Michelangelo: Saint or Sinner (2023) Movie Script
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(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
MAN: 'Was Michelangelo
a saint or a sinner?
He's a saint of art.
He's certainly a patron saint of art
and probably one of the most
famous artists in the world.
So in that sense,
he's saintly in that
we still respect him and observe him
and go to his relics
and the remains that he's given us.
But he thought of himself
as a sinner.'
WOMAN: 'I think in this case,
we have to separate
the artist from the man
and when we think of an artist,
the public persona
is always this genius,
this guy who had the hands of God
to create these divine-like works.
Then it's hard to think of him
in any other way than divine.
But maybe this is the perfect
moment in time, in history,
to think about him as a human being,
as a complicated human being.'
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(MAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(PIANO MUSIC FADES OUT)
I love Michelangelo
on a very deep level.
He's the ultimate artist for me.
And I- I like to think of him
more like a God than a mere mortal.
So, he's a complex man,
and maybe it's time for me
to stop thinking about him as a God
and think about him as a man.
(WIND SWIRLS)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
KATE:
'I never tire of being in Rome.'
'I've been coming here
for 20 years for my career.'
'It's almost as if I left
a little piece of myself here,
and then I reconnect with it again
every time.
It's a place
that just gives me so much energy.
When I'm walking these cobblestones,
I'm immediately connected
to Renaissance Masters.
I'm looking
at these ancient monuments
and I'm thinking of an
entirely different world.
But a world that still
informs my existence today.'
(CHURCH BELLS RING)
'It's such a layered city,
and I suppose I'm addicted to it.'
'I'm a pilgrim. I keep returning.
And there's one artist
more than anyone else
that I'm in search for...
..that I'm always keeping
an eye out for...
and it's Michelangelo.'
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
This is the tomb of Pope Julius II
by Michelangelo.
It was supposed to be
one of the most magnificent,
splendid, ground-breaking
artworks in history.
And instead,
it's completely mired in controversy.
It took 40 years to deliver.
It is far diminished.
It is a modest artwork
instead of a magnificent artwork.
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES)
And ultimately,
it's something that really threatens
Michelangelo's reputation.
It involves lots of scheming,
lots of letters,
lots of accusations, several popes,
Michelangelo's rivals,
Raphael and Bramante.
Perhaps the biggest controversy
about Michelangelo, this tomb.
The mausoleum
was to be Michelangelo's
commission of a lifetime
that was meant
to secure his legacy forever,
secure it beyond our wildest
dreams that we know today.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'I think the failed tomb
of Pope Julius II
can give us a different insight
into Michelangelo's personal life.
Without this tomb,
and the controversy
that surrounded it at the time,
Michelangelo probably
would not have created
some of his most magnificent work.
So one could argue
that out of his darkest moments
rose some of his
brightest achievements.'
(STIRRING MUSIC)
'As a sculptor,
he had imagined something ambitious,
a marble monument like no other.
This tomb for Pope Julius II,
known as the warrior pope,
was meant to become
the eighth wonder of the world.'
'We are unaware of the details
as we have no drawings.
But we do know that he
wanted it to be magnificent.
A celebration of Christianity,
he wanted it to be
a freestanding tomb
made entirely of the finest Carrara
marble he would choose himself.
Never since classical times
had a mausoleum like this
been built in the West
for one man alone.
Michelangelo planned to finish it
in under six years.
So why didn't he?'
This mausoleum
would've immortalised Pope Julius II
as this king-like pope,
who was this architect of Rome
who helped enable Rome to prosper
as one of the greatest cities
artistically in the world.
It was supposed to be
the Sistine Chapel in marble,
and instead we have Moses.
And don't get me wrong,
I love Moses. It's a masterpiece.
But he was supposed to have
serious company.
And instead, he's on his own.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(MAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
The tomb ultimately cost
a huge amount of money.
Maybe well into
the hundreds of thousands of dollars
in modern equivalency.
But here's where,
over the long, long history
of this tomb of 40 years,
there were contracts
and there was agreements
and there was funding,
and then there was promotion,
more money presented.
Michelangelo
didn't keep track of it!
And this is how he got into trouble.
He didn't keep track of the money,
he didn't- he couldn't legitimise,
or legitimate,
what he was spending his money on.
He was just a terrible,
terrible money manager.
(IN ITALIAN)
(CAMERAMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
Mmm.
(LAUGHTER)
MAN: Well...
(SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN, CHUCKLING)
at the British Museum,
talking about Michelangelo
in these divine terms.
But I never really thought about him
as a man before.
And when I think
about the Tomb of Julius II,
I realised that I haven't
acknowledged that perhaps...
perhaps Michelangelo was flawed,
perhaps he made mistakes.
Why did this tomb take 40 years
to deliver?
Why was he hounded by the family
asking for the artwork
that he promised them?
Why did he take money and then
maybe not deliver on the sculptures?
And I think that, as art historians,
sometimes we're guilty
of just putting forward
the story of Michelangelo
and all of his accomplishments.
And we don't like to think about
all the messy, complicated stuff.
I want to really understand
this artist that I love so much.
You know, to be a true art historian
is to see an artist in the round.
And that's what I need to do.
(BIRDS TWEETING)
(GENTLE MUSIC)
'Michelangelo's born in 1475,
in a really tiny place,
Caprese, it's near Arezzo,
in the Tuscan countryside.
Michelangelo came from a family
which had very noble origins.
He was always very keen to stress
this, it was important to him.
But by no means was-
did he grew up in a family
which had a huge amount of wealth.'
And over 500 years later,
this is still one of the most
remote parts of Italy I've ever seen.
And it spectacular.
It's not about people.
It's not about buildings.
It's not about money.
It's not about status.
It's not about power.
This place just seems
to be about light and nature.
And actually, Michelangelo's making
more sense as an artist for me.
It's really important for me
to come back to this place
and trace his footsteps
and say, "He was born".
(CHUCKLING) He was-
He was flesh and blood, just like me.
And I think this art is
known the world over.
This, sort of, person who set
the benchmark for what art could be
was born right here.
(STIRRING MUSIC)
He doesn't grow up
with a lot of money.
There's no financial stability.
There's definitely always
a concern in Michelangelo...
Even when
he's in his much later years
and he shouldn't be worrying about
money, he does worry about money.
And you can see his letters
with his father.
His father's constantly
writing to him to say,
when he's a young man, "You should
be more financially secure,
but you mustn't live in poverty.
But at the same time,
you mustn't live extravagantly."
There's all these pressures on him
and that stays with him
throughout his entire life.
It's definitely a really
psychological trait in Michelangelo
to both uphold
the good name of the family,
but not be seen to be too luxurious.
And I think you see that
in the way that he handles money.
I mean, he's slightly negligent
when he handles money.
He's very concerned about money,
but he doesn't count every penny,
he's so busy with his work,
so he's a bit of a contradiction.
Well, Michelangelo was the person
in the family that made money.
And so, um, yes, his father
was constantly asking for money
from Michelangelo.
And so Michelangelo's
a little bit irritated
that other members of his family
weren't making as much money.
But Michelangelo
made a LOT of money in his life.
I mean, he- by the end of his life,
he was a multimillionaire,
but he didn't spend money
on himself.
He spent money on everything else,
his art and mostly on marble.
So, the...
money was always a tension,
as it probably is in many families.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Well, Michelangelo came
from an old, noble family...
uh, impoverished nobility.
And so, his father
would naturally expect Michelangelo
to become a member of the government
or a notary,
or something
that was not manual labour,
which is what art was considered,
a manual labour
and not very prestigious.
'When Michelangelo as a young man
says he wants to become an artist,
you can imagine his family
were really shocked
to the point of thinking
they might be disgraced
by him becoming an artist.
But he obviously just feels it
on a very instinctive level.'
But I think what becomes very clear
is that by the time
that Michelangelo is 13,
he's basically just drawing
at school.
(CHUCKLES)
He just wants to be an artist.
And his father and his uncle try
and convince him not to be an artist.
But eventually they submit,
and he goes to become an apprentice
at the workshop of Ghirlandaio, who's
a very respected Florentine artist.
'So, I've come to Florence
to retrace his footsteps
and think about him
in all of his complexity.
The Tomb of Julius II, it seems like
quite a contemporary problem.
You know, there's fake news.
There's people
trying to slander Michelangelo.
They're trying to cancel him,
they're trying to bring him down.
Was he a saint, or was he a sinner?
I don't know.
Could Michelangelo ever be
so innocent?
I've always thought him to be so.
But now thinking about it, I realise
it's a much more complex picture.
And I need to think carefully
and try and understand him
as flesh and blood.'
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(BIRDS TWEETING)
KATE: This is the cloister of the
Church of San Lorenzo in Florence,
and it's a site of huge significance
in Michelangelo's career.
It's the Medici family church.
It's a place
where he had a huge success
with the Medici Family Chapel.
WILLIAM: And so the Medici helped
pave the way
for a Michelangelo career.
And that career began, really,
not actually in the Medici garden,
but with the Ghirlandaio workshop,
where probably
because of the Medici connection,
Michelangelo was...
His way with smoothed into
the most impressive and important
workshop in all of Florence
A painter's workshop,
which is not how we think
of Michelangelo being trained.
Michelangelo is, however,
only there one year,
and that's unusual for an apprentice.
He gets summoned, he gets picked.
Lorenzo the Magnificent says,
"Send me two of your best
pupils to Ghirlandaio."
And Michelangelo's selected.
And then, this really just changes
the course of Michelangelo's life.
He's got this humanist education.
He's looking at ancient sculptures
in the gardens,
he's being tutored by great artists,
he's living a princely kind of life
with this very wealthy Medici family.
And what's critical
is that he would become very close,
almost like family,
with two future popes.
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
Michelangelo really, as yet,
is not a sculptor when he's living
in the Medici household.
