80 pages • 2-hour read
The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Novel of Michelangelo
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Themes
Art as a Tool of Political Power
In the world of Renaissance Italy, art serves the interests of political power. Lorenzo de’ Medici is an early embodiment of the symbiotic relationship between art and power. He commissions works from the foremost Florentine artists and assembles the greatest thinkers from around the world, enjoining them into his Plato Academy to create a sense of burgeoning artistic and philosophical intellectualism in the city. Though the city is nominally ruled by councils and politicians, Lorenzo wields immense power through his wealth and status, then uses art to make this power more acceptable to the people. Since he glorifies Florence, the Florentines accept his authority. At the same time, his artistic interests inform his governance. His humanism is part of his political identity, an example of the interplay between artistic and political interests. Lorenzo’s humanistic, artistic idealism is juxtaposed against the spitefulness of Piero. Since Piero has no interest in glorifying anything other than himself, the people of Florence reject him. He ostracizes artists, demonstrating that he does not know how to use art as a political tool. He would rather use Michelangelo as a military engineer than a sculptor, a stark contrast to Lorenzo’s understanding of Michelangelo’s strengths and the power of art.
When Savonarola takes charge of the city, his approach to the relationship between art and power is the direct antithesis of Lorenzo’s. Savonarola derives power from art not by celebrating it but by denigrating it, scapegoating artists for the supposed moral decline of Florence. His bonfires are powerful political statements against Medici rule by burning the art that the Medici funded. Soderini, in turn, wishes to atone for Savonarola’s fundamentalism by turning the Republic of Florence into a beacon of the arts once again. This sympathetic relationship with art, as evidenced by Lorenzo and Soderini, shows the power of art as a means of defining political identity. Art is propaganda, but not every character understands its power.
The novel creates a contrast between Florence as a vanguard of artistic innovation and Rome as a city captured by decay. Rome is in ruins when Michelangelo arrives, but he discovers that the power of art endures beyond this material decline. Rome understood the relationship between art and power in antiquity, but now it is has become enveloped in bureaucracy and power struggles. Art is an important weapon in these struggles, but Michelangelo discovers that his patron is using him as a propaganda tool. He is a pawn in the political game, rather than an artist. The Popes use art to glorify their rule, telling a story of their achievements through art. Michelangelo, who only wants to sculpt, is frustrated by the inability to untangle politics from art. He has grand visions for his projects, but they become mired in the political struggles of Rome the city. As a Christian, Michelangelo feels beholden to the Cardinals and Popes, and he recognizes their enormous political power. As an artist, however, he resents them for reducing art to a political tool.
Michelangelo is so talented an artist, the novel suggests, that his art can exert a power of its own, transcending the intentions of his patrons. He makes clear that he has no taste for politics; when he finds himself caught between the Florentine Republic and the Medici, for example, he is only concerned about who will fund his art. When the Popes are dying and the Cardinals are vying for power, he is only concerned with who will continue his commissions. His power as an artist means that he—and seemingly he alone—is permitted to stand up to the Popes. He argues publicly with several Popes and even receives an apology from the most powerful figure in Christendom. Though Michelangelo may not recognize it, this is an example of political power made possible through art. As he grows older, Michelangelo begins to recognize the power that is granted by his immense talent. He stands up to the Inquisition, defending his Last Judgment in a way that might lead to imprisonment and torture for other people. When one priest criticizes his work as sinful, Michelangelo paints the man into the fresco, imprisoning him in an artistic judgment. By the end of his time in Rome, Michelangelo is so powerful that he is physically reshaping the Vatican. This power is granted to him by his artistic talents, even if he might never recognize this link.
The Divinity of Creativity
Throughout the novel, Michelangelo’s faith in Christianity never falters. Yet his humanistic interpretation of Christianity sometimes clashes with Church doctrine. Michelangelo believes that divinity transcends words or sermons. He believes that art is the only true way in which such divinity can be expressed, so his artistic drive is infused with his faith. In this sense, he is just as fanatical as Savonarola, though he directs his religious fervor to art. This religious devotion to art is precisely what Savonarola finds objectionable—in Savonarola’s view, Michelangelo’s works are sinful because they glorify humanity, not God. In this way, the figure of Savonarola embodies the reactionary elements within the Church that viewed the humanism of the Renaissance with suspicion.
For Michelangelo, carving marble is an act of divinely inspired creation. To carve a human figure from a block of marble is akin to an act of devotion, resembling the biblical act of Creation that he paints onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In this sense, Michelangelo’s body of work is itself an act of devotion. Even when his brother warns him against the pagan aesthetics of his Battle of the Centaurs, Michelangelo simply cannot comprehend his brother’s censorious attitude. He ignores the warning and continues with the piece because, to him, there is a divinity to the act of creation that seems obvious. In this way, Michelangelo’s faith never falters because it is both entirely unique to himself and because he is constantly searching for ways to refine and perfect his artistic expression as a means of devotion to God.
