The Sincerest Form of Flattery

“Immature poets borrow,” T.S. Eliot once said. “Mature poets steal.” Domenico Zampieri or Domenichino wrestled with the giants of the Renaissance but ultimately gave up and embraced their influence. Born October 21, 1581, Domenichino must have looked up countless times at the Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, engraving the famous central scene of God breathing life into Adam. When Domenichino painted The Rebuke of Adam and Eve (above, from 1626), he inserted a clear copy of Michelangelo’s depiction of God trailing clouds of glory. It’s impossible to think that anyone would miss the reference, then or now. Domenichino clearly wants you to know that he loves the work of Michelangelo. Such “theft” isn’t really theft when it’s done in the open. In the Baroque period following the Renaissance, artists such as Domenichino had to choose sides—ignore the previous generation or continue its achievement in a new, fresh way. God clearly comes straight out of the Renaissance playbook, but the rebuke of the first man and woman clearly doesn’t. Michelangelo’s gentle depiction of their banishment from Eden gives way in Domenichino’s version to a more medieval, sinners in the hands of an angry God feel. Mixing the Medieval with the Renaissance, Domenichino brews up his own Baroque concoction.

Domenichino “stole” another figure from Michelangelo’s ceiling in his version of The Cumaean Sibyl (above, from 1610). Domenichino transforms Michelangelo’s brawny version into a more idealized type of beauty, but retains the exotic dress of the original, and maybe even exceeds it. Connecting Domenichino’s work to that of his predecessors brings out not only what he takes but also what he chooses not to take. In this case, you have a figure immortalized by Michelangelo, painted with the delicacy of Botticelli, but with the sensual coloring of a Raphael. Domenichino viewed the Renaissance world as a great buffet table from which he could choose freely and combine at will. Such practice was not only acceptable but encouraged. Students learned by copying from antique statuary during the neoclassicist craze of the Renaissance. Copying from those copyists seemed only natural.

Unfortunately for Domenichino, tastes and standards change. A clear homage one day becomes a pale imitation centuries later. John Ruskin raked Domenichino over the coals in his late nineteenth century writings elevating J.M.W. Turner to the heights based on his originality. Whereas critics once hailed works such as Domenichino’s Diana and her Nymphs (above, from 1616-1617) as beautiful examples of draftsmanship and fanciful painting of the human form, later critics saw only a mimicking of Leonardo da Vinci’s ideas on rendering atmospheric effects in landscapes. Only in the twentieth century did Domenichino regain a minor place in the pantheon of great Italian artists, yet still overshadowed by his Baroque contemporary, Caravaggio. Nicolas Poussin, who studied briefly with Domenichino, championed the master’s work verbally as well as visually—infusing many of his lessons on landscape into his own ethereal, natural worlds. Perhaps some day the pendulum will swing back and Domenichino’s works will no longer be seen as acts of thievery but as acts of devotion to his art.

Teacher’s Pet

It must be a complex set of feelings for any teacher to see his student surpass him or her—a mixture of pride and, hopefully less, envy. When Andrea del Verrocchio painted the Baptism of Christ (above, from 1474-1475) for the monastery of San Salvi in Florence, he delegated some of the “minor” elements to students in his workshop. Little did Verrocchio, who died October 7, 1488, know that those “minor” elements would soon overshadow the work of the supposed master. Born sometime around 1435, Verrocchio assigned the painting of the angel on the left holding Christ’s clothes to his star pupil, Leonardo da Vinci. (Legend has it that the angel on the right was assigned to another promising student, Sandro Botticelli.) Soon viewers found themselves captivated more by that angelic face and the landscape behind the angel (also by da Vinci) rather than the central scene of Jesus’ baptism. A star was “born” in this painting, and da Vinci soon found his way to the top of the Renaissance art world. Master painters usually delegated parts of commissions to their assistants, saving the choice parts for themselves. Usually, those supporting elements go unnoticed, and the names of those assistants are forgotten. In this one case, however, the name of the master Verrocchio has been largely forgotten and da Vinci remains the household name.

Verrocchio didn’t necessary upstage his painting master, Fra Filippo Lippi, but he did learn enough to break out on his own and start his own workshop. After training to be a goldsmith as a young man, Verrocchio learned the fundamentals of painting from Lippi and the art of sculpture from Donatello. Although Verrocchio split time between painting and sculpture evenly up until the mid 1470s, he still managed to paint in a sculptor-like style. Verrocchio’s Madonna and Child (above, 1470) shows a great grasp of the depth and weight of the figures, as if they were statues. However, they are statuesque without being stiff, imbued with the humanizing psychological depth that characterized the entire Renaissance. Verrocchio clearly enjoys painting the drapery and veils of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child, showing off his ability to render fabrics convincingly. The landscape behind them, perhaps done by Verrocchio or assigned to an assistant, followed the conventions of the time but also impressed in the young da Vinci’s mind the value of such little details, which he placed not only in his religious subjects but even in secular portraits such as the Mona Lisa.