He's something like being trained
in something like a courtier,
sort of on the margins
of the court of the Medici.
But then, with the death
of Lorenzo de' Medici,
Michelangelo really needed a career,
he needed some kind of income.
And so he carved the Cupid
as a showpiece,
as a demonstration
that he could carve
as well as the antique sculptors
of the ancient world could carve.
And this Cupid was sent to Rome
as if it had been discovered
as an ancient work of art.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
But his big break
came from Raffaele Riario,
who actually asked Michelangelo,
"What can you do?"
You know,
"OK, I've seen you carve the Cupid,
but what can you do new for me?"
And so, Michelangelo
actually then carved the Bacchus.
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
Then a French cardinal
noticed the Bacchus
and wanted a grave memorial
for himself,
which is what the Pieta was.
It was to mark the grave of this
very powerful French cardinal.
Michelangelo finally gets
what he's looking for,
a really serious commission by
a serious cardinal for the Vatican.
And he's gonna make a Pieta.
(STIRRING CLASSICAL MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(SOFT MUSIC)
So this really was
Michelangelo's coming out,
his debut sculpture that made him
famous immediately in the world.
And one way it's famous is not only
is it beautifully carved,
but it's a beautiful,
carved piece of marble.
It's just an absolute
miracle sculpture.
And I think he changes sculpture
in that moment.
People look at this work
and they're incredibly jealous
of this young artist
in his twenties in Rome.
They think,
"Who the hell does he think he is,
this young Michelangelo,
making a work like that?"
It surpasses everything
his contemporaries have achieved.
And it really just
speaks to the ancients.
So, it's such a critical
moment in Michelangelo's life.
And I think it's the moment where
he thinks he's suddenly made it.
He returns to Florence
and he really wants to make his name
in his homeland.
This is really important for him.
He gets a gift of a commission.
It's for the Duomo.
Unfortunately... (CHUCKLES)
It's a bit of a poisoned chalice
because they give Michelangelo
"the giant",
which is this
enormous block of marble
that three different artists
have had to go at.
It's absolutely enormous
and it's been quarried
40 years before,
which makes it even harder to carve.
And so actually,
it's a really difficult commission
to give this young artist.
But Michelangelo knows
this is his big moment.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC)
The David is Michelangelo,
world stage,
and fame with the David. Why?
(DRAMATIC MUSIC CONTINUES)
Look at the scale of David.
Nobody in the Renaissance
had carved any sculpture
nearly of this scale,
and much less a nude figure
that was so impressively
naturalistic.
So, the David was actually
not even called "the David".
People just called it "Il Gigante".
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
So, Michelangelo was flourishing
as an artist in Florence.
Especially after the David, all
kinds of commissions came his way.
But suddenly,
he gets a call from Rome.
'Pope Julius II
would like him to come to Rome
to carve a mausoleum,
a monumental burial tomb
for the pope.'
So when he gets this papal summons
in 1505,
it changes the course of his
life because it means suddenly
he is right at the apotheosis
of the art world.
He has been summoned by a pope.
Not just any pope,
but a pope who wants to rebuild Rome.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
(BIRD CAWS)
(IN ITALIAN)
KATE: I think it's really difficult
to grasp quite what this means,
because the papacy
didn't just represent Christendom,
it represented power.
Pope Julius II was a warrior pope,
and he really wants to dominate
Italian politics.
So we've got money,
we've got power,
but also he's an extraordinary patron
of the arts.
So, I think if you put it
in today's terms, you could say,
"Oh, maybe it's like representing
your country at the Venice Biennale."
But it's bigger than that.
It's almost something that
we have to imagine for ourselves.
Like, imagine if the Princess
of Wales and the Prince of Wales
decided to build
a completely new palace in London
and have one artist
come and be their court artist.
Maybe that's what this is like.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
But what I think is most important
about this whole project
is at the beginning of this project,
there was no contract,
there was no drawing.
It was a verbal agreement
between the Pope and the artist
to create
this eighth wonder of the world.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(GENTLE MUSIC, BIRDS TWEETING)
KATY: 'Michelangelo's life
is intrinsically linked with marble.
It makes him and it also breaks him.
He becomes obsessed with it.'
'I've come to Florence,
to Casa Buonarroti,
a house he bought for his family,
to find out exactly how
he imagined this tomb to be...
..and to get an idea
of how much marble
he was going to need to make it.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'This place holds one of the largest
Michelangelo archives.'
And in this archive
are actually letters,
correspondences between Michelangelo
and the heirs.
And my journey has brought me here
because in these letters,
I'll be able to shed more light
on what went on.
When we look at letters,
I think what we can do
is actually put ourselves in the
shoes of those who lived that time.
And to get that first
hand experience is extraordinary.
'I can see from this document most
of the measurements for the tomb,
and the number of statues
that Michelangelo wanted to create.
It was supposed to be 7 metres wide,
11 metres deep and 8 metres high.
It would have been adorned
by over 40 life-size statues
placed in St Peter's,
all in marble.
He puts an enormous emphasis
on the marble he wanted to use...
Not just any marble, it had to be
the world-famous Carrara marble.'
Michelangelo receives 1000 ducats
from Pope Julius II
to go off to the quarries
to get the marble for this.
Uh, again...
Once again, Michelangelo insisting
that he choose the best materials.
So, he started a lifelong love
for marble
and for the marble quarries,
a place where he probably
was the happiest of all.
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'Michelangelo once wrote,
"The sculpture is already
complete within the marble block
before I start my work.
It is already there,
I just need to chisel away
the superfluous material."
I am visiting the same marble quarry
where Michelangelo
spent eight months
choosing the right slabs to use
to create the 40 statues
for the tomb of Pope Julius II.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC CONTINUES)
'Michelangelo described
this marble as being
"of compact grain,
homogenous, crystalline,
reminiscent of sugar."
I can see exactly what he meant.
Carrara is in the Apuan Mountains,
Italy's most marble-rich area.
Hundreds of quarries have
operated here since Roman times.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC BUILDS)
'I am meeting professor and sculptor
Luciano Massari
to find out more about
Michelangelo's obsession with marble
and these marble quarries.'
What is so special
about Carrara marble?
(IN ITALIAN)
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
So, after Michelangelo gets
the commission from Pope Julius II,
he comes to Carrara and it's here
where he has to extract
40 blocks of marble
to create these 40 sculptures.
What kind of feat was this
for him then?
And what does that translate to now?
(IN ITALIAN)
So, you as a professor,
but also as a sculptor...
When you're tackling Carrara marble,
what do you do with it?
And how would that be different
to how Michelangelo tackled it?
(IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(LUCIANO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(WHISPERS) OK...
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
KATY: 'Michelangelo arrived in Rome
after carefully
selecting his marble,
quarrying at Carrara
to great expense.
He then has to say goodbye to it,
as it makes its way on a boat
to Ripa Grande in Rome.
It's gonna arrive
in the port in Rome.
And what a sight it would've been
to see these enormous blocks
arriving in Rome, ready to fulfil
their artistic destiny.
It's poetic to me, but it must've
been terrifying to Michelangelo.'
(IN ITALIAN)
So, when Michelangelo comes back
to Rome with all of this marble
and he's ready to start creating
this greatest creation of all time,
then he's gonna, all of a sudden,
demand attention from the Pope
that the Pope doesn't have time for.
Time or money.
(IN ITALIAN)
(LAUGHS)
(CAMERAMAN SPEAKS ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
OK.
I think the rupture
between Michelangelo and Julius II
came mainly when Michelangelo
was unable to get an audience
with the Pope.
Uh, not only to get an audience,
but to get money to...
in order to continue this project.
And so Michelangelo left Rome
without the papal permission,
and this is the rupture.
You don't say no to a pope.
And you don't just leave his employ
without asking permission.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
The groundwork for the rupture
was laid by Bramante,
who was probably the person
who convinced the Pope
that it's not a good idea
to build your own tomb monument
in your own lifetime,
this is unlucky.
Well, Bramante is quite a character.
He's the papal architect,
is someone that really unsettles
Michelangelo.
And throughout the course
of his life, Michelangelo complains
about Bramante's influence
on his own career.
Pope Julius II really relies
on Bramante.
He's not just building him a tomb
or painting him a picture,
he's rebuilding St Peter's.
And Bramante probably was helpful
in redirecting the Pope's attention
to the Sistine ceiling.
"Why don't we have Michelangelo
paint the Sistine ceiling instead?"
Bramante hears Michelangelo's gonna
build the tomb for Pope Julius II.
He knows
he is a supremely gifted sculptor.
And he's jealous,
and he says to Pope Julius II,
"You should get him to paint
the Sistine Chapel ceiling."
(CECILE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Bramante thinks that Michelangelo's
totally gonna fail at the ceiling.
It's absolutely enormous.
And Bramante probably knows
that Michelangelo only had one year
with Ghirlandaio.
He was a young man, he didn't
have a long apprenticeship.
He wouldn't have worked
on any fresco cycles with him.
In fact, probably,
the day that Michelangelo turns up
to the Sistine Chapel in 1508,
thinking about making these frescoes
is the closest he's ever come
to making a fresco.
(IN ITALIAN)
WILLIAM: There's about eight months
there before he actually starts.
He's doing a lot of drawing.
He's making a lot of projects
and a lot of designs.
He's thinking about what's
appropriate for the ceiling.
He's consulting with the Pope
about what is wanted on the ceiling.
So, there's a long period there
before Michelangelo
actually starts to paint,
where he's sort of figuring out
that, "OK, I can do this."
And this is typical Michelangelo,
that he becomes a painter
when he needs to become a painter.
He became an architect
when he was needed as an architect.
He had never studied architecture
in his life.
He became a poet
when he wanted to write poetry.
So, he learned how to paint fresco
rather quickly.
Uh, it's a- it's a miracle.
