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The Deeper Meaning of Michelangelo

Triplex Munus Christi in the Art of Michelangelo: The Universal Patron

By Elizabeth Lev

The past few decades of increased tourism, bringing vast new audiences to Michelangelo's works in the Vatican, have seen a proliferation of new interpretations of the Renaissance artist's creations, including some that Michelangelo would never have dreamed possible. In the current flurry of economic, political, and psychological analyses, the artist's intended viewers are often forgotten, and with them much of his deeper meaning. Far from being of mere historical interest, an understanding of the identity of his primary audience could make him more approachable by contemporary viewers at all levels of society. For Michelangelo was a man who understood the power of art - beyond beauty for its own sale - to convey ideas.

Who, then, was his primary audience? At the outset of his career, Michelangelo spent two years in the household of the powerful Medici family, where he was exposed to some of the most interesting courtiers and finest humanist scholars of his time. There he learned a great deal about the role of the artist in enhancing the image and ideals of his patron. Thereafter, however, he worked almost exclusively for the clerical community for the rest of his life. His patrons and advisors became theologians as well as humanists, and his message became Truth. Over the years of creating art and envisioning Truth, his greatest works for the Church portray the representations of priest, prophet and king in an ever increasing grandness. This progression can be traced through the commissions themselves: from the little French chapel of the old Saint Peter's Basilica, original site of the Pieta, to the private chapel of the popes, the Sistine Chapel, and thence to the Seat of the Vicar of Christ, St. Peter's Basilica as rebuilt by Michelangelo himself. A sculpture, a painting and an architectural marvel to illustrate the triplex munus (triple power) of Him who may be described as the True Patron of Michelangelo.

The Priest

In 1498, the 23-year-old, relatively unknown sculptor was commissioned by Cardinal Jean de Bilheres to produce a sculpture for the Chapel of St Petronilla, a small, round former mausoleum annexed to the Old Basilica of St. Peter's. The restricted space of the chapel would have created a closer interaction with the sculpture than its present placement behind glass in a chapel far too large for the work. This would have allowed for a deeper understanding of the statue. The Pieta as a subject matter was much less common in Italy than in France, the Italians preferring a more tranquil Madonna and Child motif to the emotionally charged, highly tragic representations of Mary holding her Son one last time in her lap before he is taken away for burial. The awkward traditional imagery for this work tended to show a stiff, upright figure of the Virgin with her Son stretched straight across her lap so that the two figures would form a cross. Michelangelo burst onto the artistic scene with an entirely new representation of this event. The compositional triangle formed by the head and dress of Mary created a sense of monumental dignity not typical in earlier versions of the scene.

Another innovative element in young Michelangelo's treatment of this subject is his inclusion of both the priest and the Mass in his work. This is present in three important aspects of the sculpture. The first and most immediately visible element is in the finishing of the marble surfaces. The drapery of the Virgin is deeply carved, especially in the lower part of her robes, which creates pockets of darkness that evoke the heaviness of grief. However, the body of Christ resting upon them is polished to a degree that will never again in the work of Michelangelo. While in part this is done to emphasize the finely detailed carving of the body, it also transforms the figure into a core of light that shines out from the surrounding darkness and sends a ray of hope through the tragic scene. This serves to emphasize the salvific nature of the Mass.

Secondly, looking at the clear outline of the compositional triangle, one sees at first a classical form conveying the same notion of permanence as the pyramids. Mary seems presented as an eternal shroud for her Son, but looking again into the heart of the stone, we see a sharp contrast to this in the way the body of Christ is balanced on a fold of cloth over her knee, which seems about to give way and drop his body onto the altar. The duality of time, eternal and immediate, echoes the duality of time in the Mass, the perpetual re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, which is immediate and real each time it takes place.

Thirdly, it is this aspect which leads to what is perhaps the most beautiful element of the work. The Body of Christ, leaving his sculptural space to enter ours, the open-handed gesture of Mary and luminous body itself only take on true meaning when seen in the context of the Mass. As the priest consecrates the Host, Mary delivers the body of her Son to the altar. No artist has ever given us a more eloquent expression of the Holy Sacrifice.

