THE LIFE OF
MICHELANGELO ASCANIO CONDIVI
Cover: Fra Bartolommeo Portrait of Michelangelo, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Probably commissioned by Michelangelo himself from his fellow painter Ascanio Condivi, this biography presents an unprecedently intimate view of the life and career of the most influential artist in the history of Western art. This Issuu preview of the book reproduces the introduction specially written by Dr. Charles Robertson of Oxford Brookes University. The print edition of the whole book (176 pages including 49 pages of illustrations covering the span of Michelangelo’s output) is available now at £8.99/$17.95 ISBN 978 1 84368 012 3. For more information visit www.pallasathene.co.uk
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) remains the most compelling artist in the Western canon, and a touchstone for all artistic endeavour. Painter, sculptor, architect, poet, he redefined not only the possibilities of the imagination, but also of the image of the artist. He was the first artist to be the subject of a biography in his lifetime, with the publication of his life in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the most excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects in 1550, where Michelangelo is presented as the divinely inspired culmination of the history of art. Characteristically, perhaps, Michelangelo was dissatisfied with Vasari’s treatment, and encouraged his close friend and fellow-painter Ascanio Condivi to publish a rival biography. Condivi’s Life is an impassioned and intimate portrait of Michelangelo, which gives an unparalleled picture of the master’s life, work and personality. This narrative of genius and its struggles in the treacherous world of Papal politics and Italian wars remains one of the most fascinating and influential texts in art history.
This edition presents the classic translation by Charles Holroyd, artist, art historian and director of the National Gallery. The introduction by Charles Robertson sets Condivi’s Life in the context of Michelangelo’s career and the image that he created of himself. Ascanio Condivi (c. 1525-1574), was a moderately talented painter sculptor and architect from the Marches. He is remembered today mainly for his biography of his friend Michelangelo. Charles Robertson teaches at Oxford Brookes University and has published widely on Italian Renaissance art and architecture. He is currently writing a book on Michelangelo, Judgement Call.
The Life of
Michelangelo
THE LIFE OF
MICHEL ANGELO BY ASCANIO CONDIVI with an introduction by CHARLES ROBERTSON
PA L L A S
AT H E N E
CONTENTS Introduction by CHARLES ROBERTSON
p. 7
To Julius III p. 31
To the Readers p. 33
The Life of Michelangelo ASCANIO CONDIVI
p. 37
List of illustrations p. 174
Ignudo from the Sistine Ceiling, 1509-12
INTRODUCTION CHARLES ROBERTSON
The reason that Ascanio Condivi’s Vita di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, the short biography of Michelangelo published in Rome in 1553, should be read is that it tells you things about a great artist which you will not otherwise know. An early life written by an acquaintance offers an immediacy and a closeness to the subject that the best art history, however well researched, cannot hope to equal. Condivi provides some of the most vivid images of the artist Michelangelo’s youth, unique insights into his character and opinions, and throws a very interesting light upon his situation in Rome towards the close of his career. However, reading any 16th-century text is never a straightforward exercise and some points about why and how the book came to be written and what its intended scope was may be useful. Condivi’s book is by turns naive and sophisticated, both of which may be put down to the circumstances of its making. As an author Condivi was not an ideal choice. Opposite: The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John, c. 1555-64
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charles robertson An undistinguished painter from the Marche region of eastern Italy, he would be quite unknown if it were not for this Life of Michelangelo. Around 1545, at the age of about 25, he came to Rome and became aquainted with Michelangelo, who favoured him with a large design for an altar piece, the Epifania (British Museum) that Condivi realised as a painting. Nothing about Condivi suggests that he could have written his book alone. Surviving letters from his hand suggest, indeed, that he had a quite low level of literacy, and although he announces a number of further publishing projects in the course of the Life none of these came to anything. Condivi was later to marry the niece of Annibale Caro, a leading intellectual figure in the Rome at the time, and it seems very probable that it was Caro who was actually behind the project. It is worth asking the question why such a person as Condivi was chosen to write the Life, given that Caro and a number of his associates who were friends of Michelangelo would have seemed to be quite up to the task. Part of the explanation may have been that there was in the mid 16th-century an expectation – created by Opposite: ‘Epifania’, c. 1555
