The Ugly Renaissance (12 page)

Just as the
Papal States played a vitally important role in the politics of the Italian peninsula, the Church loomed large in Florence’s domestic affairs. At one level, the richness of ecclesiastical benefices not only made the battle for preferment a key issue in the rivalry between families and factions but also made the taxation of Church properties a major point of friction between the archbishop and the constantly cash-strapped Florentine government. Whether successive prelates and priors liked it or not, they were locked in a never-ending and rather dirty exchange.
At another level, however, the Church’s wider economic and political importance made it essential to the functioning of Florentine business and a key consideration in the struggle for control of government. On the one hand, not only did the city’s banks rely on the
papacy’s money, but the city often found that its very survival depended on its ties to the
Papal States. Good relations were essential. On the other hand, the Church also needed to ensure that the Florentine government—like the Florentine banks—was onside. This necessitated active involvement in day-to-day politics. After falling out with the Medici,
Pope Sixtus IV actively supported the
Pazzi Conspiracy, and it was telling that Archbishop Francesco Salviati of Pisa was a key player in the abortive coup.

This dimension of the crossover between religion, business, and politics also catalyzed another, more dangerous form of tension. A certain element within the Church was always uncomfortable both with the seamy world of contemporary business and with the worldliness of priests and prelates. The practice of
usury, for example, was consistently condemned by priests throughout the period, and the avariciousness of the financial sector was a constant target for attacks from preachers fired with the message of poverty and simplicity propounded by the mendicant orders. But to say that such attitudes informed criticisms of ecclesiastical vices is something of an understatement.

For purists, the Church should be a bastion of purity and simplicity, politics should be a branch of theology, and business should be moderated by Christian charity. In the eyes of a number of priests, the relentless pursuit of wealth, the constant competition for benefices, and the politicization of ecclesiastical affairs gradually came to symbolize not only the degradation of the faith but also the corruption of what should have been a godly republic. As early as the first decade of the fifteenth century, the Dominican friar
Giovanni Dominici strongly defended the idea that government should be guided by virtue and that the service of the state was a Christian obligation, but at the same time he also inveighed violently against the greed and ambition of those who strove for power (“
all the miseries of the world begin from ambition, pride of this world,” he affirmed). Attacking factions and struggles, he lamented that “
there is no justice but deception, power, money, friendships, or parents.” To change this, Christian rebirth was necessary.

Toward the end of the century the Dominican friar
Girolamo
Savonarola struck out at the rich, concentrating on their luxurious palaces,
extravagant clothing, and lavish private chapels. He was appalled by the competition for ecclesiastical offices and lambasted the willingness with which churches had been turned into dens of thieves, intent on defrauding the poor and the dispossessed. Not only had public morals and the Church been torn away from Christ’s teachings, he asserted, but government itself had become a playground for tyranny. Giving voice to the resentments engendered by socioeconomic and political inequalities, he affirmed that the good of the people—the
popolo minuto
, the ill-paid laborers, the struggling pieceworkers, the elderly, and the young—had been forgotten in the pursuit of money. The whole of Florence needed to be reformed in keeping with a purist reading of Scripture. Government would be reorganized with virtue and charity at its heart; the Church would be purified; and business would be taught modesty and restraint. “Florence,” Savonarola declared, “Christ is your king!” Within weeks of Piero de’ Medici’s fall, the friar had begun a veritable revolution. Thousands of young boys ran through the streets destroying anything that seemed to be an arrogant display of wealth; the Signoria was purged; and the whole of Florence was, as his critics observed, transformed into a convent. It was extreme, bloody, and violent, but it was perhaps nothing more than the natural outcome of the tensions arising from the interaction of business, politics, and religion.

By the time Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501, Savonarola was dead, and the tides of religious extremism had all but vanished. Religion was still an integral part of Florentine life, and the links that bound it to the institutional worlds of business and politics were as strong as ever. They were alive and well in the person of Rinaldo Or- sini. As the
David
testified, the language of religion was still central to the formation of civic identity and stood at the very core of Florence’s self-image. Indeed, religion—as the deeply pious Michelangelo would have known all too well—still structured everyday life. But the sexual deviancy, the competition for benefices, the political intrigues, and the zeal for reform still simmered beneath the surface.

W
HAT
D
AVID
S
AW

When the completed
David
was finally unveiled in the Piazza della Signoria on September 8, 1504, the statue gazed out at a snapshot of city life.

Everyone had come out for the great event. Arrayed on the
ringhiera
—the raised, stepped platform outside the main doors of the palazzo—were the doughty citizens who embodied the worlds of politics, business, and religion: the august
Piero Soderini, dressed in fine red robes and glittering with jewels; the pudgy
Jacopo Salviati, in his ridiculously overpriced clothes; and the proud Rinaldo Orsini, adorned in rich golden vestments. Yet in the square itself stood a swirling crowd of people, citizens and noncitizens, men and women, old and young, laity and clergy. Most were dressed in poor clothes, many purchased secondhand, and a good number went barefoot; some were carrying tools of their trade, having snuck out of the workshop for a few stolen moments.

It was a sight that encapsulated the influences that had brought Michelangelo to that moment. Beneath the statue’s gaze was proof positive that Florence was a republican city, made rich by trade and ordered according to the ways of the faith, uniting all in admiration for Michelangelo’s new statue. But it was also a city of profound socioeconomic inequalities fostered by guilds, a city of political exclusion concealed under a mantle of liberty, and a city torn between religious fervor and ecclesiastical abuses. Politics, business, and the Church were all there in the square: all deceptive in their appearance; all a source of tension, resentment, and violence; and all very much necessary to the art of the Renaissance.