When Verrocchio tackled the story of David and Goliath in his sculpture The Young David (above, from 1473-1475), he clearly acknowledged his debt to and announced his distance from Donatello, whose own David set the current standard for that Biblical hero. Donatello’s David stands over the severed giant’s head nude, his helmet worn at a jaunty angle, one hand cockily on his hip, and a foot placed triumphantly on Goliath’s head. Verrocchio’s David plays it cooler, his head uncovered, his body covered by a simple yet elegant toga, a hand placed on his hip in a relaxed but not cocky way, and a foot placed respectfully beside his vanquished foe’s head and not on it. Donatello’s David seems ready to talk trash while Verrocchio’s version exudes quiet confidence. When Michelangelo sculpted his definitive David, he fused elements of these two predecessors together. Depicting David before the battle, Michelangelo sculpted him in the nude like Donatello and with a clear sexual energy like Donatello, but the overall mood is more like Verrocchio—calm, quiet confidence in who he is and what he can do. Perhaps Verrocchio the teacher shared that same steady confidence in his abilities even as he watched a new generation of genius grow under his watch and leave him behind.

Sistine Saboteur

Is there any more Catholic space on earth than the Sistine Chapel? In that sacred space, popes are selected and papal religious functions are conducted. The majestic artwork commissioned by first Pope Sixtus IV and later Pope Julius II now stands as the ultimate visual expression of Christianity in the minds of most believers and nonbelievers around the world, with Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes and wall fresco of The Last Judgment often overshadowing even the work of Raphael and Sandro Botticelli. Such a pervasive mindset makes Rabbi Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner’s The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican even more shocking, threatening to challenge everything we thought we knew about the Sistine Chapel and those great works of art. Blech and Doliner essentially argue that the best laid plans of Sixtus IV and Julius II to turn the Chapel into a memorial to the power of the papacy, particularly the power wielded by the della Rovere dynasty to which those two pontiffs belonged, foundered against the better intentions of Renaissance artists, particularly Michelangelo. Tracing Michelangelo’s life back to his youth in Florence at the home of Lorenzo di Medici studying under humanist scholars, Blech and Doliner argue for the lasting effect of those scholars’ teachings in the Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah. “Michelangelo was able to subvert the entire project,” they write, “in order to secretly promote his own ideals, especially those linked to humanism, Neo-Platonism, and universal tolerance,” including tolerance of the Jewish faith by the (then) intolerant Catholic church. In The Sistine Secrets, Blech and Doliner uncover a whole new side of Michelangelo—the Jewish side! Pointing out a recently rediscovered work by Michelangelo, the Santo Spirito Crucifix (above, from 1493), they emphasize not only the anatomically correct rendering (including painted chest and underarm hair) but also the inscription above the figure, printed not only in the customary Latin (“INRI”), but also in Hebrew and Greek. When Michelangelo alters the wording in Hebrew from “King of the Jews” to “King from the Jews,” he begins a life-long struggle to resist the anti-Semitism of the Catholic church and restore the true roots of the faith, albeit in code. “Michelangelo spoke truth to power,” Blech and Doliner write, “and his insights, ingeniously concealed in his work, can at last be heard.”

Subverting Julius II’s plans put not only Michelangelo’s career in jeopardy but also his very life. Crossing the powerful pontiff meant a swift and painful death. If the “code” ever became public, Michelangelo would pay dearly. With a cunning grasp of human psychology, Michelangelo tricked Julius II by playing to the pope’s greatest weakness—vanity. Dedicating the chapel ostensibly to the Virgin Mary and Jesus, Julius II hoped that their glory would reflect on his legacy. Yet, Michelangelo talked Julius II out of his original designs, replacing them with a ceiling fresco of over 300 figures of which 95% are Jewish, with the other 5% pagan figures. Not a single personage from the New Testament appears. Under the cover of painting these figures as leading up to Christ, Michelangelo snuck in the entire tableau of Jewish history. Even over the papal entrance to the Chapel, where Julius II requested Christ be painted, Michelangelo painted instead the prophet Zechariah (above), getting away with the switch by giving Zechariah the face of Julius himself. Michelangelo, however, gets the last laugh by painting one of the putti standing behind Zechariah/Julius “giving the fig” (the Renaissance equivalent of the middle finger) from the “safety” of the shadows. Centuries of grime obscured this gesture until the recent restoration, which reveals Michelangelo’s rebellion to a new generation. On a more intellectual level, Michelangelo’s choice of Zechariah, whom Blech and Doliner call “one of the most universalist, inclusionary figures of the Hebrew Scripture,” raises a metaphorical “middle finger” to Julius II’s strident rejection of all faiths outside Catholicism.