It really is a miracle,
which is part
of the astonishment of the Sistine,
not just its scale and its grandeur,
but the fact that this person
who had never painted a fresco
in his life
painted the greatest fresco
of all time.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
'In the middle of Rome,
just in a tiny area,
is a place that holds
some of the most extraordinary
masterpieces ever created.'
'It's the Vatican City.
And the jewel for me
there is the Sistine Chapel.
It's the ultimate work of art.
You can't believe that it was
designed and executed by one man.
The sheer invention of it,
the originality,
it changes art history forever.
But for me,
it changes history forever.
This is Michelangelo showing us
what humankind is capable of.
It works on an intimate level
with me,
but also works
on a universal level.
You don't need to know very much
to fall in love with that chapel.
I took my one-year-old daughter there
and a noisy, rambunctious toddler
suddenly just stood still.
And that's when I knew
that it was true, that it really...
It really touches people.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'Even just standing
in the Sistine Chapel with you now,
my heart beats fast,
I have goose bumps.
It's hard to imagine that Bramante
thought that Michelangelo would fail
when he has achieved
such an extraordinary thing,
and I get to come in and enjoy it.'
(STIRRING MUSIC)
'For Michelangelo,
it must have been, at times, brutal.
I mean, this is a such
a physical undertaking, isn't it?'
(IN ITALIAN)
(KATE CHUCKLES)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
Michelangelo is extremely excited
about the tomb
commissioned for Pope Julius II.
We know that he begins work,
he's full of youthful bravado,
he wants to make something
extraordinary.
And yet, so quickly
after getting the tomb commission,
his attentions are diverted.
I mean, he has no choice, does he?
He has to follow
what the pope wants him to do?
(IN ITALIAN)
It's almost as if sometimes it's not
just the achievement of Michelangelo.
Sometimes it feels like
it's the achievement of humankind.
If this is what
stands for our culture,
then it's an extraordinary thing
that humankind can achieve this.
(IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
The tomb of Pope Julius II is the
most long, drawn out, protracted,
ultimately disappointing part of
Michelangelo's career, if you ask me.
He gets the commission in 1505.
He stops work in 1508,
paints the Sistine Chapel, no less.
1512, finishes the Sistine Chapel.
But then in 1513, just a few months
after the Sistine Chapel is unveiled,
Pope Julius II dies.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(BELL TOLLS)
KATY: 'Pope Julius II dies
without seeing the tomb
he had commissioned
from Michelangelo...
A tomb
that was going to be so grandiose,
it would've overshadowed
any other mausoleum
in the Western world.'
'Although we don't have drawings,
Michelangelo writes about his vision
for this masterpiece.
So, we know that it was meant
to have two or three floors.
It was meant to be adorned
by no less than 40 statues
as big and as perfect as the Moses.
And it was meant to represent
the Christian world.'
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'This tomb would've been
so ground-breaking
that experts have been trying
to bring it back to life
for decades.
But only now does the right
technology exist to do that.'
So, Mitchell, tell us about
what we're looking at here.
We are using
actual historical documents
to create the volumes
and the designs.
We are using open source software
to create the model
right from scratch.
Then we are going to apply materials
in order to make it beautiful.
And the process
is part a technical effort
and part an artistic effort
because, of course,
there is no real object
to reconstruct.
So we need to start from what
we have and imagine what we don't.
We are trying to remain as faithful
as we can to the source material.
But, of course, what we don't have,
we need to fill in the blanks.
We are here in the very beautiful
setting of San Pietro in Vincoli
as we are now wrapping up
the digital reconstruction
of the mausoleum by Michelangelo.
And in this context,
we are creating a 3D scan
of the Moses statue,
again by Michelangelo,
which will be then placed within the
3D reconstruction of the mausoleum.
It's a very important
technical challenge for us.
We are using
one of the most advanced techniques.
We're using
a structured light scanner
which uses high-energy
pulsating light beams
to recreate both the volumes
and the surface of the statue.
This 3D model will then be placed
within our digital twin
of the mausoleum
to make it as real-life as possible.
But with the flexibility
and the capabilities
of the 3D world, of course.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'And the Moses stands there,
still as always,
in its timeless beauty with his
ferocious gaze as it gets scanned
and it awaits to be put
where he should've been all along,
on the mausoleum that Michelangelo
wanted to carve all those years ago.
But he never did.
And the curse of the papal tomb
continued.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'To think that this tomb
became so intrinsically linked
with his own life, reputation
and success is astounding.
As a deeply religious man,
he wanted to deliver the world
not just a tomb, but a symbol
that celebrated Christianity
in all its glory.
But he failed.
And this failure tormented him
for the rest of his days.
When the pope died in 1513,
the pope's heirs,
the Della Rovere family,
were very keen on having
the pope's tomb now completed.
And, of course, they felt
that they had already invested
a huge amount of money,
which they had.
The family had already invested a
huge amount of money in the project.
So, this is the beginning
of the difficulties of the tomb.
(IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
The thing is, there's a new pope.
It's Pope Leo X, which is one
of Michelangelo's childhood friends.
He's hanging around in the court
of the Medici at the same time.
He's Lorenzo the Magnificent's heir.
He also wants to give Michelangelo
his own commissions,
his own projects,
and he gives Michelangelo one
of the most tantalising commissions
he could possibly have asked for...
to create the facade of San Lorenzo.
And he wants a Medici tomb,
so Michelangelo's busy trying
to fulfil the wishes of a new pope.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(CRISTINA SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
Now, what happens is they need
to put a new contract in place.
So, the heirs of Pope Julius II
want to make sure
that there's a really sort of clear
arrangement with Michelangelo,
because actually everything
with the pope
had been done more
in a gentlemen's agreement.
There was, sort of, no money set.
It was like,
"Have all the money in the world,
make me the greatest tomb on earth."
And it was all,
kind of, relatively hyperbolic,
whereas the heirs want
to put a contract in place.
(IN ITALIAN)
I mean,
he's awarded a huge amount of money.
An equivalent of, say,
a villa and a Ferrari, or something.
It's not money for life, but it is
an extraordinary amount of money.
(IN ITALIAN)
He spent lots of money.
He spent lots of money,
but he never spent money on himself.
He actually lived rather simply,
poorly.
He spent money on marble.
(IN ITALIAN)
The heirs, on their perspective,
when we put ourselves
in the shoes of the heirs,
they've paid Michelangelo
a lot of money already to do this,
yet they don't have
the financial ability
to go through
with the original plans,
so they have to downsize it.
KATE: 'In 1516,
the heirs give him another contract
because they're really
trying to keep him in line.
They reduce significantly
what the tomb should be.
So, instead of being this amazing
freestanding monument,
it becomes a wall tomb.
Far less exciting for Michelangelo,
probably,
even though it's still designed
to be quite large.'
(DANIELE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
And then in 1523, there's yet
another new pope,
Pope Clement VII.
Now, Clement VII is another
childhood friend of Michelangelo,
another Medici pope,
who also wants Michelangelo
to fulfil loads of extraordinary
obligations for him too,
including finishing the Medici tomb,
and The Last Judgement.
Michelangelo's now in a situation
where there are so many
competing demands for his time.
He can't turn down the Pope
for the heirs of Pope Julius II
but he's also terrified of them.
Michelangelo felt like
he was a victim of this story,
and Francesco Maria Della Rovere
was certainly the, um, villain.
(ALINA SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Francesco Maria Della Rovere
took over.
And here was a man who's, sort of,
a vicious soldier,
and not very sensitive to the arts,
and not very-
not at all sensitive
to Michelangelo,
who felt like the family had spent
far too much money already
and Michelangelo was not producing
anything or finishing this project.
In fact, Michelangelo was actually
accused of embezzling funds
and misusing the funds,
which he probably did.
And so-
But Francesco de Maria Della Rovere
never was a friend of Michelangelo,
and vice versa.
They really didn't get along.
And in which case,
nothing was happening on the tomb.
Michelangelo didn't-
He always had an excuse
about why he couldn't produce
what Francesco Maria expected.
So,
it's a bit like you take a house...
You wanna redo the kitchen,
so you pay someone a lot of money
because you want
to get a new kitchen.
Perhaps you want
some Carrara marble fitted...
And the builders are coming,
but they're not really showing up,
and at the end result,
you haven't got anything better
than you even begun with.
And if you're
the owner of the house,
you're not gonna be too pleased
about this.
And in a way,
this is almost parallel
to what the heirs
were experiencing with Michelangelo.
They'd paid him a lot of money,
yet he wasn't delivering.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Michelangelo promises this,
or promises that,
and he'll do it in a certain amount
of time with this amount of money.
But this is yet
the third or fourth time
that Michelangelo
has gone through this, you know,
project in a different way
with a different person.
And the result of this, you know,
imbroglio between him
and Francesco Maria Della Rovere
is that nothing was done.
(IN ITALIAN)
I mean, they are really on his case.
He says, you know,
"I'm losing weight, I'm losing sleep.
They won't get off my back."
So, actually,
he kind of asks Pope Clement VII
to sort of step in
and protect him from the heirs.
He's really worried about them,
particularly
Francesco Maria Della Rovere,
who's actually
a not particularly nice character
and totally unsympathetic
to Michelangelo.
(IN ITALIAN)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES)
(IN ITALIAN)
He was, in a sense,
flattering Michelangelo, by saying,
"You've already created
the greatest fresco of all time
in painting the ceiling.
Could you finish the chapel,
the great chapel of the Sistine,
by painting The Last Judgement?"
And here again, Michelangelo
cannot say no to a pope.
(IN ITALIAN)
(SMOOTH MUSIC)
KATE: So the first big commission
that takes Michelangelo away
from Julius II's tomb
is the ceiling.
He completes the ceiling, he goes
straight back to work on the tomb.
And then, of course, the Della Rovere
heirs are asking for a new contract.
They want
to get the work going again.
