Michelangelo: The Making of David (Part 2)

Why was Michelangelo's David such a revolutionary work of art? And what happened when Michelangelo and Leonardo went head to head on a commission? Join Alastair and James in the second of four episodes charting the life and work of Michelangelo, who many regard as history's greatest artist. Artworks in this episode include: Michelangelo, David, 1501-04, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence Attributed to Daniele da Volterra, Portrait of Michelangelo, c.1545, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. After Leonardo, Copy of The Battle of Anghiari, 17th century, Musée du Louvre, Paris Bastiano da Sangallo after Michelangelo, Copy of The Battle of Cascina, 1542, Royal Academy, London. For more great art content visit www.heni.com or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:34 A Block of Marble 00:12:17 Michelangelo Takes on the Challenge 00:16:44 Where to Place David 00:19:50 Moving the Giant 00:22:41 Analyzing David 00:33:22 Michelangelo's Character 00:40:40 Rivalry with Leonardo da Vinci 00:50:20 Pope Julius II and the Tomb Commission 00:55:55 The Great Escape from Rome

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01James Fox?

  Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm James Fox.

• 0:04Alastair Sooke?

  And I'm Alistair Sook.

• 0:09James Fox?

  A mighty giant, stark naked and white skinned, stands still, biding his time, waiting for the moment to pounce. His muscles are tense, his sling loaded, adrenaline coursing through his dilated veins. He glances towards his adversary, brow furrowed with determination. He is ready to strike. Now that, Alistair, is my very brief description of Michelangelo's enormous statue of David, which he completed in 1504, when he was just 29 years old. It's probably, don't you think, the most famous sculpture, at least in Western art history?

• 0:51Alastair Sooke?

  It's one of those works of art where it's actually just really hard to see it, to look at it. It's so familiar. It's just there, hardwired, like your parents' faces or something, in your brain. I wondered whether, I mean, there is this sort of, I've been toying whether or not to say this. I need to confess something, James.

• 1:13James Fox?

  You don't like it?

• 1:14Alastair Sooke?

  No, no, no, no, no. We'll come on to, I mean, I have some sort of things that I may raise when we do discuss it, but I haven't actually seen it.

• 1:23James Fox?

  Oh.

• 1:23Alastair Sooke?

  So there is this...

• 1:24James Fox?

  You haven't seen it?

• 1:25Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah. Does that invalidate this entire podcast?

• 1:28James Fox?

  Have you not been to Florence and all your...

• 1:29Alastair Sooke?

  Should I get my coat? Is that it? That's the podcast done?

• 1:33James Fox?

  We're just calling it an end. This can't continue from here.

• 1:35Alastair Sooke?

  I basically am reminded of, there's this famous literary parlour game called humiliation that takes place in the David Lodge novel, Changing Places. And in that case, there's a group of people, they keep on trading literary works that they haven't read. And you have to keep on, it's one upmanship, and one academic eventually admits that he's never read Hamlet, and is promptly fired. And I'm slightly concerned, hence my trepidation to bring this up. I mean, this is because, you know, this is obvious stuff, but what you see in, I have been to Florence, but, and I have been to the principal piazza, where you see Michelangelo's David. David, or you think it is, but of course, famously, it's a reproduction.

• 2:13James Fox?

  Yes.

• 2:13Alastair Sooke?

  Because the marble sculpture you described was moved in the 19th century to the academia.

• 2:18James Fox?

  Yes.

• 2:18Alastair Sooke?

  And to my disgrace, I've never visited the academia.

• 2:22James Fox?

  Well, that is, that will explain why you were so reluctant to do this series for so long.

• 2:27Alastair Sooke?

  I hadn't realised.

• 2:28James Fox?

  What a shame on you, Alastair. Well, anyway, at least you have seen, you have seen where it was originally intended to be displayed. So it was originally intended to be shown there. Well, I'm hoping that I can persuade you of the beauty and the brilliance of the original. And hopefully that will, that will prompt you next time you're in Florence to step inside the academia and to see it in that space. But it's an incredible work of art from this remarkable period in his career. I just thought we should do a brief recap to remind listeners where we've got to. So Michelangelo was born in Tuscany in 1475, grew up, I think it's very important, playing in the stone quarries just outside of Florence.

• 3:07Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 3:07James Fox?

  His father wanted him to have a real job so he could support the family. Michelangelo didn't want to. He ended up taking an apprenticeship to a painting studio, to the Gialandaios. Then he enters through, by real luck actually, the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was the de facto ruler of Florence. But when Lorenzo's family, the Medici, are ousted from the city, Michelangelo eventually gets down to Rome. And it's in Rome he makes his breakthrough work, the Pietà. And this is the story of what happens next. And one thing I should say here is that Michelangelo's life at this stage is so unbelievably eventful.

• 3:45Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 3:46James Fox?

  That, spoiler alert, this episode will cover just nine years of his life, from his mid twenties to his mid thirties.

• 3:55Alastair Sooke?

  And this is the beginning of what's sort of seen classically as the great heroic phase.

• 3:59James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Alastair Sooke?

  So we hadn't, we hadn't quite reached that point last time because the Pietà with which we ended the previous episode still, in some ways, was a throwback in terms of art. But the David is a throw forward. It's a real hinge, it's a turning point, isn't it? And it ushers in this new heroism in Michelangelo's sculpture.

• 4:15James Fox?

  Yes, this is an episode about peak Michelangelo and it's, it's full of incredible stories. This then is part two of our four-part series on the life and work of Michelangelo.

• 4:34James Fox?

  Michelangelo has just completed the Pietà in Rome in 1499. He's famous. He stays in Rome for a few years after completing the Pietà, obviously hoping that he might get some commissions from other cardinals, perhaps even from the big daddy, from the Pope himself.

• 4:51Alastair Sooke?

  They're all going to Gobbo, aren't they?

• 4:52James Fox?

  Yeah, but they've all gone to Gobbo, so basically he doesn't get any of the commissions that he's hoping for. So in 1501, he returns to Florence.

• 5:01Alastair Sooke?

  Hmm.

• 5:02James Fox?

  Now, a little bit of social context. Florence has changed again. Some listeners may remember that in the previous episode, we said how Florence, which had been ruled really for many decades by the Medici family.

• 5:14Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 5:15James Fox?

  The Medici were ousted in the 1490s, in 1494, and Florence gets taken over by this friar called Savonarola.

• 5:23Alastair Sooke?

  And he's very charismatic, you know, preaching to thousands of people.

• 5:28James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Alastair Sooke?

  But essentially, he becomes almost like a second tyrant, doesn't he, within Florence?

• 5:32James Fox?

  He does. He does. And it's a very, it's not a propitious or decent environment for artists to operate. Artworks are being burnt on these bonfires of the vanities. But ultimately, Savonarola comes to a pretty sticky end. He falls out with the Pope. Obviously, the Pope's not happy with what he's doing. And ultimately, in 1498, Savonarola is executed. And a new regime replaces Savonarola. And Florence becomes this rather civic, moderate, peaceful, quite modern republic. And it comes to be ruled by this man. I really like him, actually.

• 6:09Alastair Sooke?

  It's interesting you say that. I don't know why. I've always warmed to him as well. It's partly because I like his title.

• 6:14James Fox?

  Yes. The Gonf... Do you want to pronounce it?

• 6:16Alastair Sooke?

  Gonfaloniere.

• 6:18James Fox?

  Gonfaloniere. A man called Piero Soderini, who is a, he's actually a very...

• 6:24James Fox?

  Humane, moderate individual, he's a sort of technocrat, he's a kind of, I think of him as a sort of John Major figure.

• 6:32Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, I like him less now.

• 6:33James Fox?

  Oh, okay, well, he's just a relatively boring, but quite decent man, who believes in institutions, believes in civic virtues, just wants things to be nice and stable.

• 6:43Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, sorry, that's very unfair, John Major, he was an extremely important prime minister. But he's in power, isn't he, Sodderini's in power for about 10 years.

• 6:50James Fox?

  Sodderini comes to power, and the whole ambition for Sodderini is to re-establish Florence as a kind of nice, stable, civilised, civic-minded republic. And one of the aspects of this is he wants to start commissioning artworks again. There haven't been many artworks commissioned by Savonarola for obvious reasons, he thought art was luxury. But Sodderini wants to commission art, public art, on a civic basis. So rather than the art that was commissioned privately by the Medici, he wants to commission public art. And one of the big projects that he commissions is this enormous statue of David.