Some of Michelangelo’s frescoed revolts were less obscure for Julius and that generation to understand and, therefore, more brazen. The figure of Aminadab (above, on the left), an ancestor of David and, therefore, Christ, wears on his left arm a yellow ring of cloth resembling the badge Jews were forced to wear by the Fourth Lateran Council and the Inquisition. “Here, directly over the head of the pope, the Vicar of Christ,” the authors write breathlessly, “Michelangelo is pointing out exactly how the Catholic Church was treating the family of Christ in his day: with hatred and persecution.” By putting Aminadab directly over Julius II’s head, Michelangelo calculated that it would never be seen by the pontiff while he conducted his business in the Chapel. Again, the restoration helped bring such details back to light today. (One of the great frustrations of The Sistine Secrets is the scarcity of color plates and the high percentage of pre-restoration images that forced me to consult other books just to see what they were referring to. That problem, of course, is the fault of the publisher aiming towards a popular audience rather than an art history audience and can’t be put on the authors themselves.)

When Julius II ordered Michelangelo back to the Sistine Chapel to work on the wall fresco of The Last Judgment, Michelangelo finally had to include Christ and the Virgin Mary in his work, but he still had a few more tricks up his sleeve. The Christ of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment (above) resembles no other Renaissance Christ, instead taking his “look” from the idealized sculptures of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the pagan ancestors of Catholicism whose philosophy Michelangelo consumed back in Florence. After sneaking the pagans into the picture, Michelangelo finds room for some Jews in Heaven. At about 2 o’clock from Christ’s head appear two figures wearing hats identifying them as Jews. “One is wearing the two-pointed cap that the Church forced Jewish males to wear to reinforce the medieval prejudice that Jews, being spawn of the devil, had horns,” Blech and Doliner write. “The other Jew is wearing a yellow cap of shame, the kind that the church ordered Jewish men to wear in public in 1215.” Near these two Jews, Michelangelo places a portrait of the man who taught Michelangelo all about the Greeks and the Jews—Pico della Mirandola, whom the church excommunicated for such teachings. Michelangelo tops even that bold maneuver by including the portrait of his lover Tommaso dei Cavalieri and placing the handsome young man directly in Christ’s line of vision. (Daniele da Volterra, Michelangelo’s friend and last surviving student, altered Cavalieri’s appearance to that of an old man in the later retouching he performed after Pius IV’s threat to destroy the fresco.) Placing Jews, excommunicated radicals, and homosexuals in Heaven, Michelangelo peoples the Pope’s fresco with the very people that the church excluded then, and still.

As subtle as Michelangelo could be, he also pushed the envelope with other images. Renaissance depictions of the Last Judgment usually showed the male chosen greeting one another into Heaven with “manly” handclasps. The men entering Michelangelo’s Heaven fondly embrace and even passionately kiss (above), acts that can hardly be misinterpreted. Amassing a huge store of evidence, Blech and Dolino present a compelling case for the rebelliousness of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel art that goes far beyond fanciful interpretation. Other, more conventionally Catholic interpretations, such as Father Heinrich Pfeiffer’s The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision (reviewed here), remain valid despite The Sistine Secrets, affirming the universality and multidimensionality of Michelangelo’s art. Such different interpretations conflict, of course. Pfeiffer stresses the involvement of Vatican-appointed theologians in the Sistine Chapel’s art, yet Blech and Dolino neither mention such theologians or how Michelangelo could have snuck past their more educated and presumably attentive eyes. How Michelangelo managed this feat of subversion fades next to the greater question of why, however, which Blech and Dolino address beautifully, connecting the flaws and prejudices of Michelangelo’s time with those of today. Just as the modern Catholic Church continues to extol many of the anti-humanist tenets of the past, Western Civilization continues to repeat the sins of the past in an endless cycle of historical amnesia. Perhaps looking back to Michelangelo’s frescoes as a political statement against his time will awaken us not only to new possibilities in appreciating his art but also to new possibilities in addressing the injustices right under our noses all this time.