Michelangelo’s interpretation of religion is based on the idea that he may be able to create something so powerful and profound that God’s magnificence will be undeniable. More than a sermon or a treatise, his artworks function as physical declarations of faith. The right artwork, he believes, will foster an undeniable spirituality in others, thus imbuing his creative efforts with evangelical purpose. Ironically, his earliest demonstration of this is entirely secular. Before the David is finished, there are many in Florence who do not care for it. Michelangelo is warned about his sinful art, and the statue is attacked in the streets as it is installed. Once it is installed, however, the David is almost universally praised by the people of Florence. The statue represents Florence in an immediately understandable way, bringing the people of Florence together in appreciation for the story that Michelangelo’s statue tells about them. As Michelangelo grows older, he is able to capture this same hypnotic empathy in a more overtly religious fashion. While his Sistine Chapel paintings are criticized by conservative priests, they are adored by the visiting public. People bow before his Last Judgment, for example, believing it to be imbued with spiritual power. Even though Michelangelo does not consider himself a painter, his works are adored by visiting pilgrims. Even the conservative members of the church fear his influence; the Last Judgement may be sinful, according to them, but they recognize that the image is so powerful that they cannot simply persecute Michelangelo. There is a spiritual aura to his creativity that even the most powerful conservative priests dare not challenge.
In later life, Michelangelo builds churches. He becomes an architect, creating giant structures that embody divinity itself. He turns the act of creation into an act of devotion, signaling his spirituality through his architecture. In a very literal sense, he creates the house of the divine. The construction of St. Peter’s Basilica is an example of Michelangelo striving toward divinity through creation, seeking to share his understanding of God with the world by fashioning something tactile, three dimensional, and legible without words. The experience of simply entering the church, he believes, will be an act of religious faith and understanding, a declaration that crosses linguistic boundaries. When building, Michelangelo is working in a new medium. The scale of his projects requires collaboration, and he will not live long enough to see them completed, meaning that he cannot work solely from his own mind. He must write down his plans, codifying his beliefs about art and architecture in the process. For the first time, he must organize his spirituality in a document that is legible to others. This is what makes the construction his ultimate religious act, as it requires him to move beyond art and to explicate directly what he seeks to accomplish. Tellingly, when Michelangelo dies during the building of the dome, the novel does not depict him ascending into heaven. Rather, he ascends into the dome as he sees it in his mind. He merges with his creation that, to him, is divinity itself. He enters into his own divine creation.
The Power of Platonic Love
Michelangelo grows up in a complicated family environment. His mother died when he was young, leaving him to be raised by a father who is so focused on the family name that he does not care about the actual family. Michelangelo’s grandmother and his stepmother are supportive, but Michelangelo strives to find someone who loves him as he imagines his mother might have done. Instead of a person, he finds only art. Art becomes his major love, the only thing capable of filling the void in his life that—he suspects—was created by his mother’s absence. This means that the love he longs for most is not romantic, but platonic—that is, invested in an ideal that can only be imperfectly realized in the material world. He strives toward this ideal in his art, and his most intense emotional relationships—with Vittoria and Tomasso—embody it. By contrast, his few sexual or romantic relationships are comparatively unsatisfying and short-lived, presented mainly as obstacles to his work. He has a brief affair with Clarissa, which falls apart when he becomes distracted by his work. She recognizes that he will never love her as much as he loves carving marble. Later, Michelangelo has a brief encounter with a sex worker, which ends with him contracting syphilis and being unable to work while he recovers. Through these experiences, Michelangelo learns that sex often gets in the way of his art; his hyperfocus on his own creation, the pleasure he derives from sculpture, leaves little room for physical or romantic love.
Instead, Michelangelo’s life is shaped by a series of platonic relationships that offer him a substitute for the romantic love he cannot seem to navigate. When he is young, Lorenzo de’ Medici becomes almost more of a father to Michelangelo than Ludovico. He encourages Michelangelo’s love for art in exactly the way that the money-focused Ludovico does not. To the young Michelangelo, Lorenzo is the platonic ideal of a father figure, and Michelangelo loves him accordingly. Lorenzo’s death devastates Michelangelo more than the death of his actual father; he never thinks about dedicating a statue to Ludovico, for example, but he creates numerous statues in memory of Lorenzo. In a similar vein, Michelangelo’s apprentices, such as Argiento and Urbino, become like the sons he never had. He takes care of these surrogate sons and their families with more affection than he has for his own brothers. These substitute relationships are based on Michelangelo’s tendency to be distracted by his art. His apprentices mean so much to him because they facilitate his art, meaning that his love for them is an extension of his love for his art. Lorenzo was a patron of his art, meaning that Michelangelo loved him more than his actual father, since Ludovico was so often an impediment to artistic creation. Michelangelo’s most significant relationships are inextricable from his love for art over everything else.
The novel never delves into whether three of Michelangelo’s most significant relationships ever included a sexual or romantic element. When he is young, he falls in love with Contessina. She loves him as well, but Lorenzo’s influence and her status means that the relationship must remain platonic. She is sent away, and any romantic relationship is nipped in the bud. This provides a template for future relationships. Michelangelo is romantically interested in Vittoria, investigating her life and imagining a world in which he could love her. Yet the novel suggests that their love remains purely platonic. Tomasso is a significant presence in Michelangelo’s later life. Like Michelangelo’s apprentices, he helps to facilitate Michelangelo’s great works. Like Vittoria, he inspires Michelangelo to think more about love. Michelangelo expresses his love for Vittoria and Tomasso through sonnets, but the possibility of a romantic relationship between Tomasso and Michelangelo is—according to the novel—nothing more than slander spread about by the blackmailer Artenio. As such, Michelangelo goes to his death having known little about romantic love. He has loved in his life, but this love is largely platonic. Art is his true love; those who facilitate or inspire his art are those he loves most. To Michelangelo, love is a platonic endeavor because he can never love anyone in quite the same way that he loves his art.
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