• 7:26Alastair Sooke?

  Absolutely.

• 7:27James Fox?

  There's a big backstory.

• 7:29Alastair Sooke?

  There is a big backstory. Because, I mean, what's fascinating about what you've just said is that, quite explicitly, art is being harnessed to politics at this moment, and that's the vision of Sodderini and the people in charge in Florence. But of course, this particular block of marble, which you're referring to, and which eventually Michelangelo would carve to become the David, it was not intended at first, decades earlier, to be a piece of political art at all, was it?

• 7:57James Fox?

  No. So the story of this block of marble, a very famous story in the history of art, and it goes back, actually, before Michelangelo was even born.

• 8:07Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 8:08James Fox?

  I mean, it actually, the whole project dates back to the 1460s, when there was a plan, remember, right in the centre of Florence, there's an enormous cathedral, the Duomo, with the great dome, designed by Brunelleschi, could be quite a good episode, actually.

• 8:22Alastair Sooke?

  That would be a brilliant one, yes.

• 8:24James Fox?

  And there was a decision in the 1460s, a few decades after the dome was completed, to put these very big statues on the buttresses around the dome. And the idea was that one of these enormous statues would be of David. And so in the 1460s, again, 10 years before Michelangelo was even born... They quarry this enormous chunk of marble from the Carrara Marble Quarry and they bring it at great expense over to Florence and they install it in the Cathedral Works Yard in the centre of the town and they commission an artist called Agostino di Duccio to try to carve a figure of David out of it.

• 9:01Alastair Sooke?

  Doesn't go so well.

• 9:02James Fox?

  Doesn't go very well. The, the, the, the block of marble is too big, there are flaws in the marble, Duccio's not really good enough and so after a year, I think or so, he's sacked and the work is not even half finished, it's like, he's made some progress but very little.

• 9:16Alastair Sooke?

  I think one of the things that was said is that in, in this sort of backstory to the block of marble, a hole had been hacked out.

• 9:22James Fox?

  Yes.

• 9:22Alastair Sooke?

  In between the legs in a very awkward way.

• 9:25James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Alastair Sooke?

  And there was this sense that this block, which comes to be known as Il Gigante, the giant.

• 9:30James Fox?

  The giant, yes.

• 9:31Alastair Sooke?

  The giant has been bungled.

• 9:32James Fox?

  Yes.

• 9:33Alastair Sooke?

  So there's this sort of sense that it's been, you know, as you say, hugely expensive to bring this thing here, all this promise, all this sense of optimism about what amazing work of art could be created and it's been a total botched job.

• 9:44James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Alastair Sooke?

  And it's a bit embarrassing and it's just there, what are we gonna do with this?

• 9:47James Fox?

  Yeah, and they leave it there, just in the Cathedral Works Yard for another 10 years.

• 9:51Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 9:51James Fox?

  So it's lying there for 10 years untouched and then 10 years later, they think, the mid 1470s, Michelangelo still might not even be born by this stage, they commission another artist and they think, hopefully this guy's gonna be able to fix it. So they get a guy called Antonio Rossellino and they get him to have a go and he also fails. But again, it's an enormous piece of stone.

• 10:12Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 10:12James Fox?

  It's partly cut out, as you say, in an awkward position, there is a flaw running right through the middle of the marble, it's a very difficult job. So he has a go, he also fails.

• 10:22Alastair Sooke?

  So do you think the young Michelangelo, when he's growing up, obviously he loves sculpture, he, he must be aware of this specific block.

• 10:29James Fox?

  Yeah, because the block is in the centre of the town.

• 10:31Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 10:31James Fox?

  It's not disguised, it's right there, lying on its side, in the, basically the centre of Florence. He would have passed it regularly on his journeys through the town and everyone would talk about it, it was known as, as you say, as Il Gigante, it was a kind of, you know, it was a white elephant in the heart of Florence.

• 10:47Alastair Sooke?

  And he's so ambitious from the off.

• 10:49James Fox?

  Hmm.

• 10:50Alastair Sooke?

  You just wonder whether... That already as a sort of scheming, enterprising young artist, he's thinking, you know, one day there's one person who can slay that giant, who can overcome the giant, it's going to be me.

• 11:01James Fox?

  It's a good way of putting it, slaying a giant, actually. We're considering what the story that it ends up being representing. And so the marble has now, two artists have failed at the marble. And so this block, Il Gigantic, is still lying there in the cathedral works yard for everyone to see, like a kind of abandoned HS2 station or something like that. And 25 years pass, so basically a generation, a lifetime by the standard passes and the marble is untouched. And eventually after Sodarini comes back to power and the Republic is starting to think, you know what, we need to commission some public art. There is a decision, let's, let's have a go at this again.

• 11:44Alastair Sooke?

  Question for you, James. I've never quite got to the bottom of, at that moment, Sodarini and the people who are saying, let's awaken the sleeping giant.

• 11:52James Fox?

  Yes.

• 11:53Alastair Sooke?

  Are they intending that the sculpture should go on the Duomo? Or do they from the off know that they want to place it somewhere else?

• 11:59James Fox?

  Well, I think that's an interesting question because there are debates about the location later on. I think there is still probably an aspiration to put it up on a buttress, but it's soon, they soon discover that's not going to happen. So they make a decision, early 1500s, right, we're going to have another stab at this. And what's really interesting is Michelangelo's father, Ludovico, who is always on maneuvers, always trying to find money. He writes a letter to Michelangelo, who's still down in Rome, and he says, hey, Mikey.

• 12:30Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah. You might want to get back.

• 12:32James Fox?

  Come on back. The David's up and running. There's going to be a big commission. There's going to be a lot of money. So that's one of the reasons why Michelangelo hurries back to Florence. And duly, he is given the commission because, I mean, who else could do this? I mean, there have been tales told in Florence of what Michelangelo has achieved down with the Pietà in Rome. There's only, he's the only guy who's capable of, of pulling this off.

• 12:55Alastair Sooke?

  But don't you think this is another moment where you can see that charisma, that X factor that he had himself person? Even if he was tremendously difficult, as we've already alluded to, in that he can swiftly persuade powerful people,

• 13:08James Fox?

  Yes.

• 13:08Alastair Sooke?

  patrons to give him work, which in this case, maybe it would have been, I'm sure it still would have been competitive. I mean, you can imagine that some artist would be like, there's no way I want to go and touch that. This is, this is, um, you know, a poisoned chalice, if you like. But somehow he's managing to persuade people very quickly.

• 13:25James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Alastair Sooke?

  Take a chance on me.

• 13:26James Fox?

  And they do take a chance. He gets offered six gold florins a month, which is a lot of money. So this, this sculpture will make him wealthy. And in September fifteen oh one, he signs the contract and begins work. Do you know the first thing he does? Classic Michelangelo. No, he does.

• 13:42Alastair Sooke?

  Do you tell me?

• 13:43James Fox?

  First thing he does, he builds a wall around the marble block so no one can see what he's doing.

• 13:46Alastair Sooke?

  He doesn't like being overlooked, does he, when he's working?

• 13:49James Fox?

  He's so paranoid.

• 13:50Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 13:50James Fox?

  And he, he's such a conspiracy theorist and a very secretive man, that first thing, first, the first of money he gets from this commission is to build a wall. So no one can see.

• 14:00Alastair Sooke?

  But do you, do you think he's scared that people are, how are they going to rip off his ideas with a block of this size? Do you know, surely it's more to do with, um, just that sensitivity of creativity is a weird thing. And he obviously feels put off his game. If you've constantly got people coming in, checking, commenting, he just wants to be left in peace.

• 14:18James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Alastair Sooke?

  I, I get it. That seems not so bad.

• 14:21James Fox?

  That's probably the more accurate interpretation. Maybe I'm too unfair on him. But anyway, he works obsessively. From dawn till dusk for more than two years, chipping and hacking away at this marble, until eventually he's pretty much finished.

• 14:36James Fox?

  Have you heard the story of the nose?

• 14:38Alastair Sooke?

  Ah, this is rather nice.

• 14:41James Fox?

