Michelangelo - Infinito (2018) - full transcript

Let no one be surprised that I do now
describe the life of Michelangelo,

given that he is living still...

because his immortal works
shall never die,

his fame shall last for as long
as the world exists...

His name shall live on in the mouths
of men and the quills of writers:

despite the envy,
despite even death itself.

I have had my whole life to understand...

that stone cannot be bent
to the will of man,

but...

it must be denuded of all
that oppresses it.

This marble resists,



it rebels.

Often, it rejects you.

At times, it's indulgent.

Just like this life.

MICHELANGELO
ENDLESS

Giorgio Vasari, born in Arezzo
in the year 1511

painter, architect, writer on art.

I am first of all, the first to have gone
beyond narrating simply

what happened in the Lives of the most
excellent painters, sculptors

and architects in Italy, from Cimabue
to my own day.

I have claimed the right to judge,

choosing the best over the merely good,
and the excellent over the best.

I have noted down the approaches,
attitudes, manners...

the lines and imaginings of these artists.



I have investigated the causes and roots
of evolution in all of the arts.

The greatest of the infinite felicities
for which I praise God,

is the fortune of getting to know

the great Michelangelo Buonarroti...
a Florentine.

Of being a familiar and a friend.

This is why I have written so many things
about him: all of them true.

He was born on 6th of March,

in the year 1475.

From his earliest years, he would sketch
on paper, on the walls...

Noting this, his father Ludovico decided
to send him to study

at the workshop of master
Domenico Ghirlandaio,

so that he could learn the admirable
and valuable art of painting.

'Ere long, Ghirlandaio became aware
of this talent,

out of the ordinary despite
his tender years, one day exclaiming,

"This boy knows more than me".

And Michelangelo was just thirteen.

And so Ghirlandaio entrusted him
to the cares of Bertoldo,

a disciple of the great Donatello,
at the Gardens of San Marco,

where Lorenzo de' Medici
had set up a school

for young painters and sculptors
of talent.

I yearned for art more heroic
than painting.

I liked getting my hands dirty.

When I was a young 'un, I was sent to
wet-nurse at a family of stone-cutters.

My nourishment: marble powder
mixed in with the milk.

And when Lorenzo the Magnificent
called me to him

and put me to the test with this stone,
I was able to show him my mettle.

What did he say, the Magnifico?

"You should know by now that oldsters
ne'er have all their teeth,

there's always one or two gone!"

I didn't think twice to make good
on his advice:

that faun became old and toothless.

Perhaps they appreciated my courage,

before that sculpted head ever arrived
to be seen at Palazzo Medici,

where I met the greatest thinkers
of my time,

who gave me faith and guidance
in my works to come.

I immediately set to work on a Madonna
with young child,

imitating a technique of Donatello's.

Engraved using Donatello 's
"stiacciato " technique,

the Madonna of the Stairs,
today at Casa Buonarroti in Florence,

was Michelangelo's first work
to earn him notoriety.

A very low relief, not much bigger
than a newspaper page,

in which his scalpel barely grazes
the surface of the stone

to create almost imperceptible volumes
and a wondrous sensation of space.

Absorbed, imperturbable as a goddess
from the classical age,

the Virgin Mary is wrapped in soft,
flowing drapery.

Portrayed from behind, the Infant seems
totally abandoned to his mother's embrace,

albeit with the physique
of a Hercules at rest.

This bold perspective view of the symbolic
stairway cohabits with the presence

of a simple marble cube on which
the Sacred Group sits:

this perfect three-dimensional solid is
an extremely early sign of the passion

for pure materials apparent in all
Michelangelo's art.

Then one day, the chance to present
il Magnifico all of my appreciation.

It was when Angelo Poliziano,
who thought of me highly,

challenged me to try my hand
with Centaurs in battle.

I was to gift it to Lorenzo de Medici,

showing my fellows who I was,
the most skilful of all.

A violent battle, bodies and limbs
entwined in a clash among nude figures,

filling every corner of a scene
without the least hint of chaos...

Michelangelo's Battle of the Centaurs,
housed today at Casa Buonarroti.

In the centre, one figure looms
above all others,

standing apart with the authority
of a proudly-raised right arm.