Serving a Higher Power

Most people know Sandro Botticelli, who died May 17, 1510, for his masterpieces of Renaissance classicism—The Birth of Venus and Primavera. Born in 1445, Botticelli has become, through those two works, associated with a delicate, almost porcelain type of beauty that inspired Robert Downey, Jr.’s character in The Pick-up Artist to complement women with the question, “Did anyone ever tell you that you have the face of a Botticelli and the body of a Degas?” Few people know that those two works were created for the rich and powerful House of Medici, Botticelli’s patrons. Even Botticelli’s earliest religious pictures, such as his Madonna and Child with Six Saints (aka the Sant'Ambrogio Altarpiece ; above, from 1470) , serve the Medici family, in this case by presenting Lorenzo il Magnifico and Giuliano Medici kneeling in front of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. After studying with Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli no doubt developed a highly secularized, non-aesthetic view of religion, which allowed him to stomach placing such ruthless types as the Medici comfortably within a sacred setting.

Soon, however, Botticelli fell under the influence of the charismatic religious reformer Savonarola. Like Michelangelo, Fra Bartolomeo, and other artists, Botticelli found Savonarola’s brand of reformed Christianity, stripped of the worldly excesses and corruption of the papacy’s connections to secular power, attractive. Botticelli and Michelangelo allegedly threw some of their pagan-themed paintings into Savonarola’s infamous "Bonfire of the Vanities." Regardless of whether Botticelli actually committed any of his works to the flames, it is clear that his subject matter takes on a more serious, deeply religious tone in works such as Lamentation over the Dead Christ with the Saints Jerome, Paul and Peter (above, from 1490). The casual insertion of powerful patrons disappears as the complete focus centers on the dead Savior and the reactions of such world-rejecting aesthetics as Saint Jerome.

Although Savonarola lost control (and his life) in 1498 and the Medici regained their position of influence over society, Botticelli continued to follow the same devotional path. Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity (above, from 1500), one of the few works Botticelli signed, may have been a private work Botticelli painted for his own meditation. As in the years 1000 and 2000, 1500 was a year in which many believed the Day of Judgment was at hand. In the Mystic Nativity, Botticelli abandons all the classical realism and proportion of his early works and indulges in an almost surreal world in which a giant Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus dominate the center of the picture. Episodes from the Gospel of Saint John come to life throughout the painting. After Savonarola’s death, Botticelli simply dropped from view and little is known of his life. That departure from the world helped Botticelli’s memory fade, virtually erasing him from the mainstream of art history (with the notable exception of the work of Giorgio Vasari) until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Between 1900 and 1920, a Botticelli renaissance made him one of the most written about artists of the time. Although the Medici-supported works continue to make Botticelli’s name in our culture, choosing Savonarola over the Medici may have led to a short-term loss but a long-term gain in art history appreciation.

On the Nose

When Pope Sixtus IV gathered the fantastic four of Sandro Botticelli, Perugino, Cosimo Rosselli, and Domenico Ghirlandaio to paint new frescoes for the Sistine Chapel, Ghirlandaio’s reputation among that foursome was second only to that of Botticelli. Ghirlandaio’s The Calling of the Apostles (above) remains among the many wall frescoes overshadowed by Michelangelo’s achievements, but close inspection shows an artist worthy of a second look. The landscape that reaches back into the distance behind the flurry of figures at the front testifies to Ghirlandaio’s gift for realism in depicting devotional scenes. Sadly, the Resurrection fresco he also painted in the Sistine Chapel was destroyed, later to be replaced by Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment. Michelangelo briefly served as an apprentice under Ghirlandaio, who died January 11, 1494, so you have to wonder what he may have felt painting the same scene on the same wall worked upon by his master four decades before.

In the convent of San Marco in Florence, Ghirlandaio painted one of his most enduring versions of The Last Supper (above, from 1486). Ghirlandaio creates a sumptuous dinner, filling the plates with bread, cherries, and more, and weighting down the table with cups and decanters. Following the common layout of the scene, he places Judas on the side of the table opposite Jesus, in contrast to the Da Vinci arrangement modern eyes have come to expect. The rich merchants of Florence would have easily seen a bit of their own life of luxury in the table depicted here. The warmth and humor of Ghirlandaio comes through in the cat in the right foreground, poised to pounce upon any fallen scraps.

My favorite painting by Ghirlandaio, however, is his An Old Man and His Grandson (above, from 1490). I remember seeing this in the Louvre amidst the other great Renaissance paintings. It stood out to me because of the stunning combination of realism in depicting the grandfather’s afflicted nose and humanism in showing the love and pride he took in his grandson. Such a figure could easily have become a Brueghel-esque grotesquerie, yet Ghirlandaio resists that impulse and paints the interior life of the old man beneath the disfigurement. I recall reading years ago Bernard Berenson and Giorgio Vasari on the Italian Renaissance and feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of names—long, long names. Ghirlandaio, however, always stuck in my mind as one to remember.

