Michelangelo, God’s Architect: The Story Of His Final Years And Greatest Masterpiece

327 Pages·2019·60.61 MB·english

by  William E. Wallace

MICHELANGELO,
GOD’S ARCHITECT

MICHELANGELO,
GOD’S ARCHITECT
The Story of His Final Years and
Greatest Masterpiece
WILLIAM E. WALLACE
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2019 by William E. Wallace
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press.princeton.edu
Jacket illustrations: (front) Ponte Sant’Angelo and St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City; (spine) Jacopino
del Conte, Portrait of Michelangelo, ca. 1540, oil on panel, 88 cm (34.6") × 64 cm (25.1")
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978- 0- 691- 19549- 0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941489
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
Jacket and text design by Leslie Flis
This book has been composed in Adobe Jenson Pro and Trajan Pro
Printed on acid-f ree paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Paul Barolsky, who taught me the value of a good story

CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1
MOSES 7
CHAPTER 2
FRIENDS AT SEVENTY MATTER MORE 28
CHAPTER 3
A LONG- LIVED POPE 56
CHAPTER 4
ARCHITECT OF ST. PETER’S 75
CHAPTER 5
A NEW POPE: JULIUS III 112
CHAPTER 6
ROME 1555 154
CHAPTER 7
ARCHITECT OF ROME 184
CHAPTER 8
GOD’S ARCHITECT 215
EPILOGUE 239
NOTES 243
WORKS CITED 261
INDEX 271
PHOTO CREDITS 279

PREFACE
Having written a biography of Michelangelo, I thought I was “done”
with the artist. But, as Leonardo famously mused, “Tell me if anything
is ever done.” And as my mentor Howard Hibbard once remarked,
“There is no such thing as a definitive book or a final word on great art
or artists.” Indeed, as I wrote the final pages of my biography, I became
increasingly drawn to the poignant narrative of an aging artist con-
fronting the greatest challenge of his creative life: to build New St.
Peter’s all the while knowing he would never see it to completion.
I think I needed to pass age sixty before I could write a book about
Michelangelo in old age, and that means that I have incurred many
years of personal and scholarly debts. I would like to thank Nicholas
Terpstra, Elizabeth Cropper, and the board members of the Renais-
sance Society of America for the invitation to deliver the Josephine
Waters Bennett Lecture in 2014, which permitted me to sketch the
broad ideas for the book and to publish them in Renaissance Quarterly.
For the rare privilege of visiting the Pauline Chapel on multiple occa-
sions, I am grateful to Antonio Paolucci, Arnold Nesselrath, and
Marco Pratelli. I would like to thank Vitale Zanchettin for an after-
noon spent in some normally inaccessible parts of St. Peter’s; to Rich-
ard Goldthwaite, Eve Borsook, Peggy Haines, and Joseph Connors for
always asking the most penetrating questions; to Jim Saslow for many
questions answered, especially about Michelangelo’s poetry; to Paul
and Ruth Barolsky, Ralph Lieberman, Maria Ruvoldt, and Deborah