Visions of Papal and Ecclesiastical

Visions of Papal and Ecclesiastical Supremacy:

Michelangelo, Raphael, St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Tempietto

The traditional world was one of connection and unity. The medieval church represented the intersection of the mundane with the sacred, the coming together of the institutions of humankind with the institutions of God. Like God on high, the Church was a focal point, the center of all things, the point from which all came and to which all returned. The spiritual mingled with the material and so represented the entirety of possible existence and experience. The human world, like the divine cosmos, was multilayered, the different classes of beings forming a careful hierarchy. Subcultures existed within larger cultures. Local communities were microcosms of the larger society that contained them. At the heart of the medieval Latin Church was the Pope with his seat at Rome. In the very heart of Rome was St. Peter's Basilica, the chief church of Latin Christendom. Inside St. Peter's was the chapel that came to be known as the Sistine, the one that par excellence was associated with the popes in their role as spiritual and temporal leaders of Christianity. St. Peter's itself was a symbol in stone of the physical world. Its architectural arrangement and decorative scheme called forth notions of church history and Biblical prophecy. The present basilica is actually a replacement for an earlier church on the site that was order destroyed by Pope Julius II in 1505. The original church was built over the supposed burial place of St. Peter, the apostle who is considered the father of the Western Church. Construction of the present St. Peter's occurred largely at a time when the supremacy of the one universal Western church was being challenged by the forces of the Protestant Reformation. The current structure is meant to embody the idea of universal supremacy and indivisible unity as expressed in the continuing reign of the popes as heads of the Roman Catholic Church.

As old St. Peter's was beginning to crumble through centuries of neglect, Julius II gave orders that it be torn down and replaced, rather than be repaired. The new basilica represented; therefore, as much a break with tradition as its continuation. The pope desired a structure that would be even larger and grander than the old, and one which give graphic to the power and splendor of the Catholic Church. The greatest architects and artists of the time would create the plans for the basilica and contribute to its decoration. Both Michelangelo and Raphael were leading figures of the art world of the early Sixteenth Century. Michelangelo would work on the frescos of the Sistine Chapel, with Raphael contributing a set of tapestries. Michelangelo, Raphael, and also Bramante, would wrangle over St. Peter's final architectural form, each suggesting and fine tuning specific aspects of the finished structure. Numerous other artists and architects also contributed to the finished basilica. It is thus a tribute to the greatest artistic minds of the age, a work that includes many works, and stands as a symbol of great technical skill fused with extraordinary beauty. Within its overall harmonies, one may read the Biblical history of the Cosmos, together with the story of the Church and the political world. A monument as much to the popes as to God, St. Peter's is a story in stone, marble, paint, and various precious and semi-precious materials. Out of a contest of very human wills was born a testament to worldly ambition and talent coupled with divine faith.

The Building of St. Peter's

After the tearing down of the Constantinian basilica, work on the new church was first entrusted to Donato Bramante. Bramante chose an idealized Greek Cross plan, the idea being to represent the centrality of the church, the equal arms of the cross creating a sense of absolute harmony and balance. A great dome was to rise over the center of this cross at the west end of the old basilica and directly over the supposed site of St. Peter's tomb. According to Vasari, the idea was to place the dome of the Pantheon over the Basilica of Maxentius.

The concept was in keeping with Renaissance ideals in which works of the Classical world were used as models for present-day structures and artistic creations. Taken as ideal forms, they could be adapted to the liturgical uses of the Church while serving as a visible monument to Church's political and social worldview. The Pantheon had been a temple to all the gods, just as St. Peter's would hopefully serve as a center for all Christians. The dome's circular form could convey the idea of perfection as it's a figure without beginning or end, a shape without edges that can also be seen symbolically as a kind of crown sitting atop the church and the world. Below, the cruciform sanctuary reaches its arms out in the four cardinal directions, extending the benefits of the church to all the peoples of the globe.

Yet, after Bramante's death, his pupil Sangallo altered Bramante's idealized form, adding a nave to the Basilica. And when Sangallo also died, Michelangelo was given, and reluctantly accepted, the task of continuing work on the massive church. As Michelangelo began his contribution, the central piers of the Greek cross had already been built, and some of the arms of the cross had already been vaulted thus at least partially confining Michelangelo to a pre-set plan.

