Oil and Marble Read online

  The Vatican was packed with pilgrims that morning. It was a Jubilee year, when the pope offered forgiveness to any sinner who walked through the basilica’s doors, so thousands had converged on Rome to pray and confess their sins. That day, in the chapel of Santa Petronilla, they would also witness the unveiling of a new statue by a young, unknown sculptor.

  Michelangelo believed he had created something special, but he had to wait and see if it would move the masses. In a few moments, he would be either proclaimed a brilliant success or dismissed as a failure. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his tunic. In the bottom of each were small piles of marble dust. He squeezed his hands around the powder and rubbed the granules between his fingers. The ritual kept him calm.

  A scruffy twenty-four-year-old, Michelangelo knew he must look like an unrefined brute to the audience. He was short and strong, with muscles developed during years of cutting into marble. He had coarse black hair, rough hands covered in calluses, and a nose that had been flattened during a childhood scuffle with a fellow apprentice who was jealous of his talent. He didn’t care what others thought of his appearance; he washed once a month and wore the clothes of a stonemason: a long linen tunic, baggy pants, and heavy boots. But he had been told that his brown eyes flared with such intensity that most who met him didn’t notice his dress or smell. They were usually too taken in by his passion.

  The archpriest of St. Peter’s basilica, his black robes swishing along the marble floor, glided through the mass of pilgrims. His beak-like nose close to Michelangelo’s ear, he whispered, “Are you ready, my son?”

  Michelangelo tried to speak, but his voice caught. He nodded silently.

  As the archpriest murmured a blessing, a cold layer of sweat formed on Michelangelo’s forehead and upper lip, and when the archpriest grabbed the rope hanging over the statue, Michelangelo’s ears began to ring. He clenched his fists around the mounds of marble dust until his fingernails dug into his palms. The people would probably hate his statue. They wouldn’t understand it. They would mock it, curse it, curse him.

  The archpriest yanked the rope.

  The thick black curtain dropped to the floor, unveiling a colossal marble statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the crucified Christ. When Michelangelo was six years old, his mother died in childbirth. He was the second oldest of five sons, so she had often been too pregnant to give him much attention, and he’d spent his first two years with a wet nurse, as was customary. Although his own mother had been a distant figure, he was bereft when she died. This sculpture was an expression of that pain: a mother and son alone in their grief, locked in a mass of shadow and light, forever intertwined yet separated. The white stone gleamed with a high polish. Jesus’s body lay limply across his mother’s lap. His skin rippled with life recently lost. Mary’s gown cascaded to the floor in deep folds, while her serene expression revealed resignation to her divine fate.

  For the first time, the public was viewing Michelangelo’s Pietà.

  The crowd was silent. He scanned their blank expressions, but he couldn’t tell what they were thinking or how they were feeling. His head was pounding, he couldn’t breathe, and pressure was building up in his chest.

  Two years ago, when the French Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas hired him to carve a marble Pietà for his grave site, Michelangelo had already sculpted a few pieces for his own edification and even been paid for a full-sized Bacchus, but he had never received such a high-profile commission. Despite his inexperience, he’d guaranteed in writing that he would carve the most beautiful statue ever produced in Rome. If he were ever going to fulfill his promise of becoming a great sculptor, a statue of mother-and-son grief was his best chance.

  For two grueling years, he’d toiled over the gigantic block of marble. He often forgot to eat, drink, or sleep. The first winter he fell ill, but kept working despite the fever. During that first year, Cardinal Bilhères had often stopped by his studio to check on progress. The Frenchman had praised what he saw emerging from the marble, but then the old cardinal died, never seeing the completed sculpture and never anointing it a success. Michelangelo would have to rely on strangers to decide whether it was a masterpiece or not.

  And now, several agonizing moments after the unveiling, the audience was still staring at his creation in silence. Michelangelo pressed his fingernails into his palm.

  Finally, one red-haired pilgrim fell to his knees. “Grazie mio Dio.”

  Then a young mother, grasping two toddlers, dropped to the floor in prayer. Soon the entire congregation broke out in praise. Some wept, some sang, some mumbled heartfelt adoration. Others sat in stunned silence, mesmerized by the sculpture’s beauty.