And there are a succession
of reasons why Michelangelo
is delayed on the tomb.
It becomes quite protracted.
And then I turn and face
this way and say,
"Well, this is a whole other reason
why the tomb is further delayed
because he's working for other popes,
for their plans
and for their grand ambitions.
And it's such an extraordinary thing,
I'm so pleased it exists.(CHUCKLES)
But I'm sure the Della Rovere heirs
were frustrated by this, perhaps,
because they thought this is another
reason why the tomb is not ready.
(IN ITALIAN)
Mmm.
Mmm.
(GRAND MUSIC)
(MUSIC SOFTENS)
KATE:
'As he painted The Last Judgement,
Michelangelo himself
was being judged
for taking the Della Rovere money
and not working on the tomb.
His reputation as a godlike genius
was being stained.
I want to understand
how this situation
was perceived during his lifetime.
Maybe he was right to set aside
the much diminished tomb
of Pope Julius II
and focus
on more ambitious projects.
Maybe he had no choice.
Nestled in the Tuscan hills,
surrounded by nothing much but
forest, is Castello Malaspina.
This is where Michelangelo stayed
during his many trips to Carrara,
and where it's likely
that he received
a very scathing letter
from Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino was a powerful man
who wielded an enormous influence
on Renaissance art and politics.
His opinions mattered a great deal.
He could make or break reputations.
In the letter he wrote
to Michelangelo
in 1545 about The Last Judgement,
although full of innuendos,
it's pretty clear
that he was trying
to raise suspicions
about Michelangelo's
moral standing.'
He writes,
"Your art would be at home
in some voluptuous Roman bathhouse,
certainly not
in the highest chapel in the world.
Less criminal were it
if you were an infidel,
than being a believer,
thus to sap the faith of others.
Up to the present time,
the splendour
of such audacious marvels
hath not gone unpunished."
"Well, if the treasure bequeathed
to you by Pope Julius,
in order that you might deposit his
ashes in an urn of your own carving,
was not enough to make you keep
your plighted word,
what can I expect from you?"
And in the first part
of the letter,
he's criticising
Michelangelo's Last Judgement.
But as we read on,
we actually also see him
looking at Pope Julius II's tomb.
And by how it's phrased,
it gives insight
into how some of the public
perceived Michelangelo
and actually how, perhaps,
he didn't handle well
the relationship
between the Della Rovere family
and the Pope Julius II tomb.
"God wills that Julius should live
renowned forever in a simple tomb,
inurned in his own merits,
and not in some proud monument
dependent on your genius.
Meantime, your failure
to discharge your obligation
is reckoned to you
as an act of thieving."
Well, I mean,
it's pretty harsh in a way.
But, you know, I mean,
it's interesting to see
the public perceptions
of Michelangelo
and to see how people viewed him.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
In Michelangelo's time,
art was the news.
Art was the thing
that people paid most attention to,
other than maybe religion.
So really,
the art of the Renaissance
was the news of the Renaissance,
was the news
of the time and the people.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
One of the most astonishing things
about Michelangelo
is that he was so famous
in his lifetime
that actually two biographies
were written while he was still
alive.
He's probably the first artist ever
to read his own biography
and decide
to edit it in some ways.
And so, the first biography
that was written of him
was by Giorgio Vasari.
KATE: Vasari would like to think
that I would sit here
and call him a great painter
from the Italian Renaissance.
But actually I sit here
and call him a great writer.
He almost founded
the tradition of art history.
He wrote a series of biographies
of all of the great Italian artists.
So, he gives us, like, a firsthand
account of the Italian Renaissance.
(IN ITALIAN)
And while Michelangelo
was certainly flattered by the fact
that Vasari was writing
a biography of this artist,
he was reminded constantly
of his many unfinished works.
So,
he wanted to sort of tell the story
or control the media,
control the message.
And that's when he had
Ascanio Condivi, a friend of his,
really write
an alternative biography
that Michelangelo felt
was closer to the truth.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
The thing is, is that Michelangelo
wasn't particularly happy
with how Vasari had framed him,
essentially.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
So Michelangelo's very distressed
at the prospect
that people misunderstand.
So,
he commissions his own autobiography.
(IN ITALIAN)
So, we start to get the sense
that Michelangelo
almost wants to have his own
press agent, you know?
In today's terms, he wants to go out
there and set the record straight.
And he wants Condivi
to write this authorised account
of what happened with the tomb.
And he calls it
the great "tragedy" of the tomb.
(IN ITALIAN)
It's almost like Michelangelo's
desperately trying
to reposition himself
and secure his legacy.
And I think,
you know, in today's parlance
we would say that it was
cancel culture coming to get him.
He was a subject of gossip, subject
of rumours, and he hated that.
He thought he was a man
of noble standings.
He's not someone whose name
should be smeared in the tabloids,
as it probably felt to him,
as we see it now.
And today, we see it the whole time
with members in the public eye,
for example,
certain members of the royal family.
They might not be so clear on paper.
Yet, what they want to do
is have authorised biographies,
so people in 10, 50, 100 years' time
will remember them the way
that they want to be remembered.
Well, I think it's a contemporary
story, in the sense that...
it's sort of tale as old as time,
in terms of what we should believe
and what we should not believe.
Gossip has been swarming our world
for millennia.
And actually, if anything,
it gives a more human aspect
to Michelangelo,
because at the end of the day,
yes, he created
these divine like figures,
but he was also just a human...
A human
who wanted to secure his legacy
and authorise how the public would
perceive him in centuries to come.
Toward the end of his life,
Michelangelo shows a more cordial
relationship with Vasari.
He answers more of his letters,
and you get the sense that
Michelangelo's thinking about Vasari
as the great biographer,
and Vasari as, maybe, holding the key
to part of Michelangelo's legacy.
And after Michelangelo dies,
Vasari,
in the second edition of The Lives,
the great biographies,
entirely reworks
the Michelangelo chapter.
It's much longer,
he incorporates huge swathes
that were written
in Condivi's authorised biography,
although he doesn't actually
mention Condivi.
But what's fundamental is that
Vasari is part of the campaign
to set the record straight
about Michelangelo's life.
And so...
the information about his ancestors,
the information about the tomb,
are changed. They're modified.
And what we learn is that, you know,
Michelangelo is the great man.
And actually, to this day,
art historians are still quite keen
to talk about Michelangelo,
the great man.
There is no doubt whatsoever
that Michelangelo
wanted to tell the story his way,
and to save, in a sense,
some things of his legacy,
especially to counter
the accusations
of money embezzlement,
this sort of thing.
Michelangelo
had his own explanation,
which Visari very much developed
in his biography for Michelangelo
after they got to know each other
and after Michelangelo told Visari
what was really
the important parts of his story.
And Visari then republishes
his Lives of the Artist
in a much expanded edition.
I think the thing
that's important to remember,
as big a fan of Michelangelo as I am,
is that he did keep the money.
He continually agreed to deadlines
that he couldn't meet.
He kept the money. He claimed
that ended up out of pocket,
which is a bit duplicitous
because it's not really true.
We can see that from the records.
So he's, by no stretch
of the imagination, innocent here.
Michelangelo misused the funds
that the Della Rovere...
excessive amounts of funds
for the tomb.
"We've spent a huge amount of money,
40 years have gone by,
and we still don't have a tomb."
(IN ITALIAN)
It's the fourth project when
Guidobaldo Della Rovere takes over,
who not only
knows Michelangelo very well,
but understands him
and highly respects him,
and mostly allows Michelangelo
to work
at his own pace and in his own time.
That's the kind of patron that
Michelangelo always worked best for.
And it's not a surprise
that it's under Guidobaldo
that the tomb is finally finished.
The new heir, Guidobaldo,
is much more sympathetic,
and at this point,
it's been over 30 years
since Pope Julius the second died.
I mean, it's getting ridiculous.
So he just says, when you've finished
working for Pope Paul III,
then you'll make it for me, right?
And Michelangelo says yes.
He's got someone finally
who's sympathetic,
who writes courteous letters,
who treats him with the respect
that he demands.
So actually, it's quite amazing.
Once that contract's in place
and Pope Paul III's
given him his protection.
Michelangelo finishes it
in two years.
It took 40 years
to nail down this commission.
And ultimately, Pope Julius II's tomb
is not something
that we all talk about.
We talk about Moses, we talk
about one sculpture in this tomb.
It's not even in the Vatican
where it was supposed to be.
And actually, I barely even notice
the lying figure of Pope Julius II on
the tomb, I just look at the Moses.
So, it's not even
what it's supposed to be.
It's become something
completely different.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'This is such a long
and protracted story.
40 years, several redesigns...
Several stories, 40 figures, bronzes
Absolutely extraordinary,
there's nothing like it.
It remains a huge unfulfilled
part of art history.
And then slowly see it
begin to diminish.
Instead of becoming freestanding,
that you would be able
to walk around,
it becomes wall-based.
And then the number of
figures gets reduced dramatically.
We start losing things. We lose
the niches, we lose the bronzes.
So, a lot of the complexity
and the thing that would've given
the tomb this great advantage
of having been so epic,
that starts to fade away.
And actually, when I think about
Julius II's tomb now,
I think about it
as an unfulfilled promise
that left me Moses.'
(MUSIC BUILDS)
'When I'm standing here,
the redesigns, the contracts,
it all fades to black.
And what remains is a masterpiece.
Michelangelo has made flesh
and blood out of marble.
He's made Moses a man,
and he's a furious man.
And I'm frozen to the spot
looking at him.
And there's this deep connection,
and I feel the suspense in the air.
And there's a question
that I need answered.
And like Michelangelo once said,
"Why don't you talk, Moses?
You've been witness to so much."'
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(MUSIC FADES)
(GENTLE MUSIC)
AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk
flashing images.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
MAN: 'Was Michelangelo
a saint or a sinner?