Still, Michelangelo sought to restore the harmony of Bramante's original design. He truncated the nave and reduced the complexity of the already completed area by incorporating it into a simple arrangement of square vaults around the Greek cross.

In a letter of January 1547, Michelangelo praised Bramante's design for its adherence to ancient ideals, "He it was who laid down the first plan of St. Peter's, not full of confusion, but clear, simple, luminous and detached in such a way that it in no wise impinged upon the Palace."

Indeed, one of Michelangelo's criticisms of Sangallo's changes was that it blocked out the light to the main part of the structure, creating "so many dark lurking places above and below that they afford ample opportunity for innumerable rascalities."

The chief church of Western Christendom should be free and open and filled with natural light, much as God's light was mean to illuminate the hearts of men and women, and to animate the thoughts of the Church's rulers, the popes. By eliminating the certain overly complex aspects of the earlier plans, Michelangelo was also sending a message that straightforwardness and simplicity were best. Still, the grandeur of Bramante's original conception had been meant to serve the ego of Julius II. It was Michelangelo's original design for Julius II's tomb that had provided the inspiration for re-building St. Peter's. Apparently Julius felt that such a grand monument to himself deserved an equally grand setting.

Conflicts of opinions between Pope Julius II and Michelangelo would quickly turn into a battle of wills as Michelangelo pursued one project after another in connection with St. Peter's. Long before the artist was given primary responsibility for the structure's architectural appearance, he was already fighting with Julius over the appearance of the tomb and the Sistine Chapel.

Like the Roman Catholic Church itself, the St. Peter's was an ensemble comprised of numerous smaller sections. The papal palace joined directly with the various chapels in a visible statement of the blending together of the secular and the sacred. The Sistine Chapel, because of its large size was used for many of the major church ceremonies. Its redecoration under Julius II followed the same rules of aggrandizement as that of the rest of the basilica. Heavy use of gold and precious and semiprecious materials linked concepts of temporal wealth to ideas of the greater glory of God… and of Julius II. Among the many battles between pope and painter, was Julius II's complaint that Michelangelo was not employing gold and ultramarine lavishly enough on his Sistine ceiling.

Such disagreements cut to the deeper argument over the real natural of artistic representation, and the greater meaning of the Sistine Chapel and the Basilica. Typically, Michelangelo chose his materials based on what would be most effective in terms of his own vision of the final product. Michelangelo had, in fact, gilded the balusters in the first half of the ceiling, but then seeing -- as described by Alberti -- their distracting effect, he switched to a dull brownish yellow for the remaining balusters, employing only small gold highlights. On two of them, he used no gold at all.

Michelangelo had little patience for those he did not appreciate the finer points of art, or worse still, those, who seemed to misunderstand its fundamental concepts. A papal memorandum of 1549 gave Michelangelo absolute control over the works at St. Peter's, a condition he no doubt felt necessary if he was going to have any hope of repairing what he saw as the "errors" of Sangallo.

Shortly after taking charge of the project, Michelangelo viewed Sangallo's wooden model of the planned basilica. He was accompanied by Sangallo's followers who, according to Vasari,

Putting the best face on the matter, came forward and said how glad they were that the work had been given to him and that the model was a meadow that would always afford inexhaustible pasture, to which Michelangelo replied that they spoke truly, meaning, as he afterwards told a friend, that it would serve for sheep and oxen who know nothing of art.

In fact, a good part of Michelangelo's work on St. Peter's consisted of removing what work had been accomplished by Sangallo. Sangallo's hemicycle was demolished, and Michelangelo shored up some of Bramante's rather high-speed construction, until -- again in the opinion of Vasari -- "the columns, bases, capitals, doors and windows, cornices and projections, were perfect in every detail."

Michelangelo treated architecture as a form of sculpture, Bramante's collection of distinct parts being transformed into an organic whole.

Essentially, the failings of Sangallo's design had been in the lack the proper relationships of the different parts to the whole. Michelangelo's re-working of Sangallo's St. Peter's necessitated a new decorative plan as well. As the artist stated in a letter of December 1550,

When a plan changes its form entirely it is not only permissible, but necessary to vary the ornament also and [that of] their counterparts likewise. The central features are always as independent as one chooses - just as the nose, being in the middle of the face, is related neither to one eye nor to the other, though one hand is certainly related to the other and one eye to the other, owing to their being at the sides and having counterparts.