Fifty years later, Michelangelo
would reprise this gesture

for the Christ of his Last Judgement.

I was no good at keeping my mouth shut.

All too often I blurted out what
I thought of my fellow-students' art.

I already knew it wasn't of my standard.

Whether it was for my teasing words,
my presumption perhaps even jealousy

that the Magnifico thought so well of me,
that young Torrigiano,

a pupil like myself at Bertoldo's school,
punched me square in the face.

This muzzle, this deformed nose
that he gave me,

remains his best-known work.

After three days
of tempestuous weather, lightning,

a thunderous omen,

il Magnifico, protector, benefactor,

ideal father figure, expired.

Michelangelo, now without his patron,
felt he was lost.

He sought help and protection
from the Prior

at the convent of Santo Spirito, which
was also a hospital. And there...

the young Michelangelo started skinning
cadavers to study human anatomy:

ligaments, bone structure,
muscles, the veins.

Long nights spent in dim light allowed
him to perfect his line,

typical of his later years...

At just twenty, I had the ultimate
mystery of death in my hands.

At just twenty.

After - and for the rest of my life -
I believed I could beat death with art.

I was wrong...

I owe even more to a Cardinal,
Monsignor Raffaele Riario,

who after buying one of my Cupids
I made to look like it was ancient,

invited me to his home.

When I saw Rome that first time,
I realized why they call it eternal.

What magnificence, what ancient marble!

His challenge:

"Can you make something, my boy,
to make something of quite such beauty?"

"Give me the time and I'll show you
what I can do."

And with a block of marble bought
for little money in the streets of Rome,

I made Bacchus.

The Pagan god of joy and happiness,
conserved at the Bargello Museum,

was Michelangelo's great leap forward,

his first time ever making
a large-scale work.

A young nude, his body soft and sensual,
drunk on wine and pleasure,

his gaze lost in the distance,
barely able to keep hold of his goblet...

Meanwhile, a small satyr,
lost in Dionysian ecstasy,

plunges his smiling face into a bunch of
grapes purloined from the inattentive god.

When I showed it to Cardinal Riario,

he was unable to comprehend the vitality
I had managed to infuse into the stone,

or that this Bacchus would have
lived longer

than any other body that made
of human flesh and blood.

I found myself in Rome, alone,

with no clients and no money
to send home to my father,

who hoped, thanks to my work
to pull the family

out of the poverty of those years
of great difficulty.

It was only thanks to Jacopo Galli,
a dear true and lifelong friend

that I did not lose confidence,

that I did not decide to slink back
to Florence, a loser.

Jacopo had good contacts at court
with the Pope,

with the delegation
of Charles VIII, King of France.

"And I, lacobo Gallo, promise
the Most Reverend Monsignor

that the said Michelangelo shall
undertake the work infra one year,

and it shall be the most gorgeous work
in marble there is today in Rome...

When I read the contract which Jacopo,

from faith in and love for me signed
with the Cardinal,

I was moved... and afraid because...

the time was tight
and my ambition immense.

No longer did I have to make do
with leftover blocks of marble.

As soon as I was commissioned
to make a Pieté,

I left for Carrara. When I got there...

What a spectacle, those walls,
glinting in the light of the sun!

I had never seen this much white in stone.

The most beautiful marble in the world,
since time immemorial and forever.

I took days to choose
the purest materials.

Made by God and just for me it seemed,

for my hands to turn into eternal works.

On the road on the way back to Rome,

my mind filled with those great words
of Dante's,

when in Paradise he turns to the Madonna:

"Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,

Humble and high beyond all creatures".

It all become clear to me...

And I set to making my Pieté.

Before this work, no sculptor
ever imbued marble

with more grace and refinement
than what Michelangelo achieved,

at the tender age of twenty-four;

the full value and power of art
is evident in this Pieté.

The beauteous details... the divine
clothes in which the virgin is draped...

beyond them, Christ, dead and naked.

Such expertise in the muscles, veins,
the tendons taut over the bones,

his wrists, the joints between the body,
arms and legs.

Although some say that he fashioned
Our Lady too young,

they fail to consider
that uncontaminated virgins

maintain and conserve

a lightness in their lineaments for
a long time, free of all blemish.