He's a saint of art.
He's certainly a patron saint of art
and probably one of the most
famous artists in the world.
So in that sense,
he's saintly in that
we still respect him and observe him
and go to his relics
and the remains that he's given us.
But he thought of himself
as a sinner.'
WOMAN: 'I think in this case,
we have to separate
the artist from the man
and when we think of an artist,
the public persona
is always this genius,
this guy who had the hands of God
to create these divine-like works.
Then it's hard to think of him
in any other way than divine.
But maybe this is the perfect
moment in time, in history,
to think about him as a human being,
as a complicated human being.'
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(MAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(PIANO MUSIC FADES OUT)
I love Michelangelo
on a very deep level.
He's the ultimate artist for me.
And I- I like to think of him
more like a God than a mere mortal.
So, he's a complex man,
and maybe it's time for me
to stop thinking about him as a God
and think about him as a man.
(WIND SWIRLS)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
KATE:
'I never tire of being in Rome.'
'I've been coming here
for 20 years for my career.'
'It's almost as if I left
a little piece of myself here,
and then I reconnect with it again
every time.
It's a place
that just gives me so much energy.
When I'm walking these cobblestones,
I'm immediately connected
to Renaissance Masters.
I'm looking
at these ancient monuments
and I'm thinking of an
entirely different world.
But a world that still
informs my existence today.'
(CHURCH BELLS RING)
'It's such a layered city,
and I suppose I'm addicted to it.'
'I'm a pilgrim. I keep returning.
And there's one artist
more than anyone else
that I'm in search for...
..that I'm always keeping
an eye out for...
and it's Michelangelo.'
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
This is the tomb of Pope Julius II
by Michelangelo.
It was supposed to be
one of the most magnificent,
splendid, ground-breaking
artworks in history.
And instead,
it's completely mired in controversy.
It took 40 years to deliver.
It is far diminished.
It is a modest artwork
instead of a magnificent artwork.
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES)
And ultimately,
it's something that really threatens
Michelangelo's reputation.
It involves lots of scheming,
lots of letters,
lots of accusations, several popes,
Michelangelo's rivals,
Raphael and Bramante.
Perhaps the biggest controversy
about Michelangelo, this tomb.
The mausoleum
was to be Michelangelo's
commission of a lifetime
that was meant
to secure his legacy forever,
secure it beyond our wildest
dreams that we know today.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'I think the failed tomb
of Pope Julius II
can give us a different insight
into Michelangelo's personal life.
Without this tomb,
and the controversy
that surrounded it at the time,
Michelangelo probably
would not have created
some of his most magnificent work.
So one could argue
that out of his darkest moments
rose some of his
brightest achievements.'
(STIRRING MUSIC)
'As a sculptor,
he had imagined something ambitious,
a marble monument like no other.
This tomb for Pope Julius II,
known as the warrior pope,
was meant to become
the eighth wonder of the world.'
'We are unaware of the details
as we have no drawings.
But we do know that he
wanted it to be magnificent.
A celebration of Christianity,
he wanted it to be
a freestanding tomb
made entirely of the finest Carrara
marble he would choose himself.
Never since classical times
had a mausoleum like this
been built in the West
for one man alone.
Michelangelo planned to finish it
in under six years.
So why didn't he?'
This mausoleum
would've immortalised Pope Julius II
as this king-like pope,
who was this architect of Rome
who helped enable Rome to prosper
as one of the greatest cities
artistically in the world.
It was supposed to be
the Sistine Chapel in marble,
and instead we have Moses.
And don't get me wrong,
I love Moses. It's a masterpiece.
But he was supposed to have
serious company.
And instead, he's on his own.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(MAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
The tomb ultimately cost
a huge amount of money.
Maybe well into
the hundreds of thousands of dollars
in modern equivalency.
But here's where,
over the long, long history
of this tomb of 40 years,
there were contracts
and there was agreements
and there was funding,
and then there was promotion,
more money presented.
Michelangelo
didn't keep track of it!
And this is how he got into trouble.
He didn't keep track of the money,
he didn't- he couldn't legitimise,
or legitimate,
what he was spending his money on.
He was just a terrible,
terrible money manager.
(IN ITALIAN)
(CAMERAMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
Mmm.
(LAUGHTER)
MAN: Well...
(SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN, CHUCKLING)
at the British Museum,
talking about Michelangelo
in these divine terms.
But I never really thought about him
as a man before.
And when I think
about the Tomb of Julius II,
I realised that I haven't
acknowledged that perhaps...
perhaps Michelangelo was flawed,
perhaps he made mistakes.
Why did this tomb take 40 years
to deliver?
Why was he hounded by the family
asking for the artwork
that he promised them?
Why did he take money and then
maybe not deliver on the sculptures?
And I think that, as art historians,
sometimes we're guilty
of just putting forward
the story of Michelangelo
and all of his accomplishments.
And we don't like to think about
all the messy, complicated stuff.
I want to really understand
this artist that I love so much.
You know, to be a true art historian
is to see an artist in the round.
And that's what I need to do.
(BIRDS TWEETING)
(GENTLE MUSIC)
'Michelangelo's born in 1475,
in a really tiny place,
Caprese, it's near Arezzo,
in the Tuscan countryside.
Michelangelo came from a family
which had very noble origins.
He was always very keen to stress
this, it was important to him.
But by no means was-
did he grew up in a family
which had a huge amount of wealth.'
And over 500 years later,
this is still one of the most
remote parts of Italy I've ever seen.
And it spectacular.
It's not about people.
It's not about buildings.
It's not about money.
It's not about status.
It's not about power.
This place just seems
to be about light and nature.
And actually, Michelangelo's making
more sense as an artist for me.
It's really important for me
to come back to this place
and trace his footsteps
and say, "He was born".
(CHUCKLING) He was-
He was flesh and blood, just like me.
And I think this art is
known the world over.
This, sort of, person who set
the benchmark for what art could be
was born right here.
(STIRRING MUSIC)
He doesn't grow up
with a lot of money.
There's no financial stability.
There's definitely always
a concern in Michelangelo...
Even when
he's in his much later years
and he shouldn't be worrying about
money, he does worry about money.
And you can see his letters
with his father.
His father's constantly
writing to him to say,
when he's a young man, "You should
be more financially secure,
but you mustn't live in poverty.
But at the same time,
you mustn't live extravagantly."
There's all these pressures on him
and that stays with him
throughout his entire life.
It's definitely a really
psychological trait in Michelangelo
to both uphold
the good name of the family,
but not be seen to be too luxurious.
And I think you see that
in the way that he handles money.
I mean, he's slightly negligent
when he handles money.
He's very concerned about money,
but he doesn't count every penny,
he's so busy with his work,
so he's a bit of a contradiction.
Well, Michelangelo was the person
in the family that made money.
And so, um, yes, his father
was constantly asking for money
from Michelangelo.
And so Michelangelo's
a little bit irritated
that other members of his family
weren't making as much money.
But Michelangelo
made a LOT of money in his life.
I mean, he- by the end of his life,
he was a multimillionaire,
but he didn't spend money
on himself.
He spent money on everything else,
his art and mostly on marble.
So, the...
money was always a tension,
as it probably is in many families.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Well, Michelangelo came
from an old, noble family...
uh, impoverished nobility.
And so, his father
would naturally expect Michelangelo
to become a member of the government
or a notary,
or something
that was not manual labour,
which is what art was considered,
a manual labour
and not very prestigious.
'When Michelangelo as a young man
says he wants to become an artist,
you can imagine his family
were really shocked
to the point of thinking
they might be disgraced
by him becoming an artist.
But he obviously just feels it
on a very instinctive level.'
But I think what becomes very clear
is that by the time
that Michelangelo is 13,
he's basically just drawing
at school.
(CHUCKLES)
He just wants to be an artist.
And his father and his uncle try
and convince him not to be an artist.
But eventually they submit,
and he goes to become an apprentice
at the workshop of Ghirlandaio, who's
a very respected Florentine artist.
'So, I've come to Florence
to retrace his footsteps
and think about him
in all of his complexity.
The Tomb of Julius II, it seems like
quite a contemporary problem.
You know, there's fake news.
There's people
trying to slander Michelangelo.
They're trying to cancel him,
they're trying to bring him down.
Was he a saint, or was he a sinner?
I don't know.
Could Michelangelo ever be
so innocent?
I've always thought him to be so.
But now thinking about it, I realise
it's a much more complex picture.
And I need to think carefully
and try and understand him
as flesh and blood.'
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(BIRDS TWEETING)
KATE: This is the cloister of the
Church of San Lorenzo in Florence,
and it's a site of huge significance
in Michelangelo's career.
It's the Medici family church.
It's a place
where he had a huge success
with the Medici Family Chapel.
WILLIAM: And so the Medici helped
pave the way
for a Michelangelo career.
And that career began, really,
not actually in the Medici garden,
but with the Ghirlandaio workshop,
where probably
because of the Medici connection,
Michelangelo was...
His way with smoothed into
the most impressive and important
workshop in all of Florence
A painter's workshop,
which is not how we think
of Michelangelo being trained.
Michelangelo is, however,
only there one year,
and that's unusual for an apprentice.
He gets summoned, he gets picked.
Lorenzo the Magnificent says,
"Send me two of your best
pupils to Ghirlandaio."
And Michelangelo's selected.
And then, this really just changes
the course of Michelangelo's life.
He's got this humanist education.
He's looking at ancient sculptures
in the gardens,
he's being tutored by great artists,
he's living a princely kind of life
with this very wealthy Medici family.
And what's critical
is that he would become very close,
almost like family,
with two future popes.
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
Michelangelo really, as yet,
is not a sculptor when he's living
in the Medici household.
He's something like being trained
in something like a courtier,
sort of on the margins
of the court of the Medici.
But then, with the death
of Lorenzo de' Medici,
Michelangelo really needed a career,
he needed some kind of income.
