Read Online The Sistine Secrets by Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner - Free Book Online
Authors: Benjamin Blech, Roy Doliner
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the greatest number of these hidden messages was also the most unexpected and perilous place in the world for such subversive acts—the private chapel of the papal court in the Vatican Palace, the Sistine Chapel.
Here Michelangelo best proved his genius. For the masses his frescoes provided—and still provide to this day—delights of incomparable beauty. However, for those perceptive enough to grasp the deeper messages imbedded in his multilayered masterpiece, there are far greater rewards in store.
A REBEL IS BORN
I live and love in God’s peculiar light.
—MICHELANGELO
W HAT SHAPES A CHILD of fifteenth-century Italy to become the most revolutionary artist and the most artistic revolutionary of his time? Is the answer determined by family, by one’s name, or is it fated by horoscope?
Those who stress heredity must acknowledge that, sometimes, the fruit does indeed fall far away from the tree. The Buonarroti family tree was filled with anything but artistic types. An early ancestor had been a city councilman in Florence, another a Dominican monk, yet another a moneylender, and then there was a great-grandfather, Simone di Buonarrota, who was a wool trader and money changer. This Simone was perhaps the loftiest branch on the tree: he became rich and was a social success, gaining many honors for the family by lending money to the Florentine city government. His son Lionardo, however, was the undoing of the family. He was not a great businessman, and sired so many daughters that their wedding dowries more or less bankrupted the family. They lost their prestigious home in Florence, and Lionardo, in order to pay his debts, had to accept demeaning magistrate positions in rural villages far from the fashionable streets of Florence. His son, Ludovico, inherited his bad luck and poor business acumen. He was relegated to being the local magistrate for far-flung Caprese, high in the rocky Tuscan mountains near Arezzo. Caprese means “goat-filled,” since the rustic area probably had more mountain goats than human inhabitants. This represented a precipitous drop in the status of the once-wealthy Buonarroti line.
It was here, amid the rough stony mountains and the rough, stoic stonecutters who toiled there, that Ludovico’s wife, Francesca di Neri, gave birth to their first son in the predawn hours of a winter’s day. Ludovico, ever the precise functionary, diligently recorded: “Note as today, the 6th of March 1474, there was born to me a male child, and I have placed upon him the name of Michelagnolo…. Note that the 6th of March 1474 is according to the Florentine calendar, which counts from the Incarnation, and according to the Roman calendar, which counts from the Nativity, it is 1475.” Even at what would normally be a time of elation for a new parent, Ludovico was evidently still very much concerned with demonstrating his “noble” Florentine roots.
Florence and Rome have always had two very divergent mentalities, but it was especially so in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Back then, the Florentines based the year one of their calendar on the Incarnation, when according to Church tradition the Holy Spirit impregnated the Virgin Mary, thus uniting the divine Jesus with the human Jesus in her womb. The Roman calendar, however, was based on the Nativity, or the birth year of Jesus, just as it is today. This is an apt metaphor for the two ways of thinking in the time of Michelangelo: Renaissance Florence was a place of inclusionary, humanistic philosophy (e.g., the union of the holy and the carnal in the womb), whereas Rome was the center of exclusionary, supremacist teaching (e.g., the partum, the baby being separated from the womb). Even at birth, Michelangelo was already caught in the middle between these two cities and their two mind-sets.
Ludovico does not even mention his wife, the boy’s mother. It was obviously a difficult birth, as were most back then. The choice of the newborn’s
Here Michelangelo best proved his genius. For the masses his frescoes provided—and still provide to this day—delights of incomparable beauty. However, for those perceptive enough to grasp the deeper messages imbedded in his multilayered masterpiece, there are far greater rewards in store.
A REBEL IS BORN
I live and love in God’s peculiar light.
—MICHELANGELO
W HAT SHAPES A CHILD of fifteenth-century Italy to become the most revolutionary artist and the most artistic revolutionary of his time? Is the answer determined by family, by one’s name, or is it fated by horoscope?
Those who stress heredity must acknowledge that, sometimes, the fruit does indeed fall far away from the tree. The Buonarroti family tree was filled with anything but artistic types. An early ancestor had been a city councilman in Florence, another a Dominican monk, yet another a moneylender, and then there was a great-grandfather, Simone di Buonarrota, who was a wool trader and money changer. This Simone was perhaps the loftiest branch on the tree: he became rich and was a social success, gaining many honors for the family by lending money to the Florentine city government. His son Lionardo, however, was the undoing of the family. He was not a great businessman, and sired so many daughters that their wedding dowries more or less bankrupted the family. They lost their prestigious home in Florence, and Lionardo, in order to pay his debts, had to accept demeaning magistrate positions in rural villages far from the fashionable streets of Florence. His son, Ludovico, inherited his bad luck and poor business acumen. He was relegated to being the local magistrate for far-flung Caprese, high in the rocky Tuscan mountains near Arezzo. Caprese means “goat-filled,” since the rustic area probably had more mountain goats than human inhabitants. This represented a precipitous drop in the status of the once-wealthy Buonarroti line.
It was here, amid the rough stony mountains and the rough, stoic stonecutters who toiled there, that Ludovico’s wife, Francesca di Neri, gave birth to their first son in the predawn hours of a winter’s day. Ludovico, ever the precise functionary, diligently recorded: “Note as today, the 6th of March 1474, there was born to me a male child, and I have placed upon him the name of Michelagnolo…. Note that the 6th of March 1474 is according to the Florentine calendar, which counts from the Incarnation, and according to the Roman calendar, which counts from the Nativity, it is 1475.” Even at what would normally be a time of elation for a new parent, Ludovico was evidently still very much concerned with demonstrating his “noble” Florentine roots.
Florence and Rome have always had two very divergent mentalities, but it was especially so in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance. Back then, the Florentines based the year one of their calendar on the Incarnation, when according to Church tradition the Holy Spirit impregnated the Virgin Mary, thus uniting the divine Jesus with the human Jesus in her womb. The Roman calendar, however, was based on the Nativity, or the birth year of Jesus, just as it is today. This is an apt metaphor for the two ways of thinking in the time of Michelangelo: Renaissance Florence was a place of inclusionary, humanistic philosophy (e.g., the union of the holy and the carnal in the womb), whereas Rome was the center of exclusionary, supremacist teaching (e.g., the partum, the baby being separated from the womb). Even at birth, Michelangelo was already caught in the middle between these two cities and their two mind-sets.
Ludovico does not even mention his wife, the boy’s mother. It was obviously a difficult birth, as were most back then. The choice of the newborn’s
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