The Ugly Renaissance (24 page)

Out of this environment grew a fascination for the unity of all creation. This idea—which ultimately brought into play a truly exciting conception of human dignity and a passionate commitment to love—revolved around two other, closely connected ideas. On the one hand, everything was linked. Rather than consisting of two very distinct realms—the spiritual or heavenly and the physical or worldly—the Neoplatonists conceived of the universe as a series of hierarchies, each of which was linked to the others in a chain of decreasing perfection. On the other hand, each of the hierarchies in the chain was defined by the extent to which it manifested Platonic “forms” or “ideas.” Thus, while the “cosmic mind”—the highest and most perfect of the hierarchies—was an incorruptible realm of Platonic ideas and angels, the “realm of nature”—which humans inhabit—consisted of a corruptible compound of form and matter.

The implications of this were important. Although the different hierarchies were in some senses distinct, they were nevertheless bound together by “
a divine influence emanating from God.” All participated in God himself by virtue of their creation, and each hierarchy necessarily reflected the character of those above it. The forms and ideas in the “cosmic mind,” for example, were the “prototypes of whatever exists in the lower zones,” and by extension everything in the “realm of nature” was a less perfect manifestation of its prototype in the higher realms. As Pico put it in his
Heptaplus
:

Everything which is in the totality of worlds is also in each of them and none of them contains anything which is not to be found in each of the others … whatever exists in the inferior world will also be found in the superior world, but in a more elevated form; and whatever exists on the higher plane can also be seen down below but in a somewhat degenerate and, so to say, adulterated shape … In our world, we have fire as an element, in the celestial world the corresponding entity is the sun, in the supra-celestial world the seraphic fire of the Intellect. But consider their difference: the elemental fire burns, the celestial fire gives life, the supra-celestial loves.

The Neo
platonists believed that since the “realm of nature” was relatively low down in the scheme of creation, perfect beauty could not exist here on earth. By extension, anything that
was
in some imperfect way beautiful was a manifestation of a more sublime, heavenly beauty, and hence reflected a fragment of a higher “idea” or truth. Thus, even though man possessed an imperfect body, his physical form could sometimes reflect a measure of the ideal, while his rational soul—being incorporeal—was a yet more direct reflection of divinity.

If this was true, Ficino and Pico reasoned, it seemed possible for man to transcend the limits of his corporeal existence and achieve a sort of “union” with the higher, divine “idea” on which all else was modeled.
This was all a matter of contemplation, for which man, being uniquely endowed with a sense of reason that allowed him to “ascend” and “descend” to higher and lower realms, was ideally suited. For it was in contemplation that “
the soul withdraws from the body and from all external things into its own self … and there it discovers not only its own divinity, but in a gradual ascent, the intelligible world, the transcendent ideas, and God Himself, their common source.” On ascending to this ultimate realm of the divine idea—an experience that Ficino, following Plato, described as a “divine frenzy” and attributed to the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Sibyls—man felt an incomparable bliss, a sense of pure and consuming ecstasy.

This idea of contemplation and ecstatic union was intimately linked to ideas of love. What had motivated God’s creation of the universe was love. This love had manifested itself in a beauty that pointed the way toward God Himself. The life of contemplation—which aimed at
transcendent union—thus entailed a full recognition of the essential character of
beauty, and hence led to a desire for the ultimate fulfillment of beauty itself. This desire was, for Ficino and Pico, nothing more than love. To put this another way, contemplation required love, and love required a longing for beauty. The enjoyment of beauty was thus implicitly linked to ecstasy and even worship.

Although there are many different interpretations of the painting, it seems likely that it was this idea that
Sandro Botticelli encapsulated in
The Birth of Venus
(ca. 1486), which was perhaps intended for the Medici villa at Careggi. In this most instantly recognizable of images, Botticelli depicted the goddess Venus (who had sprung out of the severed testicles of Uranus after they had been thrown into the sea by Cronos) being blown ashore on the island of Cythera. Classically beautiful, she is every inch the goddess of love. But the desire and love that her beauty inspires are not only somewhat chaste (as is suggested by the iconography of the shell on which she is standing and by the robe with which Horae, goddess of the seasons, is about to clothe her); they are also intended to point toward the heavenly realms. Her beauty emphasizes that she represents a divine love, and the ecstasy she inspires is bound up with contemplation of this fact.

Ficino pushed the boundaries of contemplation even further and consciously set out to revive the notion of
platonic love in his translation of and commentary on Plato’s
Symposium
. The essence of contemplation, Ficino argued, could be identified with the love of others and with a friendship between those pursuing the same goal. What he had in mind was, of course, a powerful, spiritual bond between like-minded individuals, but although he was careful to avoid condoning unrestrained sexual passion, his identification of contemplation with the “desiderio di bellezza” also obliged Ficino to imbue this bond with a shared celebration of beauty—especially homoerotic beauty.

The result was a powerful resolution of long-running uncertainties in Renaissance thought. Pointing to the unity of all creation, the Neoplatonists exalted man’s capacity to reunite himself with God through a form of contemplation that demanded not only an exultant enjoyment of beauty (as a reflection of the divine) but also a deep and lasting love between individuals. This love was itself an act of worship and transcendence: it took the individual out of himself and elevated him heavenward, and it bound religious belief, the wonders of the physical
world, and the soaring possibilities of the mind together in a single, semi-orgasmic whole.