And so he carved the Cupid
as a showpiece,
as a demonstration
that he could carve
as well as the antique sculptors
of the ancient world could carve.
And this Cupid was sent to Rome
as if it had been discovered
as an ancient work of art.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
But his big break
came from Raffaele Riario,
who actually asked Michelangelo,
"What can you do?"
You know,
"OK, I've seen you carve the Cupid,
but what can you do new for me?"
And so, Michelangelo
actually then carved the Bacchus.
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
Then a French cardinal
noticed the Bacchus
and wanted a grave memorial
for himself,
which is what the Pieta was.
It was to mark the grave of this
very powerful French cardinal.
Michelangelo finally gets
what he's looking for,
a really serious commission by
a serious cardinal for the Vatican.
And he's gonna make a Pieta.
(STIRRING CLASSICAL MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(SOFT MUSIC)
So this really was
Michelangelo's coming out,
his debut sculpture that made him
famous immediately in the world.
And one way it's famous is not only
is it beautifully carved,
but it's a beautiful,
carved piece of marble.
It's just an absolute
miracle sculpture.
And I think he changes sculpture
in that moment.
People look at this work
and they're incredibly jealous
of this young artist
in his twenties in Rome.
They think,
"Who the hell does he think he is,
this young Michelangelo,
making a work like that?"
It surpasses everything
his contemporaries have achieved.
And it really just
speaks to the ancients.
So, it's such a critical
moment in Michelangelo's life.
And I think it's the moment where
he thinks he's suddenly made it.
He returns to Florence
and he really wants to make his name
in his homeland.
This is really important for him.
He gets a gift of a commission.
It's for the Duomo.
Unfortunately... (CHUCKLES)
It's a bit of a poisoned chalice
because they give Michelangelo
"the giant",
which is this
enormous block of marble
that three different artists
have had to go at.
It's absolutely enormous
and it's been quarried
40 years before,
which makes it even harder to carve.
And so actually,
it's a really difficult commission
to give this young artist.
But Michelangelo knows
this is his big moment.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC)
The David is Michelangelo,
world stage,
and fame with the David. Why?
(DRAMATIC MUSIC CONTINUES)
Look at the scale of David.
Nobody in the Renaissance
had carved any sculpture
nearly of this scale,
and much less a nude figure
that was so impressively
naturalistic.
So, the David was actually
not even called "the David".
People just called it "Il Gigante".
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
So, Michelangelo was flourishing
as an artist in Florence.
Especially after the David, all
kinds of commissions came his way.
But suddenly,
he gets a call from Rome.
'Pope Julius II
would like him to come to Rome
to carve a mausoleum,
a monumental burial tomb
for the pope.'
So when he gets this papal summons
in 1505,
it changes the course of his
life because it means suddenly
he is right at the apotheosis
of the art world.
He has been summoned by a pope.
Not just any pope,
but a pope who wants to rebuild Rome.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
(BIRD CAWS)
(IN ITALIAN)
KATE: I think it's really difficult
to grasp quite what this means,
because the papacy
didn't just represent Christendom,
it represented power.
Pope Julius II was a warrior pope,
and he really wants to dominate
Italian politics.
So we've got money,
we've got power,
but also he's an extraordinary patron
of the arts.
So, I think if you put it
in today's terms, you could say,
"Oh, maybe it's like representing
your country at the Venice Biennale."
But it's bigger than that.
It's almost something that
we have to imagine for ourselves.
Like, imagine if the Princess
of Wales and the Prince of Wales
decided to build
a completely new palace in London
and have one artist
come and be their court artist.
Maybe that's what this is like.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(WOMAN SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
But what I think is most important
about this whole project
is at the beginning of this project,
there was no contract,
there was no drawing.
It was a verbal agreement
between the Pope and the artist
to create
this eighth wonder of the world.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(GENTLE MUSIC, BIRDS TWEETING)
KATY: 'Michelangelo's life
is intrinsically linked with marble.
It makes him and it also breaks him.
He becomes obsessed with it.'
'I've come to Florence,
to Casa Buonarroti,
a house he bought for his family,
to find out exactly how
he imagined this tomb to be...
..and to get an idea
of how much marble
he was going to need to make it.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'This place holds one of the largest
Michelangelo archives.'
And in this archive
are actually letters,
correspondences between Michelangelo
and the heirs.
And my journey has brought me here
because in these letters,
I'll be able to shed more light
on what went on.
When we look at letters,
I think what we can do
is actually put ourselves in the
shoes of those who lived that time.
And to get that first
hand experience is extraordinary.
'I can see from this document most
of the measurements for the tomb,
and the number of statues
that Michelangelo wanted to create.
It was supposed to be 7 metres wide,
11 metres deep and 8 metres high.
It would have been adorned
by over 40 life-size statues
placed in St Peter's,
all in marble.
He puts an enormous emphasis
on the marble he wanted to use...
Not just any marble, it had to be
the world-famous Carrara marble.'
Michelangelo receives 1000 ducats
from Pope Julius II
to go off to the quarries
to get the marble for this.
Uh, again...
Once again, Michelangelo insisting
that he choose the best materials.
So, he started a lifelong love
for marble
and for the marble quarries,
a place where he probably
was the happiest of all.
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'Michelangelo once wrote,
"The sculpture is already
complete within the marble block
before I start my work.
It is already there,
I just need to chisel away
the superfluous material."
I am visiting the same marble quarry
where Michelangelo
spent eight months
choosing the right slabs to use
to create the 40 statues
for the tomb of Pope Julius II.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC CONTINUES)
'Michelangelo described
this marble as being
"of compact grain,
homogenous, crystalline,
reminiscent of sugar."
I can see exactly what he meant.
Carrara is in the Apuan Mountains,
Italy's most marble-rich area.
Hundreds of quarries have
operated here since Roman times.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC BUILDS)
'I am meeting professor and sculptor
Luciano Massari
to find out more about
Michelangelo's obsession with marble
and these marble quarries.'
What is so special
about Carrara marble?
(IN ITALIAN)
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
So, after Michelangelo gets
the commission from Pope Julius II,
he comes to Carrara and it's here
where he has to extract
40 blocks of marble
to create these 40 sculptures.
What kind of feat was this
for him then?
And what does that translate to now?
(IN ITALIAN)
So, you as a professor,
but also as a sculptor...
When you're tackling Carrara marble,
what do you do with it?
And how would that be different
to how Michelangelo tackled it?
(IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(LUCIANO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(WHISPERS) OK...
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
KATY: 'Michelangelo arrived in Rome
after carefully
selecting his marble,
quarrying at Carrara
to great expense.
He then has to say goodbye to it,
as it makes its way on a boat
to Ripa Grande in Rome.
It's gonna arrive
in the port in Rome.
And what a sight it would've been
to see these enormous blocks
arriving in Rome, ready to fulfil
their artistic destiny.
It's poetic to me, but it must've
been terrifying to Michelangelo.'
(IN ITALIAN)
So, when Michelangelo comes back
to Rome with all of this marble
and he's ready to start creating
this greatest creation of all time,
then he's gonna, all of a sudden,
demand attention from the Pope
that the Pope doesn't have time for.
Time or money.
(IN ITALIAN)
(LAUGHS)
(CAMERAMAN SPEAKS ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
OK.
I think the rupture
between Michelangelo and Julius II
came mainly when Michelangelo
was unable to get an audience
with the Pope.
Uh, not only to get an audience,
but to get money to...
in order to continue this project.
And so Michelangelo left Rome
without the papal permission,
and this is the rupture.
You don't say no to a pope.
And you don't just leave his employ
without asking permission.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
The groundwork for the rupture
was laid by Bramante,
who was probably the person
who convinced the Pope
that it's not a good idea
to build your own tomb monument
in your own lifetime,
this is unlucky.
Well, Bramante is quite a character.
He's the papal architect,
is someone that really unsettles
Michelangelo.
And throughout the course
of his life, Michelangelo complains
about Bramante's influence
on his own career.
Pope Julius II really relies
on Bramante.
He's not just building him a tomb
or painting him a picture,
he's rebuilding St Peter's.
And Bramante probably was helpful
in redirecting the Pope's attention
to the Sistine ceiling.
"Why don't we have Michelangelo
paint the Sistine ceiling instead?"
Bramante hears Michelangelo's gonna
build the tomb for Pope Julius II.
He knows
he is a supremely gifted sculptor.
And he's jealous,
and he says to Pope Julius II,
"You should get him to paint
the Sistine Chapel ceiling."
(CECILE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Bramante thinks that Michelangelo's
totally gonna fail at the ceiling.
It's absolutely enormous.
And Bramante probably knows
that Michelangelo only had one year
with Ghirlandaio.
He was a young man, he didn't
have a long apprenticeship.
He wouldn't have worked
on any fresco cycles with him.
In fact, probably,
the day that Michelangelo turns up
to the Sistine Chapel in 1508,
thinking about making these frescoes
is the closest he's ever come
to making a fresco.
(IN ITALIAN)
WILLIAM: There's about eight months
there before he actually starts.
He's doing a lot of drawing.
He's making a lot of projects
and a lot of designs.
He's thinking about what's
appropriate for the ceiling.
He's consulting with the Pope
about what is wanted on the ceiling.
So, there's a long period there
before Michelangelo
actually starts to paint,
where he's sort of figuring out
that, "OK, I can do this."
And this is typical Michelangelo,
that he becomes a painter
when he needs to become a painter.
He became an architect
when he was needed as an architect.
He had never studied architecture
in his life.
He became a poet
when he wanted to write poetry.
So, he learned how to paint fresco
rather quickly.
Uh, it's a- it's a miracle.
It really is a miracle,
which is part
of the astonishment of the Sistine,
not just its scale and its grandeur,
but the fact that this person
who had never painted a fresco
in his life
painted the greatest fresco
of all time.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
'In the middle of Rome,
just in a tiny area,
is a place that holds
some of the most extraordinary
masterpieces ever created.'