The Other Guy

In 1482, Pope Sixtus IV called upon artists Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, and Cosimo Rosselli to begin work on decorating the Sistine Chapel. Rosselli, who died January 7, 1507, seemed an odd choice at the time, ranking far below the other painters called to work on the prestigious project. Even today, poor Cosimo seems the odd man out. His three murals, including The Crossing of the Red Sea (above, from 1482), depicting Moses leading his people through the parted Red Sea, literally are overlooked next to the grand works of Michelangelo and the other bigger names. As Father Pfieffer’s recent work, The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, demonstrated (reviewed earlier here), Rosselli’s work fits in with the theology of all those more famous works beautifully. How the artist himself fits in remains a question.

I honestly have no recollection of Rosselli’s works from my time in the Sistine Chapel. I was too busy taking in the ceiling and The Last Judgment for the side wall frescoes to even register, even though I knew Botticelli had painted some of them. Rosselli’s The Last Supper (above, from 1482) hangs on the North wall as part of the cycle of scenes from the life of Christ across from the cycle covering the life of Moses. Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Painters wrote of Rosselli’s life and praised this work: “[H]e made an octagonal table drawn in perspective, with the ceiling above it likewise octagonal, the eight angles of which he foreshortened so well as to show that he had as good a knowledge of this art as any of the others.” Rosselli possessed workmanlike skills, but lacked visionary power. The scenes of Christ on The Mount of Olives, arrested, and crucified appearing outside the windows of the supper scene add a surreal touch, but are common to the narrative vocabulary of the time.

Rosselli’s Sermon on the Mount (above, from 1482) is the third and last of his Sistine Chapel frescos. Again, Christ appears several times: walking to the scene with his apostles, preaching, and then healing a leper. Vasari claims that Rosselli filled his Sistine frescos with brilliant blue to cover up his other deficiencies. When the Pope announced a prize for the best artist, everyone thought that Rosselli didn’t stand a chance. Instead, the Pope fell under the spell of those brilliant blues and awarded the prize to Rosselli, adding insult to injury by instructing the other artists to add brilliant blue to their works as well. Rosselli laughed last (at least if that story was true), but soon drifted into the obscurity of a man cursed by colossal contemporaries.

Cracking the Code

The Judge and Mary, Joseph’s hand with the crossed beams, Anne (bottom left), Bartholomew’s knife, and Joachim (behind Bartholomew). From The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, Abbeville Press. Photo credit: ©Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Vaticani, A. Bracchetti/P. Zigrossi.

Standing in the Sistine Chapel may be the single most overwhelming experience you can have indoors. Like the great vistas of nature’s most beautiful works, you find yourself straining to see it all at once, hoping somehow to take it all in. Unlike those landscapes, however, the Sistine Chapel encloses you in majesty on all sides, surrounding you with visual stimulation. First you crane your neck up to take in Michelangelo’s ceiling frescos. As you neck begins to cramp, you lower your eyes to his towering Last Judgment and feel yourself being judged by Christ in glory (above). I made a point of looking at the other wall frescos by Botticelli and others, the forgotten masterpieces overshadowed by Michelangelo’s mastery. As you shuffle outside with the rest of the crowd, you can’t shake the feeling that you’ve missed more than you’ve appreciated.

Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J., now comes to your rescue. In The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, Father Pfeiffer takes you on a personal tour of the Sistine Chapel, lingering over every inch of every one of the frescoes, including those “hidden” by Michelangelo’s achievement. After studying the Sistine Chapel since the 1950s, Father Pfeiffer offers in this text a new vision of that most holy space of art and religion by recovering the original vision of the artists and those who advised them. “We can no longer naively believe that painters like Raphael and Michelangelo, however great their genius, could have invented themselves the content of the subjects they depicted in their paintings, much less that of painters who worked in the Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo could have done so,” Father Pfeiffer writes. Taking his text from five articles published since 1990, now translated from the original German, Father Pfeiffer reveals the intricate theological “code” of the art of the Sistine Chapel, an intricate network of meaning linked to the deep theological ideas that theologian advisors conveyed to the artists, who then realized the ideas in paint. Thanks to these “technical advisors” to Michelangelo et al, the Sistine Chapel became a vast religious book to be read by the initiated. “To us today, by contrast, this biblical visual idiom is largely lost,” Father Pfeiffer laments. Thanks to his efforts, we can now read again the language of that idiomatic code. Fans of the mythical Da Vinci Code should revel in this real-life religious code-breaking performed right before our eyes.


Southern wall: Sandro Botticelli, The Punishment of Korah, with scenes of the ships of Solomon and Jehoshaphat at Ezion-geber waiting to depart for the green land of Ophir, and the attempt to stone Moses. From The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, Abbeville Press. Photo credit: ©Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Vaticani, A. Bracchetti/P. Zigrossi.