4

T
HE
W
ORKSHOP OF THE
W
ORLD

W
HILE
M
ICHELANGELO
was carving the
David
, his artistic life was undoubtedly structured by the shifting world of business, politics, and religion. But the institutional background only tells part of the story. However much the statue was imbued with meaning received from the tortuous inequalities of the period, the slow process of carving the
David
took place in the context of the mundane realities of day-to-day existence.

Michelangelo was admittedly a very secretive man in the years 1501–4. Having been given permission to carve the
David
in the
workshops of the
Opera del Duomo, near the cathedral, Michelangelo erected “
a partition of planks and trestles around the marble, and worked on it constantly without anyone seeing it.” He was already an experienced sculptor, but it was tough work. Whether he was hammering away at his chisel or using his bowed drill, it was strenuous, noisy, and extremely dirty. As
Leonardo da Vinci recorded, the sculptor’s work was

accompanied by great sweat which mingles with dust and becomes converted into mud. His face becomes plastered and powdered all over with marble dust, which makes him look like a baker, and he becomes covered in minute chips of marble, which makes him look as if he is covered in snow.

But despite his longing for secrecy, Michelangelo’s work life was far from secluded. He was continually surrounded by people, and his workshop was always bustling with comings and goings. Assistants and apprentices were constantly hurrying to and fro with materials, and friends—like the talentless stone carver
Topolino (Domenico di Giovanni di Bertino Fancelli)—were forever popping in. Day after day, Michelangelo received impromptu visits from the
operai
, keen for
updates on progress, from powerful communal figures, like the
gonfaloniere a vita
,
Piero Soderini, or from prospective patrons like
Taddeo Taddei, looking to commission yet more work or haggle over prices. Tradesmen brought their wares or demanded payment, tax assessors pressed awkward questions, or curious passersby nosed their way in for a peek. On top of this, there were the inescapable dinners with Lodovico and his brothers, family matters to attend to, or servants with whom to talk.

Michelangelo’s workshop in the period 1501–4 provides a snapshot of the daily life of the Renaissance artist in the raw. It’s a dimension of artistic production that is perhaps easy to forget when familiar conceptions of the “Renaissance” are called to mind. When we plunge into this
social whirl, the worries and anxieties, the hopes and dreams, and the obligations and prejudices that conditioned the mind-set of the Renaissance artist and that shaped the content of much of the art of the period appear in vivid detail.

C
IRCLES AND
S
ODALITIES

Michelangelo’s workshop would have swarmed with people from every corner of the city. In this respect, he was by no means untypical. Although his contemporary
Piero di Cosimo was notoriously misanthropic, artists could not but live surrounded by a vast network of people. As Vasari reported,
Filippo Brunelleschi was “
always having to contend with someone or other,” and
Donatello was so plagued by requests and obligations that he claimed “
he would rather die of hunger than have to think about such things.”

But the hordes of people with whom Michelangelo would have had daily contact in the period 1501–4 were more than just an amorphous mass of random individuals. The overwhelming majority fell within distinct circles of social activity, each of which reflected a different sphere of contemporary social existence, was governed by its own values and rules, and carried with it clear obligations that provided the framework not only for work but also for the patterns of everyday life. The dynamics of these circles were, however, anything but reflective of the pure, ideal world conjured up by familiar conceptions of the Renaissance, and Michelangelo’s sometimes pleasant, sometimes awful social world was typical of the period.

Family

The first and most important of Michelangelo’s social circles was his family. In Renaissance Italy, there was no more important bond than this, and its significance is attested to by the attention lavished on it in works such as
Leon Battista Alberti’s dialogue
On the Family
. Much more so than today, the family was the primary determinant of the course and character of a person’s social life. It not only contributed dramatically toward perceptions of social status but also addressed “
a comprehensive array of human needs: material and economic, social and political, personal and psychological.”

Returning to live in the family home in 1501, Michelangelo joined a bustling and busy household that was in many senses typical of a period in which
the average size of the domestic sphere had grown in step with trends in population. Many artists of his age—particularly if unmarried—lived in
households comprising an average of five people across two or even three generations in homes owned or in the names of the eldest male. Although his mother had died while he was still a child, his father continued to be in active control of the household, and Michelangelo had no fewer than five siblings, four of whom were still at home. The eldest brother, Lionardo, had entered the Dominican order some years before, but his sister, Cassandra, and his remaining three brothers—Buonarroto (1477–1528), Giovansimone (1479–1548), and Gismondo (1481–1555)—were just beginning to test their luck in the world under the umbrella of the family.

Michelangelo’s redoubtable father, the fifty-seven-year-old Lodovico, controlled everything in the eyes of the law. What Michelangelo earned, he kept, but if his father helped him in any material sense, Lodovico could legally claim half of all of the profits. By the same token, Michelangelo could not enter into any contract without Lodovico’s prior permission, and he could not even make a will without his father’s say-so. Indeed, it was not until Michelangelo was thirty-one that he was formally emancipated from his father’s control. That, at least, was the state of affairs in legal terms. In practice, things were more complex.

As is suggested by
the letter he sent to Michelangelo in late 1500 warning him about his financial affairs (see previous chapter), Lodovico was an affectionate and doting father. But he also looked to his second son as the family’s primary breadwinner and expected to be looked after.
Perceiving himself to be an old man, far advanced in years, he told Michelangelo, “
I must love myself first, then others. Until now, I loved others more than myself.” Unmarried and happy to be welcomed back into the family fold, Michelangelo gladly undertook this obligation, and in this regard he somewhat resembled his contemporary
Antonio Correggio, who, “
for the sake of his family, … was a slave to his work.”
Only on rare occasions did Michelangelo complain that his support was underappreciated.