For Michelangelo, a building needed to be as balanced and natural as the human body. And so it would be with St. Peter's, a structure that was meant to symbolize the universal body of the Western Church.

The Sistine Chapel

Within St. Peter's, the Sistine Chapel occupies a place equivalent to that occupied by St. Peter's within the overall world of Latin Christendom. As one of the largest chapels in the basilica, the Sistine Chapel has long been the setting of major ceremonies and religious celebrations, including those traditionally presided over by the pope in person. As befitted a center of both the physical and metaphysical worlds, the Sistine Chapel was modeled after the First Temple in Jerusalem. Its dimensions correspond exactly to those of the Temple described in the Old Testament; the dimensions that were decreed by God in First Kings, Chapters Six to Fourteen.

Internally, the Chapel would contain representations of the history of the world and of the Church. From the beginning, Pope Julius II intended for Michelangelo to execute the frescos inside the Sistine Chapel, informing Bramante that he was dispatching Sangallo to Florence to bring back Michelangelo. Bramante; however, informed the Pope that he was familiar with Michelangelo's views on painting the Chapel, and that Michelangelo did not wish to undertake any such project:

"You did not pay any serious attention either to the tomb [of Julius II] or to the painting of the ceiling," and Bramante continued: "Holy Father, I believe that Michelangelo would lack the necessary courage to attack the ceiling because he has not had much experience in figure painting, and in general the figures will be set high and in foreshortening, and this brings up problems which are completely different from those met in painting at ground level.

Such feelings would set the stage for future conflicts between painter and pope in regard to the painting of the ceiling. As relayed by Bramante, Michelangelo's comments underscore the great technical difficulties involved with working so high up, and also the special difficulties presented to a man who thought of himself more as a sculptor than a painter. From the beginning, Michelangelo was an unwilling participant in Julius II's grandiose schemes to embellish the Sistine Chapel.

At the time of Julius II's accession, the Sistine Chapel walls were decorated with a series of Old Testament and New Testament scenes by artists such as Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, Bartolommeo della Gatta, and Cosimo Rosselli, while the ceiling featured the relatively simple motif of a heaven studded with stars, the chapel having been commissioned by Julius' uncle -- and the Chapel's namesake -- Pope Sixtus IV.

At the level of the windows, the Chapel was adorned with portraits of various early pope-saints, a form of decoration that further emphasized the links between the mundane and the divine. The representations of the popes also recalled the august lineage of the present pope, giving visible form to the notion of an unending line of apostolic succession. Julius II also wished to preserve these existing works of art as a tribute to his uncle, a fact that would force Michelangelo to work within established constraints.

Michelangelo's work; therefore, would be largely in addition to, and not in place of much of the existing decoration. Michelangelo attacked the Pope's the "poverty" of the Pope's original plan for redecorating the ceiling, demanding instead that Julius II permit him to "make what I wanted, whatever would please me."

The ceiling was continually a work in progress. Michelangelo began with an exceedingly rich, almost ostentatious palette, liberally employing gold leaf, vivid blues, and other bright colors. The first half of the ceiling primarily follows this arrangement. However, in the second half, Michelangelo began to work with more muted colors, the forms themselves growing heavier and more solid and earthbound in appearance.

Michelangelo struggled with the commission and the pope almost from the very beginning. Bramante had planned a scaffold that would hang from the ceiling by ropes. Michelangelo complained immediately, realizing that the scaffolding would leave permanent holes in the ceiling that would be scattered in and out among his frescos. Michelangelo redesigned the scaffolding, insisting on something that extended between the walls. Michelangelo's solution was a series of stout wooden beams inserted into oblong holes in the walls just above the cornice and windows. A kind of bridge was constructed on the basis of these supports, the bridge enabling the painter to comfortably reach the ceiling.

While the work was in progress, Julius was demanding and insisted on frequently visiting and climbing up the scaffold. Eager to have at least some of the work exposed, Julius ordered the scaffolding removed form the completed half of the ceiling.