  This is a story, it actually is very close to my heart because when I was at primary school, we had a head teacher, a headmaster, wonderful man called David MacPherson, who died only a couple of years ago. And almost every assembly, he told the story of the nose. It was one of his most favourite stories.

• 14:55Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, well, you must, um, channel him in his honour.

• 14:57James Fox?

  Okay.

• 14:58Alastair Sooke?

  Maybe you can relate it.

• 14:59James Fox?

  I will channel him for this, and this is in honour of my old headmaster, David MacPherson. But basically, the story is told by Vasari, that Michelangelo has virtually finished David. And Soderini, John Major, he turns up at the works yard and looks at the sculpture and he says, oh, this is fantastic, Michelangelo, you've done a superb job. However, may I make one comment? Michelangelo says, yes. And he says, I just think maybe the nose is a little bit too big. And Michelangelo knows the nose isn't too big. But anyway, he, you know, he decides to humor Soderini. So he climbs, he takes a handful of marble dust and his chisel, climbs up the ladder

• 15:41James Fox?

  and he pretends to hack away at the nose, releasing the marble dust from his hand as he goes. And when he comes down, obviously, nothing has changed at all. He says, so Soderini, what do you think now? And Soderini says, oh, it's improved immeasurably. This is perfect. So that's the story that was always told to me by David MacPherson.

• 15:58Alastair Sooke?

  It really crystallizes several things. One, Michelangelo's complete arrogance when it comes to, he will not be told. Secondly, his total suppleness when it comes to patrons. Because he also recognizes that he needs to humor Soderini's remarks and he does so in a very ingenious way. And I think third, and it's related to that second point, the mythology of Michelangelo is he's always kind of sticking two fingers up at his supposed betters.

• 16:27James Fox?

  Yes, absolutely true. But anyway, he completes the sculpture. And when it's finally revealed, the David, people are astonished. And this, to go back to the thing you mentioned earlier about whether it goes on the buttress. There is a question about, right, what do we do with the sculpture?

• 16:43Alastair Sooke?

  See, I find this whole part of the David story fascinating because my understanding is, and this is before it's even finished, there's a recognition that there's something great that has to be displayed. And there's an assembly which is convened of officials, but also artists, including.

• 16:59James Fox?

  Yes, it is one of the most incredible documents in the history of art. Because in January 1504, a committee is formed to discuss where to put this enormous sculpture. And there are about 30 men attend this meeting, including Leonardo.

• 17:19James Fox?

  Da Vinci, as we call him.

• 17:20Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 17:20James Fox?

  Botticelli, Filipino Lippi, all the great and the good of, of the Florentine art world are there. And we have the minutes of the, the, the meeting. It's astonishing, they're all saying, well, I think it should go here and I think it should go there.

• 17:34Alastair Sooke?

  Specifically with Leonardo, we know which position he favoured.

• 17:37James Fox?

  Yes.

• 17:38Alastair Sooke?

  And, and the fascinating thing to me about this whole chapter is inevitably you have rivals between big egos, major talents altogether, who have skin in the game.

• 17:50James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Alastair Sooke?

  And it's quite possible they don't have Michelangelo's best interests at heart when it comes to its positioning.

• 17:55James Fox?

  Leonardo wanted to go in the lodger. So in the centre of Florence, you've got the Piazza della Signoria, which is right in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. It's the main square, isn't it, in Florence? There's also a lodger there, which is sort of open courtyard. Leonardo thinks it should go in there. Other people think it should go on the step. Botticelli thinks it should go at the steps of the cathedral. Other people think it should go in the, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

• 18:21Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 18:21James Fox?

  And a decision is made that it, that it should go in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.

• 18:25Alastair Sooke?

  I think there's a parapet, isn't there, called the Ringiera?

• 18:27James Fox?

  Yeah. I think it's a disastrous choice.

• 18:30Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 18:31James Fox?

  You've seen, you've seen David in it.

• 18:32Alastair Sooke?

  I have, I've seen the fake David.

• 18:34James Fox?

  It's dwarfed by, they should have listened to Leonardo, they really should, because it would have looked fantastic. Framed in the lodger.

• 18:39Alastair Sooke?

  The shops are in there, do look gorgeous.

• 18:41James Fox?

  But it, it doesn't look good where it is. But anyway, the decision is made that it will go in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. And remember, this is public art, it's relatively propagandistic in function. It's trying to promote particular values of Florence. And so there is a rationale for it politically and in terms of its civic identity. But aesthetically, it doesn't look good.

• 19:02Alastair Sooke?

  But you see, it's interesting because you've just been quite charitable towards Leonardo. You're sort of suggesting that he had his aesthetic interests at heart and he's suggesting this is the place where your wonderful work of art would look best. But of course, you could argue it the other way. That Leonardo is much older, he's got this new young rival and they're about to, shortly we'll find out, they're going to be competing on some other works of art quite explicitly. He's recognising that the powers that be in Florence are privileging Michelangelo to such an extent that they want to place the David by the palace itself.

• 19:37James Fox?

  Yes.

• 19:37Alastair Sooke?

  And perhaps he's trying to undermine that as a, as a, as a outcome.

• 19:42James Fox?

  I, I, I'm sure that, I'm sure you're probably right, but, uh, but the, the result visually isn't all that successful. But this is an amazing thing. In, on, in May fifteen oh four, the sculpture has to be moved from the works yard, the cathedral works yard, to the location in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. I'm just going to read, if I may, a little extract from the diary of Luca Landucci. Which is, it's a remarkable passage. This is what it says. "On the fourteenth of May fifteen oh four, the marble giant was taken from the opera, which is the works yard. It came out at midnight and they broke the wall above the gateway enough to let it pass. That night some stones were thrown at the colossus to harm it.

• 20:24James Fox?

  Watch had to be kept at night and it made way very slowly, bound as it was upright, suspended in the air with enormous beams and a complicated mechanism of ropes. It took four days to reach the piazza, arriving on the eighteenth at the hour of twelve. More than forty men were employed to make it go and there were fourteen rollers joined beneath it which were progressively transferred. Afterwards, they worked until the eighth of June fifteen oh four to place it on the platform where the Judith used to stand. The Judith was removed and set up upon the ground within the palace. The said giant was the work of Michelangelo, Bonarrotti."

• 21:04Alastair Sooke?

  It's a very powerful, evocative thing. The translation I've got refers to the fact the logs were greased.

• 21:09James Fox?

  Greased, okay.

• 21:10Alastair Sooke?

  But the thing that I find fascinating about that, that document is, first of all, it reminds us of the ingenuity required to move something just so thick. And actually, funnily enough, if you read Vasari, he's almost as excited by the schemes and mechanisms and the pulleys and the system that is created to transport the, the block as he is by the sculpture itself, seemingly. So the other aspect about that, that passage, which- Which is so important is the fact that people are throwing stones because it's a reminder of how politicised art has become, which I think requires a little bit of unpacking. But clearly in Florence at this moment, you have different factions. And the Medici had been in power for some time, but then they were driven out of town. You then had Savonarola.

• 21:56Alastair Sooke?

  But you still have, I guess, people, would we call them traditionalists, people who are still supporting the Medici cause. And eventually the Medici come back and reinstated in Florence, and that's important for later parts of Michelangelo's career. And there is a sense that already at this moment, before the sculpture has found its final resting place. For the next few centuries, that at this moment, it is seen by Michelangelo's contemporaries as a political work of art, which is about slaying the tyranny of the Medici. Therefore, it symbolises the Republic. And consequently, those people who are not so pleased with the Republic and would quite like the Medici to come back. When they see it, they are literally chucking stones at the sculpture.

• 22:37James Fox?

  Yeah, it's really interesting. Well, let's talk a little bit about about the sculpture itself. Let's take a few minutes to do that. I think first of all, let's just tell the story of David. I mean, some people, of course, will know that story, but it's a biblical tale from the Book of Samuel. And basically, it's a moment in which the Israelites are at war with the Philistines, which who are a sort of ancient pagan people who are living around modern day Gaza. So it's rather contemporary parallels going on there, Israel fighting a war in Gaza. The Philistines have a mighty warrior in their army called Goliath. Terrifying, formidable individual, and every single day he is challenging the Israelite army to send someone to fight him.

• 23:20James Fox?