People marvel that the hand of a man
could create in such a short time

a thing so admirable and divine.

Simply, a miracle that a rock,
initially so totally formless,

can have been crafted to this perfection,

beyond what nature can achieve
in bodily flesh.

So great was Michelangelo's love for
this work that he carved his name

above the girdle around Our Lady's
breast. Here alone, and nevermore.

Why did I sign it?

Because of the rumour around
that my Pieta was the work

of a sculptor from Lombardy,
a certain Cristoforo Solari.

All of that exertion! How could I allow
another man to benefit?

Then, after, I never had to sign
a thing again.

I could have returned to my father,
with honour and dignity.

My friends called me to Florence
to add lustre

to the Republic of Gonfaloniere
Pier Soderini.

Such nourishment for my ambition!

Michelangelo was the first to think
that sculpture is an art achieved

by removing all material
that is superfluous.

One where the Maker reduces it to
the form that it took in his mind's eye.

He found it in the workshops of the
Opera del Duomo, a block of marble

that was big enough, already worked
by two artists who had thinned it,

hacked at it, then left it abandoned.

At Santa Maria del Fiore, this is how
Michelangelo slaved away for three years,

hidden from view, by day and by night,

trying to resuscitate someone
who was believed to be dead.

And it came to pass that the work really

did suck the breath from all of
the statues ancient and modern,

Greek, Latin, whatever they were.

He who beholds it need not concern
themselves with seeing

any other works of sculpture
made in this day

or in the time of any other creator.

The most incredible thing about
this gigantic work is,

put simply, the challenge.

A heroic and athletic young man
with a lean physique

immortalized in the moment before hurling
a rock at the cruel philistine giant

who had been terrorizing
the people of Israel.

His legs ready to spring, muscles tense,

veins in relief,

a proud expression on his face,
they all highlight this vital moment:

the peak of concentration
that precedes action.

Pier Soderini fell in love with this
statue, which rises more than 5 metres,

before it was even finished.

He appointed a committee of the greatest
artists of the day,

including Leonardo and Botticelli,

to find the ideal spot for such
an extraordinary work.

Moving it from Florence Cathedral
to Piazza della Signoria

was a heroic undertaking:

swinging from a rudimentary crane,
secured with ropes and pulleys,

it took more than forty men four days
to haul it to its final destination,

right outside Palazzo Vecchio.

In the late 1800s, David was moved once
again, to the Galleria dell'Accademia.

It remains there to this day,

the eternal symbol
of the City of Florence.

David with his catapult,

me a bow drill.

With a simple catapult,
David defeated Goliath.

I felt just like David,
powerful and proud.

I had risen to my challenge:

with my bare hands and a bow drill,

I extracted eternal life
from living marble.

To think, my David...

took the spot occupied
by Donatello's Judith!

Do you now see why they've always
called him the "giant"?

Messer Agnolo Doni, a cloth merchant
of great wealth,

was very keen to own a work
of Michelangelo's,

so he commissioned a tondo on panel,

in which Our Lady, kneeling down,
holds the Infant out to Joseph

who with great love, tenderness and
reverence takes him into his arms.

Once the work was finished, Michelangelo
asked him seventy ducats.

Agnolo Doni, a man of some savvy,

thought the cost
too high for a simple painting...

so he offered to pay forty ducats for it.

Instead, Michelangelo claimed
a hundred ducats.

Well, Agnolo Doni, who liked the work,

said he'd give him the seventy
that he'd initially asked for.

Michelangelo was not at all happy.

Indeed, believing that Agnolo Doni
lacked faith in his art,

he went and doubled the price.

A hundred and forty ducats,
or the whole deal was cancelled.

In the end, desiring that tondo
at all costs, Agnolo Doni

was forced to cough up the price
he was asking.

The Doni Tondo,
housed at the Uffizi Gallery,

is the only work we know for certain
Michelangelo painted on wooden panel.

The Holy Family is an ancient,
recurrent motif.

Here, Michelangelo crafted it
as if he were sculpting.

He used clear, shimmering, intense colours

to create an effect that leaves us
slightly uneasy,

a far cry from the traditional
tranquillity of such scenes.

Michelangelo was well-schooled in the
symbols so important to Florentine nobles.