  He had created his first masterpiece.

  Relief rushed over him. The black dots faded. His vision cleared. When he was a baby, his parents had sent him into the quarries around Settignano to be nursed by a marble quarrier’s wife. His first memories were of men digging white slabs out of the earth, the sound of metal hammers clanking against stone, and the taste of marble dust on his tongue. Spending the first two years of his life living among those stonecutters and drinking the milk of a quarrier’s wife had given him an unquenchable thirst for marble. He had sacrificed his whole life to sculpt. He had no wife, no betrothed, no children, no hobbies, and now, he was finally going to reap the benefits of his obsession.

  “Who sculpted it?” he heard one pilgrim ask another.

  Michelangelo sucked in a breath and prepared to feel the delicious tingle that would surely run up his spine at the sound of his own name.

  “Our Gobbo, from Milan,” the other pilgrim responded.

  Michelangelo’s throat closed. What had that pilgrim said?

  Before he could stop it, that name swept through the crowd like the Arno River rushing through the Tuscan landscape after a heavy rain. “Gobbo, Gobbo, Gobbo,” the pilgrims whispered until everyone seemed to be chanting that name. Gobbo, a second-rate hunchbacked stone carver from Milan. Gobbo, whose figures were static and thick, practically deformed. Gobbo, who didn’t have the talent to mold the Pietà’s pedestal. Michelangelo had toiled his whole life to raise up his family’s name through his art, and now those fools were attributing his masterpiece to that lazy, untalented, godless Gobbo.

  When Michelangelo was still in the womb, his mother had tumbled off her horse and was dragged behind the beast for several minutes. Doctors predicted the babe inside would not survive, but inexplicably he’d lived. To celebrate the miraculous birth, his parents had bestowed upon him a unique, divinely inspired name: Michelangelo, one who is protected by the archangel Michael.

  Surely God did not save him, give him a rare and beautiful name, and instill in him an unwavering desire to carve marble, only to allow all the credit for his masterpiece to go to that undeserving impostor, Gobbo.

  Michelangelo was so angry he was dizzy. The church whirled around him, and the ceiling felt like it was caving in. The archpriest, who might point him out to the crowd, was nowhere to be seen. He had to find a way to ensure that no one ever attributed his sculpture to anyone but him. But how?

  Then an idea popped into his head, so perfect that it must have been sent from heaven. To set God’s plan for his life back on track, he needed to inscribe his name directly into the Pietà, so no one could ever mistake who carved it.

  There was only one problem. Michelangelo didn’t own the Pietà anymore. It belonged to the church. He couldn’t simply walk up to it and start hacking into the stone. Someone would stop him. Maybe even arrest him. No. To carve his name into the sculpture, he would have to do it late at night, when all the worshipers were gone, the doors closed and locked, and the priests fast asleep.

  And to do that, Michelangelo was going to have to break into the Vatican.

  Michelangelo peeked out of his hiding place behind a tomb in a decaying side chapel. He had been lying in wait for hours. Finally, all was quiet. Dark. He told himself to stop obsessing about what might happen if he were ca
ught vandalizing church property. He was protecting his family name. He would risk anything.

  “God, please forgive me,” he whispered as he crept out from behind the tomb and across the shadowy nave. He had removed his boots to quiet his footfalls, and he clasped his leather satchel tightly against his body to prevent his metal tools from jangling.

  In the chapel of Santa Petronilla, a shaft of moonlight cast a soft blue glow across his Pietà. It had been weeks since he had been alone with Mary and Jesus. While he’d prepared for the unveiling, priests or pilgrims had always been milling. But now, in the quiet church, he could hear the marble humming. Whenever he carved, the marble spoke to him, a communion between his soul and the soul of stone. The Pietà had talked, chanted, and sung to him at all hours of the day and night. Now they were alone again, reunited like old friends. Opening his bag, he dumped his tools onto the floor. They clattered loudly. “Cavolo,” Michelangelo hissed. He held his breath, bracing for someone to run into the church and catch him, but the only sound was a gust of wind blowing through a crack in the walls. The clanking tools hadn’t seemed to wake anyone.

