The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo; religious imagery and papal primacy

Table of contents :
PREFACE
CONTENTS
LIST OF PLATES
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
I. THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING AND ITS DECORATIONS
A. The Building
B. The Frescoes: The Documentary Evidence
C. The Composition of the Fresco Cycles
II. PICTORIAL SOURCES
III. THE MOSES CYCLE
The Lost Fresco on the Altar-wall
FRESCO I
FRESCO II
FRESCO III
FRESCO IV
FRESCO V
FRESCO VI
FRESCO VII
IV. THE CHRIST CYCLE
FRESCO I
FRESCOES II AND VI
FRESCO III and FRESCO V
FRESCO IV
V. TYPOLOGY AND WORLD HISTORY
VI. THE FRESCOES OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL AND THE PRIMATUS PAPAE
APPENDIXES
A. Contract for Ten Frescoes of October 1481
B. Estimate for the First Four Frescoes of the North Wall
INDEX
PLATES 1-44

Citation preview

OXFORD-WARBURG STUDIES General Editors t. s. r. boase and g. bing

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.f GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA

CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA

KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG

The Punishment of the Sons of Aaron

THE

SISTINE CHAPEL BEFORE MICHELANGELO cPgligious Imagery and Papal Primacy BY

L. D. ETTLINGER WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE FRESCOES BY H. O. FEIN

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1965

© Oxford University Press 196; PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD

BY VIVIAN RIDLER PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

GERTRUD BING IN MEMORIAM

PREFACE HE fifteenth-century frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, which are perhaps the most important of their time, have received scant attention in the last fifty years. The present investigation is an attempt to give these neglected paintings their due and to see what light can be shed on them by a re-investigation of their iconography and their historical setting. A work begun as long ago as 1956 has naturally involved me in many obliga­ tions. In that year I was fortunate enough to hold a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and my research was continued—with many unforeseen interruptions—in London and Rome. I am much indebted in the first place to the Vatican authorities, and in particular to Conte Prof. Dott. Paolo Dalia Torre di Sanguinetto, Direttore Generale dei Monumenti, Musei e Gallerie Pontificie, for permission to have new photographs of the frescoes made and to the British Academy as well as to the Unione di Arte Post Antica Romana for the substantial grants which made the taking of these photographs possible. The Unione, moreover, through the kind offices of Professor W. Lotz and Dr. Hildegard Giess, Bibliotheca Hertziana, gave much practical help in Rome and also supplied technical equipment. To them, as to the staff of the Vatican Museum who smoothed the photographer’s path, I wish to express my thanks. Finally I must thank my colleague Mr. O. Fein and put on record my admiration for his brilliant success in this difficult task. Two friends, in particular, have put me in their debt. To Professor E. Panofsky I owe generous guidance and criticism both in method and detail. The Rev. Father Dr. Paul Kiinzle was always ready to answer my questions and ■ place his great learning at my disposal, especially in theological and historical problems. My obligations to my colleagues at the Warburg Institute are numerous. It is a matter of deep sorrow that my thanks will no longer reach Gertrud Bing. She encouraged me from the outset, read every draft of my text and, with her unique gift for leading others to clarity and precision, determined a great deal of the final shape of this book. H. Buchthal discussed the second chapter with me in detail, though I alone must be responsible for the conclusions I drew from his instruction. J. B. Trapp read the book in manuscript and made many valuable

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viii

Preface

suggestions in subject-matter apart from greatly improving my English style. Anne Marie Meyer helped, with her customary accuracy, to prepare text and plates for the press and was good enough to read the proofs. While collecting material for the first chapter I benefited not only from the library of the German Art Historical Institute in Florence but also from the generously given help of Professor U. Middeldorf. The staff of the manuscript room of the Vatican Library assisted me in many ways and bore my requests for many manuscripts with great courtesy. ♦ I also wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the following friends and colleagues: Professor E. Battisti (Rome), Mrs. Kay Baxandall (London), Mr. M. Baxandall (London), Dr. C. Bertelli (Rome), Dr. Eve Borsook (Florence), Dr. T. Buddensieg (Berlin), Professor A. Campana (Rome), Professor H. von Einem (Bonn), Father Ferrari (Rome), Dr. Rosalie Green (Princeton), Dr. J. Hess (Rome), Professor H. Jedin (Bonn), the late Professor E. Kantorowicz (Princeton), Dr. P. Kidson (London), Professor E. Kitzinger (Washington), Mr. M. Levey (London), Professor M. Lewine (New York), Professor H. Lutzeler (Bonn), Professor K. Martin (Munich), Dr. Jennifer Montagu (Lon­ don), Dr. P. Murray (London), Dr. B. Narkiss (Jerusalem), Miss Claire Pace (London), Dr. Dora Panofsky (Princeton), Professor D. Redig de Campos (Rome), Dr. N. Rubinstein (London), Dr. L. Salerno (Rome), Dr. Hermine Speier (Rome), Miss Katherine Waldram (London), Professor R. Weiss (Lon­ don), Professor K. Weitzmann (Princeton), Dr. Josepha Weitzmann-Fiedler (Princeton). I wish to thank Mr. B. A. R. Carter for drawing the reconstruction of the altar wall of the Chapel. My wife undertook the thankless task of compiling the index. Moreover, she saw to it—in a remote country retreat in France—that I found the quiet and concentration needed for writing the final version. But above all else she dis­ cussed my work with me at all stages and was a constant source of inspiration and strength. L. D. E. Warburg Institute, University of London July 1964

CONTENTS LIST OF PLATES

xi

ABBREVIATIONS

xv

INTRODUCTION

i

I. THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING AND ITS DECORATIONS

A. The Building

12

b. The Frescoes: The Documentary Evidence

15

c. The Composition of the Fresco Cycles

31

II. PICTORIAL SOURCES

45

III. THE MOSES CYCLE

57

IV. THE CHRIST CYCLE

76

V. TYPOLOGY AND WORLD HISTORY

94

VI. THE FRESCOES OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL AND THE PRIMATUS PAPAE 104 APPENDIXES

A. Contract for Ten Frescoes of October 1481 b. Estimate for the First Four Frescoes of the North Wall

INDEX

120

122 125

LIST OF PLATES The photographs of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were especially taken for this book by Mr. Otto Fein. The photographs of the Vatican Bible, MS. Vat. lat. 3440, were supplied by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and those of the Octateuchs, Vatican Library MSS. gr. 746 and 747, by the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. In all other cases the sources are indicated in brackets. Frontispiece: The Punishment of the Sons of Aaron 1. Perugino and Pinturicchio: The Circumcision of Moses’ Son 2. Botticelli: Moses in Egypt and Midian 3. Rosselli: The Crossing of the Red Sea 4. Rosselli: The Giving of the Law and the Adoration of the Golden Calf 5. Botticelli: The Punishment of Corah and the Sons of Aaron. The Stoning of Moses 6. Signorelli: The Last Acts and the Death of Moses 7. Matteo da Lecce: The Archangel Michael defending the Body of Moses 8. Perugino: The Baptism of Christ 9. Botticelli: The Temptation and the Old Testament Sacrifice 10. Ghirlandajo: The Calling of the first Apostles 11. Rosselli: The Sermon on the Mount 12. Perugino: Christ’s Charge to St. Peter 13. Rosselli: The Institution of the Eucharist 14. Matteo da Lecce: The Resurrection and Ascension 15. Detail from Pl. 1: Zipporah circumcises her Son 16. a. Detail from Pl. 1: The Angel of the Lord meeting Moses b. Detail from Pl. 2: Moses slaying the Egyptian 17. Detail from Pl. 2: Moses meeting Jethro’s Daughters 18. Detail from Pl. 3 : Pharaoh’s Army drowned 19. Detail from Pl. 4: Moses on Mount Sinai 20. a. Detail from Pl. 4: The Adoration of the Golden Calf b. Detail from Pl. 4: Moses’ Return from Mount Sinai 21. Detail from Pl. 4: The Punishment of the Idolaters 22. Detail from Pl. 5: The Punishment of Corah and the Preservation of his Sons 23. Detail from Pl. 6: Joshua appointed as Moses’ Successor 24. Detail from Pl. 6: Moses addressing the Israelites 25. Detail from Pl. 6: The Stranger among the Israelites 26. Detail from Pl. 6: The Israelites lamenting Moses 27. Detail from Pl. 9: The Acolyte assisting at the Sacrifice

xii

List of Plates

28. a. Detail from Pl. 8 : St. John preaching b. Detail from Pl. 9: Christ accompanied by Angels 29. Detail from Pl. 9: The third Temptation of Christ 30. a. Detail from Pl. 12: Christ’s Charge to St. Peter b. Detail from pl. 13: The Institution of the Eucharist 31. a. Detail from Pl. 9: The Temple in Jerusalem b. Detail from Pl. 12: The Ideal Church 32. a. and b. Details from Pl. 12: The two Triumphal Arches with Sixtus’s dedicatory inscription c. The Arch of Constantine, Rome (Alinari) ■ 33. Detail from Pl. 5: The Triumphal Arch 34. a. Pier Matteo d’Amelia: Design for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Florence, Uffizi (Soprin­ tendenza alle Gallerie, Florence) b. Perugino: Assumption of the Virgin. Naples, Cathedral (Soprintendenza alle Gallerie, Naples) c. Perugino Workshop: Drawing after the lost altarpiece of the Sistine Chapel. Vienna, Albertina (Albertina) 35. a. Moses addressing the Israelites. Death of Moses. Mosaic, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore (Alinari) b. The Crossing of the Red Sea. Mosaic, Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore (Alinari) c. Christ calling Peter and Andrew. Ivory altar frontal, Salerno, Cathedral (R. Moscioni) d. Giusto dei Menabuoi: Christ calling Peter and Andrew. Padua, Baptistery (Alinari) 36. a. The Adoration of the Golden Calf. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 3550, fol. 48r b. Moses receiving the Law. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 3550, fol. 47v c. Ghiberti: Moses receiving the Law. Florence, Baptistery (Anderson) d. The Israelites leaving Egypt. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 2550, fol. 37v e. Pharaoh’s Army drowned. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 3550, fol. 38v 37. a. Joshua appointed as Moses’ Successor. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 3550, fol. 88r b. The Punishment of Corah. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 3550, fol. 77v c. The Israelites lamenting Moses. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. lat. 3550, fol. io5v d. The Israelites leaving Egypt. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. i8or e. Moses killing the Egyptian. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. ij4r 38. a. Moses meeting the Daughters of Jethro. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. i$4v b. Moses addressing the Israelites. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. 3261· c. The Punishment of the Idolaters. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 747, fol. n6r d. The Adoration of the Golden Calf and the Punishment of the Idolaters. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 747, fol. 11 jv e. Moses returning from Mount Sinai. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. 2j4v 39. a. Moses seeing the Promised Land. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. 4371· b. St. Michael defending the body of Moses. Herrad of Landsberg, Hortas Deliciarum, fol. J4r (Warburg Institute) c. The Death of Moses. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. 43 8r 40. a. Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. 21 ir b. The Circumcision of Moses’ Son. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. i6jr

List of Plates

xiii

c. The Circumcision of Moses’ Son. London, British Museum, MS. Add. 15277, fol. 4r (British Museum) d. The Angel of the Lord meeting Moses. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. gall. 16, fol. 5 iv (Staatsbibliothek, Munich)

41. a. The Punishment of Corah. Vatican Library, MS. Vat. gr. 746, fol. 340’ b. The Punishment of Corah and of the Sons of Aaron. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Clm. 835, fol. i9v (Photo Marburg) c. Scenes from Exodus and Leviticus. Paris, Bibliothèque de 1’Arsenal, MS. 5211, fol. 531· (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) 42. a. The Institution of the Eucharist. Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale, Incunabula, XV. VII. 106, fol. 11 iv (Biblioteca Nazionale, Turin) b. Façade of Old St. Peter’s. Drawing by D. Tasellî, Archivio di S. Pietro c. Christ cleansing the Leper. Herrad of Landsberg, Hortas Deliciarum^ fol. 23 8V (Warburg Institute) d. The Altar of the Holocaust. Vatican Library, MS. Urb. lat. 14, fol. mv (Vatican Library) e. The High Priest. Vatican Library, MS. Urb. lat. 14, fol. ii3v (Vatican Library) 43. a. Giovanni del Biondo, Synagogue and Ecclesia, detail from Christ and Virgin enthroned. Yale University Art Gallery, James Jackson Jarves Collection (Yale University Art Gallery) b. The Last Judgement. Tympanum, Abbey of St. Mary Magdalene, Vézelay (Service Com­ mercial, Monuments Historiques, Paris) c. The New Covenant. Herrad of Landsberg, Hortas Deliciaram, fol. 6yv (Warburg Institute) d. The Old Covenant. Herrad of Landsberg, Hortas Deliciaraw, fol. 6~jT (Warburg Institute) 44. a. The Interior of the Sistine Chapel (Alinari) b. Reconstruction of the original altar-wall, after a drawing by B. A. R. Carter

ABBREVIATIONS AB The Art Bulletin (New York, 1913- ). . Buchthal, Katin Kingdom H. Buchthal, Miniature Painting in the Katin Kingdom of Jerusalem [With Liturgical and Palaeographical chapters by Francis Wormaid] (Oxford,

Cornell, Biblia Pauperum H. Cornell, Biblia Pauperum (Stockholm, 1925). JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (London, 1940- ). Laborde, Bible Moralisee A. Comte de Laborde, Études sur la Bible Moralisée illustrée (Paris, 1911-27). Pastor, Päpste L. von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (Freiburg i. B., 1906-33). P.K. Patrologia Katina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1843-90). RDK Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, ed. Otto Schmitt (Stuttgart, I937- )· Steinmann, Botticelli E. Steinmann, Botticelli, translated by C. Dodgson (London, 1901). Steinmann, Kapelle E. Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, i, Der Bau und Schmuck der Kapelle unter Sixtus IV (Munich, 1901). Thieme-Becker Allgemeines Kexikon der bildenden Künstler, ed. U. Thieme and F. Becker (Leipzig, 1907-50). G. Vasari, Ke vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. G. Vasari (Milanesi) Milanesi (Florence, 1878-85). J. Wilpert, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom Wilpert, Mosaiken IV. bis XIII. Jahrhundert (Freiburg i. B., 1916). G. Wilpert, I sarcofagi cristiani antichi (Rome, 1929-36). Wilpert, Sarcofagi

Introduction EDIOCRITY, tinsel ostentation and tasteless diligence mark the greater number of that society of craftsmen whom Sixtus IV conscribed ... to decorate or rather disfigure the panels of the grand chapel which took its name from him. The superintendence of the whole the Pope, with the usual vanity and ignorance of princes, gave to Sandro, the least qualified of the group, whose barbarous taste and dry minuteness palsied, or assimilated to his own, the powers of his associates, and rendered the whole a monument of puerile ostentation and conceits unworthy of its place.’1 These sentiments about the Sistine Chapel will appear to us intemperate and unfair; nevertheless Henry Fuseli, who uttered them about 1808 in his History of Art, was one of the first to pay attention to the fifteenth-century wall decorations, for up till then no more than passing references had been made to them because of the overpowering presence of Michelangelo’s paintings, which accorded better w’ith ruling academic taste. It was in fact the discovery of the ‘Italian Primitives’ which in the end led to a closer study and better appreciation of the pictures along the walls. As early as 1795 Luigi Lanzi had mentioned them and singled out Botticelli for praise.2 Seroux d’Agincourt was the first to publish engrav­ ings after Botticelli’s and Perugino’s frescoes in his Histoire de Part par les monuments (1823), and Ingres introduced a copy after one of Botticelli’s Moses frescoes in the background of a painting showing Pope Pius VII officiating in the Sistine Chapel.3 During the nineteenth century Ruskin, Lady Eastlake, and Mrs. Jameson are to be found not surprisingly among those who praised the Sistine Chapel. Even so, as late as 1855 Jacob Burckhardt in the Cicerone could still complain that the fifteenth-century pictures of the Chapel did not receive that attention which he felt was their due4 and the ninth edition of K. Baedeker’s Handbook^ for Travellers of 1886 still dismisses them briefly by calling them ‘interesting’ and hurries on to the paintings of Michelangelo.

M

1 J. Knowles, 'Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli (Lon­ don, 1831), iii, 182-3. 2 L. Lanzi, Storiapittorica dell’Italia (Bassano, 1795), L 63· . . . . 3 For the growing appreciation of the Sistine Chapel 817149

B

see the brief but pertinent account by Μ. Levey, ‘Botticelli and Nineteenth-Century England’, JWCI, xxxiii (i960), 294-6. 4 J. Burckhardt, Der Cicerone, Gesamtausgabe, iv (Berlin, 1933), 201.

z

Introduction

But even among those who appreciated the merits of these frescoes, admira­ tion was confined to individual pictures and particularly to those of Botticelli and Perugino. Ruskin admitted that on his first visit to Rome he found the lower walls of the Chapel ‘entirely useless’ and he discovered and copied Botticelli’s daughters of Jethro only later.1 It was perhaps above all Botticelli’s growing reputation which made the fifteenth-century decorations of the Chapel more popular. Nevertheless the ensemble and the significance of the imagery as a whole were hardly taken into account before the publication in 1901 of Ernst Steinmann’s massive tome dedicated entirely to the pre-Michelangelo structure.2 Today guide-books inform visitors that the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Palace was built by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), and originally decorated at his behest between 1481 and 1483 by Perugino, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Rosselli, and Signorelli with papal portraits in the clerestory and in the zone below with two fresco cycles depicting the fives of Moses and Christ. But they usually add that these traditional biblical scenes are full of allusions to the warlike and political exploits of Sixtus and that, in consequence, these pictures are on the walls as much for the sake of glorifying a vain and worldly Renaissance Pope as for their religious content. Fanciful iconographic explanations of this kind are given by guides and vergers all over the world, but in this case they are of less popular origin. The learned and ingenious interpretation propounded by Ernst Steinmann in the book just mentioned has gained general acceptance and a brief discussion of his thesis is necessary before a new interpretation of the fifteenth-century decoration of the Sistine Chapel can properly be attempted. In order to understand Steinmann’s arguments we must recall the arrangement of the two narrative fresco cycles (Pl. 44^). The six paintings on the south wall represent the life of Moses. The series originally began on the altar-wall with a picture of the Finding of the Infant Moses which was destroyed to make room for Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. The frescoes now remaining depict—starting with the fresco nearest the altar: (1) the Circumcision of Moses’ Son (Pl. 1), (2) the story of the young Moses from the Slaying of the Egyptian Task­ master to the Exodus from Egypt, including the Meeting with the Daughters 1 J. Ruskin, Praeterita, The Works of John Ruskin (Library Edition), xxxv (London, 1908), 273. These remarks refer to the first visit of 1840. There is, however, an appreciative account of the fifteenth-century frescoes in his Ariadne Fiorentina of 1872, cf. xxii, 442-3.

2 Ernst Steinmann, Kapelle. Steinmann has given a summary of his interpretation in Botticelli (London, 1901); see also P. Schubring, Die Sixtinische Kapelle (Rome, 1909); A. Venturi, Fa Cappella Sistina (Rome, n.d.); Mary Pittaluga, Fhe Sistine Chapel (Rome, 1952).

Introduction

3

of Jethro and Moses before the Burning Bush (Pl. 2), (3) the Crossing of the Red Sea (Pl. 3), (4) the Law-giving on Sinai and the Adoration of the Golden Calf (Pl. 4), (5) the Punishment of the Sons of Aaron, the Rebellion of Corah, Dathan, and Abiron, and also the Stoning of Moses (Pl. 5), (6) the Testament of Moses, the Appointing of Joshua, and Moses’ Death (Pl. 6). The last fresco of this cycle, on the east wall, was restored in the sixteenth century in the course of building repairs. It represents the Archangel Michael Defending the Body of Moses against the Devil (Pl. 7). The cycle illustrating the life of Christ began on the altar-wall with the Nativity. Along the north wall follow six frescoes: (1) the Baptism, including the Preaching of St. John and Christ’s First Sermon (Pl. 8), (2) the Tempta­ tion, with an Old Testament sacrifice enacted in front of the Temple (Pl. 9), (3) the Calling of the First Apostles (Pl. 10), (4) the Sermon on the Mount and the Healing of the Leper (Pl. 11), (5) the Charge to St. Peter, with the Stoning of Christ and the Tribute Money (Pl. 12), (6) the Last Supper and three Passion scenes (Pl. 13). The Resurrection, with the Ascension as a subsidiary scene, on the entrance-wall was also repainted during the sixteenth-century repairs to the chapel (Pl. 14). Steinmann wanted to show that the frescoes of the Sistina served three differ­ ent purposes. In the first instance he regarded them as straightforward illustra­ tions of important events in the lives of Moses and Christ. Next he maintained that the arrangement in these two cycles on opposite walls—by which the founders of the Old and the New Covenant seem to be juxtaposed incident by incident—transformed the pictorial biographies into an intricate scheme of Christian typology, although he had to admit that the juxtapositions cannot be made to match with any of the traditional typological series. The Circumcision of the Son of Moses may be a suitable type for the baptism of Christ, but the Crossing of the Red Sea, usually paired with the Baptism or the Stilling the Storm, appears here opposite the Calling of the First Apostles. The Rebellion of Corah occurs only rarely in a typological context and never as the type of the Charge to St. Peter. Such deviations from accepted theology and iconography suggested to Steinmann yet a third intention behind the imagery of the Chapel, and he claimed—without the support of documentary or other corroborative evidence —that the choice of some scenes was determined by Sixtus’s desire to see events of his own reign commemorated on these walls. For example, he insisted that the Crossing of the Red Sea was given prominence within the cycle only after the

4

Introduction

defeat of the Duke of Calabria in August 1482. ‘Sixtus commanded that the glorious feat of arms should be commemorated in the cycle of pictures in his palace chapel, and . . . Piero di Cosimo raised a striking memorial to the hero of Campo Morto.’12Steinmann went so far as to identify the struggling warriors overcome by the waves of the Red Sea with the leaders of an army who had dared to resist the Pope and in the storm breaking over Egypt he discovered a subtle allusion to a tempest which had raged during the battle. Similarly the inclusion of the seldom-represented Rebellion of Corah was supposed to celebrate by impheation another of the Pope’s victories, the foiling of Andreas Zamometic’s attempt to convene a General Council at Basel in 1482? Again, thanks to Steinmann the second fresco of the Christ cycle representing the Temptation is usually referred to as the Cleansing of the Leper. It must indeed seem curious that the principal subject of this picture should have been relegated to some comparatively small scenes in the upper register while the foreground is filled with an apparently unconnected action. Steinmann claimed that the rite taking place here corresponds to the prescription for the cleansing of lepers given in the Old Testament (Lev. xiv. 1-7) and suggested that this recondite subject was included in a prominent position, because Sixtus had re-endowed and rebuilt the famous old Hospital of S. Spirito. ‘The eyes of the aged Pope, when he sat on his throne, assisting at the solemn mass, might rest with special delight on this fresco . . . and he might flatter himself that the picture would hand down his glory to the most remote successors on the throne of St. Peter.’3 But it is impossible to accept this interpretation. In the first place, S. Spirito was not an institution for the care of lepers but a home for foundlings and a general hospital.4 More important still, if this fresco really had represented the Cleansing of the Leper religious imagery and Holy Writ would have been employed merely as a pretext in order to celebrate the Pope as a patron of architecture and as a benefactor of the sick. Steinmann’s interpretation of the Sistine frescoes is at least partly the result of 1 Steinmann, Botticelli, p. 5 5. 2 Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 262-72. 3 Steinmann, Botticelli, p. 5 2. See also Kapelle, pp. 244— 53· 4 H. Brockhaus, ‘Das Hospital S. Spirito zu Rom’, Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, vii (1884), 281-90, 429-45 ; A. Canezza and Μ. Casalini, Il Pio Istituto di S. Spirito (Rome, 1933); P. de Angelis, L’Arcispedale

di Santo Spirito in Saxia (Rome, 1952). The Pope himself, in the Bull Etsi universis of January 1476 (Pullarium Romanum, v (i860), 226 ff.), clearly speaks of the scope of the hospital after referring to the rebuilding of it: ... ut qui in eo infantes expositi, languentes et infirmi, alii quoque pauperes et egeni benigne recipi, mittere et charitative tractari valeant .... Moreover, none of the frescoes in the hospital refers to the treating of lepers.

Introduction

5

an historical outlook which saw in the Renaissance essentially a worldly move­ ment. From such a point of view it was indeed possible to propose in all serious­ ness that the frescoes in the most important chapel of the Vatican palace were little more than allegories praising the achievements of its founder and im­ mortalizing his name. Burckhardt’s celebrated thesis that fame was the spur to many actions during the Renaissance was thus carried to its extreme con­ clusion. Sixtus IV was intelligent and sensitive enough to know where to indulge his urge for self-perpetuation. It is true that he celebrated his life and his exploits in a monumental pictorial cycle on the walls of the hospital of S. Spirito; in that chapel of St. Peter’s which was to be his mausoleum he displayed his arms in pro­ fusion1 and he saw to it that suitable inscriptions recorded his building activities all over Rome. But in his palace chapel there is none of this ostentation, and these simple facts alone should suffice to warn us against accepting too personal an interpretation of the imagery in the Sistine Chapel. Some theologians and historians were indeed quick to spot this weakness in Steinmann’s interpretation almost as soon as it was published. J. Sauer, while accepting many of the iconographic readings proposed by Steinmann, denied that the Cleansing of the Leper contained any allusions to Sixtus’s benefactions. It was in fact Sauer who first indicated a more properly historical understanding of the pictures in the Sistine Chapel. He suggested that Moses and Christ are shown in the roles of leaders of religious communities and thereby as fore­ runners of the Vicar of Christ on earth. He further explained that through the choice of incidents these two religious leaders are shown in their threefold function as teacher, priest, and ruler. As will be seen later Sauer, with his im­ mense knowledge of theology and Christian iconography, had almost at a glance grasped the true character of the Sistina paintings.2 It is only to be regretted that his stimulating papers did not become better known and that he never went on to a fuller or more substantiated interpretation of the frescoes. It should be added, however, that in one particular point Sauer allowed himself to be swayed by appearances. He thought that the depicting of Moses and Christ in an equal number of frames on opposite walls should be understood as a rigid typological system. Realizing the differences from the Liblia Pauperum and other typological 1 L. D. Ettlinger, ‘Pollaiuolo’s Tomb of Sixtus IV’, JVGI, xvi (1953), 268. 2 J. Sauer, Review of Steinmann’s book in Germania (Wissenschaftliche Beilage) no. 48, 1901. See also the

same author’s longer discussion of Steinmann in Deutsche Rundschau, xxxii (1906), 27-39; F· X· Kraus, Geschichte der christlichen Kunst, ii. 2, Italienische Renais­ sance, ed. by J. Sauer (Freiburg, 1908), pp. 243-6.

6

Introduction

treatises, he interpreted the corresponding scenes from the two testaments as allegories of the Sacraments without offering proof for his hypothesis. Sauer’s short analysis is important in a wider context. During the past fifty years our views about the character of the Renaissance have changed and we have become more sensitive to the great complexity of ideological patterns underlying Quattrocento thinking. In the fields of religion and theology in particular we now tend to stress continuity rather than disruption and no longer regard the naïve realism of narrative painting, which became so pro­ nounced in religious art during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, as a sign of a shallow Christianity. Moreover, our iconological methods have become more refined. Iconology, properly handled, is now an historical discipline which recognizes both the pertinacity of pictorial symbols and the force of the ever­ changing historical context which transforms images. This means that any image can be properly understood only in a concrete situation. Even if the iconography of some individual scenes in the Sistine Chapel might be identical with that of a previous rendering of the same subject, such similarity in itself does not point any lesson or offer an explanation.We have to ask what considerations may have prompted those who planned the Sistina frescoes to include the particular con­ figuration. Similarly we should realize that the same must hold good for the cycles as a whole, and the question whether these frescoes add up to a typo­ logical sequence must be linked to the concrete ends and the purposes for which the Sistine Chapel was built.1 The purpose of this new study of the fifteenth-century decorations in the Chapel is therefore primarily iconological, but some questions relevant to date, style, and composition of the frescoes will be discussed first. Since the system of continuous narrative has been used for the Sistina frescoes, we have more than one incident depicted within every single frame and count about twenty-five scenes each from the life of Moses and Christ. It can hardly be assumed that the choice of these scenes was left to the artists who painted them or even to the master who directed the decoration of the Chapel. It is also obvious that individual incidents were not selected for the sake of their picturesque character or on account of traditional popularity, for a number of omissions as well as inclusions strike us at once as peculiar to the Sistine Chapel. To name only the most outstanding instances: apart from the Heating of the Leper not 1 For the distinction between iconology and iconography see E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York, 1962), pp. 3-17.

Introduction

7

one of the miracles wrought by Christ is represented and the Passion story is reduced to three small pictures inset, or glimpsed through openings, above the Cast Supper. Among the Moses pictures we look in vain for the miracles in the desert or the ten plagues, but we do find such rarely depicted incidents as the Circumcision of the Son of Moses or the Punishment of Corah, Dathan and Abiron. All this cannot be without significance and it will therefore be necessary to analyse the choice of subject-matter in both cycles. Only by comparing the Moses and Christ series—and that holds good not only for the selection of in­ cidents represented, but also for the juxtaposition of Old Testament and New Testament scenes—with other and earlier representations can we establish the peculiar character of the Sistina cycles. Such an analysis will lead to two further questions. First: Moses was not one of the most popular figures in late medieval or Renaissance imagery. It is true, in Italian art he sometimes occurs together with Old Testament prophets, but narrative Moses-scenes are extremely rare. Where they do occur, they invariably form part of a larger and more general Old Testament series of illustrations, as is the case with the Barna and Bartolomeo di Fredi frescoes in the Collegiata at S. Gimignano1 or on Ghiberti’s Porta del Paradiso.2 In fact, we have to turn to illuminated manuscripts, to bibles and psalters, in our search for more extensive Moses cycles for many parallels and we have to look for our examples in works produced outside Italy at an earlier period. All this means that the painters of the Moses cycle in the Sistina could not rely on a living tradition through which workshop models were easily available. This raises a crucial problem. Were the artists simply given verbal instructions about the content of each individual scene and did they have to make up their own illustrations to fit the biblical narrative, or were they furnished with pictorial models of some kind? In other words we have to ask whether these frescoes fit into any tradition of illustrated bibles. It can easily be seen that this question is more pertinent to the Moses cycle than to the New Testament scenes. The latter fit in many respects into the tradition of monumental church painting, though here too some unusual features may be found. Second: are we justified in interpreting the two cycles as a typological scheme simply because they occur on opposite walls of the Chapel? Up till now this assumption seems to have been made tacitly by all authors who have written on 1 S. L. Faison, ‘Barna and Bartolo di Fredi’, AB, xiv (1932), 285-315.

2 R. Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton, 1956), pp. 169-88.

8

Introduction

the subject, yet while there are a number of obvious and common types and antitypes, there are even more ‘juxtapositions’ which will not fit into any known typological arrangement. We must ask therefore whether the two cycles taken together make sense, even if they are not typological in character. It must be admitted at once that our documentary evidence is fragmentary. Two contracts for the chapel decoration merely mention the names of the artists employed, the number of frescoes to be painted, the salaries to be paid, and the sums to be forfeited, should the painters break their contract.1 There is no detailed list of subjects to be executed, but only a brief reference to ‘stories from the Old and New Testament’. The Pope’s representative contracting with the artists is a ‘Clerk of Works’ and none of the witnesses seem to have been theologians. Hence we cannot say whether some adviser on questions of icono­ graphy was retained, as had been the case when Ghiberti was commissioned to make the third pair of Baptistery doors. Vasari mentions most of the frescoes in a number of references scattered through the biographies of those artists who worked in the Sistine Chapel, but he gives only general titles to the pictures he mentions. It will be seen, however, that at least in one case his information en­ ables us to gain a better understanding of an iconographic problem. Otherwise there is hardly any evidence from written sources. The authors of Renaissance guide-books to Rome were never explicit about the Sistina frescoes; later they pay more attention to the works of Michelangelo than to those of his predeces­ sors. The many panegyrics written in honour of Sixtus and for the most part un­ published speak in flowery language about the splendours of the Vatican Palace and the Pope’s munificence as a patron of the arts, but they never concern them­ selves with detail.2 We must therefore approach our problems indirectly. Our most important evidence will be afforded by an iconological study both of individual scenes and of their arrangement in cycles. For this task we can draw 1 See below, Appendix A, p. 120. 2 The best-known of these panegyrics is Aurelius Brandolini’s De laudibus Sixti /JZ, extracts from which have been published by E. Müntz, Ues arts ä la cour des Papes, iii (Paris, 1882), 59-60, and L. D. Ettlinger, op. cit., pp. 273-4; see also Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 595-6. The following list of eulogies, now in the Vatican Library, does not claim to be complete: Ada de Montalto, Oratio ad Sixtum IV de eius laudibus, Vat. lat. 3568; Paulus Spi­ nosus, Carmen adSixtum IV, Vat. lat. 3587; Bartolomeus, Carmina ad Sixtum IV, Vat. lat. 3610; Rodericus de Sancta Ella, Contra impugnatores celibatus, ad Sixtum IV, Vat. lat. 3639; Donato Acciaiuoli, Oratio ad Sixtum IV

qua gratulatur ob eius electionem, Vat. lat. 13679; Jacobus de Horetis, Divo Sixto IV P.M.... dicatum carmen, Ottob. lat. 1329. Some praises of Sixtus, mainly of a political nature, are found in Benedetto Colucci’s addresses ; see A. Frugoni, Scritti inediti di Benedetto Colucci da Pistoja (Nuova Coll, di testi umanistici, ii) (Florence, 1939). An anonymous poem about the works of Sixtus IV has been published by V. Pacifici, Un carme biografico di Sisto IV del 1477 (Tivoli, n.d.); the author is Robert Flemyng, as was discovered by A. Campana, ‘Roma di Sisto IV. Le Lucubranciunculae di Robert Flemyng’, Sirena dei Romanisti (1948), pp. 88-89.

Introduction

9

on comparative pictorial material as well as on current Bible commentaries, like Petrus Comestor’s Historia Scbolastica, and last but not least on theological writings of the period, including those by Sixtus himself. We are too easily inclined to dismiss Sixtus as a purely ‘political’ Pope, or to regard the great benefactor of the Vatican Library as a humanist and collector of classical texts. But there is little evidence that Sixtus concerned himself much with the classics and it should be obvious that the scope of the Library was much wider. On the other hand we know that Sixtus was one of the foremost theologians of his time. The list of books in his study at the time of his death happens to have survived and attests vividly to the use he made of the theo­ logical sections of the Library;1 we can still get glimpses of his critical reading from the marginalia in some books which entered the Vatican Library from his private collection.2 Before becoming General of the Franciscan Order in 1464 Francesco della Rovere had taught with great success at several Italian universities and it is recorded that scholars like Bessarion attended his lectures and admired his intellect.3 In 1456 he took a leading part in the disputation between Franciscans and Dominicans concerning the Holy Blood of Christ and his contribution to this celebrated quarrel was published as a book in 1472. This treatise, to which repeated reference will have to be made, employs all the sophisticated appara­ tus of scholastic argument and brings to bear on the subject not only a sharp mind but also a wealth of learning. Sixtus’s reading ranged widely from the early Fathers to works of the great Franciscans, and it is for this reason that we must study the Sistine Chapel in the light of the Pope’s theological knowledge.4 The outlook of so powerful a theologian would have played a decisive part in the character of the imagery and in some cases his own writings may furnish texts illustrated in the frescoes. It should not be forgotten that Sixtus bestowed special care and a great deal of 1 E. Müntz and P. Fabre, Ea bìbliothèque du Vatican au i)e siede (Paris, 1887), pp. 265-8. 2 A. Monaci, ‘Autografi di Sisto IV nella Biblioteca Vaticana’, Archiv. Francisc. Hist, iv (1911), 179 ff.; W. Lampen, OFM, Joannes Duns Scotus et Sancta Sedes (Rome, 1929), P· 13 J Teetaert, s.v. ‘Sixte IV’, Enc. Théol. Cath., xiv (1939); A. Maier, ‘Alcuni autografi di Sisto IV’, Riv. di Storia della Chiesa, vii (1953), 411· 3 L. v. Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste im Zeitalter der Reformation, 5th ed., ii (Freiburg, 1923), 213. 4 Sixtus’s three treatises, De Sanguine Christi, De futuris

contingentibus, and De potentia Dei, were printed together in Rome in 1472. One of the manuscripts in the Vatican Library (Vat. lat. 1051) is the dedication copy made for Paul II, and another (Vat. lat. 1052) has marginal notes in Sixtus’s hand. Pastor, op. cit., p. 435, and others refer to a fourth treatise dealing with the Immaculate Con­ ception. It has been shown that this attribution rests on a misunderstanding. See A. Matanic, ‘Xystus Pp IV scripsitne librum “De conceptione beatae Virginis Mariae”?’, Antonianum, xxix (1954), 573-8.

IO

Introduction

money on this Chapel and there are indications that it held a special place among his many Roman endowments. It should also be borne in mind that the Sistina is no ordinary palace chapel, as was for example Fra Angelico’s chapel of S. Ni­ colai. It is the grand ceremonial sanctuary of the papal residence, not a place for daily private devotions. Here the Pope attended mass on the great feasts or when important state visitors were in Rome and here the conclaves were meant to be held. The decorations chosen must have been selected with these functions in mind and the Sistina must have been planned from the outset as much as a visual symbol of the Church and of papacy as was—even in a different way—the basilica of St. Peter. Would it not be quite unhistorical to assume that those responsible for the adornment of this Chapel thought only of colourful splendour and the display of worldly glory? There is no proof that Sixtus himself outlined the programme for the chapel decorations, but considering his whole personality it seems more than likely that he determined at least the general theme. If anywhere in his many secular and religious foundations, it is in this Chapel where we can expect to find his theology and his policies as Pope visibly expressed. It is obvious from at least three other instances that Sixtus was fully aware of the efficacy of visual symbols. He gave to the Roman people the famous classical bronze statues to be placed on the Capitol as ‘monumentum priscae excellentiae virtutisque’;1 he had a cycle of frescoes painted in the Hospital of S. Spirito which told the story of his own rise to power;2 and he himself prescribed the setting for his own tomb.3 If Sixtus did indeed set himself a monument in the Chapel which still bears his name, it was not a monument to his worldly exploits but one to the role he assigned to his high office. One of Sixtus’s own early treatises, De Potentia Dei, deals briefly with the functions of the Pope in the order of things. But we have further sources from which we can discover Sixtus’s ideas about the papacy: his own bulls and briefs, and a number of treatises by various hands on the powers of the Pope. Such treatises were produced in large numbers from the end of the thirteenth century onwards. The conciliar controversy of the early fifteenth century acted as a stimulus to the composition of yet more such tracts and Sixtus would natu­ rally have been familiar with this literature. Hence the imagery of the Chapel will have to be set against this type of papal propaganda. 1 For a discussion of the donation and inscription see W. S. Heckscher, Sixtus IV aeneas insignes statuas Romano populo restituendas censuit (The Hague, 1955).

2 See above, p. 4, n. 4. 3 L. D. Ettlinger, op. cit., p. 268.

Introduction

II

Sixtus’s work for his Chapel deserves our attention not only because the Pope called to Rome some of the best painters of his day and thus left us an entrancing example of Quattrocento artistry, but equally because here in the heart of Christendom Sixtus must have wished to create a significant monument at a moment when the Papacy had finally emerged victorious from a long struggle.

I

The History of the Building and its Decoration A. THE BUILDING

F

| Sistine Chapel is erected over a simple rectangular ground-plan, I the inside measurements being 40-00 m.x 13-60 m. It is larger than J, any other chapel in either Vatican or Lateran and of the papal palace chapels only that of Clement VI at Avignon is bigger. The very size clearly indicates the special character of this edifice. The height of 20-70 m. is also remarkable. The side and entrance walls—originally also part of the altar-wall—are divided into three horizontal zones, separated by bold cornices. The lowest zone is decorated with painted curtains patterned with the Rovere emblem, the oak. The middle zone displays the narrative frescoes separated from each other by Corinthian pilasters adorned with grotesques. In the uppermost zone full­ length portraits of the earliest thirty Popes are painted between the windows in illusionistic niches. The deliberate arrangement, and in particular the amount of available wall space, suggest that the chapel must have been designed with these particular decorations in mind. Similar decorative schemes had been used in the old basilica of St. Peter’s and in S. Paolo fuori le Mura. Even closer parallels, including the painted curtains in the lowest zone, are known from Sta Maria Antiqua and S. Urbano a Caffarella, near the Via Appia. These painted decorations and their arrangement are not the only strikingly traditional elements in the Sistine Chapel. The tessellated floor of coloured marble is yet another distinctive feature derived from much earlier models and so is the screen, the Cancellata, originally dividing the Chapel into two equal parts, but moved during the sixteenth century so as to enlarge the space in front of the altar. It is possible that all these archaizing details were introduced con­ sciously in order to mark a return to early Christian usage and such a course cannot be ruled out in the case of a building dating from a period which witnessed a renewed interest in the theology of the Fathers. But it seems more

History of the Puilding and its Decoration

13

likely that this ceremonial chapel, rising on a site probably used since Carolin­ gian days, followed a pattern set by its predecessors. It is therefore necessary to consider briefly the history of the Vatican palace in so far as it is relevant for our purpose. Even though up to the fourteenth century the Lateran was the principal residence of the Popes, a palace adjoining the church erected over the tomb of St. Peter had been in existence since the pontificate of Leo III (795-816). It seems to have been situated below the Vatican hill and to the north of the atrium of the basilica, that is to say in the region where we find the Sistina to-day,1 and it is likely that this first Vatican palace already contained a chapel on or near the site of the present one. For Nicolaus III (1277-80), when extending the palace up the hill, seems to have respected an existing layout of buildings. An in­ scription of 1278 (now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori) refers to this:‘. .. 55. P. D. Nicolaus P III fierifecit palatia etaulam maiorem et capellam et alias domos antiquas amplificavit pontificates sui anno primo?2 This enlarged capella magna must there­ fore also have been in the northern or north-western part of the palace; Ehrle and Egger located it ‘in der Nähe und in der Richtung der heutigen Sistina’.3 The palace also contained at least one smaller chapel for daily devotions and there are indications that the bigger chapel was destined for the more important papal ceremonies. It was here, for example, that St. Brigid was canonized by Boniface IX in 1391.4 As far as we can make out from the few surviving records about building operations and repairs, this thirteenth-century chapel probably embodied two features which were also incorporated in the Chapel of Sixtus IV: a screen and a gallery for the choir. The Chapel, which must have fallen into disrepair while the Popes resided in Avignon, was restored during the pontificate of Martin V (1417-31). At that time it was still known as the capella major palatii, or simply as capella magna. When Nicolaus V (1447-55) made tentative plans to improve and enlarge the Vatican palace, he seems also to have envisaged a new capella magna, but the account left by his biographer, Gianozzo Manetti, is neither detailed nor clear enough to allow any definite conclusions.5 We know nothing about the exact 1 F. Ehrle and H. Egger, Der Vatikanische Palast in seiner 'Entwicklung bis zur Mitte des ig. Jahrhunderts (Studi e documenti per la storia del Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano, II) (Vatican City, 1935), p. 30. 2 Forcella, Iscrizioni delle chiese e d’altri edificii di Roma, xiii (Rome, 1879), p. 25. Über Pontificato (ed. Duchesne), ii, 458, n. 4.

3 Ehrle and Egger, op. cit., p. 71. About a cancellata in the earlier chapel see p. 72. 4 Ibid., p. 87. 5 Manetti’s text, now reprinted and revised by T. Magnuson, Studies in Roman Quattrocento Architecture (Figura ix) (Stockholm, 1958), pp. 351-62. About Manetti as biographer of Nicolaus V see pp. 55-64.

i4

History of the Building and its Decoration

size of this chapel and can only say that Nicolaus wanted a chapel large enough for papal ceremonies.1 When Sixtus became Pope in 1471 he almost immediately started a vigorous building activity all over Rome. The Aqua Virgo was begun in 1472, the Ponte Sisto during the following year, and restorations at SS. Apostoli, St. Peter’s, and the Vatican Palace had been taken in hand well before the jubilee of 1475. There is, however, no indication that the new palace chapel was planned so early and Platina’s biography of the Pope, covering his reign only up till 1474, makes no mention of it. It seems therefore almost certain that the chapel was begun some time after 1475, but we^ before the autumn of 1481, when work on its decoration had already been begun.2 Like the older chapel the Sistina was built on the first floor of the palace so as to be on the same level as the aulae, and a special staircase—later replaced by the Scala Regia—led up to it by way of the aula primal We cannot say, however, whether the Sistine Chapel rises exactly on the foundations of the older struc­ ture, which it replaced, or whether it is larger. The Sala Regia, abutting on the east end of the Chapel, stands on the site of the former aula prima and hence the east wall of the Sistine Chapel must follow the course of the east wall of the old chapel. Since the west wall is to-day—and always was—an outside wall, the Sistine Chapel could have been extended in this direction beyond the old foundations. Unfortunately it is not recorded to which saint the original capella magna had been dedicated. Pope Sixtus, who officially introduced the feast of the Immacu­ lata (8 December) into the church calendar, wished to express his great venera­ tion for the Virgin in the title of his new palace chapel when he dedicated it on 15 August 1483 to the Assunta. It is possible, however, that already the pre­ decessor of the Sistine Chapel bore the title, or one of the titles, of the Virgin Mary. For twenty-five years before its consecration Domenico de’ Domenichi had treated the question whether the feast of the Immaculate Conception should be celebrated by the Church and in the course of his argument he had pointed out that this feast was indeed regularly celebrated in front of the Pope and the Curia in the capella papalis, adding that this particular service rested not on some 1 Magnuson, op. cit., p. 149, suggests that this chapel would have been larger than the earlier one, but since Manetti gives no measurements, this claim cannot be proved; see also L. v. Pastor, 'Päpste, ii, 654. 2 O. Pollack, in Thieme-Becker, ix (Leipzig, 1913),

388-9, s.v. ‘Dolci’, states that the building was begun in 1473 but gives no evidence. 3 Ehrle and Egger, op. cit., p. 71. See also Magnuson, op. cit., plan ii.

History of the Building and its Decoration

15

binding liturgical rule, but on custom only. Such a custom would have been most likely to develop in a chapel bearing the name of the Virgin.1 None of the surviving records tell us whom Sixtus entrusted with the design of the Chapel. Vasari2 names as architect the little-known Baccio Pontelli, who was certainly employed by the Pope in other instances, and we have no reason to distrust his word. But in any case the Sistine Chapel is hardly the work of an original architect and its strictly utilitarian structure is designed on traditional lines so as to serve its liturgical functions and at the same time to allow for the display of a rich wall decoration. B. THE FRESCOES: THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

Of the records relating to the decoration of the Chapel the earliest is a drawing (now in the Uffizi, no. 711) presumed to be the design for the ceiling, inscribed in a hand which is perhaps that of Antonio da San Gallo: per la capella di Sisto di mano di piermatteo d’Amelia. Non si fece cosi. La fatta Michelangelo poi a fiure come si vede in opera.3 It is a very plain affair: the ground is sky-blue and deco­ rated with an irregular pattern of golden stars; the lunettes are framed by simple painted profiles, springing from acanthus leaves in the corners of the spandrels, and the arms of Sixtus over the two shorter sides (Pl. 34 a). It is generally believed that the vaulted ceding of the Chapel was originally painted in accordance with this design, but we have no firm evidence that it was ever executed, and we should not make light of San Gallo’s note on the drawing. True enough, a line from a poem by Aurelio Brandolini has repeatedly been adduced to prove that the Sistina originally was ‘a sanctuary covered by a blue starry sky’:4 Hie ubi sydereum consurgit ad aethera templum .. .5 but the word sydereum need not describe a ceiling adorned with stars and it is more likely that the phrase sydereum templum should be understood metaphori­ cally, indicating a ‘heavenly’ or excellent building.6 Moreover, when Vasari wrote that Julius II was persuaded to have the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel decorated per memoria di Sisto suo %io7 he may be implying that by 1508 the 1 Domenico de’ Domenichi’s Quaestio de celebratione Jesti conceptionis Beatae Mariae Virginis is preserved in MS. Vat. lat. 5869, fols. 44r~48r. It is summarized and discussed by H. J. Jedin, Studien über Domenico de’ Domenichi(Akad. d. Wissenschaftenu. Literatur, Mainz; Abh. d. Geistes- u. socialwiss. Ki., v), 1957, pp. Z45~7· 2 Vasari (Milanesi), ii, 647. See also above, p. 9, n. 4.

3 Steinmann, Kapelle, p. 191, n. 2. 4 Ibid., p. 192. 5 E. Muntz, L,es arts à la cour des Papes, iii (Paris, 1878). 135· . . . _ 6 Fornellini, Totius latinitatis lexicon, vi (Prati, 1871), s.v. ‘sidereus’, § 2. 7 Vasari (Milanesi), vii, 173.

16

History of the Building and its Decoration

vault was, in fact, still undecorated. There is no indication in Vasari’s text that any previous work had to be removed before Michelangelo could start his frescoes, but we read that Julius volse ancora ... che si guastassi lefacciate che avevano già dipinto al tempo di Sisto i maestri innanzi, a luià To whichever part of the origi­ nal decoration this may refer—and it may apply only to the figures of the Popes in the clerestory—we have in this passage an indication of plans of Julius II which would have involved the destruction of paintings done in the time of his uncle. · About the artist whom San Gallo mentions as the master of the ceiling design we know very little and that little makes his participation in the work at the Sistina likely, but by no means certain. Pier Matteo d’Amelia was a minor Umbrian decorative painter,12 whom we first meet in 1467 as a pupil and assistant of Fra Filippo Lippi in Spoleto, where he must have been working together with Fra Diamante, also later to be employed by Sixtus IV. We do not know when Pier Matteo arrived in Rome since all payments to him recorded there date only from the time of Innocent VIII.3 In June 1480 he was in Orvieto and was paid for decorating with golden stars the figures of an Annunciation group;4 in the autumn of the same year he w'as still working at Orvieto Cathedral and further payments are recorded also in June and July 1481.5 But early in 1482 Pier Matteo must have been in Rome because a minute of the Orvieto Opera del Duomo says that he should be asked to return from there in order to paint the new choir chapel.6 Since we have no documents indicating a sojourn in Rome between his working in Spoleto and Orvieto,7 we must conclude that the design for the ceiling decoration was made after July 1481—the date of the last recorded payment in Orvieto—and before February 1482 when he was ordered to come back quando citius potest. If the ceiling was actually executed by Pier Matteo d’Amelia it would also have been done at about that time. Such a date seems likely also in the light of the documents of October 1481 and January 1482, relating to the murals. It can hardly be a coincidence of dates that both ceiling and walls should have been handed over to the painters some time during the latter part of 1481. This shows that the structure of the 1 Vasari (Milanesi), vii, 174. 2 His name is sometimes wrongly given as Pier Matteo Serdenti. For the correct name see U. Gnoli, Pittori e miniatori nell’ Umbria (Spoleto, 1923), pp. 243 ff., and the same author’s paper in Polletino d'arte, n.s., iii (1924), 307 ff.

3 Müntz in Archivio di storia dell'arte, ii (1889), 479-81. 4 L. Fumi, Il Duomo di Orvieto (1891), p. 298, docu­ ment CXXXVII. 5 op. cit., pp. 396 and 457. 6 op. cit., p. 396. 7 Gnoli, op. cit., p. 243.

History of the Building and its Decoration

17

Chapel cannot have been completed much earlier, though it does not throw any light on the starting date of the building operations. The first of these documents is a commission for ten paintings and is dated 27 October 1481; the other is an assessment for paintings executed in four bays of the Chapel dated 17 January 1482. Both are drawn up between Giovanni de Dolci, the ‘Clerk of Works’ to the Pope, and the four painters Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Rosselli, and Perugino.1 Two entirely different interpretations of the documents have been offered and these must be considered briefly, as in one way or another they have influenced the interpretation of the Sistine frescoes. Steinmann2*held that by October 1481 only the ten frescoes mentioned in the contract still remained to be painted and that the assessment of January 1482 referred to work already completed when the contract of the previous October was drawn up. As we shall see presently, in this respect Steinmann was certainly right, but his suggestions about the progress of the murals cannot be accepted since they do not allow for an orderly sequence of work. Steinmann thought that by October 1481 Perugino had completed the whole altar-wall with the Assumption in the centre and the flanking scenes of the Finding of Moses and the Nativity. He also assumed that at that date each of the four painters had furnished a trial-piece, ein Probchild} He further lists three frescoes which he connects with contemporary events and which therefore can in his opinion not have been begun before the second half of 1482. They are—in roughly chrono­ logical order—the Crossing of the Red Sea, which he believed to commemorate the battle of Campo Morto (21 August 1482). Since he assumed that this fresco in its present form was an afterthought he had also to assume that its insertion necessitated certain alterations in the preceding fresco, Botticelli’s picture of the Youth of Moses. During the same time the Corah fresco would have been exe­ cuted, for—as already mentioned—Steinmann saw in it an allusion to the anti­ papal agitation of Andreas Zamometic which reached its climax during the summer of 1482 and ended only with the archbishop’s arrest in December of the same year.4 Perugino’s Charge to St. Peter, allegedly containing a portrait of Alfonso of Calabria, who came to Rome at the end of 1482,5 would also have to 1 The document was first published by Gnoli, Archivio di storia dell’arte, vi (1893), 128. For a corrected version see H. Pogatscher’s text in an appendix to Stein­ mann, Kapelle, pp. 633-5. Compare also A. Groner, ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der sixtinischen Wandfresken’, Zeitschrift für Christliche Kunst, xix (1906), cols. 163 ff. 817149

The document is reprinted below, pp. 120-3, with a few minor corrections. 2 Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 187 ff. 3 Ibid., p. 189. 4 Ibid., pp. 262 ff. 5 Ibid., pp. 344 f.

c

18

History of the Building and its Decoration

have been unfinished at that time. Finally, so Steinmann’s argument runs, Signo­ relli, who according to Vasari executed the last two frescoes of the Moses cycle, cannot have arrived on the scene before the autumn of 1482? If we accepted this interpretation of the documents we would be faced with a very odd situation concerning the sequence of work done in the Chapel. By October 1481 Perugino would have completed the altar-wall, but he and his three colleagues would also have furnished four unspecified frescoes in some indeterminate part of the Chapel. Furthermore, leaving aside what may have been done about painting the papal portraits in the clerestory, work on the narrative frescoes would have proceeded in a completely haphazard fashion. The Chapel would not have been painted from one end to the other—as seems reasonable to assume a priori—Bsxt some paintings were executed here and there while unexplained gaps were left in the very parts of both cycles to be filled conveniently in the latter part of 1482 with allusions to political events that had occurred in the interval. This is really expecting too much of coincidence.1 2 Recognizing the weakness of Steinmann’s scheme, A. Groner suggested a different interpretation,3 which has been accepted by some scholars. He thought that the contract of October 1481 referred to the first ten frescoes to be executed (not the remaining ten, as Steinmann had assumed), but he fails to explain why so arbitrary a number out of the total of 14 frescoes should have been com­ missioned at this moment. He has to admit, of course, that the document clearly speaks of decorative work already begun, but he assumes this to have been Perugino’s painting of the altar-wall.4 Groner further thought that the four con­ tracting painters had agreed among themselves to execute each one pair of fres­ coes on opposite walls, that is to say Perugino would have undertaken to paint the Circumcision of the Son of Moses and the Baptism., Botticelli the Youth of Moses and the Temptation, and so forth. But this suggestion—which cannot be corro­ borated from documentary evidence—involves Groner at once in discrediting Vasari and in a new attribution of the Red Sea fresco. Vasari had named Cosimo Rosselli as the painter of this fresco, but in Groner’s reconstruction it had to be 1 Vasari (Milanesi), ili, 691; Steinmann, Kapelle, p. 189; Μ. Salmi, Cuea Signorelli (Novara, 1953), pp. 47 f., dis­ cusses the dates suggested for Signorelli’s stay in Rome. 2 J. Mesnil, ‘Botticelli à Rome’, Rivista d’arte, iii (1905), 112 ff., criticized Steinmann’s interpretation of the relevant documents and referred to his ‘fantaisistes hypothèses’. See particularly pp. 113-15.

3 A. Groner, op. cit. See also the same author’s ‘Uber die Historienzyklen der Sixtinischen Kapelle’, Archivfür Christliche Kunst, xiv (1906), 13-17, 29-32, 41-42, 53-55, 59-62, 72-74. 4 Groner’s hypothesis was accepted by G. de Francovich, ‘Benedetto Ghirlandajo’, Dedalo, vi (1926), 710.