In this composition, he seems
to have drawn inspiration

from Saint Paul's epistle
to the Ephesians.

The low yet impassable wall therefore
represents original sin,

separating the Christ Child
from the small Baptist

and young nude figures who are pulling
their garments off.

As Christians, they can be free at last
from sin, stripping away their sins,

they become new men.

The wondrous yet unfinished Pitti Tondo,
today at the Bargello Museum,

depicts another Holy Family.

Here, Michelangelo chose a classical
composition in which,

impassive as a Hellenic Queen, the Virgin
is distracted from her reading

by the Infant beside her.

I have always thought,

the closer a painting resembles a relief,
the more successful it becomes.

A brief period of peace, calm,
and easing off,

something I no longer had in my life.

But ambition never stops gnawing,

it brooks no peace or happiness at all.

Gonfaloniere Pier Soderini asked me
to paint frescoes along one wall

of the Sala del Maggior Consiglio,
at Palazzo dei Signori.

On the other wall, none other
than Leonardo Da Vinci.

How could I resist the challenge...?

I began by working on the cartoons
in complete secret.

I drew the preparatory cartoon
for my Battle of Cascina,

the same size as the scene
I wanted to depict.

When Michelangelo's drawing
became public knowledge,

it attracted immense admiration.

Artists flocked to see it from
all over Europe,

a practice usually reserved
for the casts of statues.

They came to touch it, copy it and,
in the end, pilfer pieces of it

as if it were a holy relic.

Before a few decades were out,
there was nothing left of the cartoon...

And the legend was born.

However, a copy of the central portion,
made by Aristotile da Sangallo,

has survived, preserving
at least a recollection.

The tangle of naked bodies, frozen in
the moment just before battle is joined,

is merely a pretext for the artist to
show off what he is really interested in:

the heroics of the ideal body.

I never did finish that fresco.

My one consolation, that Leonardo
had to give up too.

His usual malaise of trying out
new techniques,

he wound up making a huge mess up
of wax and oils,

the whole thing gone to pot.

By now, my name was being
mentioned in palaces

across Europe with reverence and respect.

Even Pope Julius ll wanted me
to make him something,

to aggrandize himself.

Such was the renown of Michelangelo
after his Pieta, the giant of Florence

and the cartoon for the Battle of Cascina,

that Julius ll, now the pontiff,

commissioned him to make his burial
monument, which in beauty,

creativity and hauteur exceeded any other
ancient imperial burial.

I spent eight months in Carrara,

excavating that marble from the mountain.

Cutting the stone,
choosing the crucial point,

eliminating veins that made
the marble graceless...

I almost went mad, not being able
to exercise my hands with a chisel.

One day I found myself at the top
of the mountain, thinking,

"I'll sculpt this, this whole thing,

so that they'll be able to know what
I'm capable of from the coast!"

Julius ll's tomb was, for Michelangelo,
conceived as

a veritable "mountain of marble",

a magnificent free-standing
three-dimensional structure

surrounded by a forest
of larger-than-life statues.

What, in his mind's eyes, should
have been his finest artistic triumph

ended up becoming the "tomb tragedy".
Started in 1505,

it would not see the light of day
until forty years later,

in a vastly reduced version compared
to the initial plan.

Pursuing this obsession with almost
superhuman energy, the artist

left us the greatest example of what
modern critics refer to as

Michelangelo's "un-finished works".

There is no other way to define
the Prisoners,

which jut out of the marble,
exposed and raw...

The stone itself imprisons
the chained-up slaves,

immortalized in the twists
of classical statuary.

Michelangelo's Moses, made to decorate
Julius ll's tomb,

is the true masterpiece of this work.

The ancient patriarch's face is an ideal
portrait of Pope Julius ll,

who was known for his "terribleness".

He is portrayed here in a pose that is
both vigilant and pensive.

Sculpted at twice natural size, almost
thirty years elapsed before Moses

was finally placed in the Basilica
of San Pietro in Vincoli.

It is said that to make the most
of the statue's face,

vibrant with life and energy,

Michelangelo oriented the head towards
the natural light

that enters through a small window
in the basilica.

A prodigious touch that puts the seal
on an immense work.

That Moses seemed so... so well-crafted

that it was almost strange he was bereft
of his own intellect.