  And no one dares to do it. The soldiers don't want to get involved. And one day, a little boy, a shepherd boy called David, he comes to the battlefield, simply, I think, to give his brothers a sandwich or something. And he says, well, I'll fight him. And the people say, you can't fight him. You're a little boy and he's enormous. David says, I can do it. And they said, well, have some armour. I don't need armour. David goes up to Goliath. And he has a little sling and he loads his sling with a stone and Goliath starts ridiculing him, saying, "You little boy, you can't take me on." At which point, David puts a rock in his sling, he chucks the rock, the rock lands right into Goliath's forehead and kills Goliath. And then he goes up and he takes Goliath's sword and he beheads him. And the Philistines run away and the Israelites win the war.

• 24:04James Fox?

  So that's the story of David. Most artists previously had depicted the moment after

• 24:12Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 24:12James Fox?

  David's triumph, hadn't they?

• 24:14Alastair Sooke?

  Which is, which is itself fascinating because it's a little bit like when we discussed the Pieta in the earlier part. Michelangelo deviates from earlier precedents in terms of the treatment of that subject. So what you would often find in a David sculpture before Michelangelo is you would see the sword, Goliath's sword, you would see David posing with the decapitated head of Goliath probably at his feet. And you'd have artistically something very interesting going on, which is this contrast between sort of beautiful youth.

• 24:46James Fox?

  Yes.

• 24:46Alastair Sooke?

  Who's looking quite introspective. It's the moment of victory, but he's not really that pumped up. He's sort of almost quite contemplative, possibly leaning on the sword and then grisly, monstrous, oversized, human, decapitated head at his feet. And you would have a sense of the victory, the surprising against the odds victory of this young hero.

• 25:06James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Alastair Sooke?

  With whom the Florentines identified as, as seeing themselves as kind of underdog.

• 25:10James Fox?

  Yes.

• 25:11Alastair Sooke?

  Michelangelo doesn't do that in the sculpture, does he? I mean, you don't see any decapitated head at all for one good reason. This is the moment before he's actually thrown that rock and killed Goliath.

• 25:22James Fox?

  I think it's a masterstroke and Michelangelo often does this. He chooses not the moment after, but as you say, the moment before. And by choosing the moment before, he fills this sculpture with pregnant tension, with suspense, with, oh, what's going to happen? And that, I think, is absolutely brilliant.

• 25:40Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, that's what you're seeing. You described the furrowed brow. Possibly he's turning his head and you could even imagine this is the first glimpse. He really sort of possibly locks eyes with Goliath. And it's important, he's got, his left hand is gesturing up at his shoulder. It's often quite hard to see when you see it in a photographic reproduction of the sculpture, but the sling is resting on the shoulder. And there's this thing in his body, which is entirely nude, where it's part tense, part relaxed, and it's as though he's about to wind up

• 26:12James Fox?

  Yes.

• 26:13Alastair Sooke?

  to start unleashing this onslaught.

• 26:15James Fox?

  Do you know what for me the moment is? You know, there's this trope in Hollywood cinema, in westerns in particular,

• 26:21Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 26:21James Fox?

  where you get the hero, the goodie and the baddie, and they meet each other. And the goodie walks away, and as he's walking away, the baddie says, are you chicken?

• 26:29Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 26:30James Fox?

  And then, and then, you know, the goodie stops, and then you cut to the close up.

• 26:35Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 26:35James Fox?

  And then there's this very slow turning of his head, and he looks around, he says, what did you call me?

• 26:40Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 26:40James Fox?

  That is this sculpture.

• 26:42Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 26:43James Fox?

  And once you see this sculpture through that lens, you cannot ever unsee it.

• 26:46Alastair Sooke?

  But it's fascinating you say that, in part because there are some aspects of the sculpture that we should discuss, and it's a very classicizing work of art. It's a classical nude, it's a heroic male nude.

• 26:57James Fox?

  It's completely wrong.

• 26:58Alastair Sooke?

  The first heroic male nude. Yes, but there are, some of the peculiarities are, one, the enormous weirdly big right hand, but secondly, the head, it does have this totally different spirit to that sort of pagan antiquity, this kind of sculpture you would have, that would have been excavated at that moment.

• 27:17James Fox?

  A sort of 1980s haircut, in a way.

• 27:20Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's just very, very sort of permed.

• 27:21James Fox?

  Permed.

• 27:22Alastair Sooke?

  Absolutely permed, and oversized, but a lot of attention goes there, which is why I think your analogy with the close up is brilliant, because you are focusing very much on that, that gives a drama, it gives the animation in a sense of the sculpture.

• 27:36James Fox?

  To go back to what I was saying earlier, there are a lot of liberties that Michelangelo has taken with this work, so a few things that he's got wrong in some ways. First of all, David is a boy, and this is not a boy, I mean, he's clearly gone through puberty, we can see that. He is not small, but he's shown an enormous scale. He is nude, I mean, there is no evidence that David was nude, and he wouldn't have been nude, and

• 28:02James Fox?

  Finally, David was Jewish and this figure is uncircumcised. So there are a great deal of inaccuracies here.

• 28:11Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, there's even, I came across when I was sort of reading up before we were going to record this episode. There's a Swiss art historian called Heinrich Wolfli. He has this brilliant word which he described Michelangelo's David as a hobble de hoy, which means a clumsy or awkward youth.

• 28:26James Fox?

  Right.

• 28:27Alastair Sooke?

  And I think there's something to that. There is a slight, an oddness to the sculpture.

• 28:32James Fox?

  Yes.

• 28:33Alastair Sooke?

  And it's surprising because as we said at the start, this is so well known. It would be easy in our minds to just see this as shorthand for the apogee of Western male beauty. Here it is, but it kind of isn't. It's much weirder than that.

• 28:47James Fox?

  Yeah. Why do you think that? You mentioned the size of the head and the size of the right hand. Do you think that's just a mistake?

• 28:54Alastair Sooke?

  It is possible that the constraints of the block are dictating certain things that he has to do. I like to think though, that the head and the hand, they're what give it the sort of, how would you describe it? The surging new Renaissance self-confident power.

• 29:11James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Alastair Sooke?

  Because if you didn't have those aspects, what you have is a pastiche of an ancient work of art. Totally just a sort of, you know, classicizing thing where the technical term that's used to describe this particular pose, which you often find in ancient statues is contraposto. And it's this pose which animates a sculpture. So instead of having someone just staring with their weight evenly distributed on two legs, all of the weight is on one leg and then it means that the other leg is relaxed. And you have this kind of play of tension and relaxation in the muscles in the pose, which is then played through in his abdomen and his torso. And he completely understands that, looking at ancient sculpture. But if you did just have that, you might just have something which feels a bit like the Sleeping Cupid which has been lost.

• 29:57Alastair Sooke?

  It's just a kind of, it's a fake antique work. But there's something here about a sense of, I don't know, it's surging deeper passions and emotions, which are conveyed by that almost monstrous carbuncle of a hand attached to the leg. And the head with the huge hair, I mean, the hair itself is expressive.

• 30:17James Fox?

  I know.

• 30:17Alastair Sooke?

  And it's that sense of expression that I think is announcing the new heroism you find in Michelangelo's art. But it's the spirit of an age as well, isn't it?

• 30:25James Fox?

  Yeah. You know what, I didn't used to like this sculpture. I felt it was rather. Caesar's Palace. Do you know what I mean? But then I've spent a lot of time standing in front of it. And actually, if you go to the academia, I do encourage you to go to the academia, Alastair. If you go and you stand in front of this work, and there's a bit of a trick, and I encourage listeners, if they're going to the academia to do exactly this, if you stand in front of the David and you look up at his face, and then as you're looking at his face, you walk around the sculpture, you don't take your eyes off his face. What you actually see is something truly amazing happen. You see the whole facial expression, the mood of the piece transform in front of your eyes.

• 31:05James Fox?

  So you see this relatively placid, peaceful, innocent looking boy suddenly become filled with rage and formidable strength and terror. It's an extraordinary thing as you move around the sculpture. And how Michelangelo pulled that off, I do not know. It is, I think, a justly famous work. It's one of the most famous sculptures now, isn't it? I mean, it's, you see it in adverts and films, everything all over the place.

• 31:29Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, that's why it has become Caesar's Palace, because the definition of kitsch is you're ripping off great works of art. It's so reproduced, it's so familiar. And it's actually quite hard for us as modern viewers to not see it through that prism. It's very, you know, think of all the different contexts as well. This block was originally created for a cathedral. Doesn't end up in a cathedral, it ends up in public display as a political work of art. It's been ripped off by popular culture endlessly. And of course, now today, for those of us who are fortunate enough or have done their homework properly and have seen it, it's in a museum, a completely different context again.

• 32:01James Fox?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, one thing is certain, it's an extraordinary achievement. It would be the climax of any artist's career. But remember, at this stage in 1504, Michelangelo's still in his twenties. And he's still a young man, he's still got another 60 years or so of work ahead of him. But I think it's quite clear that he's now established as a towering figure in Florentine art. There is only one man to match him. We have mentioned him very briefly, but we'll talk about him more after the break.

• 32:35James Fox?

  A reminder that if you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time. And if you're enjoying this episode, please consider following Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.

• 32:59James Fox?

  Welcome back to Stories of Art. We're in 1504. Michelangelo is the talk and the toast of Florence. But he's not a particularly comfortable celebrity, is he, Alastair? And I thought that now he's a proper adult, we should probably spend a minute or two discussing the kind of character he is and painting a little picture of him. I think the first thing to say is his appearance. He's quite short, even by those standards. He's five foot two. Stocky, muscular.

• 33:31Alastair Sooke?

  We know the colour of his eyes.

• 33:32James Fox?

  What colour is his eyes?

• 33:33Alastair Sooke?

  Horn-coloured eyes, flecked blue and yellow.

• 33:36James Fox?

  Ah, well, that's lovely.

• 33:37Alastair Sooke?

  He had a sparse beard.

• 33:39James Fox?

  A sparse beard?

• 33:40Alastair Sooke?

  That's all I've got on his appearance.

• 33:41James Fox?

  Well, what about the nose? The nose is very famous.

• 33:44Alastair Sooke?

  The nose, I can't believe we didn't bring this up in the last episode.

• 33:47James Fox?

  No, we should have done.

• 33:48Alastair Sooke?

  There's a wonderful anecdote. Partly, I love this because there's just a phrase that gets used, which I think is so evocative. But if we think back to his youth, we discussed this in the previous part. Michelangelo was at this wonderful academy, the Garden of San Marco, that was overseen by Lorenzo the Magnificent. There was a sculptor, Bertoldo, who was possibly his teacher. And there are these wonderful works of antiquity, there are paintings, and this is where Michelangelo is schooled. There were other artists in this academy. And there was one artist called Pietro Torigiano, who's probably quite familiar, in fact, to a British audience, at least, because he does work in England.

• 34:26James Fox?

  In Westminster Abbey.

• 34:27Alastair Sooke?

  He creates the tomb, the monument to Henry VII and his Queen, which is in Westminster Abbey, sort of bringing the Renaissance over to this country, in part. And they're both there at this academy in Florence in, what would this be? Around about 1490?

• 34:42James Fox?

  About, yes, I guess so. Yeah, 1490.

• 34:45Alastair Sooke?

  And to begin with, they're quite friendly, but there's a sense of also being rivals. And the way that supposedly Torigiano talks about what happened next, we have supposedly, these are his words, right, later recollections. He refers to this, Buonarroti and I, obviously referring to Michelangelo, "we used to go along together when we were boys." To study in Massaccio's chapel in the church of the Carmine. So studying great artist Massaccio, there's sort of precedent. Interesting in itself that they're actually going to look at earlier artists. Um, and that's the important part of their training. Buonarroti had the habit of making fun of anyone else who was drawing there. And one day he provoked me so much that I lost my temper more than usual. And clenching my fist gave him such a punch on the nose.

• 35:29Alastair Sooke?

  That I felt the bone and cartilage crush like a biscuit. I love that, like a biscuit. So that fellow will carry my signature till he dies.

• 35:38James Fox?

  And he did.

• 35:39Alastair Sooke?

  He absolutely did.

• 35:40James Fox?

  He did. So Michelangelo had a, had a flattened bent nose for the rest of his life, defining feature of him.

• 35:45Alastair Sooke?

  Do you think this justifies his paranoia? I mean, very early on, he was smacked in the face. I mean, it definitely suggests that he had a difficult provocative temperament and could rub people up the wrong way.

• 35:57James Fox?

  Yes, I think he absolutely did run up, rub people up the wrong way. So he looked a bit like a rugby player, so a front row rugby player in that sense. He was also filthy. So his father said to him, Michelangelo, whatever you do, never wash.

• 36:10Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 36:11James Fox?

  He hardly ever changed his clothes, even by the standards of the day.

• 36:14Alastair Sooke?

  Do we know why he passed on this advice?

• 36:15James Fox?

  I don't know. I think it was, you know, God knows why. But anyway, what we do is he never washed, he very rarely washed, very rarely changed his clothes. His biographer, Condivi, have you read this? He said, he often slept in his clothes and in the boots, which he was always worn. And he has sometimes gone so long without taking them off. But then the skin came off like a snake's with the boots.

• 36:37Alastair Sooke?

  So gross.

• 36:38James Fox?

  Disgusting.

• 36:39Alastair Sooke?

  You see, that's really puzzled me. Couple of reasons. One, I wonder whether, is there something about sort of mortification of the flesh? Could there be on some level, his faith is a factor in this? It's almost like a hair shirt, but for boots.

• 36:53James Fox?

  Well, that is interesting because I think one of the things we see throughout Michelangelo's life is that he was very greedy, just like his father. Uh, and was constantly trying to amass money. He was a kind of cowboy builder as well. He would often sign a deal and with no intention of completing it, will move on to the next commission to try and build up the kind of, you know, deposit.

• 37:13Alastair Sooke?

  He got a lot of criticism for that. And in fact, some of the biographies were written to try and correct that, that sort of charge.

• 37:18James Fox?

  Yeah, but, but he, although he was very greedy and money minded and his letters are just, he's obsessed with money. That's all he writes about. He's not a materialistic person at all. He's not interested in nice clothes.

• 37:31Alastair Sooke?

  He's not interested in- Hang on a sec. Because, I mean, this was the other thing I was going to say about the boots, is I wonder whether it's to do with part of the Michelangelo myth-making, because of course you are right, he has this very simple Spartan existence throughout his life. But there is one detail about him in later life, which I find fascinating on this on this front, because he dresses in black doublets. And you might say, so what? Black was a really expensive dye during the Renaissance. So it seems that certainly later in life, of course, he could have spent way more on finery and sumptury and, you know, looked the dog's bollocks, whatever. But he is wearing clothes to signal status.

• 38:15Alastair Sooke?

  And it does suggest, on some level, a materialism that perhaps runs slightly counter to that idea of, here's the guy, he sleeps in his clothes, he's so obsessed with his work, that's all he can think of. I don't know.

• 38:25James Fox?

  I did not know about the black doublet, so I stand corrected. But it is true that when he dies, and we'll encounter this in a couple of episodes' time, he has very few possessions in the house. But the money that he is amassing is effectively for the family. So he ends up bankrolling his brothers, he's got quite a few brothers, all of whom are useless. He's bankrolling his father, who doesn't really work, he's also useless. He's bailing them out. The father is often taking money out of Michelangelo's bank account and living high off the hog.

• 38:57Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 38:58James Fox?

  Although he's constantly trying to accumulate money, most of that money is being used to support his family members.

• 39:04Alastair Sooke?

  The thing that I find fascinating about the family stuff is it actually paints him in a different light. And I've so far, in the course of this series, have been rather mean about Michelangelo. And famously, he's prickly, he's taciturn, he can be suspicious of others, he's paranoid, he's quite introverted, he can be anxious, he's arrogant, he can be tempestuous. He just sounds like not a nice guy at all. On the other hand, he does, through his life, have a number of friendships with people in whom he is inspiring really deep, fierce loyalty.

• 39:35James Fox?

  Yes.

• 39:36Alastair Sooke?

  Peter in life, when he's living in Rome, he has kind of surrogate family with this wonderful servant. And there's a servant's called Urbino. I mean, since we're doing a bit on character now, I thought it might be okay to throw forward. But Urbino dies quite young. The old Michelangelo is really upset. And Urbino had a wife called Cornelia. She had a son, an elder son, who was named after Michelangelo, Michelangelo. And Michelangelo even writes to her and says, I would like to take my namesake into my care. And he says, I'll cherish him in Florence with more affection than the children of my nephew, Leonardo.

• 40:12James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Alastair Sooke?

  And it's like this little insight into his own surg-, because of course, whether he was celibate, we don't quite know. But he, despite telling his nephew Leonardo to marry and further the line of the family, he never marries. He doesn't have children. But he has this little surrogate family. It's quite sweet.

• 40:28James Fox?

  Yes, he was greedy but also generous simultaneously. But as you say, very difficult personality. He had some very, very close friendships, especially later on in his life. But he also has a lot of enemies.

• 40:39Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, he does.

• 40:40James Fox?

  And one of those enemies, or at least we should say rivals, in this period and this sort of heroic phase in his career is Leonardo.

• 40:48Alastair Sooke?

  Ah.

• 40:48James Fox?

  Leonardo, some people call him Leonardo da Vinci. And so we should, I think we should have a little bit of fun with this relationship. So Leonardo, I think you've mentioned it already, he's significantly older than Michelangelo. So we're in the period straight after David has been made, in the early 1500s. Michelangelo by this stage is, what, 29, 30? Leonardo is in his 50s. They could not be more different, could they?

• 41:11Alastair Sooke?

  Well, both from Florence, it's important to say, but then, and actually, interestingly, both make their names away from Florence.

• 41:19James Fox?

  Yes.

• 41:19Alastair Sooke?

  So Leonardo spends a lot of time in Milan, working for Ludovico Sforza il Moro, the Swarthy One, the ruler of Milan. And that's where Leonardo paints his Last Supper. Michelangelo, of course, we've established, actually makes his name in Rome rather than in Florence. I mean, Vasari speaks about, what's the phrase he uses? This strong resentment between them. How do you pronounce it? Do you know how to do it?

• 41:45James Fox?

  I don't know. What's the word?

• 41:47Alastair Sooke?

  The word is S D E G N O.

• 41:49James Fox?

  Geno grandissimo.

• 41:51Alastair Sooke?

  So there's this strong resentment. So there is a sense of rivalry despite the age gap.

• 41:55James Fox?

  Yes.

• 41:56Alastair Sooke?

  But there is this incredible moment in the history of art where, in 1504, when Michelangelo is finishing the David, and we've already established that Leonardo is in town, having been in Milan, he's come back to Florence, and he's part of that committee to work out where the David should be placed. At the same moment, a young Raphael turns up.

• 42:14James Fox?

  I know.

• 42:15Alastair Sooke?

  You have all of the, well, almost all of the turtles in place, in situ, at one time, all looking at each other's work. And that's hugely influential, and it's fascinating. We don't have time to get into it in this, but it really is interesting to see in drawings, studies, compositional works, you can see the influences. You can see a younger Raphael, he is literally drawing the David. He is drawing other works by Michelangelo and Leonardo.

• 42:41James Fox?

  Oh, yeah. He's stealing ideas.

• 42:43Alastair Sooke?

  Well, I think, yeah, and he has a good point. I mean, the kind of, like, the more trout ways, he assimilates. Raphael assimilates. Not Raphael just plagiarizes, but there was an element where he really does take.

• 42:53James Fox?

  But there's such different personalities, Leonardo and Michelangelo.

• 42:56Alastair Sooke?

  They are, they are.

• 42:57James Fox?

  You know, Leonardo is, he's very good-looking, he's suave, he's a bain, he's well-dressed, he's well-groomed. Part of his big shtick is to prove that artists can be gentlemen, that artists can mix and be great personality at the dinner table. He would be fantastic at a dinner party, actually, Leonardo.

• 43:13Alastair Sooke?

  It's why he loves painting. He privileges painting more than sculpture. Because sculpture's messy and noisy, and you need to be someone like Michelangelo, who enjoys spending many months in the quarries at Carrara, sleeping in his clothes.

• 43:25James Fox?

  I know.

• 43:26Alastair Sooke?

  That is not Leonardo's bag at all.

• 43:27James Fox?

  That's not his bag.

• 43:28Alastair Sooke?

  You can be dressed in really a beautiful outfit and paint. And he actually says that.

• 43:32James Fox?

  Yes, he does. And have you heard this little story about Dante? There's a great little story when they, so Leonardo is in a piazza in Florence. And, you know, he's looking great, he's with some very well-connected people and he's talking to them about Dante, the great Italian poet. And then in the background, at the other side of the piazza, he sees Michelangelo staggering away, covered in marble dust, maybe in a filthy black doublet.

• 43:56Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 43:56James Fox?

  And he says, "Oh, Michelangelo, come over here, come over here, my boy." And so Michelangelo staggers over to him and he says, "We're talking about Dante. I'm sure you have very strong views about Dante." To which Michelangelo says, "Aren't you the guy who tried to cast a horse in Milan and didn't do it?"

• 44:12Alastair Sooke?

  Ah, yes.

• 44:12James Fox?

  Mic drop, walks away. Leonardo left incredibly embarrassed.

• 44:15Alastair Sooke?

  So there was this great project in Milan to cast an equestrian monument to the Sportrs and Leonardo, he had this gig, he did a lot of work on it, it never quite came about and Michelangelo is mocking him for that.

• 44:30James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Alastair Sooke?

  Which is weird as well because Michelangelo, we haven't talked about this, he loved Italian poetry.

• 44:36James Fox?

  Yes.

• 44:37Alastair Sooke?

  He was a huge fan.

• 44:38James Fox?

  He did actually know a lot about Dante.

• 44:39Alastair Sooke?

  He could have come in at that point and had a lot to say and add. He could have trumped him in another way.

• 44:43James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Alastair Sooke?

  But instead he went for quite a blunt put down.

• 44:46James Fox?

  It's a low, it's a trump blow, isn't it really, rather than actually engaging in the subject. But, you know, that's a, it may be exaggerated, but I think there is no doubt that there was a rivalry between them. Artists were competing for a small number of commissions, they had to be rivals. And so in 1504, Alastair, soon after completing David, the Florentine authorities set both of these artists on collision course. So Leonardo has already been commissioned to paint a mural for the Palazzo Vecchio, the building that David is in front of.

• 45:21Alastair Sooke?

  So there's a big new council chamber. In the 1490s, post-Medici rule, there's this big new council and it's so large, they have to construct a new chamber, which is the kind of heart of political life in Florence. And that's the setting, isn't it, for this face-off between Leonardo and Michelangelo?

• 45:37James Fox?

  Because after Michelangelo has completed David, they say, "Well, why don't you do the one on the other side of the wall?" So you've effectively got these two greatest artists of the time in Florence being set against each other. And so they both go off into different parts of the city.

• 45:50Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 45:50James Fox?

  They're given, they're given working spaces as far apart as possible so they don't encounter each other. And they work away on these two cartoons, which are the full-size drawings that will be the basis for the murals. And they're both asked to do different battles, aren't they?

• 46:06Alastair Sooke?

  So two important moments in Florentine history. One, which is the one that Leonardo is going to depict or wants to depict, because of course we should say from the outset, neither mural gets made.

• 46:19James Fox?

  Oh, no.

• 46:19Alastair Sooke?

  Neither is executed. It's one of those... It's incredible how influential these murals have been, given that they don't exist and never did.

• 46:25James Fox?

  Yes.

• 46:26Alastair Sooke?

  But Leonardo is representing the Battle of Angiari, which was an important moment in Florentine military history, a victory for the Florentines.

• 46:35James Fox?

  Against Milan, I think.

• 46:38Alastair Sooke?

  Against Milan. And then Michelangelo, a little later, is meant to be commemorating the Battle of Cassinat, which was an earlier victory of the Florentines over, I think, the Peseans.

• 46:51James Fox?

  Yes.

• 46:52Alastair Sooke?

  The fascinating thing is that you can see these two contrasting artistic visions and approaches in the two different murals by Leonardo and Michelangelo. And Michelangelo does something which, again, is immensely wrong-footed, because this is... I'm sorry to pause. It's a complicated story, because we don't actually have the murals to look at. There are preparatory studies, and there are copies by artists of the cartoons created by Leonardo and Michelangelo, which allow us now to have a sense of what each composition would have been. Leonardo's composition, military leaders on horseback in the middle of this great melee, contorted, twisted faces. That's what you're seeing, this great knot.

• 47:36Alastair Sooke?

  He was a master and a brilliant artist of depicting horses. You see these horses in this knot of cavalrymen who are fighting.

• 47:45James Fox?

  It's an incredibly modern image, actually, isn't it? Because, you know, we've done an episode on Jericho. It feels like something from that period. It feels like something Napoleonic, doesn't it, in its style? It's unbelievably dynamic.

• 47:54Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, it does. Michelangelo does something very different, because he doesn't depict, at least in the... Surviving copies of the cartoon that we know about, he doesn't depict the battle itself. Instead, he's representing the Florentine soldiers lounging about on the banks of a river on a scorching Sunday at the moment where someone sounds the alarm to let them know that supposedly the peasants might be coming and it's time to get in your armour. And you suddenly see this tremendous activity and energy going on as these men are suddenly thinking, basically, shit, we gotta, we gotta fight. And, and someone is in the foreground trying to, I think Vasari picks this out in the biography, trying to put on a stocking, but it's quite hard because his leg is wet or the clothing is wet, something like that.

• 48:39Alastair Sooke?

  And of course, what is going on here is Michelangelo is, unlike Leonardo, he's interested in not faces, but bodies.

• 48:50James Fox?

  Yes.

• 48:50Alastair Sooke?

  And male bodies. And you see, this was so celebrated in his lifetime, even the cartoon, that full-scale, one-to-one preparatory drawing, which would have been transferred to create the mural, because it's almost like he's showboating in the way that he can depict the male form with these so-called difficult foreshortenings in every which way. And it's the beginning of this sense where the human body has this expressive power itself, which is the foundation of his art.

• 49:23James Fox?

  Yeah. Which do you prefer?

• 49:26Alastair Sooke?

  Probably Leonardo.

• 49:28James Fox?

  Yeah, me too.

• 49:30Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's interesting you say that. I mean, I, you know, because it's sort of like grotesque face versus the sort of idealizing male nude. I, I love the concept of Michelangelo. I love the wrong footing, I'm not going to depict the battle. It's possible there would have been, the battle would have somehow been depicted in another part in the mural, I think. In this surviving cartoon, I love the fact that it's the moment before the battle.

• 49:52James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 49:52Alastair Sooke?

  In the same way that David is the moment before the battle.

• 49:54James Fox?

  Yeah. He doesn't quite pull it off, I think. Anyway, based on the drawings that survive. Anyway, neither of these paintings ended up, as you say, being made. So Michelangelo, I think Leonardo started, but just as he had with the Last Suppe, experimented with techniques and the whole, the paint started to run down the

• 50:10Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, it goes a bit wrong.

• 50:11James Fox?

  It goes wrong. Classic Leonardo. And Michelangelo is about to start painting when he gets a summons.

• 50:20Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 50:20James Fox?

  He's summoned finally by the big dog, by the Pope in Rome. There is a new Pope in Rome, a man called Julius the Second. I think if there is any man in Italy who has a bigger ego than Michelangelo is Julius the Second. He's only been Pope for a couple of years, hasn't he? What do we know about Julius the Second?

• 50:40Alastair Sooke?

  Well, as you say, he's a megalomaniac. He has unbelievable, vaunting ambition. And he's also the great patron of the High Renaissance. He's known as the Pope in armour, the warrior Pope. I think earlier in this series, you've alluded to the fact that Rome was actually a bit down on its luck. But he is the man who, he wages a series of military campaigns and sort of restores, if you like, the greatness of the Papal States. His uncle had been Pope, Pope Sixus the Fourth. He spent some time in France before his election as Pope in 1503. And he takes the name Julius, Julius the Second, to refer to, of course, Julius Caesar. So his choice of Papal name exactly is going for.

• 51:19Alastair Sooke?

  But, you know, a great general, a great military commander, signalling what he wanted his papacy to be about. And he is the guy who decides to rebuild St Peter's. He also hires Raphael to decorate the Papal stanza, the rooms, the apartments in the Vatican Palace. So he is synonymous with that unbelievable, brilliant moment of the High Italian Renaissance.

• 51:46James Fox?

  Yeah, so he's been Pope for only a couple of, this gives you an indication of what an ego he had. He'd only been Pope for a couple of years. He was already starting to plan his tomb. And not just any tomb, he wanted to have the largest tomb since the time of Hadrian and Augustus.

• 52:01Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 52:02James Fox?

  And so he knows, he has seen the Pietà in Rome. He has heard what Michelangelo did up with the David. He knows Michelangelo is the man for the job. And so he summons Michelangelo down to Rome in 1505. He offers him staggering sums of money.

• 52:19Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 52:19James Fox?

  So he offers him. A hundred gold flor in advance, which is a year's salary for a crafts person just to sign the deal, and then 1,200 ducats a year, which is 10 times the average artist's salary every single year, to make the piece, plus 10,000 more when he's finished. And so Michelangelo can't believe his luck.

• 52:42Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, but you know, you know what's so fascinating about this is that the tomb, it's almost like, well, it was an impossible task to pull off.

• 52:49James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Alastair Sooke?

  You know, what we need to make clear from the outset is that that original vision for the tomb is so big, it's so ambitious, involving so many, like more than 40, possibly even 47 statues.

• 53:01James Fox?

  And it's a freestanding building. It's basically like a building on its own right with arches and architraves and columns and niches, and it's filled with, as you say, 40-plus life-size sculptures. It's a life's work.

• 53:17Alastair Sooke?

  And it occupies him for the next few decades, and it becomes this great millstone around his neck. I mean, the biographers refer to it as the tragedy of the tomb.

• 53:26James Fox?

  Yes.

• 53:27Alastair Sooke?

  And we have elements from that tomb. There are particular figures, very famous works of sculpture in their own right, which I'm sure at some point we'll talk about. But that tomb, as originally conceived, at that moment you're describing, when it's kind of like, have all the money in the world to do it.

• 53:40James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Alastair Sooke?

  It never comes to pass.

• 53:42James Fox?

  No, but at the time, you know, 1505, Michelangelo can't believe his luck. He's got a commission from the Pope. It's a massive game-changing commission, far bigger than David. There's an enormous amount of money, which, as we've said, matters greatly to him. He can't, he's rubbing his hands together. He heads off to Carrara, to the marble quarry, to start quarrying this stone. I suspect this is the happiest time in his life. You know, he's in his pomp, he's got a lot of money, he's doing this extraordinarily ambitious work, he's in a quarry with the stonemasons, just where he likes to be. It's like being in childhood again.

• 54:16Alastair Sooke?

  Well, he spends a long time there, doesn't he?

• 54:18James Fox?

  Eight months.

• 54:19Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 54:20James Fox?

  He spends eight months in Carrara. He acquires 100 tonnes of stone. He has to actually take out, even though he's been paid quite a lot of money, he has to take out a bank loan to pay for this stone to return to Rome. However, Alastair.

• 54:34James Fox?

  While Michelangelo is in Carrara quarrying the stone, Pope Julius changes his mind.

• 54:41Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 54:42James Fox?

  He decides he doesn't want the tomb after all.

• 54:44Alastair Sooke?

  No.

• 54:45James Fox?

  Quite a complicated reason. I think the reason is that Julius wanted the tomb to be in St Peter's.

• 54:51Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 54:51James Fox?

  St Peter's is not the building it is today. It was a kind of old decrepit building. There were subsidence. It was falling down.

• 54:57Alastair Sooke?

  Well, it's a basilica. I mean, it was the building that was built by Constantine.

• 55:01James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Alastair Sooke?

  And it was built over the supposed spot where St Peter had been martyred and there's his tomb.

• 55:06James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Alastair Sooke?

  And actually, I mean, think how radical this is in itself. There's a building which at this point had been there for centuries that was synonymous with the very heart of Christianity. And Julius comes along like, you know what? I'm going to build something else.

• 55:20James Fox?

  Well, yeah, this is what happened. So he commissioned this tomb. And when he starts to look into it, the tomb he wants to put in the basilica, he realises the basilica isn't fit for purpose.

• 55:30Alastair Sooke?

  Well, as in it's not big enough?

• 55:31James Fox?