History of the Building and its Decoration

19

Ghirlandajo’s work so as to form a pair with his Calling of the First Apostles opposite.1 Groner makes light of the assessment of January 1482: according to his inter­ pretation it simply means that four of the ten frescoes commissioned three months earlier were now ready for inspection and the fixing of payment. His remaining arguments are even more speculative, for he claims that each of the original four artists undertook to paint one more fresco some time during 1482, but that work in the Chapel was slowed down because political events had temporarily lessened the Pope’s interest in his palace chapel. There is no direct or indirect evidence for any of this—on the contrary, we know through Jacopo da Volterra how impatient the Pope was to see the work completed.2 In view of the fact that neither Steinmann’s nor Groner’s interpretation of these two vital documents is convincing, it seems necessary to scrutinize them afresh, calling to our aid the only other early evidence of any value: Vasari’s Lives.3 The contract dated 27 October 1481 is headed: Locatio picture capelle magne nove palacii apostolici sive deputatio ad ipsam depingendam. It should be noted that in this heading there is no indication restricting the work to any particular part of the Chapel; rather it is couched in such general terms that it can only refer to the painting of the whole Chapel. Since a contract is a legal document the wording must have been carefully chosen—here as much as in other known cases—and the very wide reference to ‘painting of the new Chapel’ seems of considerable importance. The contracting parties are Giovanni de Dolci, superstans sive commissarius fabricaepalacii apostolici^ and the four painters Cosimo Rosselli, Botticelli, Dome­ nico Ghirlandajo, and Pietro Perugino. Dolci is not introduced as the architect of the Chapel (and there is not a word in the contract which would allow us to assign this role to him),4 but as a papal official, and the four painters are listed 1 A. Groner, Zeitschr. f. Christi. Kunst, xix (1906), col. 230 S. 2 Jacopo da Volterra, Diarium Romanum, ed. E. Ca­ rusi (Muratori, Race, degli Stor. Ital. xxiii, 3) (Città di Castello, 1904), p. 206. 3 The account given by Francesco Albertini, Opus­ culum de mirabilibus novae et veteris Urbis Romae (1510), reprinted by R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topografico della Città di Roma, iv (Rome, 1953), 5°^, only mentions the names of the participating artists. He calls one of them Filippo, but this is hardly a mistaken reference to Filippino Lippi, as has sometimes been assumed. It can only be a wrong abbreviation of Rosselli’s

name, who was called in full Cosimo Filippi Laurentii Rosselli. 4 Steinmann’s interpretation of Dolci’s role as the major architect of Sixtus IV is open to doubt. The pay­ ments made to his estate after his death never refer to him unambiguously as an architect. See for example Steinmann, Kapelle, p. 628 (Document 1): . . . edificiorum per quondam .. . Johanninum ... in capella et aliis membris palacii apostolici ac in arce Civitevetule factorum tenus etc. .. . The same terminology is to be found in document 2, p. 629. We further find references to payments pro fabrica capelle majoris (p. 630), and finally the following passage: creditor camere pro expensis fabricarum capelle

20

History of the Building and its Decoration

without distinction. Hence this contract in no way corroborates Vasari’s asser­ tion that the Pope had called Botticelli to Rome in order that he might direct the decoration of the Sistine Chapel.1 About the task of the painters the text of the commission is quite explicit and unambiguous: picturam capelle magne none dicti palacii apostolici a capite altaris inferius videlicet decern historias testamenti antiqui et novi cum cortinis inferius ad depingendam .... This can only imply that the artists were told to execute ten stories from the Old and New Testaments with the (painted) curtains below and these decorations were to run along the side walls starting from the altar-wall.2 To this are added the crucial words: prout inceptum est, and they can only mean that part of the Chapel had already been decorated in the same manner and was to serve as a model for the rest. They must also mean that the ten new frescoes were to be of the same good quality, particularly since the contract contained the customary clause about the guaranteeing of good workmanship. In other words: the decorations commissioned in October 1481 had to conform in every respect with certain work already in hand. This is also reaffirmed by the follow­ ing passage:promiseruntipsi depictores... dictas decern historias cum earum cortinis... depingere et finire hinc ad quintam decimam diem mensis marciiproxime futuri cum precio solutionis et extimationis ad quam sen quod extimabuntur istoriae jam factae in dicta capella per eosdem pictores. The understanding of this sentence hinges on the meaning of the word jam. For grammatical as well as for logical reasons we should understand jam as referring to the past in terms of the present, i.e. the moment of drawing up the contract. Since the contract stipulates that all majoris et arris Civitevetule ac diversorum in palatio factorum ... (p. 631). There is no cogent reason why fabrica should mean here the actual fabric or building; on the contrary, the plural fabricarum and the phrase in capella seem to suggest that Dolci acted as a Commissioner or Clerk of Works, who had to supervise certain buildings. A detailed study of the documents, which Pogatscher published as an appendix to Steinmann, makes it clear, moreover, that these payments may have been in part reimbursements for money laid out by Dolci. Further the word fabrica usually means the building office, a usage which has been taken over into Italian (see F. Edler, M Glossary of Medieval Terms of Business, Italian Series [Cambridge, Mass., 1934], s.v. Fabrica'). There is absolutely no proof that Dolci designed the Sistine Chapel and Vasari may have been right after all when he named Baccio Pontelli as Sixtus’s principal architect and as designer of the Sistina, Vasari (Milanesi), ii, 647 ff. See also E. Lavagnino, ‘L’architetto di Sisto IV’, Id Arte, xxvii (1924), 4 ff.

1 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 316-17. 2 Steinmann, Kapelle, p. 187, interprets this passage correctly when he translates vorn Altar abwärts. Groner (op. cit., col. 168) says: ‘Dolci überträgt somit den vier Malern die ersten zehn Bilder des Zyklus beginnend über dem Altar rückwärts. . . . Für den Lateiner kann daran, dass diese Auffassung die einzig mögliche ist, kein Zweifel obwalten, mag der Inhalt des Satzes auch dem Kunsthistoriker einiges Kopfzerbrechen verur­ sachen.’ The irony of these remarks seems a little un­ warranted considering Groner’s own fanciful transla­ tion of the simple word inferius. There can be little doubt that the words a capite must refer to the head or choir­ end of the chapel. (See Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, 11 (1883), s.v. Caput, caput ecclesiae—pro capitio, seu ea ecclesiae parte ubi altare erigitur·, see also s.v. capitium·. pars aedis sacrae quae vulgo presbyterium.) In the same document the word inferius is used only a line later, again meaning ‘below’ : cum cortinis inferius.

History of the Building and its Decoration

21

frescoes should be finished within six months and fixes a substantial penalty in case of default, it does not make sense to promise the valuation of work ‘already’ done for 15 March 1482 when all frescoes had to be complete. After the words ad quam we should add diem, so that the end of the passage means: iby which date will be valued the pictures already painted.’ Our interpretation is in fact borne out by the terms of the estimate dated 17 January 1482.1 This document remains meaningless unless we place it in the context just outlined. Nobody discussing it seems to have paid any attention to the heading: Compromissum super estimationepicture in quatuorprimis istoriisfactis in capella maiore pape. In these words the frescoes are unmistakably described as the first four frescoes (and by implication the first four bays) and the word compromissum—a mutual promise to abide by the decision of an arbiter—seems to hark back to the agreement of October 1481, which had promised precisely such an action for the work already begun. On the other hand, it is hardly per­ missible to assume that this valuation can refer to the first four of the ten frescoes commissioned in 1481, for no provision for such an intermediate estimate is made in the contract. Again, though no distinction is made betw’een the four masters, it is reason­ able to say that each of them had completed one istoria. This term is somewhat loosely used and does not seem to refer to the narrative frescoes only. The con­ tract had spoken of decern istorias cum earum cortinis and the assessment of re­ muneration grants 250 ducats to each artist pro dictis quatuor istoriis cum dictis cortinis cornicibus et pontificibus videlicet pro qualibet istoria . . ., which means that the term istoria refers not only to the narrative paintings but can include the painting of each bay. This fact makes the word istoria important for yet another reason. The contract of 1481 had been concluded with four different artists who were jointly and individually—omnibus et singulis ipsi depictores obligarunt-sesponsible for themselves and their assistants. Now, in January 1482, each of them is paid for work done in one bay of the Chapel. It is therefore logical to assume that in each case the papal portraits in the clerestory were the responsi­ bility of the master to whose lot had fallen the main fresco below. Admittedly, the contract of 1481 does not specifically mention these portraits, but they are mentioned in the assessment.2 Art historians have given the portraits to a 1 See p. 122. 2 Steinmann, Kapelle, p. 186, states that the normal practice of fresco technique to work from the top down­ wards makes the completion of the papal portraits

obligatory before the historical frescoes could be started. But this argument does not hold good in this case, as a broad cornice runs between the clerestory and the lower part of the wall.

22

History of the building and its Decoration

number of hands but with more sense and modesty than our modern ‘attributionisti’ Agostino Taja solved this problem as early as 1750, adding: non si trovando di essi [sc. ritratti deipapi] notizia precisa scritta, ma questo si scorge però dal­ l’uniformità della maniera, per quanto riconoscer si puote in una sola figura in confronto di un istoriato.1 If we now consider the two documents together in the light of the preceding discussion, we arrive at a very simple result. By October 1481, when Rosselli, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, and Perugino were commissioned to paint ten further frescoes in the Sistine Chapel a capite altaris inferius, these same four masters had already been at work in four bays of the chapel. Disregarding the caput capellae —the altar-wall—there were actually fourteen frescoes in all to be painted: six along each side-wall and two over the entrance. Our documents account for this number and we have to ask why the altar-wall should not have come into them. Unfortunately there exists no Grimaldi to have made a drawing of the altar­ wall before the Quattrocento decorations had to make room for Michelangelo’s work, and for a reconstruction of the original appearance we have to rely on a brief description in Vasari’s Life of Perugino2 and on a late fifteenth-century drawing in the Albertina reproducing only the altar-piece (Pls. 34 c and 44 b). In the clerestory, between the windows, now walled up, there must have been two, if not four, portraits matching the papal portraits along the other walls. We are inclined to think that there were, in fact, only two such portraits, namely those of Linus and Cletus, since the series now begins with Clement I on the north wall. True, we see four portraits painted on the entrance wall, but even if Christ and Peter did find a place in Platina’s Lives of the Popes, that is not sufficient reason why they should also appear on the walls of the Sistina, parti­ cularly in view of the fact that they figure so prominently in the historical 1 Agostino Taja, Descrizione del Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano (1750), p. 45. Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 201 ff., claimed that several of the papal portraits were painted by Fra Diamante. But neither Albertini nor Vasari men­ tions any work of his in the Sistina. In any case, since no absolutely certain works by Fra Diamante are known, attributions are worthless. (See G. Gronau, in ThiemeBecker, ix (1913), s.v. Diamante.) Steinmann has ad­ duced a document—discovered by Milanesi—according to which the Pope granted Fra Diamante a pension of 100 ducats from the income of the Badia of Poppi perche era valente depiniore ed aveva in Roma depinto alcune open nella cappella del Papa. (Steinmann, Rapelie, p. 203, docu­ ment 1.) There is nothing to indicate that these paintings were in the Sistine Chapel, and both the smaller palace

chapel and the Cappella del Coro at St. Peter’s qualify for the title cappella del Papa. It seems very unlikely that a substantial pension should be given for a few portraits and it would be even stranger that the Badia of Poppi should pay for work done in the Sistine Chapel, if—as all other documents clearly demonstrate—the papal treasury paid for all work done in the palace. Finally our interpretation of the assessment of January 1482 rules out the participation, even for the portraits, of any artist not connected with the workshop of one of the four contracting masters, and there is no reason to be­ lieve that Fra Diamante, who was an established master in his own right, had joined any workshop. 2 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 578-9.

History of the Building and its Decoration

23

frescoes underneath.Moreover the cycle of papal portraits in S. Paolo fuori le Mura began with a portrait of Linus.1 Below the clerestory Perugino, according to Vasari, had painted the frescoes with the Nativity and the Finding of Moses. N'isNi adds: . . . e nella medesima faccia dove e Valtare, fece la tavola in muro con P Assunsfone della Madonna, dove ginoc­ chioni ritrasse papa Sisto.2 This altar-piece must have been a rather remarkable picture, for as early as 1482—that is to say even before the Chapel had been com­ pleted and consecrated—Sigismondo dei Conti wrote of it: In fronte . . . altaris imago ipsius Virginis Mariae in coelum assumptae tanta arte depictum erat, ut sese humo atollere etin aethera tendere videretur.3 Only a few years previously (1479) Perugino had decorated the apse of the Cappella del Coro of St. Peter’s with a fresco of the Virgin and Saints, also including the kneeling figure of the Pope.4 We may therefore hazard the guess that the success of this painting must have prompted Sixtus to entrust Perugino once more with a similar task. But in the Sistine Chapel the altar-painting was an integral part of the decorations and must have been on a monumental scale, for it certainly was a mural and not a panel. Vasari’s wording—tavola in muro—may at first suggest a panel painting let into the wall or standing in front of it. But it can be demonstrated that he used the word tavola in a wide sense. He speaks of una tavola di marmop of una tavola di terracottap but when actually describing an altar-panel, as for example in the case of the Pollaiuolo painting for the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal in S. Miniato, he is precise in his description: una tavola a olio ... la quale fuposta su Paltare.7 Altar-pieces al fresco had been used in Italy from the Trecento onward. The painting by Lippo Vanni in the chapel of the Seminario Arcivescovile in Siena is one of the earliest known examples; Gozzoli had employed the same technique for the altar pictures of the Cappellino della Madonna delle Tosse in Castel Fiorentino8 and in S. Francesco inMontefalco. In the latter example the altar­ piece is flanked by narrative scenes from the life of St. Jerome. Perugino him­ self used this technique for an altar-piece when painting the Adoration together with its frame straight on the wall of Sta Maria delie Lacrime in Trevi, and Pinturicchio’s Assumption in the Rovere chapel of Sta Maria del Popolo in Rome is also a fresco. There is thus nothing unusual in this procedure and it can be 1 J. Garber, Wirkungen der frühchristlichen Gemälde- of Sixtus IV’, JWCI, xvi (1953), pl. 41a. zyklen (Berlin, 1918), p. 3. 5 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 124. 2 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 578. 6 Ibid., ii, 197. 3 Sigismondo dei Conti, Te storie de’ suoi tempi, i 7 Ibid., iii, 291. (Rome, 1905), 205. 8 E. Borsook, Tuscan Mural Painting (London, i960), 4 Reproduced by L. D. Ettlinger, ‘Pollaiuolo’s Tomb pls. 74-78.