When I believed I'd found the inspiration
I'd sought my entire life...

What a huge blow to me...

Julius ll

snatched the chisel from my hand.

The blame lies with Bramante,
a great old friend of Raphael's,

who, having seen the Pope far
too enamoured

of Michelangelo's expertise with marble,

convinced Julius ll that it was
tempting fate,

erecting a tomb while he was still alive.

He persuaded him therefore to suspend
this magnificent project.

And given that Michelangelo was
no expert in painting frescoes,

wishing to make things more difficult
still, he invited the Pope

to commission him to decorate
the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Pope Julius ll had commissioned
from Raphael School of Athens.

For his private apartment.

Raffaello, he had... depicted me
as Heraclitus,

the philosopher with thoughts deep
as a Delian diver.

I was commissioned to make
a truly vast fresco.

Raffaello, provoking me.
I was forced to respond,

I had to compete with him in his own art,
compete and win.

I was to give those painted figures all
that marble had taught me.

I was to fill that ceiling with bodies
and tendons and muscles,

of a size that the whole world
would call a miracle.

And I began by blotting out...

that blue sky and its gilded stars.

Then, I took down the scaffolding
Bramante had built,

which went into the ceiling.

I had another one built to my own design.

I brought some friends down from
Florence, who alas made a mess up

with the paints and were unable
to translate my fantasies.

I sent them away, plunged into
depression, but I had to keep going...

I had to triumph over Raphael...
over myself.

And so, I did it all. I, alone.

I found no satisfaction in what
I was doing. I couldn't see the end.

It is so difficult to detach oneself
from one's own work...

Jealous and preoccupied, I let no one see
the results of my toils.

Not even the Pope.

I remain in far-off fantasies,

my work is not going how it deserves,
it seems to me.

Ah, the difficulty of this work, one that
is still not my profession.

And despite lavishing so much time,
no fruits do I see.

May god help me.

It is 1508. For the first time
in history, a Pope decides to give

an artist "carte blanche" to decorate
the ceiling of a papal chapel.

At 33 years of age, Michelangelo
is in the prime of his artistic powers.

He brooks no form of simplification as
he prepares to take on this titanic task.

A thousand square metres more or less,
practically every available space

covered in a riot of human bodies:

frowning, resigned, tense,

frenetic...

Framed within a visionary architecture
in which Michelangelo wilfully ignores

all Renaissance rules of perspective,
proportion and verisimilitude.

Rather than concealing pillars,
arches and cornices,

he uses them to amplify the curvature
of the ceiling.

The paints seem to have been mixed
not with lime but with light.

He wielded his brushstrokes on
the plaster like a chisel on marble.

Prophets and Sibyls dominate
the ceiling's surface,

larger than all of the other characters.

They seem to flow out
of the architectural context,

clinging precariously to their thrones,
hanging perilously over the void.

They announce the coming of Christ
with muscular movements

and powerfully-twisting bodies.

Their faces and expressions are severe,

pensive...

surprised.

What they have announced,
inspired by the Lord,

is coming to pass in the scenes
painted around them.

The nine scenes in the central panels
tell the stories

of the Book of Genesis
in chronological order:

the Origins of the Universe, of Mankind
and of Sin.

God sunders the light from the darkness,
marking the start of the world.

He creates the stars and the planets,
suspended in space.

The supreme architect, he prepares matter

by dividing land from water.

In the Creation of Eve, the woman emerges
from one of Adam's ribs as he sleeps.

God beckons her, inviting her to rise.

In the Original Sin, a fig tree forever
changes the fate of humankind.

Entwined in its branches, the two-faced
snake, the devil of temptation,

while Archangel Michael,
holding his sword of justice,

runs Adam and Eve out of Earthly Paradise.

Guilt takes form in the shocking
transfiguration of the first woman

and the first man, becoming grotesque
caricatures deformed by sin.

In the Flood, groups of the naked flee
the thunderous waters

and the wrath of God.

Terrified yet resigned to what will come,

they strive to save themselves
and their loved ones.

However, the ceiling's most extraordinary
fresco of all is the Creation of Adam.

As an image, it is both primordial
and incredibly powerful.

With vigour and elegance, the Creator
leans out into the infinity of space

to bestow life upon the first man.

Adam's beautiful body,
"in the image of and resembling God",

is a concentration of all the gifts
of creation.

The spark of Life

that is about to crackle from the hand
of God to Adam's finger...

Hands outstretched towards one another
without ever truly managing to touch...

Analogous to the extreme tension
man feels as he tries to reach God.

It is as if, in that infinitesimal space
between the two index fingers,

Michelangelo attempts to define his art:

that unbridgeable gap between
the human and the divine.

There was a commission during that period
that would not let me be.

An entombment.

Like that of Julius ll.

It all brought me back to death,

that enemy to fear and to challenge.

But also,

finally the end of our toil in this world.

Leo X was elected Pope in 1513.

The son of Lorenzo the Magnificent,
he commissioned Michelangelo

to erect a temple in the Basilica
of San Lorenzo

to bestow eternity upon the Medici family.

Michelangelo created a place
of great spirituality

in which - by a quirk of fate -
the one thing he failed to complete

was the sarcophagus of his patron,
Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Sculptures representing the four phases
of the day recline on the sarcophagi,

transformed into beds, crowned by statues

of Dukes Giuliano di Nemours
and Lorenzo di Urbino.

They allude to the passage of time
on this Earthly coil.

They also refer to an age of eternity
and salvation.

Night sleeps deeply,
beyond consciousness or memory;

Day shows off his powerful anatomy
in a twisting motion.

Dusk appears resigned to eternal torpor.

Dawn raises herself on a bed of feathers,

twisting in grief at the death
of the young Medicis.

"Midway along this path of our life
I found myself in a dark forest

The pathway now astray".

Florence was being ripped apart
by in-fighting.

Faced with the choice of siding
with the Medici or the Repubblica,

Michelangelo chose the Republic.

In the summer of 1530, to avoid arrest
and the risk of being put to death,

Michelangelo was forced into hiding,
in fact, beneath the tomb

commissioned by the very man who now
wanted to punish him

for his political leanings,

in a secret chamber beneath
the Basilica of San Lorenzo.

In that dramatic moment, Michelangelo
sketched away neurotically

with a stick of charcoal:
figures floating in mid-air,

including the head of the legendary
Laocobn,

something that had inspired him greatly
in the past.

These quick sketches, hastily made,

indicate that perhaps he only spent
a short time in this refuge.

The graffiti was discovered in 1975,

in a room that had been used
to store firewood.

Laid centuries earlier, the plaster
preserved these precious drawings,

which rank among the most fascinating
modern-day discoveries

of this master's works.

"And so once more to see
the light of the stars."

Aged early by all the hard toil
in my life.

Unhappy always,

for all the things I was unable to finish
the way I saw them in my mind.

Suffering...

for the money I didn't spend and that
never seemed to be enough.

I became sure the moment had come
to meet with my Maker...

then he...

blessed me with love.

"How can it be that me is
no longer my own?

O God, God, God,

what is this Love that goes
from eye to heart,

filling the tightest space until it grows
and floods out?"

God gave me love in the form
of a gentleman and a Madonna.

He, as handsome as David; the other,
as noble and pure as the Virgin.

Tommaso filled my eyes;

Vittoria, my very soul.

Infinitely more than all, he loved
Messer Tommaso de' Cavalieri,

a gentleman of Rome, who though young
loved the arts.

And Michelangelo gave him
beauteous drawings

of divine heads in black and red pencil...

He drew him a Ganymede carried off
to the heavens,

Tityus whose heart is being eaten
by a vulture,

the chariot of the sun plummeting
with Phaeton into the Po...

He portrayed Messer Tommaso
in a life-sized cartoon,

his sole portrait from life,

because he loathed everything that was
alive unless it was of infinite beauty.

A man and a woman,

pardon,

a god through her mouth speaks,

oh god, to listen to her I made myself
such that...

never more mine she'll be.

From my love of Vittoria came drawings
of a Crucifixion and a Pieté.

Our friendship so tender changed me
profoundly.

I learned that he who has known no evil

cannot know goodness.

I found comfort in her circle
of spiritualists.

I was dazzled by their promise
of redemption.

They had this idea of a church renewed,

in which the spirit becomes illuminated
by divine grace

only if one strives to listen.

If I succeeded in that effort,

God alone could have judged me...

could have found me...

Quilty...

or innocent.

Around that time, the Pope decided
to invite him to paint

the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

He wanted Michelangelo to portray
the Last Judgement,

to imbue that story of everything
with all that

the art of drawing could bring to it.

And so it was that Pietro Perugino's
Assumption of the Madonna for Pope Sixtus

was sacrificed to make way for art
by the divine Michelangelo.

No sooner did I start in on the cartoons,
Clement VII died.

As did my father.

The new Pope, Paul Ill, elevated me
to supreme architect,

painter and sculptor
to the apostolic palaces.

I returned to Rome,

to stay for the rest of my days.

Five years alone again,
aloft, near the gods.

I got rid of all of the paintings
on the wall, including my own,

I walled in two windows and added
a slope to the wall

to make it look like the Judgement
was truly pending

on any who dared to look up to the skies.

The whole thing was to revolve around
a Jesus of great beauty,

immersed in the lapis lazuli blue
Giotto loved so well.

"Through me is the way to the city of woe;

Through me is the way to eternal pain;

Through me is the way among people lost.

Before me there were no created things,

Only eternal, and I eternal last.

All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"

The Last Judgement is a warning
to the world,

at a time of tragedy when no certainties
seemed to survive:

the Church, having just recovered
after the Sack of Rome,

trembles under the blows
of the Protestant Reformation.

Against this backdrop,
now in his sixties, Michelangelo

created an immense, mind-blowing
and revolutionary work.

The scene has no boundaries,
bathed in lapis lazuli blue light,

suspended in time and space.

It is dominated by the imperious figure
of Christ the Judge: a beautiful wrestler

who has been given the task of judging
the living and the dead

with steadfastness and justice.

Once he lowers that muscle-bound arm,

the fate that his father bestowed on him
shall be complete.

By his side, the Madonna turns away,
not wanting to witness

the frightful spectacle of the punishment
of the reprobates.

The whole monumental composition revolves
around the figure of Christ.

It is populated by hundreds of figures,
who defy the laws of gravity.

Michelangelo's depiction of the male body
is a declaration of love to God.

Human beauty is, here, a reflection
of heavenly beauty.

The Elect awaken from the sleep of death,
some still in skeletal form.

Scooped up by wingless angels, they make
their ascent to Heaven.

Sinners' bodies tumble down towards Hell,

as described by the beloved Dante:

a cave reddened by flame, in which devils
wait their chance to grab the damned.

Charon, his eyes a-fire,
ferries lost souls like animals

to the slaughter across a river reduced
to a marshy stream.

Minos judges souls, girdled by a snake:

his face is a grotesque portrait
of Biagio da Cesena,

the Pope's Master of Ceremonies.

The Maestro got his revenge on him
for considering the nudity

of the suffering bodies
to be inappropriate.

The blessed hear the clarion call
of the seven trumpets

ofjudgement as sweet music;

the poor souls being pushed forcedly
by the devils towards the Underworld

plug their ears to avoid going deaf.

One and all, reprobates and blessed,
struggle desperately

either to escape the underworld

or to grab their spot in heaven.

Saint Peter hands back the keys,

now just a pointless burden.

Saint Bartholomew displays
his flayed skin,

sporting the lifeless face
of Michelangelo.

who hopes to atone for his own sins by
presenting himself to God annihilated,

in lifeless form.

"A flash of vermilion light

Overcomes all feeling in me;

And I dropped like a man falling into
deep sleep."

"Men do not care what blood
it costs to sow."

When it was publicly unveiled,
the Last Judgement

aroused both admiration and shock.

It came close to being destroyed
immediately,

for being indecorous and unseemly.

A few years after Michelangelo died,

the decision was taken to alter just
the most scandalous figures.

Daniele da Volterra, who was given
this thankless task,

was from then on nicknamed "Braghettone".

Fortunately, Marcello Venusti had made
a copy of the Last Judgement

soon after it was painted,
before the enforced trousering:

a small painting, today in Naples,

preserves the Maestro's original creation.

Revealed or covered up,

those bodies revolutionized and stunned
his contemporaries,

thanks to the incredible freedom
of Michelangelo's approach

to an ancient and sacred theme...