  He grabbed a hammer and chisel and climbed onto his Pietà. Grainy darkness obscured his vision, but he had labored over this statue for two long years. Even if he were struck blind, he would know every grain.

  He ran his hands across the stone and found the familiar marble strap crossing the Madonna’s chest. He slid his chisel down and to the left, and then pulled his hammer back to make the first cut.

  Once he started, he couldn’t stop and leave some half-written word scrawled upon his stone. If he made even a single mark on the perfectly polished statue, he had to finish, or else he would have ruined his own masterpiece for nothing.

  Michelangelo swung. The hammer clanged against the chisel. The blade made a heavy, reverberating thunk when it hit the rock. The noise echoed through the cavernous church, much more loudly than he had anticipated. Cold fear gripped his chest, but he couldn’t stop now.

  Clang, thunk, clang, thunk, clang, thunk.

  Marble dust swirled and settled into his hair and clothes. Sweat mixed with grime, creating a gray paste that slid into his eyes. It stung.

  The serene face of the Virgin Mary stared down at him. He stopped hammering. Silence engulfed him as he waited for the lady to admonish him for cutting into her chest. Most believed marble was nothing but inert rock, but Michelangelo knew life coursed through its veins, just as blood pumped through the hearts of men. He whispered to Mary, but even he wasn’t always sure what he said when he spoke the language of the stone.

  A swish of movement caught his eye. Was it a rodent scurrying across the nave? A bird stuck in the rafters? A cloud passing over the moon? Then he saw the outline of a torch-bearing figure gliding down the far aisle outside the chapel. The maniacal sound of carving must have woken the priests.

  Michelangelo lunged off his perch and ducked into a nearby arched recess, hoping to find cover under the veil of heavy shadows. When he looked back, he saw something that made his stomach sink.

  His tools were still lying at the base of the sculpture. The pile would prove to the patrolling priest that there was an intruder. If Michelangelo were caught, he could be excommunicated, drawn and quartered, or hung. The pope would damn him for his sins. His flayed skin would burn in Dante’s inferno for eternity.

  He didn’t have time to grab the tools. The priest, walking up and down the aisles, was quickly advancing. Michelangelo believed men of God could hear fear, and in that quiet church, his panic must sound like thunder. He sucked in a deep breath and held it.

  The priest rounded the far end of the apse and started up the transept toward him, waving the torch across each dark corner. Michelangelo counted the approaching footfalls, each bringing him one step closer to capture.

  The clergyman reached Santa Petronilla chapel. Michelangelo saw a stern face with sagging, wrinkled skin peering out from under a cleric’s hood. The old man looked the severe, unforgiving sort.

  The priest scanned the statue. His gaze moved toward the incriminating pile of tools. As Michelangelo pressed back into the arched recess, the top of his head bumped against a small metal shelf positioned just above him. Metal clanked against stone.

  The priest swung his torch toward the sound. Light flew across the chapel, heading for Michelangelo. He smashed his eyes closed. The heat of the torchlight crossed his face. He expected to hear a surprised roar, but instead the warmth passed right over him. He squinted one eye open in time to see a rat scurry over the priest’s sandaled feet. The padre yelped and shook the torch at the animal. “Rats!”

  As the rat skittered back into the dark, the priest glanced around, but seemed content with his search and eager to escape the rodents. He hurried off, vanishing out the back door.

  Michelangelo was alone again. He took a heavy, rattling breath.

  That rat, he thought, must have been the Holy Spirit sent to scare the clergyman away. God was blessing him and his art once again.

  Michelangelo crept out from his hiding place and went back to work. Periodically, a priest checked in on the church, but Michelangelo always slipped back into hiding and evaded capture. Knowing he was under heaven’s protection, he took his time carefully fashioning each ornate Roman letter and even spent an extra hour polishing the Latin words, Michael Angelus Bonarotus Florent Faciebat.

  Michelangelo Buonarroti of Florence made this.

