of excavating Rome. He was and recuperating stones for building new buildings, including St. Peter's. So that and then his storytelling abilities, and he was very consciously,

this is competing against the ceiling. He knew that the ceiling was there, and he had to sort of live up to that. He had to do something that prevented people from looking up immediately. And I can say that having seen them two years ago, just before the pandemic, They had them out, and they put up in the chapel. I came into the chapel. I did not look up for many minutes. Michelangelo would be horrified.

Yeah, and Raphael would be thrilled. His triumph. I did eventually look off again. But you could say Michelangelo has the last laugh. He's the last man standing, really. He outlives Raphael and Leonardo and then comes back and paints the last judgment. And then builds a dome next door, as you do. Yes.

And of course paints the other chapel, the Pauline Chapel, after he's finished the last judgment, also within the Vatican. Which is these strange, dark paintings. They are strange. It's really tortured and bizarre. It's like the last judgment, but even more sort of curled up and bizarre. Why does that torture come from, do you think? Why do you think that torture comes from?

I think this is a motif of his whole life. He is uncomfortable in his own skin, always, in his sculpture, and his painting, whatever he's doing. in his poetry. That isn't uncomfortable. David isn't uncomfortable, isn't he? There's a disquiet across his... This is a fairly young Michelangelo still.

But if you look at David's face, you look at him from one side, and you see a body at ease, somebody who is confident. Then you walk around him, and you see the other side of the face, and suddenly the disquiet comes out, the doubt, the inner life, the turmoil inside him is suggested by that change. as you walk around him. It's very effective. And I think that is, he's getting to the heart of like this discovery of the individual, so to speak, in the Renaissance of inner life as something that is very real and can be expressed

through the body. And that's what he then builds on through his career. He expresses inner turmoil or inner. Also, I mean, not just negative emotions, but a lot of negative emotions and difficult emotions through his bodies, these tortured bodies. And when he gets towards to, like when he paints the Last Judgment and the Napoleon Chapel and his late sculpture, you really have this sense and expressed through his poetry too, that he's doubtful that his art can do anything to really ultimately save him.

That it's only his faith. He's very religious too, profoundly religious, but yeah. I was just going to add to that and add about this very late series of extraordinary drawings that he makes of the crucifixion, which he's using as a way to sort of meditative. on death and resurrection and salvation and all of these amazing subjects where the figures almost become vaporous.

They blend into the spiritual realm rather than the physical realm. And in these drawings you can really get that sense of the inner torment and he's trying to work through his fears and his hopes. And by this point he's in his 70s. But that's also where we come back to Protestantism and justification through faith

because that's a key tenet of Protestantism. and to have Michelangelo making those drawings of Christ on the cross and thinking about what that means. In the particular context of this period, when everybody is debating the relative importance of good works, as in the traditions of the Catholic Church, versus justification through faith, and how do those two fit together?

How can they be reconciled? All the debates that go on at the Council of Trent? This is part of what Michelangelo's world is about, is trying to work out how Christianity should be. And in that sense, I think we can see some of the things that he does in his painting and in his poetry is reflecting that whole period of real deep personal turmoil that individuals at the time were feeling like, have we got this religious business right? Have we understood what God expects of us?

Have we been doing it all wrong? And if you're a real believer, that's incredibly difficult to deal with. It's terrifying, isn't it? Well, thank you all very much. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Since the war began, my inbox has been flooded. People from Ukraine, Russia and Britain are getting in touch with me. They're telling me about a very different battle,

but one that's also having real consequences for the people caught up in it. I'm Marianna Spring, and in this new point, podcast for Radio 4, War on Truth, I'll be reporting on the extraordinary information war being waged over Ukraine and hearing from the ordinary people sucked into it. This blatant denial of reality is being waged by trolls, state media, influencers, online and beyond. From BBC Radio 4, War on Truth. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds.