He was accompanied by Sangallo's followers who, according to Vasari,
Putting the best face on the matter, came forward and said how glad they were that the work had been given to him and that the model was a meadow that would always afford inexhaustible pasture, to which Michelangelo replied that they spoke truly, meaning, as he afterwards told a friend, that it would serve for sheep and oxen who know nothing of art.
In fact, a good part of Michelangelo's work on St. Peter's consisted of removing what work had been accomplished by Sangallo. Sangallo's hemicycle was demolished, and Michelangelo shored up some of Bramante's rather high-speed construction, until -- again in the opinion of Vasari -- "the columns, bases, capitals, doors and windows, cornices and projections, were perfect in every detail."
Michelangelo treated architecture as a form of sculpture, Bramante's collection of distinct parts being transformed into an organic whole.
Essentially, the failings of Sangallo's design had been in the lack the proper relationships of the different parts to the whole. Michelangelo's re-working of Sangallo's St. Peter's necessitated a new decorative plan as well. As the artist stated in a letter of December 1550,
When a plan changes its form entirely it is not only permissible, but necessary to vary the ornament also and [that of] their counterparts likewise. The central features are always as independent as one chooses - just as the nose, being in the middle of the face, is related neither to one eye nor to the other, though one hand is certainly related to the other and one eye to the other, owing to their being at the sides and having counterparts.
For Michelangelo, a building needed to be as balanced and natural as the human body. And so it would be with St. Peter's, a structure that was meant to symbolize the universal body of the Western Church.
The Sistine Chapel
Within St. Peter's, the Sistine Chapel occupies a place equivalent to that occupied by St. Peter's within the overall world of Latin Christendom. As one of the largest chapels in the basilica, the Sistine Chapel has long been the setting of major ceremonies and religious celebrations, including those traditionally presided over by the pope in person. As befitted a center of both the physical and metaphysical worlds, the Sistine Chapel was modeled after the First Temple in Jerusalem. Its dimensions correspond exactly to those of the Temple described in the Old Testament; the dimensions that were decreed by God in First Kings, Chapters Six to Fourteen.
Internally, the Chapel would contain representations of the history of the world and of the Church. From the beginning, Pope Julius II intended for Michelangelo to execute the frescos inside the Sistine Chapel, informing Bramante that he was dispatching Sangallo to Florence to bring back Michelangelo. Bramante; however, informed the Pope that he was familiar with Michelangelo's views on painting the Chapel, and that Michelangelo did not wish to undertake any such project:
"You did not pay any serious attention either to the tomb [of Julius II] or to the painting of the ceiling," and Bramante continued: "Holy Father, I believe that Michelangelo would lack the necessary courage to attack the ceiling because he has not had much experience in figure painting, and in general the figures will be set high and in foreshortening, and this brings up problems which are completely different from those met in painting at ground level.
Such feelings would set the stage for future conflicts between painter and pope in regard to the painting of the ceiling. As relayed by Bramante, Michelangelo's comments underscore the great technical difficulties involved with working so high up, and also the special difficulties presented to a man who thought of himself more as a sculptor than a painter. From the beginning, Michelangelo was an unwilling participant in Julius II's grandiose schemes to embellish the Sistine Chapel.
At the time of Julius II's accession, the Sistine Chapel walls were decorated with a series of Old Testament and New Testament scenes by artists such as Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, Bartolommeo della Gatta, and Cosimo Rosselli, while the ceiling featured the relatively simple motif of a heaven studded with stars, the chapel having been commissioned by Julius' uncle -- and the Chapel's namesake -- Pope Sixtus IV.
At the level of the windows, the Chapel was adorned with portraits of various early pope-saints, a form of decoration that further emphasized the links between the mundane and the divine. The representations of the...
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