'It's the Vatican City.
And the jewel for me
there is the Sistine Chapel.
It's the ultimate work of art.
You can't believe that it was
designed and executed by one man.
The sheer invention of it,
the originality,
it changes art history forever.
But for me,
it changes history forever.
This is Michelangelo showing us
what humankind is capable of.
It works on an intimate level
with me,
but also works
on a universal level.
You don't need to know very much
to fall in love with that chapel.
I took my one-year-old daughter there
and a noisy, rambunctious toddler
suddenly just stood still.
And that's when I knew
that it was true, that it really...
It really touches people.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'Even just standing
in the Sistine Chapel with you now,
my heart beats fast,
I have goose bumps.
It's hard to imagine that Bramante
thought that Michelangelo would fail
when he has achieved
such an extraordinary thing,
and I get to come in and enjoy it.'
(STIRRING MUSIC)
'For Michelangelo,
it must have been, at times, brutal.
I mean, this is a such
a physical undertaking, isn't it?'
(IN ITALIAN)
(KATE CHUCKLES)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
Michelangelo is extremely excited
about the tomb
commissioned for Pope Julius II.
We know that he begins work,
he's full of youthful bravado,
he wants to make something
extraordinary.
And yet, so quickly
after getting the tomb commission,
his attentions are diverted.
I mean, he has no choice, does he?
He has to follow
what the pope wants him to do?
(IN ITALIAN)
It's almost as if sometimes it's not
just the achievement of Michelangelo.
Sometimes it feels like
it's the achievement of humankind.
If this is what
stands for our culture,
then it's an extraordinary thing
that humankind can achieve this.
(IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
The tomb of Pope Julius II is the
most long, drawn out, protracted,
ultimately disappointing part of
Michelangelo's career, if you ask me.
He gets the commission in 1505.
He stops work in 1508,
paints the Sistine Chapel, no less.
1512, finishes the Sistine Chapel.
But then in 1513, just a few months
after the Sistine Chapel is unveiled,
Pope Julius II dies.
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(BELL TOLLS)
KATY: 'Pope Julius II dies
without seeing the tomb
he had commissioned
from Michelangelo...
A tomb
that was going to be so grandiose,
it would've overshadowed
any other mausoleum
in the Western world.'
'Although we don't have drawings,
Michelangelo writes about his vision
for this masterpiece.
So, we know that it was meant
to have two or three floors.
It was meant to be adorned
by no less than 40 statues
as big and as perfect as the Moses.
And it was meant to represent
the Christian world.'
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'This tomb would've been
so ground-breaking
that experts have been trying
to bring it back to life
for decades.
But only now does the right
technology exist to do that.'
So, Mitchell, tell us about
what we're looking at here.
We are using
actual historical documents
to create the volumes
and the designs.
We are using open source software
to create the model
right from scratch.
Then we are going to apply materials
in order to make it beautiful.
And the process
is part a technical effort
and part an artistic effort
because, of course,
there is no real object
to reconstruct.
So we need to start from what
we have and imagine what we don't.
We are trying to remain as faithful
as we can to the source material.
But, of course, what we don't have,
we need to fill in the blanks.
We are here in the very beautiful
setting of San Pietro in Vincoli
as we are now wrapping up
the digital reconstruction
of the mausoleum by Michelangelo.
And in this context,
we are creating a 3D scan
of the Moses statue,
again by Michelangelo,
which will be then placed within the
3D reconstruction of the mausoleum.
It's a very important
technical challenge for us.
We are using
one of the most advanced techniques.
We're using
a structured light scanner
which uses high-energy
pulsating light beams
to recreate both the volumes
and the surface of the statue.
This 3D model will then be placed
within our digital twin
of the mausoleum
to make it as real-life as possible.
But with the flexibility
and the capabilities
of the 3D world, of course.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'And the Moses stands there,
still as always,
in its timeless beauty with his
ferocious gaze as it gets scanned
and it awaits to be put
where he should've been all along,
on the mausoleum that Michelangelo
wanted to carve all those years ago.
But he never did.
And the curse of the papal tomb
continued.'
(CURIOUS MUSIC)
'To think that this tomb
became so intrinsically linked
with his own life, reputation
and success is astounding.
As a deeply religious man,
he wanted to deliver the world
not just a tomb, but a symbol
that celebrated Christianity
in all its glory.
But he failed.
And this failure tormented him
for the rest of his days.
When the pope died in 1513,
the pope's heirs,
the Della Rovere family,
were very keen on having
the pope's tomb now completed.
And, of course, they felt
that they had already invested
a huge amount of money,
which they had.
The family had already invested a
huge amount of money in the project.
So, this is the beginning
of the difficulties of the tomb.
(IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
The thing is, there's a new pope.
It's Pope Leo X, which is one
of Michelangelo's childhood friends.
He's hanging around in the court
of the Medici at the same time.
He's Lorenzo the Magnificent's heir.
He also wants to give Michelangelo
his own commissions,
his own projects,
and he gives Michelangelo one
of the most tantalising commissions
he could possibly have asked for...
to create the facade of San Lorenzo.
And he wants a Medici tomb,
so Michelangelo's busy trying
to fulfil the wishes of a new pope.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(CRISTINA SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
(IN ITALIAN)
Now, what happens is they need
to put a new contract in place.
So, the heirs of Pope Julius II
want to make sure
that there's a really sort of clear
arrangement with Michelangelo,
because actually everything
with the pope
had been done more
in a gentlemen's agreement.
There was, sort of, no money set.
It was like,
"Have all the money in the world,
make me the greatest tomb on earth."
And it was all,
kind of, relatively hyperbolic,
whereas the heirs want
to put a contract in place.
(IN ITALIAN)
I mean,
he's awarded a huge amount of money.
An equivalent of, say,
a villa and a Ferrari, or something.
It's not money for life, but it is
an extraordinary amount of money.
(IN ITALIAN)
He spent lots of money.
He spent lots of money,
but he never spent money on himself.
He actually lived rather simply,
poorly.
He spent money on marble.
(IN ITALIAN)
The heirs, on their perspective,
when we put ourselves
in the shoes of the heirs,
they've paid Michelangelo
a lot of money already to do this,
yet they don't have
the financial ability
to go through
with the original plans,
so they have to downsize it.
KATE: 'In 1516,
the heirs give him another contract
because they're really
trying to keep him in line.
They reduce significantly
what the tomb should be.
So, instead of being this amazing
freestanding monument,
it becomes a wall tomb.
Far less exciting for Michelangelo,
probably,
even though it's still designed
to be quite large.'
(DANIELE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
And then in 1523, there's yet
another new pope,
Pope Clement VII.
Now, Clement VII is another
childhood friend of Michelangelo,
another Medici pope,
who also wants Michelangelo
to fulfil loads of extraordinary
obligations for him too,
including finishing the Medici tomb,
and The Last Judgement.
Michelangelo's now in a situation
where there are so many
competing demands for his time.
He can't turn down the Pope
for the heirs of Pope Julius II
but he's also terrified of them.
Michelangelo felt like
he was a victim of this story,
and Francesco Maria Della Rovere
was certainly the, um, villain.
(ALINA SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Francesco Maria Della Rovere
took over.
And here was a man who's, sort of,
a vicious soldier,
and not very sensitive to the arts,
and not very-
not at all sensitive
to Michelangelo,
who felt like the family had spent
far too much money already
and Michelangelo was not producing
anything or finishing this project.
In fact, Michelangelo was actually
accused of embezzling funds
and misusing the funds,
which he probably did.
And so-
But Francesco de Maria Della Rovere
never was a friend of Michelangelo,
and vice versa.
They really didn't get along.
And in which case,
nothing was happening on the tomb.
Michelangelo didn't-
He always had an excuse
about why he couldn't produce
what Francesco Maria expected.
So,
it's a bit like you take a house...
You wanna redo the kitchen,
so you pay someone a lot of money
because you want
to get a new kitchen.
Perhaps you want
some Carrara marble fitted...
And the builders are coming,
but they're not really showing up,
and at the end result,
you haven't got anything better
than you even begun with.
And if you're
the owner of the house,
you're not gonna be too pleased
about this.
And in a way,
this is almost parallel
to what the heirs
were experiencing with Michelangelo.
They'd paid him a lot of money,
yet he wasn't delivering.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
Michelangelo promises this,
or promises that,
and he'll do it in a certain amount
of time with this amount of money.
But this is yet
the third or fourth time
that Michelangelo
has gone through this, you know,
project in a different way
with a different person.
And the result of this, you know,
imbroglio between him
and Francesco Maria Della Rovere
is that nothing was done.
(IN ITALIAN)
I mean, they are really on his case.
He says, you know,
"I'm losing weight, I'm losing sleep.
They won't get off my back."
So, actually,
he kind of asks Pope Clement VII
to sort of step in
and protect him from the heirs.
He's really worried about them,
particularly
Francesco Maria Della Rovere,
who's actually
a not particularly nice character
and totally unsympathetic
to Michelangelo.
(IN ITALIAN)
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(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
(IN ITALIAN)
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(CONTINUES IN ITALIAN)
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(IN ITALIAN)
He was, in a sense,
flattering Michelangelo, by saying,
"You've already created
the greatest fresco of all time
in painting the ceiling.
Could you finish the chapel,
the great chapel of the Sistine,
by painting The Last Judgement?"
And here again, Michelangelo
cannot say no to a pope.
(IN ITALIAN)
(SMOOTH MUSIC)
KATE: So the first big commission
that takes Michelangelo away
from Julius II's tomb
is the ceiling.
He completes the ceiling, he goes
straight back to work on the tomb.
And then, of course, the Della Rovere
heirs are asking for a new contract.
They want
to get the work going again.
And there are a succession
of reasons why Michelangelo
is delayed on the tomb.
It becomes quite protracted.
And then I turn and face
this way and say,
"Well, this is a whole other reason
why the tomb is further delayed
because he's working for other popes,
for their plans
and for their grand ambitions.
And it's such an extraordinary thing,
I'm so pleased it exists.(CHUCKLES)
But I'm sure the Della Rovere heirs
were frustrated by this, perhaps,
because they thought this is another
reason why the tomb is not ready.
(IN ITALIAN)
Mmm.
Mmm.
(GRAND MUSIC)
(MUSIC SOFTENS)
KATE:
'As he painted The Last Judgement,
Michelangelo himself
was being judged
for taking the Della Rovere money
and not working on the tomb.
His reputation as a godlike genius
was being stained.
I want to understand
how this situation
was perceived during his lifetime.
Maybe he was right to set aside
the much diminished tomb
of Pope Julius II
and focus
on more ambitious projects.
Maybe he had no choice.
Nestled in the Tuscan hills,
surrounded by nothing much but
forest, is Castello Malaspina.
This is where Michelangelo stayed
during his many trips to Carrara,
and where it's likely
that he received
a very scathing letter
from Pietro Aretino
Pietro Aretino was a powerful man
who wielded an enormous influence
on Renaissance art and politics.
His opinions mattered a great deal.
He could make or break reputations.
In the letter he wrote
to Michelangelo
in 1545 about The Last Judgement,
although full of innuendos,
it's pretty clear
that he was trying
to raise suspicions
about Michelangelo's
moral standing.'
He writes,
"Your art would be at home
in some voluptuous Roman bathhouse,
certainly not
in the highest chapel in the world.
Less criminal were it
if you were an infidel,
than being a believer,
thus to sap the faith of others.
Up to the present time,
the splendour
of such audacious marvels
hath not gone unpunished."
"Well, if the treasure bequeathed
to you by Pope Julius,
in order that you might deposit his
ashes in an urn of your own carving,
was not enough to make you keep
your plighted word,
what can I expect from you?"
And in the first part
of the letter,
he's criticising
Michelangelo's Last Judgement.
But as we read on,
we actually also see him
looking at Pope Julius II's tomb.
And by how it's phrased,
it gives insight
into how some of the public
perceived Michelangelo
and actually how, perhaps,
he didn't handle well
the relationship
between the Della Rovere family
and the Pope Julius II tomb.
"God wills that Julius should live
renowned forever in a simple tomb,
inurned in his own merits,
and not in some proud monument
dependent on your genius.
Meantime, your failure
to discharge your obligation
is reckoned to you
as an act of thieving."
Well, I mean,
it's pretty harsh in a way.
But, you know, I mean,
it's interesting to see
the public perceptions
of Michelangelo
and to see how people viewed him.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
In Michelangelo's time,
art was the news.
Art was the thing
that people paid most attention to,
other than maybe religion.
So really,
the art of the Renaissance
was the news of the Renaissance,
was the news
of the time and the people.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
One of the most astonishing things
about Michelangelo
is that he was so famous
in his lifetime
that actually two biographies
were written while he was still
alive.
He's probably the first artist ever
to read his own biography
and decide
to edit it in some ways.
And so, the first biography
that was written of him
was by Giorgio Vasari.
KATE: Vasari would like to think
that I would sit here
and call him a great painter
from the Italian Renaissance.
But actually I sit here
and call him a great writer.
He almost founded
the tradition of art history.
He wrote a series of biographies
of all of the great Italian artists.
So, he gives us, like, a firsthand
account of the Italian Renaissance.
(IN ITALIAN)
And while Michelangelo
was certainly flattered by the fact
that Vasari was writing
a biography of this artist,
he was reminded constantly
of his many unfinished works.
So,
he wanted to sort of tell the story
or control the media,
control the message.
And that's when he had
Ascanio Condivi, a friend of his,
really write
an alternative biography
that Michelangelo felt
was closer to the truth.
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(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC)
The thing is, is that Michelangelo
wasn't particularly happy
with how Vasari had framed him,
essentially.
(ANTONIO SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
So Michelangelo's very distressed
at the prospect
that people misunderstand.
So,
he commissions his own autobiography.
(IN ITALIAN)
So, we start to get the sense
that Michelangelo
almost wants to have his own
press agent, you know?
In today's terms, he wants to go out
there and set the record straight.
And he wants Condivi
to write this authorised account
of what happened with the tomb.
And he calls it
the great "tragedy" of the tomb.
(IN ITALIAN)
It's almost like Michelangelo's
desperately trying
to reposition himself
and secure his legacy.
And I think,
you know, in today's parlance
we would say that it was
cancel culture coming to get him.
He was a subject of gossip, subject
of rumours, and he hated that.
He thought he was a man
of noble standings.
He's not someone whose name
should be smeared in the tabloids,
as it probably felt to him,
as we see it now.
And today, we see it the whole time
with members in the public eye,
for example,
certain members of the royal family.
They might not be so clear on paper.
Yet, what they want to do
is have authorised biographies,
so people in 10, 50, 100 years' time
will remember them the way
that they want to be remembered.
Well, I think it's a contemporary
story, in the sense that...
it's sort of tale as old as time,
in terms of what we should believe
and what we should not believe.
Gossip has been swarming our world
for millennia.
And actually, if anything,
it gives a more human aspect
to Michelangelo,
because at the end of the day,
yes, he created
these divine like figures,
but he was also just a human...
A human
who wanted to secure his legacy
and authorise how the public would
perceive him in centuries to come.
Toward the end of his life,
Michelangelo shows a more cordial
relationship with Vasari.
He answers more of his letters,
and you get the sense that
Michelangelo's thinking about Vasari
as the great biographer,
and Vasari as, maybe, holding the key
to part of Michelangelo's legacy.
And after Michelangelo dies,
Vasari,
in the second edition of The Lives,
the great biographies,
entirely reworks
the Michelangelo chapter.
It's much longer,
he incorporates huge swathes
that were written
in Condivi's authorised biography,
although he doesn't actually
mention Condivi.
But what's fundamental is that
Vasari is part of the campaign
to set the record straight
about Michelangelo's life.
And so...
the information about his ancestors,
the information about the tomb,
are changed. They're modified.
And what we learn is that, you know,
Michelangelo is the great man.
And actually, to this day,
art historians are still quite keen
to talk about Michelangelo,
the great man.
There is no doubt whatsoever
that Michelangelo
wanted to tell the story his way,
and to save, in a sense,
some things of his legacy,
especially to counter
the accusations
of money embezzlement,
this sort of thing.
Michelangelo
had his own explanation,
which Visari very much developed
in his biography for Michelangelo
after they got to know each other
and after Michelangelo told Visari
what was really
the important parts of his story.
And Visari then republishes
his Lives of the Artist
in a much expanded edition.
I think the thing
that's important to remember,
as big a fan of Michelangelo as I am,
is that he did keep the money.
He continually agreed to deadlines
that he couldn't meet.
He kept the money. He claimed
that ended up out of pocket,
which is a bit duplicitous
because it's not really true.
We can see that from the records.
So he's, by no stretch
of the imagination, innocent here.
Michelangelo misused the funds
that the Della Rovere...
excessive amounts of funds
for the tomb.
"We've spent a huge amount of money,
40 years have gone by,
and we still don't have a tomb."
(IN ITALIAN)
It's the fourth project when
Guidobaldo Della Rovere takes over,
who not only
knows Michelangelo very well,
but understands him
and highly respects him,
and mostly allows Michelangelo
to work
at his own pace and in his own time.
That's the kind of patron that
Michelangelo always worked best for.
And it's not a surprise
that it's under Guidobaldo
that the tomb is finally finished.
The new heir, Guidobaldo,
is much more sympathetic,
and at this point,
it's been over 30 years
since Pope Julius the second died.
I mean, it's getting ridiculous.
So he just says, when you've finished
working for Pope Paul III,
then you'll make it for me, right?
And Michelangelo says yes.
He's got someone finally
who's sympathetic,
who writes courteous letters,
who treats him with the respect
that he demands.
So actually, it's quite amazing.
Once that contract's in place
and Pope Paul III's
given him his protection.
Michelangelo finishes it
in two years.
It took 40 years
to nail down this commission.
And ultimately, Pope Julius II's tomb
is not something
that we all talk about.
We talk about Moses, we talk
about one sculpture in this tomb.
It's not even in the Vatican
where it was supposed to be.
And actually, I barely even notice
the lying figure of Pope Julius II on
the tomb, I just look at the Moses.
So, it's not even
what it's supposed to be.
It's become something
completely different.
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
'This is such a long
and protracted story.
40 years, several redesigns...
Several stories, 40 figures, bronzes
Absolutely extraordinary,
there's nothing like it.
It remains a huge unfulfilled
part of art history.
And then slowly see it
begin to diminish.
Instead of becoming freestanding,
that you would be able
to walk around,
it becomes wall-based.
And then the number of
figures gets reduced dramatically.
We start losing things. We lose
the niches, we lose the bronzes.
So, a lot of the complexity
and the thing that would've given
the tomb this great advantage
of having been so epic,
that starts to fade away.
And actually, when I think about
Julius II's tomb now,
I think about it
as an unfulfilled promise
that left me Moses.'
(MUSIC BUILDS)
'When I'm standing here,
the redesigns, the contracts,
it all fades to black.
And what remains is a masterpiece.
Michelangelo has made flesh
and blood out of marble.
He's made Moses a man,
and he's a furious man.
And I'm frozen to the spot
looking at him.
And there's this deep connection,
and I feel the suspense in the air.
And there's a question
that I need answered.
And like Michelangelo once said,
"Why don't you talk, Moses?
You've been witness to so much."'
(PENSIVE MUSIC)
(MUSIC FADES)
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