Condivi wrote further of the Pope's frequent demands on Michelangelo, in particular, the Pope's impatience at the amount of time the work was taking:

It is true that I have heard him say that the work he would have wished, as he was prevented by the hurry of the Pope, who demanded of him one day when he would finish the Chapel. Michelangelo said: 'When I can.' The Pope, angered, added: 'Do you want me to have you thrown down off this scaffolding?' Michelangelo, hearing this, said to himself: 'No, you shall not have me thrown down,' and as soon as the Pope had gone away he had the scaffolding taken down and uncovered his work upon All Saints' Day

The episode illustrates the problems faced by the artist in dealing with his autocratic patron, underscoring as it does the different ways of looking at art. For Michelangelo, the creation of the ceiling was, like the creation of his other works, a powerful, and even emotionally-draining, undertaking, an exercise in personal expression and creativity. For Julius II, Michelangelo appears in many ways as but a tool, a means to an end -- the end of which was the pope's own self-glorification. Both worked within their respective themes, Julius as heir to what he saw as an ancient and uninterrupted tradition of religious power, and development, much of it more worldly than sacred. Michelangelo, on the other hand, was the artist working with his own sacred gifts to convey a message that would be understandable to countless future generations, imparting to them a sense both of the world beyond the physical world, and also something of the man who had created the whole spectacular scene on the chapel ceiling.

Complementing the permanent frescos of Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel was also originally home to a series of tapestries by Raphael. These two have a theme that relates to the idea of the apostolic succession of the popes. Scenes from the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul were richly represented on a series of ten tapestries. Raphael employed gold threads to highlight the strongly modeled figures of these narrative scenes. The gold acts like light playing on the figures, casting shadows and bringing out the depth and drama of the scene.

Again, this recalls the divine light that inspires and animates the world represented on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and walls. Raphael's figures are set amid architecture, another way of joining the spiritual to the physical. The historical and spiritual are given concrete forms, are set among recognizable shapes and scenes. Vivid colors move easily into more earthy tones as if the blessed figures of the apostles are both part of an also removed from the realm of everyday life. In fact, Raphael's tapestries are, "entirely keyed to the dominance of their reflections and to their harmony with their light environment, the stone of the architectural setting, the yellowish ground, and the delicate colours of the landscape, to die away at last in the pure monochrome gold-relief style of the lower borders" -- the scenes are thus both interconnected and self-contained.

They relate to one another, but are carefully frame din a way that makes each episode distinct, as befits a series of events that are being related to the viewer. The overall effect was to impress visitors to the chapel with the splendor of the papal lineage, and to anchor that lineage in sacred story. The choice of tapestries specifically recalls the decoration of royal palaces in the Early Modern Period.

More Technical Innovation: St. Peter's Dome

In addition to solving the various technical problems of painting the Sistine Chapel's vast ceiling, Michelangelo exhibited his genius in other architectural feats. One of his most notable projects was a design for the great dome of the new St. Peter's. Though not the precise dome that was eventually built, Michelangelo's plan was closely followed. Michelangelo based his plan on the dome of the cathedral in Florence. He was especially interested in the mathematical ratio of the dome itself to the supporting drum beneath.

Paired columns serve as buttresses, echoing the paired pilasters below. The dome is hemispherical with a lantern on top. Michelangelo was innovative in his use of figures displayed around the dome on socles. The figures and their pedestals actually helped to support the physical structure of the dome, a fact that apparently unnoticed by the eventual builders of the dome whom removed these elements.

The idea is an interesting combination of decorative architecture and structural engineering. It speaks, as well, to the interplay of the various elements of a design program. In one sense, Michelangelo's work is perfectly streamlined, nothing going to waste in terms of structural elements. The architecture contributes, on every level, to the overall meaning of the work. Once more, Michelangelo plans are architecture as sculpture. And as in the case of his sculptures, the works serve the allegorical purposes of those who commissioned them. To crown St. Peter's dome with figures of angels was to represent God's creation topped by and in a way supported by the ranks of heavenly beings. The outward thrust of the dome was countered by these figures in much the same way that the centrifugal forces of human affairs were constrained by the virtues imparted by the Church. Completion of what would be one of the largest masonry domes continued over a period of decades. The dome was finally completed by Giacomo della Porta in 1590. As built, the dome is actually a double-shelled vault, a technique that was used later on in such structures as Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.