The Prophet

Michelangelo's next endeavor was for Pope Julius II: the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling from 1508 to 1512. On the ceiling of the Pope's private chapel, he painted narrative scenes from the book of Genesis, colossal Sibyls and Prophets, the ancestors of Christ, and various scenes from other books of the Old Testament. In a vivid and dramatic rendering of the history of man's salvation, these images form an itinerary which starts with the Creation of Light, takes the viewer through the Creation and Fall of Man to the Drunkenness of Noah, then leads the way to the promised Savior with the Prophets and Sibyls and culminates in the enormous figure of the prophet Jonah. Michelangelo again uses his technical prowess to enhance the meaning of the work. Among the dynamic figures of the twelve Sibyls and Prophets of the vault, Johan is notably larger. The whole space of his painted niche is enlarged to accommodate a figure considerably larger than the figure of Zachariah opposite him. Also in contrast to this fellow Prophets, he is painted frontally, directly confronting those who enter the chapel on the other side of the room. The colors used for him are dramatically different from the saturated jewel tones of the preceding figures. He is suffused with a beam of light so powerful that it turns his green tunic lavender. Michelangelo's choice of colors is in keeping with the message of salvation, according to the well-known symbolism of green as the color of hope and purple as the color of penance. For art connoisseurs among the viewers, Michelangelo added a touch of virtuosity to this figure: Jonah appears to lean backward into space while the spandrel on which he is painted projects forward, showing a complete command of the difficult painting technique of foreshortening. But the most intriguing aspect of Jonah is his placement in the chapel. All the other prophets sit firmly in their niches while Jonah appears to dangle suspended in midair, about to drop to the altar below. The other figures begin a special dynamic by being too large for the architectural space designed for them, reminders that they bore a message too large for their niche in history. Jonah takes this a step further by appearing to burst out of his space in the niche and make a transition to the next part of the story, the altar. With Jonah, the pledge of salvation promised throughout the ceiling is brought to fruition. "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Mt. 12:40) The explosive arrival of God into human history is presented through Jonah's entry into our space in the chapel. Every time Mass is celebrated in the chapel, the figure of Jonah brings the reminder of our salvation to the present, the here and now as he erupts into our space.

The King

Michelangelo's last major work for the Vatican was the construction of the Basilica of St Peter's itself. Originally passed over in favor of Raphael, San Gallo, Peruzzi and others, Michelangelo came to this task at the age of seventy, after the building site had been open for about forty years. It was his gift to the Church; he took no payment, but built it for the "Glory of God and the salvation of his soul." Through his plan, he illustrated the great vertical of the Catholic Church, the magisterium. Designed during the Council of Trent, the immense dome unequivocally declares the primacy of Peter by architecturally crowning the successor of St. Peter by architecturally crowning the successor of St. Peter. According to the original plan of Michelangelo, the vertical axis of the dome above the grave of St. Peter's would have been at the center of the church. With the elongation of the nave in 1601 the centrality of the design was diminished. Externally, the dome gave the church an anthropomorphic cast, as the rounded apses and the raised dome would have appeared as the head and shoulders of the church while the elongation of the dome was reminiscent of the Papal tiara. Traditionally in church architecture, the dome of a church represents heaven while the body of the building represents the earth. The interior of the Basilica is based on the hemisphere of the Pantheon's dome rests directly on the solid masonry of the drum, implying the fusion of heaven and earth, the drum of Michelangelo's dome is pierced with windows, creating the effect of a cushion of light. As a result, the 137-and-a-half foot span of brick and concrete, (only 5 feet narrower than the Pantheon's dome) appears weightless, as a reminder that man does not fuse heaven to earth when and where he likes, but that Heaven chooses where it comes to rest - in this case, over the grave of St. Peter. From Sixtus V to John Paul II, every Pope who has celebrated Mass at the Papal altar has been drawn into Michelangelo's architectural illustration of the two-thousand-year-old communication between God and the successor of St. Peter. The dome of the Basilica was the crowning achievement of the artist's sixty-plus year career in the Vatican.

While there is no way for either Michelangelo or the people who hired him to have planned this, the visions of priest, prophet and king that mark the three major commissions executed during his career leave the present day viewer with the distinct idea of the guidance of the Holy Spirit throughout the lifetime of this artist. The Triplex Munus Christi (the three powers of Christ) in which every Christian is called to participate illustrates how these works have a grandeur that defies the passage of time and changes in style and continue to this day to have a universal appeal.

Elizabeth Lev lives in Rome and teaches Italian Renaissance Art at Duquesne University's Rome Campus. She has a particular interest in sacred art of the 16th and 17th centuries.