24

History of the Building and its Decoration

observed that the fresco technique seems to have been employed particularly in places where an altar-piece on a large scale was required. The Assumption drawing in the Albertina (Inv. no. 4861) cannot be from the hand of Perugino himself but looks as if it were a somewhat timid copy by one of his pupils.1*iiiNevertheless there can be no doubt that this drawing reproduces the original altar-piece of the Sistine Chapel, for the kneeling ecclesiastic on the left with the tiara at his feet clearly bears the features of Sixtus IV (Pl. 34 c). We learn from the Albertina drawing that Perugino employed a simple for­ mula of composition also known to us from other (and later) renderings of the Assumption produced in his workshop, of which the large panel in Naples Cathedral is an almost exact replica of the Sistina design (Pl. 34^)? The event is depicted in two sharply separated zones: in the lower we have the Apostles with St. Peter recommending the kneeling Pope to the Virgin; above we see the Assunta standing upright in a mandorla formed by cherubim and supported by a choir of angels. It will be noted that the Virgin is drawn to a slightly larger scale than the Apostles. There are certain indications which allow us to determine the actual size of the painting over the altar and to reconstruct thereby the whole wall. In cases where the altar-piece forms an integral part of fresco decorations, we usually find that its scale is made to match that of the ensemble and that the figures are of approxi­ mately the same size as those on the neighbouring narrative frescoes. This rule applies even when a panel is placed upon the altar and surrounded by frescoes, as is the case with Ghirlandajo’s Adoration of the Shepherds in the Sassetti Chapel. We must therefore conjecture that the figures of Perugino’s Assumption cannot have been smaller than the principal figures in the Moses and Christ pictures, which are roughly fife-size; they might even have been somewhat larger. We know that before the alterations introduced when Michelangelo’s Dast judgement was painted the altar had been placed about 2 feet above the floor level of the rest of the Chapel. Allowing for the height of the mensa, a little space above it and the frame of the altar-piece there would hardly have been enough room to fit an Assumption of the dimensions just indicated below the cornice separating the zone with the painted curtains from that of the narrative frescoes above, and we must conclude that the altar-piece reached well into this 1 A. Stix and L. Fröhlich-Bum, Beschreibender Katalog der Handzeichnungen in der Graphischen Sammlung Albertina, iii (Vienna, 1926), no. 41, rightly as from the school of Perugino. The authors add unconvincingly ‘vielleicht

ein Modeletto aus der Werkstatt für den Auftrag­ geber’. 2 E. Camesca, Tutta la pittura del Perugino (Milan, 1959), pl. 227.

History of the Building and its Decoration zone and most likely to the second cornice, that is to say the one running under­ neath the clerestory. The Vienna drawing offers a further clue to such an arrange­ ment. It will be noticed that its upper edge is formed by a straight line, while with paintings of this particular subject it is more common to have a round­ headed top, as we find it for example on the Assumption in Naples, which in every other respect repeats the composition of the Sistina altar-piece down to details.1 But the use of a straight upper edge would be justified if the painting ran up to, or almost up to, a cornice, and a picture terminating in this manner also fits better into the decorative arrangement of the chapel. The height of such an altar-piece would have been approximately 18 feet, but it is not possible to give more precise measurements since the width and shape of the frame are unknown. No objections on technical grounds can be raised against conjecturing a monumental altar-piece of such dimensions since even bigger frescoes were painted during the Quattrocento. It seems now possible to reconstruct the original appearance of the west wall: in the centre w’as the upright oblong of Perugino’s Assumption^ reaching virtually through two ‘zones’, being flanked in the lower part by the painted curtains (aligned with those along the side walls) and in the upper part by two narrative frescoes representing the Finding of Moses on the left and the Nativity on the right. These two frescoes must have been rather less wide than the paintings on the other walls.2 If we reconstruct the altar-wall in this fashion, it will be easily seen that it differed considerably from the bays along the three other walls both in layout and in areas to be painted. Yet commissions and assessments of the fifteenth century usually paid careful attention to the size of paintings and to the amount of materials involved.3 Further, this wall was destined to display the important • 1 Note particularly the position of the donor and the kneeling apostle on the right. 2 Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 277-96, suggested a much smaller altar-piece and two narrative frescoes of the same size as those on the side walls. J. Wilde, ‘Der ursprüng­ liche Plan Michelangelos zum Jiingsten Gericht’, Die Graphischen Kilnste, n.f., i (1936), 8-10, believed that the rectangle visible at the bottom of the first drawing for the Dost Judgement (F. 20, Casa Buonarotti) indicated the frame of Perugino’s original altar-piece which was to be retained at that stage. This suggestion has been accepted by C. de Tolnay, Michelangelo, v (Princeton, i960), 24, and P. Barocchi, Michelangelo e la sua scuola (Acc. Tosc. di Scienze e Lettere, Studi, viii) (Florence 1962), pp. 177-9. The arguments in favour of this thesis, however,

are unconvincing and objections can be raised both on artistic and iconographie grounds. Briefly, such an arrangement would imply not only disparity of scale between Perugino’s and Michelangelo’s work, but also lead to the unlikely situation where an angel would throw one of the damned off the frame above the Assunta. Moreover it can be clearly seen that the figures of some of the damned overlap with the rectangle. It seems there­ fore that this rectangle cannot be connected with Michel­ angelo’s design for the Last Judgement. 3 M. Wackernagel, Der Dehensraum des Kilnstiers in der florentinischen Renaissance (Leipzig, 1938), pp. 127-37; H. Lerner-Lehmkuhl, Zur Struktur und Geschichte des Klorentiner Kunstmarkts im /j. Jahrhundert (Wattenscheid, 1936), pp. 33-36.

26

History of the Building and its Decoration

altar-piece and—most significant of all—the frescoes on this wall were bound to determine the scale and style of all the other paintings in the Chapel. It is therefore likely that the whole altar-wall had been commissioned separately from Perugino alone, and had been completed when the contract of October 1481 was drawn up. Such a hypothesis would add weight to our previous inter­ pretation of a phrase in that document: that the painters had only to work acapitealtarisinferius, which clearly excludes the altar-wall from this commission. We are assuming that by October 1481 Perugino had completed the painting of the entire altar-wall, but it is unfortunately impossible to say how long he had taken over it. His fresco in the apse of the Capella Sixti IV in St. Peter’s must have been completed in December 1479,1 knt it is doubtful whether at that time the Sistina was ready to be decorated and it also seems unlikely that frescoes should have been started during the winter months. In March 1481 Jacopo da Volterra talked of the Pope as holding services in a temporary chapel quousque aliud majus erit instauratum quod egregio ope re et magno sumptu re-aedificatur.z Never­ theless, by the end of the same year Perugino must have been at work on the altar-wall, for the same author said: nondum sacellum majus est absolutum, continua enim emblemate etpictura ornatur.3 Jacopo da Volterra was a conscientious chroni­ cler and the difference of phrasing may be significant. If work on painting the altar-wall was begun only after March 1481, it would mean that some (unspeci­ fied) part of that year and the first eight or nine months of the following could have been devoted to this task. This does not seem an unreasonably long period. When the four painters undertook to execute their ten frescoes within six months, they must have been hard pressed by the Pope and they may well have promised more than they could possibly fulfil. Gozzoli, while working in the Campo Santo, undertook to paint three frescoes per year and Ghirlandajo planned to take fully four years over the choir of Sta Maria Novella. J. Mesnil has suggested that each of the narrative frescoes in the Sistine Chapel would have taken at least four months to complete.4 We have now to consider in what order the work in the Chapel a capite altaris inferius would have progressed. The phrase suggests that the normal procedure in decorating churches and chapels was followed and that painting began with the fresco nearest to the altar-wall. The documents are silent on this point, but if we turn to Vasari’s account about the authorship of individual frescoes, we may 1 L. D. Ettlinger, loc. cit., p. 269. 2 Jacopo da Volterra, op. cit., p. 40. 3 Ibid., pp. 83-84.

4 J. Mesnil, ‘Botticelli k Rome’, Rivista d’arte, iii (1905), 117-18.

History of the Building and its Decoration

27

be able to decide in which order they were painted. In this way we can also dispose of Steinmann’s suggestion that certain changes were made during the course of work in order to accommodate allusions to contemporary events. Vasari states in the Life of Pinturicchio that he worked in Rome together with Perugino, without however giving any details, and in the biography of Bartolo­ meo della Gatta he asserts more specifically that this master painted a fresco in the Sistina together with Perugino and Signorelli.1 This means that Vasari re­ garded both Pinturicchio and Bartolomeo merely as assistants, and we can list the frescoes in accordance with the artists to whom he attributed them. (For the sake of convenience the frescoes have been numbered, beginning with the ones nearest to the altar-wall.)

ALTAR-WALL Perugino South wall ? Moses I Moses 2 Botticelli Moses 3 Rosselli ? Moses 4 Moses 5 Botticelli Moses 6 Signorelli

North wall Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ Christ

I

2 3 4 5 6

Perugino Botticelli Ghirlandajo Rosselli Perugino Rosselli

ENTRANCE WALL Moses 7 Signorelli

Christ 7 Ghirlandajo

The most striking thing about this tabulation is the proof that the first four frescoes of the Christ cycle are by the four masters with whom the contract of October 1481 was concluded, while it also shows that no such clear-cut attribu­ tions seem possible on the opposite wall. Vasari does not name the authors of the first and the fourth fresco. His attribution of the second fresco to Botticelli has never been seriously questioned and that of the third to Rosselli has been disputed by some scholars,2 while others have rightly accepted it, even if admitting a good deal of workshop collaboration.3 As to the fourth fresco, 1 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 216. z Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 432 ff., attributed the fresco to Piero di Cosimo and another pupil of Rosselli; Venturi, in Sioria, vir, 1, 581-2, to Fra Diamante; B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Florentine

School, i (London, 1963), 211, to ‘Utili’, ‘probably with Davide Ghirlandajo’. 3 G. de Francovich, loc. cit., attributes this fresco to Benedetto Ghirlandajo.

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History of the Building and its Decoration

modern critics are unanimous in their opinion that it comes from the workshop of Rosselli. There are some doubts as to the author of the first fresco, but on balance the stylistic evidence seems to point to collaboration between Perugino and his assistant Pinturicchio. This gives us the following sequence for the four frescoes: Moses i Perugino and Pinturicchio Moses 2 Botticelli Moses 3 Rosselli ' Moses 4 Rosselli We are thus led to the conclusion that the first four frescoes of the Christ cycle were executed before the rest and must be the istoriae referred to in the assess­ ment of January 1482, and that the remaining ten frescoes were commissioned in October 1481.1 It seems most likely that after finishing the four frescoes of the Christ cycle the artists should have turned to the opposite wall in order to start on the Moses cycle, and this would fit in with the above-mentioned practice of working from the altar towards the entrance. In the Sistina there is additional evidence that this method was observed, because Signorelli, who can only have arrived on the scene when all but two frescoes were completed, was alloted the last two of the Moses cycle farthest from the altar. It is strange, however, that the third and fourth frescoes of the Moses cycle seem both to be from the hand (and workshop) of Cosimo Rosselli, while judging by analogy of the opposite wall we should expect Ghirlandajo to have painted the fourth fresco. In fact, none of the frescoes of the Moses cycle are by him, but it is perhaps possible to account for this irregularity. Ghirlandajo must have been away from Rome for some time while work in the Sistina was still in progress. His presence in Florence is recorded in May 1482 for his marriage.2 During his absence Rosselli must have been allotted the Crossing of the Red Sea. In any case, after the completion of the first four frescoes on either wall, the working procedure seems to have been slightly changed. Perugino must have continued on the north wall with the Charge to St. Peter with Rosselli next to him working on the Last Supper and Botticelli painting the Rebellion of Corah on the opposite wall. After his return to Rome Ghirlandajo must have taken 1 Groner’s suggestion that the artists worked throughout the chapel on pairs of frescoes on opposite walls not only involves the re-attribution of the Red Sea fresco,

I ' breaks ' ' down ' - the - fifth - - bay where Botticelli and but also in Perugino worked opposite each other, 3 J. Mesnil, op. cit., p. 119.

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on the only remaining fresco of the Christ cycle: the Ascension over the entrance wall. This leaves only the last two frescoes of the Moses cycle, which Vasari attributed to Signorelli, writing: Chiamato poi dal detto Papa Sisto a lavorare nella cappella del Pala^yo, a concorren^a di tanti pittori, dipinse in quella due storie, che fra tante sono tenute le migliori. Uuna e il Pestamento di Mose al popolo Ebreo nell’avere veduto la terra dipromessione, e I’altra la morte sua.1 As has been said, Vasari also writes that Signorelli collaborated in one of the frescoes with Perugino and Bartolomeo della Gatta.2 It will be remembered that Signorelli’s name is not mentioned in either the commission of 1481 or the assessment of the following year, but the putative date of his arrival in Rome may help us to understand this puzzling problem. In August 1481 he was still in Cortona; in October 1482 he was commissioned by the Fraternity of S. Maria in S. Francesco di Lucignano in Vai di Chiano to paint the armadio del reliquiario and finally, in 1484, we know of his presence in Perugia and Gubbio. This leaves us with two alternatives for a stay in Rome: between August 1481 and October 1482, or at some time after this latter date. A sojourn in Rome 1481/2 for work in the Chapel can obviously be ruled out. Moreover, if our assumption is correct that the Chapel was painted from the altar toward the entrance wall, Signorelli’s two frescoes could only have been taken in hand at the very end. Since the Chapel was not dedicated until 15 August 1483 it is most likely that Signorelli did not arrive in Rome until well after October 1482.3 We may even be able to say why Signorelli should have been employed at all, in spite of the omission of his name from the contract of 1481. On 5 October 1482 Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and Botticelli were commissioned to paint the Sala dei Gigli of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, but on 31 Decem­ ber of the same year the commission to Perugino was revoked and given to Filippino Lippi instead.4 It seems remarkable that three out of the four artists who had worked together in the Sistine Chapel should jointly have received another commission on the same day. Besides, Cosimo Rosselli was also back in Florence by November 1482.5 His name does not appear with those of his former colleagues in the contract for the Signoria and there may have been some truth in Vasari’s anecdotes about a certain amount of animosity between 1 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 691. 2 Ibid, iii 216. 3 M. Salmi, op. cit., p. 42.

4 M· Canuti, IlPerugino, ii (Siena, 1951), 127 and documents 126 and 127; see also J. Mesnil, op. cit., p. 112. 5 Thieme-Becker, s.v. ‘Rosselli’.

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History of the Building and its Decoration

him and the others.1 In any case, it must be more than coincidence that the four artists of the original contract left Rome in the autumn of 1482 without having completed their allotted task. No certain answer to the question why this should have happened is, however, possible. It is obvious that the painters had not ful­ filled the stipulation of the contract to complete the remaining ten frescoes by 15 March 1482. Did Sixtus perhaps use this failure as an excuse and obtain in­ stead the services of Signorelli? Vasari, it will be remembered, tells us that the Pope called him to Rome to compete with the other artists, yet he could not have arrived before the four others left, since his contract in S. Francesco di Lucignano is dated 16 October 1482 and that of the Signoria 5 October. In that case the so-called competition would have been no more than a comparison between the completed works, which according to Vasari many decided in Signorelli’s favour. But there is another possibility of accounting for Signorelli’s work in the Chapel and we are inclined to regard it as the more likely of the two. Sixtus IV must have been notoriously slow in paying his debts. The heirs of Giovanni dei Dolci still received outstanding payments in the days of Innocent VIII, and bills for work in the Sistine Chapel were settled with Perugino as late as 1490, some six years after Sixtus’s death.2 The artists might simply have departed together in protest against default of payment. In any case, whatever the explanation may be, our analysis of the working procedure in conjunction with the extant docu­ ments corroborates Vasari’s assertion that Signorelli did take a share in deco­ rating the Chapel. We should add that the stylistic peculiarities of the Testament of Moses (Pl. 6) confirm these findings, while unfortunately the very last fresco of the cycle, St. Michael Defending the Body of Moses (Pl. 7), is repainted and does not allow any critical judgement. We have still to ask whether we can ascertain the artist who was in charge of the work, for it is obvious that there must have been a firm directing hand. Vasari stated boldly that Pope Sixtus had called Botticelli to Rome expressly for this purpose. But such a claim can only have been prompted by the Aretine historian’s notorious Tuscan pride and prejudice, for in 1481 Botticelli was still a comparatively untried artist with little experience in fresco painting. There was, however, already working in Rome a more practised master, and it can be demon­ strated with a fair degree of certainty that the Umbrian Perugino was entrusted with this responsibility, even though our documents are silent on this point. 1 Vasari (Milanesi), iii, 188.