In 1482, Pope Sixtus IV, a Franciscan who “cultivated allegorical Biblical exegesis,” called upon artists Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Perugino to begin work on decorating the Sistine Chapel. Sixtus IV dedicated the Chapel to the Virgin Mary. “Mary’s immaculate conceptiion,” Father Pfeiffer writes, “and hence the true role of the Mother of God in God’s will, influenced the artistic conception of the fresco decorations of the chapel from the outset.” Even works such as Botticelli’s The Punishment of Korah contain hidden references to Mary from the Old Testament book of Exodus. Throughout the rest of his analysis of the Sistine Chapel, Father Pfeiffer returns over and over to the centrality of Mary in the scheme of the art. Not only does Mary reach back to the Old Testament, but she reaches forward to the Church as the theological “type” of the Church and the “bride” of Jesus, her son. Parodoxically both wife and mother, Mary’s relationship with Jesus represents just one of the complex interweavings of multiple layers of meaning found in the works of the Chapel, which speak to one another as they speak to us with one powerful voice. Father Pfeiffer amazes with his ability to wed the visual evidence of the art and trace it back to specific theological concepts and even the specific original texts and authors of those concepts. If they ever film Indiana Jones and the Vatican Archives, Father Pfeiffer should get the part.

The prophet Daniel, symbolizing reason, draws his vision on a piece of paper with charcoal. The nude figure representing will carries the large open book, while memory is portrayed behind the prophet’s shoulder. The two pairs of children in the illusionistic marble reliefs perform their nuptial dance. From The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, Abbeville Press. Photo credit: ©Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Vaticani, A. Bracchetti/P. Zigrossi.

After demonstrating the interplay of typology between the Jesus frescoes and the Moses frescoes along with walls, Father Pfeiffer tackles the grand ceiling frescoes of Michelangelo, which he began in 1508 at the request of Pope Julius II, Sixtus IV’s nephew. Julius II clearly wanted to carry on his uncle’s program. The ceiling frescoes detail the world before Mosaic law, completing the trinity begun by the walls that examined the world both during and after Mosaic law. I use the word “trinity” specifically to give a sense of how even the religious concept of the Trinity takes physical and artistic form in the Chapel in so many ways over and over. These ideas ricochet everywhere in the text, and Father Pfeiffer beautifully handles every carom and angle in explaining these interconnections without losing the reader. When he explained how the five male prophets (including Daniel, above) correspond to the female sibyls in another bride/groom allusion, I saw those familiar figures in a whole new light. When Father Pfeiffer went on to explain how the two smaller figures accompanying each of the prophets and sibyls play out the mental state of the larger figure in a “psychological trinity” (there’s that word again), I finally accepted that no detail, however small, can be considered arbitrary in the Sistine Chapel. Everything, even the colors of the clothing worn by each figure, contributes to the nexus of meaning.

The Fall, detail: Adam does not take the fruit from Eve, but picks it with his own hands. The stump with the leafless branches symbolizes the Tree of Life, or the cross. From The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, Abbeville Press. Photo credit: ©Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Vaticani, A. Bracchetti/P. Zigrossi.

Father Pfeiffer’s main concern is the embodied theological meaning of the art, but he still demonstrates the artistry of the masters, especially Michelangelo. As Michelangelo grew more confident in his fresco technique, he evolves from the painter of huge crowded scenes of the story of Noah to the creator of simpler, more focused images starring larger figures such as Adam and Eve in The Fall (above). Michelangelo’s artistic confidence parallels a theological confidence as he began to internalize all those years of theological advisors whispering in his ear. In The Fall, Eve takes the fatal fruit from the hand of the serpent, who has the upper body of a woman but the lower half of a snake, but Adam picks the fruit with his own hand, deviating from the Biblical text. Any fears that Father Pfeiffer’s thesis would diminish the acheivement of the Sistine Chapel artists, transforming them into painterly stenographers, disappear as Michelangelo emerges as the first artist to serve as his own technical theological advisor.

Mary’s head shows the technique of spolvero, or pouncing, in which the composition is transferred from the cartoon by rubbing charcoal dust through holes pricked along the lines of the cartoon. The dots left by the charcoal dust are visible, for example, along the lips. From The Sistine Chapel: A New Vision, Abbeville Press. Photo credit: ©Archivio Fotografico dei Musei Vaticani, A. Bracchetti/P. Zigrossi.