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charles robertson the examples of Sebastiano Serlio and Vasari – that writing on art, particularly contemporary art, should be done by practitioners. Furthermore, the fact that both Vasari and Condivi were artists may have permitted them the unprecedented licence to write a life of a living person at a time when convention demanded that biography be reserved for the dead. This might have been an unfeasible infringement of decorum for an established literary figure. The tone of the Life is convincingly personal – displaying, in a limited way, the insight of one artist into the work of another – so it would be wrong to consider Condivi as merely a front for a ghost writer. Michelangelo was notoriously difficult but seems to have befriended young artists or at least allowed them to become close him on a number of occasions even if, as in Condivi’s case, they were not particularly talented. Michelangelo could be approachable, friendly and communicative, as is evident in the Dialogues written by the young Portuguese artist, Francisco da Holanda, who had become familiar with Michelangelo and his circle in 1538. If Condivi was useful in being able to contribute this personal tone himself, Michelangelo and whoever else was backing the project would also have known that his other shortcomings could be rectified by judicious editing. The Life displays some 10
introduction breadth of cultural reference and refinements of style of which Condivi, alone, was probably not capable. It was normal at this period for books to be heavily edited even to the point of being substantially recast. As a consequence the text is composite and layered, revealing the inputs of author, subject and editor, at the least. When considering Condivi’s Life it is important to remember that it was a collective enterprise. Condivi’s relations with Michelangelo – what he calls the love, the conversation and the close familiarity with which Michelangelo favoured him – remain, however, the reason why the book remains a vivid evocation of Michelangelo the man, even if Condivi does treat it occasionally more like a saint’s life. Many of the incidental details are significant both in themselves and as confirmation of the authority of the text. For example, Condivi writes that Michelangelo was expert in anatomy, but he gave up dissection because it turned his stomach so that he could neither eat nor drink with benefit. The first statement was well known and evident in Michelangelo’s work; the second could only be known by an intimate. Condivi also gives a very detailed account of Overleaf: Study for Adam on the Sistine Ceiling, c. 1511
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charles robertson Michelangelo’s physical appearance and interesting indications about his opinions, including his Platonism and in particular his religious views. He records the old Michelangelo’s continuing reverence for Savonarola, whom he had heard preach in his youth. He details Michelangelo’s obsession with chastity and his defence of the apparent youth of the Virgin in the Pietà on the grounds that virgins do not age as other women. Ingeniously, the writer’s humble status as a simple artist is deployed as a foil to the depth of Michelangelo’s knowledge and thought concerning issues that Condivi himself claims not to fully understand. In contrast to these personal aspects, the book is also very much the product of the court environment of Papal Rome. It is dedicated to the reigning pope, Julius III, and published by the official printer Antonio Blado. The original is a handsome little book, printed in elegant roman type on good quality paper, with pretty wood block initials and wide margins. It seems to have been modestly successful, since there was a second issue in the year of publication. There are minor interpolated passages in the second issue which would have been of special interest to a local audience, indicating that the primary market of the Life was, indeed, Roman. Condivi and his friends 14
introduction seem to have wished that Michelangelo had been closer to the Julius III; indeed the Life regrets that Michelangelo, because of his timidity or pride, does not benefit from ruling Pope’s goodwill to the extent that he should. There may be an implicit negative contrast with the recently dead Pope, Paul III, who is seen to have particularly favoured Michelangelo whereas Julius III, for the most part, has merely continued the initiatives of Paul. These concerns might seem rather petty were it not for the fact that by the time the Life was published Michelangelo had been negotiating the tortuous world of Roman patronage and dealing with Popes for more than fifty years. The reported dialogue which is such a feature of Condivi’s accounts of Michelangelo’s encounters with earlier Popes, especially Julius II, would have had a particular piquancy to a Roman audience of courtiers and dependants whose careers were conducted within a system of clientelism. It is easy to imagine these readers’ vicarious pleasure in learning of Michelangelo’s acts of defiance and their schadenfreude when he is forced to bend to the will of the Popes. Ultimately, for these Romans Michelangelo’s greatness was validated by the degree to which he was respected and indulged by the Popes. The immediate reason for writing the Life probably 15