2 Steinmann, Kapelle, pp. 629-33, 635-6.

History of the Puilding and its Decoration

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Perugino’s ascendancy over his colleagues can be inferred for a number of reasons. It has already been pointed out that in any case his paintings on the altar-wall must have determined the scale and composition of all other pictures in the Chapel, but he and his assistants were responsible also for the first fresco on both the north and the south wall. Finally it was he who executed the thematically most significant fresco of the Christ cycle: the Charge to St. Peter. It makes little difference whether he himself chose this particular fresco or whether it was allotted to him by the Pope. We find a slight confirmation of our hypothesis in two sixteenth-century references. The historian RaphaelMaffei believed that Perugino had decorated the Sistina all by himself.1 He may, of course, have misunderstood his sources, but it is also possible that he still knew that Perugino had in fact supervised the decoration of the Chapel. Paolo Giovio, when discussing Perugino’s style, also referred to his leading role in the Sistina, writing: Nemo enim illo divorum vultus et ora, praesertim Angelorum, blandius et suavius exprimebat, vel testimonio Nisti Ponti­ ficis, qui ei palmam detulit, quum in pingendo domestico templo artifices questosa contentione decertassent.2 C. THE COMPOSITION OF THE FRESCO CYCLES

The decoration of a room the size of the Sistine Chapel would have been a tremendous task under any circumstances, but here it was made even more complicated by the intricacies of the theological programme. Each of the frescoes contains within one frame a number of separate scenes. Sometimes there are only two, as in the first and third frescoes of the Moses cycle (Pls. i and 3), or the fourth fresco of the Christ cycle (Pl. 11), but in other cases there are as many as five (in the second fresco of the Christ cycle, Pl. 9), or even seven scenes (in the second fresco of the Moses cycle, Pl. 2), which had to be accom­ modated. As our iconological inquiry will presently show, the number of scenes within each frame must have been determined by theological considera­ tions and this implies that the executing artists were not free to make their own choice but were faced with a variety of compositional problems in each case. We know too little about Quattrocento working procedure to say how a scheme of decoration as extensive as that of the Sistine Chapel was planned 1 M. Canuti, op. cit., i, 57 and document no. 123. 2 Paolo Giovio, Fragmentum trium dialogorum, published by Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, vii

(Florence, 1809), 4. I should like to thank Mr. Michael Baxandall for bringing this text to my notice; it seems to have been overlooked by the biographers of Perugino.

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History of the Building and its Decoration

in detail, but we have a document—albeit drawn up some fifty years earlier— which gives us some indication of the collaboration between an artist and his scholarly adviser: Leonardo Bruni’s famous letter to the Committee of the Arte di Calimala in charge of the commission for the third door of the Baptistery.1 The composition of a large bronze door was a simple task when compared with the complex decoration of a whole chapel, but nevertheless Bruni found it necessary to append to his letter not only a fist of subjects proposed, but also a graphic scheme of their layout. He justified his choice of twenty scenes from the Old Testament by saying that they should answer two requirements: they should be illustri and significantly explaining the first as an aesthetic and the second as an iconographic category. In other words, he wished to suggest the representation of incidents which would not only make fine pictures but were at the same time of significant content. Referring to the latter demand he added: ‘But I should like to be at hand for the artist who has to design them, so that I can make him understand the significance of each story.’2 This would imply learned control down to details. We can be sure that control of a similar kind was exercised in the Sistine Chapel, and there would have been nothing unusual in this even in the late Quattrocento. Isabella d’Este’s humanist adviser, when commissioning the Triumph of Chastity for the Studiolo, was very firm with Perugino in this respect. The painter was told exactly what figures had to be in the picture and he was allowed to reduce their number only as long as the principal ones remained. But at the same time he was forbidden to introduce any fancies of his own accord.3 In the frescoes of the Sistina the narrative net is so closely woven, and we shall see later that the didactic purpose of almost every detail is made so plain, that there can have been little or no room for any fancy work on the part of the painters. For the moment we are only concerned with establishing the fact that there must also have been an artistic ‘master-plan’, for any visitor to the Chapel is at once struck by the unity and homogeneity of the paintings. There is a cohesion not only of theme, but also in composition and style, so compelling 1 R. Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti (Princeton, 1956), p. 161 and document 52, p. 372; see also E. H. Gombrich, ‘Apollonio di Giovanni’, JIECI, xviii (1955), 26. 2 R. Krautheimer, op. cit., p. 372: Io considero che le 20 historic della nuova porta . . . vogliono avere due cose princi­ palmente: Puna che siano illustri, Paltra che siano significanti.

Illustri chiamo quelle che possono ben pascere Pacchio con varietà di disegno, significanti chiamo quelle che abbino importanza degna di memoria. 3 The relevant documents are most conveniently printed together by M. Canuti, op. cit., ii, 212 ff.

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that even Michelangelo still paid his respects to it when painting the Last Judgement.1 It is therefore clear that very little can have been left to chance, even if the contract of 1481 does not speak of any division of labour. This may originally have been set down in some other document now lost, as such an omission is unusual. Definite sections of the walls were assigned to the artists invited to decorate the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio, and Signorelli had his tasks in Orvieto circumscribed very clearly. It is again the correspondence about Perugino’s work for Isabella d’Este which tells us something about the methods employed in order to impart artistic unity to a series of pictures painted for a single room by various masters. Perugino asked for the measurements of the foreground figures on Mantegna’s Parnassus before he began painting his own Triumph of Chastity and Isabella sent him a thread the length of the tallest figure. At a later stage he was given exact information about the place his picture was to have in the camerino and told how the light would fall on it. The artists working in the Sistine Chapel had one advantage over Isabella’s harassed painters: they were together in Rome. But even so the composition of individual frescoes and the size of figures must have been arranged before work began. Throughout all the frescoes the size of the principal figures is fairly con­ stant. Landscape backgrounds fill about the same amount of space in each picture and the horizon is at the same height, just as architectural features are done approximately to the same scale. Even the tonality and colour schemes are remarkably well attuned, considering that we have before us the works of five painters of diverse stylistic origin. It may be said that such uniformity is, in part at least, responsible for the difficulties critics have had in distinguishing hands, or assigning certain parts of the frescoes to assistants. But the problem seems rather the reverse to us: it is striking to what extent these different artistic personalities were willing to accept direction and to sink their individuality for the sake of harmonious appearance. Yet unity of this kind was not only due to aesthetic considerations; it had to be strictly maintained if the particular method of illustration used here was to succeed. Artists faced with the task of depicting a narrative cycle of many scenes may choose between two types of representation: either by treating every incident as an individual self-contained picture, or by grouping a number of incidents 1 J. Wilde, ‘The Decoration of the Sistine Chapel’, Proceedings of the British Academy (London, 1959), pp. 61-81. 817149

D

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History of the Building and its Decoration

together within one common frame. Both methods can claim to be descended from the practice of classical antiquity. The former was applied, for example, to the long series of biblical pictures on the walls of S. Paolo fuori le Mura and old St. Peter’s and to the mosaics of Sta Maria Maggiore. It was revived—not fortuitously1—by Giotto in the Arena Chapel and the Master of the St. Francis Legend in Assisi. It was still employed by Ghirlandajo in the choir of Sta Maria Novella. The continuous narrative—that is the placing of several scenes within one frame—had been widely used on Roman sarcophagi and possibly in late antique book illustration.2 It played an important part in the Middle Ages and well into the Trecento, since it allowed artists to combine for didactic purposes a great number of incidents without being constrained by problems of visual unity. But by the fifteenth century a fundamental change in the application of this method was required when optical and aesthetic unity was demanded of painting, and of the pictorial relief. The old system of continuous narrative was fashioned to meet these requirements when all incidents were represented in a unified pictorial space with prominence being given to a central scene, while the subsidiary ones were relegated to the sides or the background. This method is demonstrated at its best by Masaccio’s Tribute Money in the Brancacci Chapel. The dominant central scene represents Christ’s command to St. Peter; to the left, where normally we should expect to see an earlier incident represented, we see Peter extracting the coin from the mouth of the fish and to the right of the central group we see him once again, handing over the coin. The whole story is divided into three dramatically and psychologically essential episodes, but they are no longer arranged in chronological order. On the other hand, they take place on one single ‘stage-set’ and are contained within one frame. When Ghiberti designed the ten panels of the Porta del Paradiso to display thirty-seven events from the Old Testament he refined Masaccio’s method.3 We cannot follow here the development of this type of representation through the Quattrocento and up to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, but the fact should be stressed that in this respect at least these frescoes are in an idiom very much of their own age. Even though early single-frame cycles must have been well known at the time and their arrangement would have been eminently suited to the imagery to be displayed in the Sistina, an artistic convention of the Quattro1 J. White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (Studies in Manuscript Illustration, ii, Princeton, 1947), (London, 1957), pp. 23 ff., 57 ff. pp. 17-33. ’ ’ 2 K. Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex 3 R. Krautheimer, op. cit., p. 138.

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cento—that of a unified picture space—with all its inherent difficulties was chosen. This required in the case of each fresco a decision as to the relevance of the individual scenes included as well as the retention of the same compositional pattern throughout the Chapel in order to obtain the maximum visual clarity of narrative content. Beginning the narrative at the altar-wall it was customary in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance either to work round the church and back to the altar, or to proceed in a double stream along each side wall towards the entrance. The latter arrangement was the obvious choice in the case of the Sistina with the juxtaposed Moses and Christ cycles. This system, however, creates one peculiar difficulty. We automatically ‘read’ pictures from left to right as we do the pages of a book. The life of Christ on the north wall in a number of scenes following each other from left to right could be depicted without encountering any special problems of composition and we find therefore a marked tendency to follow the correct narrative and chronological order, only stressing in each fresco the most important incident by compositional devices. But the same could obviously not be done on the south wall with the life of Moses. It can in fact be seen that here a virtue has been made of necessity. Unified pictorial space is, of course, maintained in each fresco, but instead of insisting on the narrative sequence more attention has been paid to the visual singling out of the central incident on each fresco. This means that the final result is a far less tidy over­ all pattern than on the opposite wall. Even so, as will presently be seen, at­ tempts must have been made to preserve a dominant note of composition in all twelve frescoes. A brief consideration of them will establish this and demonstrate what means have been used to achieve pictorial unity. The first preserved fresco of the Christ cycle combines four different scenes of which the Baptism is the most important (Pl. 8). Consequently it is given the prominent central position and the largest figures. However, in the grouping of the subsidiary incidents with their smaller figures a strictly chronological order is preserved. To the left—and that implies preceding the Baptism in time—we have St. John Preaching and also St. John on his way to the Jordan·, to the right, following upon the Baptism, we see Christ Preaching. The landscape setting is used to stress these divisions and the scenes on the sides are placed on the slopes rising over the Jordan valley, while the central event is sharply silhouetted against a low horizon. The central group is still further accentuated by the group of God the Father in a glory of cherubim appearing in the sky. Yet in spite of

36

History of the Building and its Decoration

the intricate arrangement of these four scenes within one frame, the composition of the whole fresco is of great simplicity. We descend with the Baptist into the river valley and then follow Christ to the hill on the right. It is this inward and outward movement, often descending towards the centre, and pivoting on a strongly marked feature, which characterizes every fresco in the Sistina. On the second fresco Botticelli was faced with a far more formidable problem (Pl. 9). For reasons which will appear later he had to combine the three tempta­ tions of Christ with an Old Testament sacrificial rite enacted in front of the Temple and demanding a multitude of figures. His solution is of striking origin­ ality. He divided the picture into two horizontal registers and the sacrifice fills the lower of them, or the foreground; the incidents from the life of Christ are placed further back and into the upper register, but they are placed in eminent positions. Their chronological order is strictly maintained. With all this the principle of composition of the whole fresco is the same as in the first. The pivot is once again formed by a two-figure group, the high priest with his acolyte, and the features of the landscape as well as the rhythmic movement of the by­ standers lead the eye towards this group with the Temple forming a pronounced accent. The main scene in its organization, the three temptations together with the lateral groups, forms a tripartite division of the whole. An interesting device has been used in the case of the third fresco in order to maintain this pattern (Pl. 10). Strictly speaking the Calling of the First Apostles depicts only two events from the life of Christ: the calling first of Peter and Andrew and next of John and James. But since the former and more important of these actions is divided into two episodes there seem to be three scenes on this fresco. Striking the eye first of all there is the monumental and serene central group formed by Christ and the kneeling Apostles Peter and Andrew. But in the middle-ground and further to the left—indeed preceding this summons in time—Christ is seen again, standing on the shore beckoning to the two fisher­ men out on the lake in their boat. This scene is balanced on the other side and on the same level by the call to John and James. As with the first fresco the group in the middle is placed against a low horizon and the bright surface of the water. The principal fines of composition emphasize the arrangement and even the birds in the sky stress the direction towards the centre. The next fresco seems at first sight rather different in character for there are only two incidents: the Sermon on the Mount and the Healing of the Leper, for the subsidiary scenes in the background —Christ coming down from the mountain