When Michelangelo begins work on The Last Judgment in 1534, he refuses any theological advisors at all. (Pietro Aretino, who would have been that advisor, took offense and retaliated by accusing Michelangelo of homosexuality. In response, Michelangelo used Aretino’s face for that of St. Bartholomew, who holds the flayed skin upon which Michelangelo painted his own self-portrait.) The Last Judgment serves as a curtain call for all the other figures in the Sistine Chapel—the neat bow with which the total package is wrapped. The mad press of nude bodies seen in The Last Judgment represents the “architecture” of the Church itself, composed of the bodies of the living members on Earth. The Virgin and Christ as judge co-star in this final act. Mary (above, in close up) actually appears pregnant, representing “the Church in birth pangs with the whole of humanity.” Christ, modeled on the Apollo Belvedere in a show of Michelangelo’s classical, pagan aesthetic, commands the scene with his raised hand of damnation, the “gesture [that] causes the entire painting to tremble, down to the last, lowest corners.” By going character by character and teasing out the meaning of every glance and gesture, Father Pfeiffer makes sense of the riotous chorus of the saved and the damned and gives us a long, deep look into the mind of Michelangelo as he conceived the mind of God. (Da Vinci Code fans should note that Mary Magdalene appears to the right of Christ, dressed in yellow-green. Make of that what you will…)

Father Pfeiffer remarks in his epilogue that he hopes that his study of the theological underpinnings of the Sistine Chapel’s art brings back the study of the ideas embodied by art and not just the surface beauties of the work. His exegesis of the Sistine Chapel will instill a new reverence and awe for even those who have studied these works for years. Just as Father Pfeiffer’s text focuses more and more closely on every detail of the art, the illustrations accompanying the text offer a vision of the art that I’ve never encountered before. To come close enough to see the charcoal dust remaining on the Virgin’s lips as a remnant of Michelangelo’s technique is to see these works as the artist himself saw them centuries ago on the scaffolding. While the miraculous restoration effort restored the colors beneath the grime, Father Pfeiffer’s A Sistine Chapel: A New Vision restores the imaginative power and spiritual intensity of that truly magical space.

[Many thanks to Abbeville Press for providing me with a review copy of this book as well as the images above.]

The Person She Knew Best

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone. I am the person I know best,” Hayden Herrera said yesterday during The Rose Susan Hirschhorn Behrend Lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, quoting the subject of her lecture, Frida Kahlo. Herrera, author of the indispensible biography of Frida, spoke for over an hour on the great artist, displaying the courage and artistry of Kahlo as well as her own scholarship and panache. As the sold-out crowd shuffled into the auditorium, the slide of Kahlo’s The Broken Column (above, from 1944) greeted us, as resolute and unflinching as Kahlo herself in the face of emotional and physical pain.

Herrera, who is currently working on a biography of Isamu Noguchi, centered her survey of Kahlo on the self-portraits, which Herrera sees as “substitute Fridas” the artist would send off into the world. Through her portraits, Herrera contended, Kahlo could “extend her being into the world and make herself known.” Although these portraits all show Frida “always fearfully alone,… her mask of reserve” almost never slips. When that mask slips slightly in her 1947 self-portrait, Diego and I, painted after Diego Rivera asked for a second divorce, the control of the other portrayals seems that much more remarkable.


Tracing the trajectory of Kahlo’s life from the first Self-Portrait (above, from 1926), Herrera captured both the obsession with death and the humor of her subject. Herrera knows Frida like few others, and knew all the right laugh lines to keep the often difficult subject matter palatable. Speaking of Madonna’s desire to play Kahlo in a movie, Herrera quipped, “Luckily, she didn’t.” The often absurd egotism of the “elephantine” Diego Rivera provided plenty of comic fodder as well. Such moments were welcome in the midst of Herrera’s retelling of Kahlo’s struggles with childlessness, illness, and finally drug abuse and suicide. Ending with the same image she began with—The Broken Column—Herrera beautifully described Kahlo as “a female Saint Sebastian” posing as the “heroic sufferer” never surrendering to the pain. Looking back to the Self-Portrait of 1926, you can actually see the toll the years had taken on Kahlo. The almost Renaissance princess of 1926 (demonstrating Kahlo’s affection for Botticelli and Bronzino) gives way to the mature artist looking out upon the world and demanding to be seen.

It was wonderful to see a sellout crowd, but I wish the demographic had been a little younger. Aside from myself and a handful of other non-museum personnel, the crowd was exclusively people over sixty. Certainly students and artists would have benefitted from hearing Dr. Herrera speak, if not just to learn more about Kahlo but to learn how a true art historian approaches a subject with respect, devotion, and affectionate humor. (Perhaps the PMA will make a podcast available.) Dr. Herrera’s lecture served as a great appetizer for the main course of the Frida Kahlo exhibition coming to the PMA next February.