charles robertson arose from Michelangelo’s own desire to provide a corrective to Vasari’s Life of Michelangelo which is the last Life in the first edition of his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, published in Florence in 1550. The scopes of Vasari’s and Condivi’s Lives are quite different. In Vasari’s Life, Michelangelo is the culmination of a development of Tuscan art which began with Cimabue and Giotto, not simply an account of a great living artist. There is no doubt that Michelangelo was flattered by the attention. Yet Vasari’s account was not entirely satisfactory to him, and some aspects were definitely displeasing. The legitimate justification that Condivi puts forward for writing a new Life is that he knew Michelangelo well, unlike others including presumably Vasari. However, he tacitly accepts the authority of much of what Vasari wrote and Vasari returns the compliment by assimilating many of Condivi’s detailed points in the second edition of his own Life of Michelangelo published in 1568, also without acknowledgement. From Michelangelo’s point of view chief among the shortcomings in the Vasari Life was the the account of his Opposite: A seated male nude (study for an ignudo on the Sistine Ceiling), c. 1511. For verso see p. 18
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introduction early career. Michelangelo’s earliest works clearly mattered very much to him, since they reassured him that his talent was innate and not learned, and Condivi’s text gives an invaluable account of the early sculpture. Michelangelo was displeased by Vasari’s entirely accurate statement that he had been an apprentice of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Condivi refutes this detail while rather unconvincingly accepting that Michelangelo was associated with the older artist. He offers an idealised account of a much more idiosyncratic personal formation for Michelangelo, as a sculptor, under the direct patronage of Medici. While Vasari also stresses the Medici connection, in Condivi’s account Michelangelo is actually a favoured member of their household. The details of this are hard to verify independently, but it genuinely reflects Michelangelo’s own understanding of his development and what he wanted others to believe. In many ways the early section of Condivi’s Life is the most compelling. There is the image of Lorenzo the Magnificent in his palace showing the young Michelangelo his collection of ancient intaglios, contrasted with Opposite: Studies for God the Father and attendant angels for The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Ceiling, c. 1511. Verso of sheet illustrated on p. 17
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charles robertson the ghastly vision of Michelangelo’s friend, the musician Cardiere, in which the dead Lorenzo, naked under a tattered black cloak, predicts disaster for the house of Medici. Michelangelo was so impressed by this that he fled Florence. This, and many other details only someone close to Michelangelo would have come by. There were also clearly many anecdotes current about the young Michelangelo, particularly concerning his tempestuous relations with patrons such as Julius II. Here Michelangelo, via Condivi, was trying, understandably, to give what he would have considered the authentic version. Condivi’s account of Michelangelo’s mature work is perfunctory and there are large areas of Michelangelo’s art that are not covered at all. He often takes information from Vasari’s much more methodical treatment. The chief exception to this – and a very significant contribution to our knowledge of Michelangelo’s work – is the discussion of the project for the Tomb of Julius II. It is not so much that Vasari had inadequately described the earlier stages of the project, which he certainly had, but that Michelangelo was very concerned to rebut the accusation that he had cheated the Julius II’s heirs and dishonoured Opposite: Studies for the spandrel of the Libyan Sibyl on the Sistine Ceiling, 1511-2, and for the Slaves for the Julius tomb, c. 1512-3
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introduction the memory of the Pope. This unpleasant version of events was very widespread by the mid century and it needed to be scotched and the eventual reduced realisation of the tomb, which had recently been set up in San Pietro in Vincoli, defended. Condivi’s Life does more than that by coming up with the brilliant formulation of the Tragedy of the Tomb for the whole affair: this ingeniously turns a failure to fulfil a commission into a personal narrative about Michelangelo the heroic artist. One might anticipate that the Life would be particularly revealing about Michelangelo’s immediate circumstances in Rome around 1550. In this respect it is both frustrating and illuminating. Condivi refers to the great recent frescoes, the Last Judgement and the decoration of the Pauline Chapel, in a quite cursory way. The Last Judgement had attracted considerable criticism on the grounds that the display of nudes was obscene and inappropriate to a religious setting, and this view was already in print in one of Pietro Aretino’s letters, published in 1550. The strategy adopted by Condivi is to praise the work in a curtailed way, on the grounds that it is wellknown through prints, and to defend its prudence, a Opposite: St Lawrence, from the Last Judgement, 1536-41
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charles robertson quality that Aretino had specifically found lacking on Michelangelo’s part. In any case, by the 1550s Michelangelo had ceased to paint and his public career was devoted to architecture; he continued to draw and sculpt but not for commission. The book is at pains to point out that Michelangelo actually never wished to be an architect by profession. At the same time there were good reasons why Michelangelo’s competence in this area needed to be affirmed. Michelangelo had been appointed Architect of St Peter’s, by the previous pope, Paul III; this had been confirmed by Julius III, but Michelangelo found his authority was constantly being challenged by other professionals involved in the massive project. To counter this, the Life states that Michelangelo devoted himself to perspective and architecture. This formulation is a commonplace of 16th-century architectural theorists, who in a development of the ideas of Vitruvius, the ancient Roman writer on architecture, saw perspective as a key underpinning to architectural design. Michelangelo’s technical competence, another Vitruvian trope, is asserted with an account of a project for scaffolding the Sistine Chapel that was superior to one Opposite: Design for the Laurentian Library door, c. 1526