It was in this dimension of Neoplatonism that Michelangelo found his salvation. Unable—or perhaps unwilling—to pursue a fully sexual relationship with
Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, he had at last found a means of worshipping him as a reflection of the divine, of loving him as the very model of human beauty without fear of sin, and of enjoying the rapture that he knew so well. Abandoning the self-flagellating morality of Petrarch and the unsatisfying libertinism of
Boccaccio and Valla, he learned from Ficino and Pico that Tommaso could become his own Venus, a demigod who pointed the way toward Heaven and could be adored physically, spiritually, and chastely.

In the years that followed his first meeting with Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, Michelangelo had undergone the extremes of pain and pleasure. He had loved deeply, he had been saddened by rebuffs, he had been tormented by guilt, and he had found ecstasy in adoration. But perhaps most important, in his verses and drawings, he had sought to understand and express his innermost feelings through the ideas and images that had arisen out of others’ experiences of the world and of love. Often turning to the language of classical antiquity, he had relived the joys and the sorrows of those such as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Manetti, Valla, Ficino, and Pico in an attempt to find solace and satisfaction. And in doing so, he had reenacted the personal dramas that had inspired and motivated the cultural masterpieces of the Renaissance. As such, Michelangelo’s fraught relationship with Tommaso can be seen as a microcosm of the Renaissance itself that underscores the extent to which the intellectual world of the Renaissance artist was derived not from high-minded ideals divorced from reality but from a desperate attempt to comprehend the grim and delightful experiences that made up everyday life.

PART TWO

T
HE
W
ORLD OF THE
R
ENAISSANCE
P
ATRON

6

T
HE
A
RT OF
P
OWER

O
N THE AFTERNOON
of April 17, 1459, the fifteen-year-old Galeazzo Maria Sforza arrived at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi accompanied by a large retinue of magnificently attired horsemen. A handsome and eloquent young man, he had the dignity and good sense of a prince twice his age, and despite his youth he had been sent to Florence on
an important diplomatic mission by his father, the duke of Milan. Having been greeted by the priors earlier that day, he had come to the home of Cosimo de’ Medici—the city’s de facto ruler—to begin negotiations.

An old hand at the game of international politics, the sixty-nine-year-old Cosimo would have given great thought to where in the palazzo to meet his young guest. First impressions mattered, and no more so than where diplomacy was concerned. But while courtly convention would have recommended one of the grand public rooms on the
piano nobile
as the most fitting place to receive so aristocratic a visitor, the nature of the deal they were to discuss may well have persuaded Cosimo to wait for Galeazzo Maria in the smaller and more intimate setting of the palace’s private chapel. It would have been a shrewd choice.

Having come from the ducal court of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza was used to magnificence. But what he would have seen as he crossed the threshold would have surprised the son of even the most lavish prince. The tiny chapel—which would have barely been big enough to contain his entourage—exploded with life and color. Three entire walls were given over to the rich, exuberant frescoes of the
Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem
(
Fig. 18
), and although they would have been incomplete at the time of Galeazzo Maria’s visit, they would have inspired awe in any man of taste and refinement. Set in a “
fairy world of gaiety and charm,” the scenes showed the three kings traveling “in truly royal state through a smiling landscape.” Packing his images with realistic details,
the artist—Benozzo Gozzoli—had perfectly captured the opulence and excitement of the biblical procession.
Absolutely no expense had been spared. In obedience to his patron’s wishes, Gozzoli had adorned the figures with the most radiant, dazzling clothes possible and had certainly not skimped on the most expensive gold and ultramarine paints.

But if Galeazzo Maria’s first reaction would have been one of amazement, Cosimo would have wanted him to look beyond mere surface beauty. There was much more to the chapel than first met the eye. For all their richness and vibrancy, Gozzoli’s frescoes weren’t just telling the story of the Magi. They were doing something else entirely.

Although there was a deliberate echo of the spectacular processions held in Florence every Epiphany, the
Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem
was transforming a biblical story into a glorification of the Medici’s wealth and power. Each of the characters in Gozzoli’s frescoes was a portrait of one of the participants at the Council of Florence, which had met in 1439 in an attempt to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. And naturally, the Medici were given the starring roles.

There, on the south wall, dressed in fine, oriental robes, and wearing a turbaned crown, was the former
Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus, playing the role of Balthazar. Next to him, playing the part of Melchior on the west wall, was Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople, riding a donkey and wearing a long white beard. And on the east—but still unfinished—wall, there appeared the crucial scene. Caspar, the third and youngest of the Magi, was played by a handsome young man dressed in a magnificent golden cloak and could only be an idealized representation of Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo “il Magnifico,” then a boy of ten. Behind him appeared Cosimo himself, accompanied by his son Piero—the Gouty—and a host of exotic servants. And in the crowd of figures following them, Galeazzo Maria would have glimpsed the heads of prelates, including
Isidore of Kiev and Cardinal Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (who was to become
Pope Pius II), notable scholars—such as the Greeks
Argyropoulos and Plethon—and artists, including Gozzoli himself. At the far left of the scene were two unfinished figures, but it was clear from the horses alone that they were destined to be portraits of powerful nobles. In fact, one was already recognizable as a portrait of
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, while the other would shortly depict Galeazzo Maria himself.