[Many thanks to Dr. Herrera for signing my copy of her biography of Frida. I’ll save it for Alex (and the sister he may have someday) to read years from now.]

Beloved and Accursed

Amedeo Modigliani, whose first name means “beloved of God,” entered this world on this date in 1884. More than perhaps any other modern artist in the early twentieth century, Modigliani adopted the style of African art and reshaped that “primitivism” into his own artistic idiom. His sculpture Head (above) seems like something straight out of African art. In his short thirty-five years of life, Modigliani crammed in more than enough living and loving for a dozen artists.

Modigliani’s nudes and other sensual works often seem to be the work of a man trying to make up for lost time or a man knowing his time is short. For Modigliani, both were true. After suffering through a series of childhood illnesses, Modigliani feared that he would die as a 14-year-old before seeing the great Italian masters’ paintings in Florence, Italy. When he survived, his mother took him to see Florence and his life in art was born. As an adult, Modigliani moved to the Montmartre section of Paris to live La Vie Boheme with the other impoverished artists, smoke hashish, and drink absinthe, all of which, added to his tuberculosis, contributed to his early demise. The nickname other painters used for Modigliani—“Modi”—also was a pun for the French “maudit,” which means “accursed.” Combined this pun with the meaning of his first name, Amedeo Modgiliani was literally blessed and accursed.

Modigliani met Jeanne Hebuterne, a young art student, in 1917. (Portraits of Jeanne by Modigliani appear above and below.) Within a year, she bore his child, also named Jeanne. By all reports, their relationship was passionate and violent, due in part to her family’s objections to their relationship and their continued poverty. Modigliani finally succumbed to his tuberculosis on January 24, 1920. Jeanne, nine months pregnant with their second child, leapt from a window two days later, killing herself and their unborn child. The story of Modigliani ranks second only to Van Gogh’s in terms of drama and pathos in the annals of art history.

Of course, such a story couldn’t possibly be enough for Hollywood. The 2004 movie titled simply Modigliani, starring Andy Garcia in the title role, does the typical Hollywood hatchet job on Modigliani’s legend, inserting some absurd painting contest and even rewriting the details of how Modigliani actually dies. Taking liberties with the basic story is standard operating procedure in filmmaking, but Modigliani takes it way too far. Modigliani deserves far better. I always remember the scene in 1987’s The Pick-up Artist where Robert Downey, Jr. practices his come-ons in a mirror and says “Did anyone ever tell you that you have the face of a Botticelli and the body of a Degas?” I always thought that he should have added, “and the neck of a Modigliani…”

Of Brotherhoods and Blessed Damozels

The blessed damozel lean'd out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters still'd at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.

From Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and perhaps England’s finest painter-poet since William Blake, turned 179 on Saturday, May 12th. An excerpt from his widely anthologized poem The Blessed Damozel appears above, along with the painting of the same name he made years later.

Along with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, Rossetti began the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 as a way to escape the influence of the heavy hitters of the Renaissance (Raphael, Michelangelo, and da Vinci) and discover a simpler, more Medieval, and less Mannerist style based on painting from nature while deriving much of their subject matter from literature, especially the work of the Romantic poets and Shakespeare.

One of these Shakespeare-inspired works, Millais’ Ophelia (above), shows Elizabeth Siddal, who became Rossetti’s wife. When Siddal died in 1862 from an overdose of laudanum, Rossetti foreswore writing poetry ever again and even buried a manuscript of poems with his late wife. Personal problems drove Rossetti to take up poetry again and he exhumed his wife’s body to recover his lost poems in 1869—perhaps the most macabre episode in Romantic literature that I can think of, including the exploits of Byron and Shelley.

Rossetti helped revive William Blake’s artistic and literary reputations in the 1860s by being involved in the preparation of Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of Blake, the first true study of the poet-painter, after Gilchrist’s death. The visionary aspect of Blake’s work clearly influenced the otherworldly, Romantic nature of Rossetti’s painting and poetry.

Much of Rossetti’s poetry is very dated, but he has several interesting poems on such paintings as da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, Botticelli’s Primavera , and “Michelangelo’s” The Holy Family (no longer attributed to Michelangelo). I remember loving Rossetti’s poetry when I was in high school, caught up in all the romanticism of the ladies and heroes—a young man’s idea of what poetry should ideally be. However, his paintings and all those of the Pre-Raphaelite school continue to catch my eye and entertain.

(BTW, The Rossetti Archive hopes to collect all things Rossetti by 2008. You can find all of his poems on the paintings I discuss there. Especially interesting are the links between some of his poems and his paintings that came from that same spark of inspiration.)