  It's not big enough. The walls aren't straight. You know, it's not going to work. So he decides, well, I can't, you know, I've got to spend my money redoing the basilica. I can't spend money on both of these projects. But he doesn't tell Michelangelo. And so this is one of, this is my favourite story in the whole life of Michelangelo. It's absolutely extraordinary. And we know it blow for blow because Michelangelo wrote about it in multiple letters. So what happens is Michelangelo out in Carrara, the Pope's changed his mind but hasn't told Michelangelo. Michelangelo is now in debt because he's spent so much money getting stone. So he returns after eight months to Rome to get some more money.

• 56:08Alastair Sooke?

  Can I interrupt for one second before you launch into this, the brilliant story?

• 56:12James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Alastair Sooke?

  Because there's just a moment in Carrara that I find fascinating, which we haven't touched on. And I just wanted to get your take on it because Michelangelo is spending many months there. And there's this other story about how he spies a mountain and he kind of wants to carve it into a colossus, like a colossus that the ancients would have created. What do you think that's telling us, that story? I mean?

• 56:35James Fox?

  I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but I mean, it certainly is expressive of these megalomaniac ambitions that he has.

• 56:44Alastair Sooke?

  Them as well as Julius, that's the thing.

• 56:45James Fox?

  I think so.

• 56:46Alastair Sooke?

  You have these two megalomaniacs, really.

• 56:48James Fox?

  Yeah, and we will see over this episode and the rest of this episode and the next episode, how they repeatedly clash. But there's also a sense, you know, something that people talk about a lot with Michelangelo is that with his sculptures, he feels the form is inside the stone. And his job is to remove the excess stone and to reveal the form that has always been there. So maybe he's up in the mountains, maybe he's drunk too much Chianti. And he sees this great gigantic figure in the mountains. Anyway. Carrara for eight months decides after eight months, so this is now the spring of fifteen oh six, to come back to Rome to get some more money from Julius so he can carry on the project. And he goes to a dinner in the Vatican.

• 57:28James Fox?

  And he's sitting at the table and there's a nice dinner, lots of people are there. And he overhears at the end of the table Pope Julius saying, well, I'm not doing the tomb anymore. And Michelangelo is like, what? And so Michelangelo, who's never backward in terms of coming forward, he just stands up and he walks over to the Pope. He says, your holiness, um, so this tomb that I'm working on, I do need some more money for more stone. And Julius just says, oh, Michelangelo, let's not talk about, we're having dinner, let's not talk about it now. Come back on Monday morning, we'll resolve everything then. So Michelangelo goes home, he stews over the weekend. And on Monday morning, as requested, he returns to the Vatican.

• 58:06James Fox?

  And he waits in the waiting room and eventually someone comes out and says, I'm very sorry, the Pope's too busy to see you. Can you come back tomorrow? Then he definitely will see you. So Michelangelo stomps home and he comes back on Tuesday and the same thing happens again. Sorry, Pope's too busy to see you. Please come back on Wednesday. He's very keen to see you. So Michelangelo returns on the Wednesday and again, the same thing happens. The Pope is ghosting him.

• 58:28Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 58:28James Fox?

  Goes back on the Thursday, the same thing happens. On the Friday, he returns, he's actually not even allowed in the building, he's kicked out. So Michelangelo, you know, he now knows the writing is on the wall, the tomb is not going to happen. He is furious, he's a very petulant man. So he runs home, he packs up all his belongings, he gets on a horse and he rides out of Rome, vowing never ever to return. But one thing you do, if you're employed by the Pope, you do not leave Rome without permission. And the Pope's men are standing at the city's walls and they see Michelangelo leaving and the Pope sends five horsemen to chase him. And so Michelangelo riding through the villages and the lanes and over the hills to get out of Rome as quickly as possible.

• 59:08Alastair Sooke?

  We're back into your western territory.

• 59:09James Fox?

  Yes, exactly. And the five horsemen are following him and he's going as fast as he can. Every couple of hours, he's changing horses, you know, trying desperately to cross into Tuscany into Florentine territory. Eventually, at two in the morning, he gets into Florentine territory. It's a village called Poggi Bonsi. I don't know if you've ever been to it.

• 59:26Alastair Sooke?

  I have not.

• 59:26James Fox?

  Lovely named Poggi Bonsi. And the guys catch up with him and there's an enormous argument outside and in when they say, the Pope needs you back. You cannot leave without permission. Michelangelo threatens to murder these, these five horsemen. They wake everyone up in the village with the screams and the shouts. And eventually he refuses to go and he heads off back to Florence and those guys return, tails between their legs, back to Rome.

• 59:50Alastair Sooke?

  Is this an instance of this famous terrible attire?

• 59:53James Fox?

  I think so.

• 59:54Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it, it's kind of unbelievable that essentially one of the most powerful men in the world is saying, what are you doing? Come back. And you say, no, thanks.

• 1:00:03James Fox?

  He's like, no way, I'm off.

• 1:00:04Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05James Fox?

  Yeah. I mean, and Michelangelo says, you know, we made a deal, you know, we, the deal was to do the tomb, you know, I'm not coming back unless you do the tomb. I mean, it's amazing that he has this, the kind of the strength of will and the bravery to do this. So he heads back to, to Florence and the Pope meanwhile is constantly writing to him, saying, please come back, please come back. And Michelangelo at this stage, he's not just annoyed with the Pope, he's actually now scared that he's going to be killed. He, he's scared that if he returns to Rome, that he will be imprisoned and will ultimately be executed. So he refuses. Request after request after request after request. Eventually, the Pope has to write to John Major, to Sodarini, to say, please, can you

• 1:00:50James Fox?

  sort, sort this out for me? And I've got the letter.

• 1:00:52Alastair Sooke?

  Ah.

• 1:00:53James Fox?

  That the Pope, I think it's a lovely letter.

• 1:00:55Alastair Sooke?

  Okay.

• 1:00:55James Fox?

  That the Pope writes to Sodarini, to the Florentine government. And he says, beloved sons, greetings and apostolic benediction. We hear that the sculptor Michelangelo, who left us without reason and by caprice, now fears to return. Although we bear no grudge, because we know the natural disposition of men of this type, however, to belay all suspicion, we call on the affection that you have for us and ask you to promise him on our behalf that if he returns, he will neither be touched nor insulted, and we will restore him to the same state of apostolic grace that he held before his departure. Rome, 8th of July, 1506, in the third year of our pontificate.

• 1:01:39Alastair Sooke?

  You see, I think he really actually respects the way that Michelangelo is just saying, you know what, I'm not going to do it. It's made him much keener. I mean, he really wants him to come back.

• 1:01:49James Fox?

  He does. Well, and eventually, in 1508, Michelangelo is persuaded, partly by John Major, to return to Rome.

• 1:01:58Alastair Sooke?

  He does, and the the meeting takes place in Bologna, which is where Julius is waging a military campaign. And there's this wonderful moment in the sources where they finally come face to face, and Julius says something along the lines of, we would have you come to us, but instead, we have come to you. In other words, I kept on ordering you to come to Rome, and look, I mean, I'm the Pope. I've had to come to Bologna to get this meeting. This is this is kind of madness. And he actually, there's a rapprochement. He asks Michelangelo to do a different work for him, not the tomb, although the tomb can be ongoing, but he says, I want you to make a life-sized bronze of me.

• 1:02:41Alastair Sooke?

  This in itself is quite a wonderful mini story, because the bronze that Michelangelo creates, Michelangelo asked the Pope, you know, do you want to be shown with a with a book in in your hand in this sculpture? And the Pope, Julius II, replies to him, no, give me a sword, I'm not a man of letters. This is the warrior Pope kind of idea. Eventually, that bronze gets melted down and turned into a piece of artillery, so it's lost. But yeah, ultimately, Michelangelo is then brought back into the Roman fold.

• 1:03:14James Fox?

  Yes, in 1508, Michelangelo returns to Rome, at which point, Alastair, he is given the commission for which he is perhaps most famous of all, a work that will turn out to be. Not just one of the most celebrated artworks in Western history, but one of the great achievements in human history, the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And that, dear listener, we will be discussing in the next episode, so stay tuned. Goodbye. Goodbye.

• 1:03:49James Fox?

  If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts and maybe even leave a review.