  Michelangelo completed his job and ducked behind a sarcophagus moments before the cardinals filed in for morning mass, a private affair in which the church elite could mingle before the doors opened to the public. A few minutes into the service, he heard a murmur of excitement ripple through the congregation, but he didn’t look out for fear of being spotted. Instead he hid silently, waiting for his chance to slip out unnoticed.

  After the service, the priests opened the front doors and welcomed throngs of pilgrims into the church. Michelangelo waited until the building was full, and then slid out of his hiding place and mixed in with the multitudes. The layer of marble dust helped him blend in. The travelers were covered with dirt from the road.

  As he walked by his Pietà, he slowed to listen to the chatter. The pilgrims were all trying out a new, unique name on their tongues. “Michelangelo Buonarroti,” they murmured, passing his name from person to person. Michelangelo flushed with pride.

  “One of these days, you’ll learn to let your art speak for itself.”

  Michelangelo turned to see Jacopo Galli, the wealthy Roman banker who had recommended him to Cardinal Bilhères for the Pietà, walking beside him. Michelangelo was glad his friend was there to witness this triumph.

  Jacopo thrust his chin at the Pietà. “But in the meantime, I’ll admit that when he saw it this morning, he was …” He paused as though savoring a drop of honey on his tongue. “Impressed.”

  “When who saw it?”

  “The pope, of course.”

  Michelangelo stared. Had he heard correctly, or was Jacopo suddenly speaking in tongues? Alexander VI was famous for his power-hungry corruption and fervent sexual appetites, but he was also the revered head of the Catholic Church, man’s closest connection to the heavens. The pope complimenting his work was akin to God sending down heavenly approval.

  “His Holiness wanted to see your Pietà unencumbered by the general masses,” Jacopo said, waving to a cardinal lingering nearby. Jacopo always had something brewing with someone important. “And the archpriest invited me for the viewing, hoping I might be able to extol your hard work and talent …”

  So that’s why there had been a commotion at morning mass, Michelangelo realized. The pope had been in attendance. “What did he say?”

  “He praised it for its beauty. Said it moved him to Godly charity. And we all know that’s an impressive feat for this Holy Father. He even laughed at your ego in signing it. Said you reminded him of Cesare.”

  Michelangelo’s stomach flipped. Cesare Borgia was the pope’s illegi
timate son and a notorious rogue. Reared for the church and elevated to the rank of cardinal by the age of eighteen, Cesare had become the first man in history to renounce the cardinal’s hat, an unforgivable rebellion in Michelangelo’s opinion. Worse still, according to rumors, Cesare had killed his brother, consummated his love with his sister, and murdered her husband out of jealousy. Currently he was leading the pope’s army on a bloodthirsty rampage across the peninsula to take control of papal lands that were in revolt. Being compared to the infamous Cesare Borgia wasn’t a compliment, unless of course that comparison was uttered by his father, the pope.

  “Il Papa said you are all heart and passion,” Jacopo continued. “A beguiling arrogance, I believe he called it. He said, let’s see, what precisely did he say …”

  Michelangelo clutched the strap of his leather satchel as he waited for Jacopo to remember the exact words.

  “He said, ‘I think that Michelangelo Buonarroti will make something of himself one day.’ It sounded like, if you keep it up, His Holiness might even hire you. Wouldn’t that be something? Working for a pope …”

  Michelangelo dropped to knees.

  He had come to Rome four years before in hopes of making a name for himself in the ancient capital. The Eternal City excited his imagination. Ancient remains, buried for hundreds of years, were gradually being excavated. Marble columns and triumphant arches were half-exposed, their deteriorating tops rising out of the dirt like tombstones. Every day a new building, statue, or artifact was unearthed. The old Roman Forum was a perfect home for an artist who wanted to study, copy, and imitate the art of the ancients. But despite the great art, Rome disappointed him. The once-powerful capital was now a small, dirty, rural town, teeming with prostitutes, beggars, and thieves. Executed corpses hung on scaffolding, rotting for weeks as a warning to others considering crimes. For a man who was used to the refined beauty of Florence, the coarseness of Rome was shocking. Michelangelo had been ready to flee almost as soon as he arrived, but he couldn’t slink back to Florence a failure. He’d bragged to his family that he would become a great master in Rome. He would return home either a success or not at all.