History of tbe Building and its Decoration

y/

with his disciples—are too small to be o£ any pictorial significance (Pl. n). But even in this case Rosselli made a feeble attempt to adhere to the tripartite struc­ ture of the other frescoes. True, he was faced with a real difficulty, for he had no two-figure group to place in the centre and he obviously had to stress the greater importance of the Sermon on the Mount. Hence he placed Christ in an elevated position with listeners sitting at his feet. Another group of listeners forms the left wing of the composition, while the Healing of the Leper, with the figure of Christ repeated, forms the right wing. The caesura on both sides is strongly marked by upright figures in the foreground turning their back on Christ. Even so the Sermon on the Mount seems to fill the whole frame and to absorb the figures of the miracle scene on the right into its orbit. We have tried to show that it was Perugino who supervised the painting of the Sistina, and it is therefore not surprising to find that his Charge to St. Peter— the fifth fresco of the Christ cycle—is like the Baptism one of the compositions which demonstrate most faithfully the overall pattern of composition employed throughout the cycles (Pl. 12). For the representation of this significant event Perugino allowed himself the whole width of the fresco, relying again on the central two-figure group, and he banished the two iconographically important subsidiary scenes to the middle-ground. It can easily be seen that the arrange­ ment of the apostles and bystanders on either side of the Christ and Peter group leads rhythmically towards it and that these figures together with the buildings in the background fall naturally into a threefold division, the temple acting as a most powerful stress over the main event. In this connexion it is interesting to observe how Perugino treated the small scenes of the Tribute Money and the Stoning of Christ which in the biblical account and chronologically are not related to the Charge to St. Peter. They appear in the middle-ground where optically they fill an otherwise empty space, and the figure of Christ in both is singled out through being isolated in the gap between the temple and a trium­ phal arch. But even so these little scenes form an integral part of the whole pattern and help to stress the central group, which once again is silhouetted against a lighter background. Finally Rosselli’s Last Supper (Pl. 13). It is perhaps a pity that the scene least amenable to the persistent formula of composition used in the Chapel should have been placed into the hands of the weakest artist, for Rosselli’s use of it is painfully mechanical. The Lord’s Supper forms, of course, the principal scene in the foreground, but three other important events from the Passion—the

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History of the Building and its Decoration

Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal, and the Crucifixion, appear above the table-like panels set into the wall. Christ and Judas turning towards each other form a slightly emphasized central group, but Rosselli did not really succeed in break­ ing the monotonous grouping of the apostles nor in giving the figure of Christ its proper prominence. It is interesting to note as far as the very last fresco of the series is concerned, the Resurrection on the entrance wall, that even in its present heavily restored state we can still dimly perceive Ghirlandajo’s original composition (Pl. 14). To the right of the risen Christ can faintly be seen a much smaller rendering of the Ascension which once must have had some suitable counterpart on the other side, now vanished. In that case the tripartite rhythm with a strongly accentuated central group would also have governed this fresco. Looking at the six frescoes of the north wall together we are struck by their unity of design. The narrative unfolds evenly from left to right and a simple unbroken rhythm leads the eye from one picture to the next. With the frescoes of the Moses cycle opposite attempts have obviously been made to maintain a similar artistic unity, even though it proved impossible for the narrative to flow smoothly from beginning to end. This no doubt is partly due to the difficulties raised by the frescoes following each other chrono­ logically from right to left. But it can also be observed that there are frescoes in this cycle which had to contain a greater number of events than any on the other side. With the first fresco, the Circumcision of the Son of Moses, it at once becomes apparent that, under the particular difficulties of composition encountered on this wall, an orderly chronological succession of events running from the altar to the entrance overtaxed the imagination of some of the painters (Pl. 1). The initial incident, the angel stopping Moses on the road to Egypt, should be expected to be placed nearest the altar, but it appears instead on the farther side with the subsequent circumcision scene to its right. We have, of course, no difficulty in following these events, but as far as the small subsidiary scenes in the middle-ground are concerned, lack of narrative continuity makes it hard to decide what they represent. No compositional device indicates their place in the time sequence of events. We can only guess that the charming pastoral group on the left might have been inserted to remind us of Moses’ occupation in Midian. The scene in the centre seems to depict Moses’ meeting with Jethro. As to composition, the fresco can quite naturally be divided into three

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39

sections. The figures of Moses and the angel are singled out as a central group and this is furthermore stressed by the tree-topped rock rising steeply behind them. The left wing is formed by the train of Moses’ family with their chattels and the right by the group of spectators round the kneeling Zipporah. We find applied once again the by now familiar formula which we have observed under­ lying all frescoes on the opposite wall, but in this case it is used without its logic. It has become a purely formal device because the two central figures belong to the incident depicted in the left half of the fresco. It is of particular interest that Perugino, who with his workshop was responsible for this painting, should have allowed the rigidity of a coherent pattern to take precedence over clear narrative representation. Yet this insistence on formal homogeneity, even with unsuitable material, is another pointer to careful over-all planning. The second fresco comprises no less than seven incidents from the early life of Moses, but Botticelli has succeeded in arranging them in such a way that the story unfolds from right to left (Pl. 2). This is done with great ingenuity, for it is not only the sequence of events which makes for this impression, but even more the strongly marked direction of Moses’ actions and gestures. The triptych formula is used again, but this time to great advantage, not only to organize the picture but also to clarify the story. The meeting of Moses with the daughters of Jethro by the well is placed in the centre; the murder of the Egyptian task­ master and Moses’ flight appear to the right, while God’s appearance in the thorn­ bush and the Israelites on the march are to the left. A group of trees serves both as a setting for the well and as a frame for the central section. Certain details are noteworthy. The idyllic meeting by the well is strangely enough given great prominence. Moses’ meeting with the Lord is told in two episodes: he takes off his sandals and God addresses him from the thornbush. Within the context of the whole cycle this is an event of outstanding significance and Botticelli has emphasized the fact by making the figures of God and Moses disproportionately large considering their position in the middle-ground of the picture. Finally the movement and gesture of Moses at the head of the group on the extreme left take the onlooker straight to the next fresco. This is a clever touch of composition, for in Rosselli’s Crossing of the Red Sea the story is again rolled off from right to left (Pl. 3). The problem of composi­ tion was simple and the tripartite division fitted the task naturally. The middle section is taken up by the roaring sea surmounted by the column proclaiming the presence of the Lord; Pharaoh and his hosts are struggling with the waves to the

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History of the Building and its Decoration

right of it, while on the other side the Israelites led by Moses have reached the shore and are setting out on their journey through the desert. In spite of this leftward movement there is no continuity with the next fresco and of all the paintings in the Sistina the composition of Rosselli’s Sinai is perhaps the most muddled and untidy (Pl. 4). Yet even in this case an attempt has been made to apply the usual formula of design in order to accommodate four episodes. Mount Sinai placed in the centre is the dominant feature. Below is the two-figure group of Moses breaking the Tables of the Law, accompanied by Joshua. The events round the Golden Calf are shown on the right and in­ clude the punishment of the idolaters. To the left of the centre we see Moses returning with the new Tables and the camp of the Israelites in the desert. There is no continuity of narrative or any attention to chronological sequence of incidents, though Moses receiving the Tables and the punishment of heresy have been given a significant prominence. Still the composition remains weak: by crowding his fresco with too many figures Rosselli has obscured the directional diagonals leading to Moses in the foreground, and the meeting between him and God on the mountain seems divorced from the rest of the composition. It looks as if Rosselli had failed to make proper use of that pattern of design which his colleagues had applied with more imagination. By contrast Botticelli’s fresco that follows is of great clarity and simplicity. (Pl. 5). Three events had to be represented: the attempt of the Jews to stone Moses, the wrongful sacrifice of the sons of Aaron, and the punishment of Corah. They fall by themselves into three sections and we have once more in the centre foreground an isolated two-figure group, here accentuated by the altar and the triumphal arch. Moses is shown three times and on each occasion he moves from right to left. The direction of the narrative away from the altar­ wall is taken up again. In this respect Signorelli’s Testament of Moses is one of the most interesting compositions in the Chapel, for it follows this direction, even though the events are not told in strict historical order (Pl. 6). The appointment of Joshua should precede the recapitulation of the Law. On the other hand, the death and burial of Moses follow in their proper sequence and the latter is placed near the left edge. But it is even more remarkable that Signorelli, who was after all a late­ comer among the artists painting in the Sistina, was still bound by the formula of design employed throughout these frescoes. The division into three parts is maintained, but not without some difficulty, as there were only two principal

History of the Building and its Decoration

41

episodes to be illustrated. On the right and left natural groupings could be formed with Moses reading the Law to the assembled Israelites and the appoint­ ment of Joshua. All the figures in the centre really form part of the scene on the right, but certain formal devices have been introduced in order to create a strongly emphasized group in the middle of the picture. The seated figure of the mysterious naked youth with the man seen from the back by his side form a kind of pivot for the whole composition and take the place of the normal twofigure group of the other frescoes. Moreover, the woman carrying a child on her shoulder and turning towards the right isolates all the figures in the middle from the listeners round Moses on the right. The central feature is accentuated not only by the rock behind, but also by the presence of Moses on top. In many respects this fresco is rather close to Botticelli’s Temptation with which it also shares the use of an upper register for some significant scenes. The fresco on the entrance wall, the Fight ofthe Archangel Michaelfor the Body of Moses, can no longer be fairly judged and has obviously been repainted more drastically than the neighbouring Resurrection (Pl. 7). Only the fact that Michael moves from right to left seems to indicate that at least the original scheme of composition has been preserved. However, it is unlikely that in their original state the figures were conceived on the large scale in which they appear at present. Thus uniformity of design in all frescoes, harmony of colour schemes, con­ sistency in the scale of figures and the treatment of landscape backgrounds— they are more Umbrian than Florentine in style—all point to a carefully prepared master-plan for the decoration of the Sistine Chapel and strict supervision of its execution. It can be shown that this direction extended down to the details, some of which are indicative of the spirit in which these frescoes were conceived. Throughout the six frescoes of the north wall the physical appearance of Christ is always the same. His noble and serene figure is a perfect example of the ageless and idealized type common to Quattrocento painting and he is quickly recognized also by his traditional dress, the red garment and blue cloak. No such traditional image existed in the case of Moses, but the painters of the south wall frescoes took great care in creating a definite and easily identifiable personality. Moses has been modelled on the conventional figures of the Old Testament prophets, among whom he had sometimes been represented. His advancing age is indicated without materially altering his strong bearded features as we progress from one fresco to the next. His costume, a yellow dress over which he wears an olive-green cloak, remains the same throughout the

42

History of the Building and its Decoration

whole cycle, and this model was even adhered to when the last fresco was re­ painted in the sixteenth century. This is a pictorial device which allows us to follow the lives of Moses and Christ through an intricate and continuous narrative; at the same time it also establishes the two religious leaders psycho­ logically as strongly contrasted types. One further point still remains to be discussed which affects the composition of these fresco cycles, that is to say the inclusion of contemporary portraits. But here, first of all, we have to make a careful distinction. It has already been argued that none of the Sistina frescoes can be allusive renderings of Sixtus’s own exploits and it would therefore be futile to look for likenesses among the personages of the Bible episodes. However, this does not mean that many of them are not carefully characterized or drawn from suitable models, while others are no more than conventional types. In this way Botticelli was more successful in giving individual expression to heads than was Rosselli. But it can be seen at a glance that the crowds on some frescoes—for example the Circum­ cision of the Son of Moses, or the Calling of the First Aposties—are made up of two kinds of figures. They are on the one hand the Israelites, the Apostles, and various figures required by the narrative, but there are also other types distinguished as mere spectators by their Quattrocento costume. It is only among these that we may look for portraits of the Pope’s friends and courtiers, but we must remem­ ber that they are portraits in assisten^a and that their presence cannot materially add to the meaning of the episodes depicted. Nevertheless, through this con­ trivance two levels of representation are created and men and women with individualized features are witnesses of the lives of Christ and Moses just as much as the worshippers in the Chapel itself. The introduction of contemporary portraits is interesting also from an historical point of view. The spectators mingling with the participants of the actions are different from such donor portraits as we find in the Sassetti Chapel or in the choir of Santa Maria Novella. They are in spirit nearer to their six­ teenth-century counterparts on the frescoes of Raphael’s Stanza del Eliodoro. It may not be fortuitous that Julius II—as so often—should have followed a model inspired by his uncle. As far as the design of the frescoes is concerned, the treatment of contempo­ rary portraits used in the Sistina offered the painters one important advantage. All figures could be arranged in a homogeneous frieze-like composition, which moves along the chapel walls like a procession.

II

Pictorial Sources "^HE frescoes of the Sistine Chapel must have set special problems for planners and painters because of the comparatively large number of subjects not normally represented on wall or panel paintings. Familiar events like the aptism, the Last Supper, and the Resurrection could easily be modelled on established patterns and in other cases it was possible to adapt existing pictorial types to suit the peculiarities of the programme. This was done by Ghirlandaio when he had to give prominence to St. Peter in the Calling of the First Apostles (Pl. io). For the sake of a stronger effect he com­ bined two different renderings of this incident. The principal group of Christ addressing Peter and Andrew, kneeling before Him, takes up a well-known type of representation occurring at least since the late fourteenth century (Pl. 35 d).1 On the other hand, to show Christ beckoning to the two fishermen in their boat—as in the background on the left of the same fresco—is a much older type of illustration, which we find as early as the twelfth century on one of the reliefs of the ciborium of S. Marco in Venice and among the carvings of the ivory paliotto in Salerno cathedral (Pl. c).2 We have seen that the layout and decoration of the Sistine Chapel follow early Christian prototypes and it may therefore seem surprising that little use was made of the time-honoured Roman pictorial cycles when models for the new frescoes had to be found. But this fact is easily explained. The pictures on the walls of S. Paolo fuori le Mura3 and in the old basilica of St. Peter illustrated only a particularly selective number of episodes and the scenes from the life of Moses finished with the events connected with the exodus from Egypt with

I

1 It occurs in a North Italian Gospel book dated 1399 (Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett 78 C.19) and in the closely related frescoes of the Baptistery in Padua, attributed to Giusto de’ Menabuoi. See Berliner Museen, Berichte aus d. Preuss. Kunstslgen, xlix (1928), 133; S. Bettini, Giusto de" Menabuoi (Padua, 1944); P. Toesca, Storia dell’arte italiana, ii, Il trecento (Turin, 1951), p. 794·

2 For the S. Marco ciborium see A. Venturi, Storia delParte italiana, i (Milan, 1901), 243; for the Salerno paliotto see A. Goldschmidt, Die Elfenbeinskulpturen aus derromanischen7.eit,'\N(B>&‘c\irx,sc)zf>), 36ff.,Pl.xLvi,Fig. 34. 3 Wilpert, Mosaiken, ii, 582 ff.; see also J. Garber, Wirkungen der frühchristlichen Gemäldezyklen der Petersund Pauls-Basiliken in Rom (Berlin, 1918).

44

Pictorial Sources

emphasis on the plagues, which, however, are not represented in the Sistine Chapel. The fifth-century mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the other hand, gave a comprehensive account of Moses’ wThole career,1 and in this case we can trace some influence on the Sistine Chapel frescoes. The most notable instance occurs in the rendering of the Crossing ofthe Red Sea (Pl. 3). Rosselli used an almost identical composition, with Egypt being repre­ sented by a town on the right, the Israelites and Egyptians shown as densely packed crowds and the sea surging between them. The movement is from right to left, while in renderings nearer in date to the Sistine Chapel it runs sometimes in the reverse direction (Pl. 35