One that, in his hands, becomes modern,

angst-ridden

and eternal.

Blessed and mightily fortunate
was Paul Ill,

because God conceded to his protection
true judgement,

true damnation and resurrection.

Michelangelo infused such power in
his painting that "the dead were dead,

and the living seemed living".

It took him almost eight years
to complete his Judgement,

finally unveiled on Christmas Day 1541,

to wonder and amazement among
all beholders.

But even though fresco painting
is no job for the old,

his toils in the Vatican palazzos
showed no sign of ending.

Pope Paul Ill could not imagine
dispensing with Michelangelo's services.

He commissioned the ageing maestro,
now in his seventies, to paint

new cycle of frescoes for his private
chapel in the Apostolic Palace.

Michelangelo painted for almost
ten years, taking long breaks

because of poor health
and failing eyesight.

Once again, he wins the challenge
against himself;

this would be his final pictorial work.

Like Saul, Michelangelo would obey
the law of the Lord.

And, like Saint Peter,
before God and man he was ready

to accept what was to come.

And after having served the popes,
the time came to serve just God.

And so I became God's hand.

After being named architect of
Saint Peter's Basilica, Michelangelo

dedicated himself to this job
until the end of his days.

In a stroke of genius, he designed
the final form of the dome,

filling it with all available light.

Work on Michelangelo's design, one of
the most revolutionary ever conceived

was only completed posthumously,
at the end of the sixteenth century.

I was striving so hard to complete
the job at Saint Peter's,

for the Church as a whole
and for our Lord...

making sure there was no trickery
or pilfering.

My one comfort came from sculpting,

in my home,

without any projects in particular.

They were Pietés,

like the first I ever sculpted.

Sometimes by night I would take
just a peek, astounded

that they were so... light-filled,
finished and...

And yet I was just hacking,

breaking things, mutilating...

I sheared away marble,
despairing that the stone...

was somehow becoming suddenly mute.

I no longer succeeded in stripping away,

I couldn't add,

I was unable to finish things.

With this sulphurous heart,

with this flesh of tow,

no peace could there be for me.

How can a miserable man...

ever succeed in equalling the perfection
of divine design?

The Rondanini Pieté, today housed
at the Castello Sforzesco,

was Michelangelo's last poignant work
of sculpture.

This marble piece looks like it has been
wounded and mutilated

through repeated blows by the Maestro,

who in a veritable destructive rage
profoundly transformed his initial idea

to produce a totally different
composition:

unfinished, modern in the extreme,

bearing witness to a creative raptus
that has enthralled critics

and contemporary artists alike.

Whereas from the rear the form
of the original block of stone

is evident in all of its raw materiality,

from the front we make out the figures
of Christ and Mary.

However, the demarcation between
the person doing the holding

and the person being held is completely
wiped out.

The group is supple and spiritual,

the two bodies tending to melt
and flow into one another,

as if the mother wanted to call her
son back into the womb,

to find peace and solace there.

Before dying, Michelangelo pared things
back to the essential,

sculpting an intimate, tormented prayer

in the final piece of marble
he was to challenge.

Ah, happy, truly happy is our age,

we have been able to cast so much light
to brighten up the shadows.

Michelangelo pulled the blindfold
from the eyes of our minds,

he cast aside the veil of falsity that
darkened the halls of the intellect.

Praise be to the Heavens,

and let us strive to imitate
Michelangelo in all things.

But why do ljump from place to place,
a-leaping?

All I have to say is:

wherever he laid his divine hand,
he resurrected things,

infusing them with life eternal.

Confound these hands,

confound the passage of time.

Confound my loneliness,

and confound you, marble.

May nothing remain of the things
I have made, because...

what I have made has not been enough.

Confound me, because I wanted
to be like God,

to try and make life

rather than fully living my own.

Confound this...

It's over...

It's over!

So what's left?

Come on, tell me!

Can you tell me what it was for,
this immense hard labour?

But why?

Why Won't you speak?

All his statues are so constrained
by agony

that they seem to wish
to break themselves.

When Michelangelo was old
he actually broke them.

Art did not content him.
He wanted infinity.

MICHELANGELO
ENDLESS