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charles robertson devised by the great architect Bramante. Michelangelo’s long-standing practical credentials are reinforced with a story about how the Sultan wanted him to come to Constantinople to build a bridge over the Golden Horn at the time of his initial altercations with Julius II over the contstuction of his tomb. This practical competence provides a shield for the most problematic episode in Michelangelo’s life when he worked for the restored Republican regime of 1527-30 for the defence of Florence against Pope Clement VII. It is treated from the point of view of the technical brilliance of his fortification solutions, rather than the rebellious act. Frustratingly Condivi gives very little detailed information about the many projects of the time. St Peter’s is mentioned only briefly, and the Campidoglio and the Palazzo Farnese not at all. Condivi does not seem to have been very knowledgeable about architecture. That said, there are clear indications of Michelangelo’s own take on architectural aesthetics. The description of the painted architecture frame work of the Sistine Chapel ceiling treats it as actual architectural design; this deviates radically from Vasari’s account of it as merely a decorative scheme. The defence of the notion of variety in architecture, to avoid the monotony which is born of sameness, 26
introduction seems certainly to voice Michelangelo’s own opinion. The painted cornice of the Sistine Ceiling and the actual cornice in the Julius tomb are both emphasised as binding the work together. This dynamic conception is unusual in 16th-century criticism but strikingly evokes a key quality of Michelangelo’s architectural design. It is to be regretted that Condivi’s Life is often viewed in terms of it limitations rather than its merits and contrasted unfavourably with Vasari’s. This is unfair and as with any text we should not make unreasonable demands of accuracy or deplore its lacunae. To an extraordinary degree the life both presents Michelangelo as an individual and as a public figure. It especially documents social and professional anxieties. Condivi, an upwardly mobile figure from humble beginnings, was sensitive to Michelangelo’s own concern with status, although the latter’s origins were more among distressed gentlefolk. He devotes a long passage at the beginning of the Life to Michelangelo’s spurious descent from the Counts of Canossa, a very distinguished northern Italian family. He recounts how the idealised wise patron Lorenzo the Magnificent disabused Michelangelo’s father of his fixed notion that in becoming a sculptor his son would be an artisan, with the consequent loss of social status. The Life 27
charles robertson is also anxious to give details of Michelangelo’s prominent friends and Michelangelo’s distinction as a poet, as if to mitigate the slur of manual labour. Characteristically, Michelangelo seems to have been unhappy with Condivi’s work. In a replay of Condivi’s critique of Vasari, Michelangelo was to inspire another young associate to make critical annotations on a copy of Condivi’s text. Ironically this does not its diminish the value of the Life since it shows that it itself had the power to provoke in Michelangelo the self-fashionning urge that had given rise to the book in the first place. There is necessarily a great gulf between our interests in Michelangelo and his work and the original purposes of Ascanio Condivi’s Life of Michelangelo but its worth to us will be inestimable, if, along with the personal details for which it is best known, we grasp the significance of what the publication, in its broadest sense, tells us about Michelangelo and his world. The translation published here is that of Charles Holroyd, published in Michael Angelo Buonarotti, with translations of the Life of the Master by his Scholar Ascanio Condivi, and Three Dialogues from the Portuguese by Francesco da Hollanda, London, New York, 1911. 28
introduction Charles Holroyd (1861-1917) is an interesting figure, who was the last practising artist to be director of the National Gallery and an accomplished art historian. His book, which first came out in 1902, is an important contribution to the study of Michelangelo in English. In the second edition of 1911 the translation of Condivi was somewhat amended in the light of a translation by Herbert Horne. Holroyd’s work may seem a little archaic but it has the great merit of staying very close to the original Italian. Holroyd did not include Condivi’s dedication to the Pope or his address to the readers, probably because they would have seemed quite boring and somewhat impersonal to an early twentieth-century audience that sets great store by insight in the individual artist. They are included here however, since they establish the context of the work.
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