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- [00:00]
Kate Lister
Hi, I'm your host, Kate Lister. If you would like Betwixt the Sheets ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every single week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:27]
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- [02:00]
Kate Lister
Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Betwixt the Sheets and I'm so glad that you are. But before we can be allowed to continue any further on our little journey together, I have to tell you this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. And we call that the fair do's warning because, well, fair dues we have told you it's a bit of a spicy one. If you keep listening and get upset, well, that's on you, quite frankly. Right on with the show. Walk lightly betwixt us. We do not want to draw attention to ourselves. It's 1510. And I have snuck us into the Sistine Chapel to see how Michelangelo is getting on with this ceiling painting he's been banging on about. And yet, to be fair, that is not half bad, Mike. That is not bad at all. Well, that's my artistic review anyway. But also, you would have to say that Catholicism has never looked quite this sexy. The creation of Adam's section looks like a scene from the local bath houses. I'm not sure how he's managed it, but it's remarkable. Sexy and pious all at the same time. But all of this has got me thinking about the man himself. What was Michelangelo's sexuality? How did he manage to square his sexuality with his faith? And what conflict arose out of that? Not to mention everything else that was going on in his life while he was creating these masterpieces? Well, let's leave him to it and we'll do some more digging. What do you call him, Ann?
- [03:52]
Sarah Prodan
Oh, money.
- [03:53]
Kate Lister
Of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
- [03:56]
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- [03:59]
Sarah Prodan
Boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.
- [04:09]
Kate Lister
Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
- [04:11]
Sarah Prodan
Goodness, what beautiful diamonds. Has nothing to do with it, Dearian.
- [04:20]
Kate Lister
Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Michelangelo was many things. He was a painter, a sculptor, a poet, a devout Catholic, and a great big, lovely gay Italian man. He was. We can just put any naysayers to bed with this one. He absolutely was. But how did his sexuality play a part in his life? Did it create conflict with his faith? He was intensely religious, you know. And how was all of this expressed in his many masterpieces? Taking us into this fascinating world of Renaissance Italy today is Michelangelo scholar Sarah Pro Dan to help us get to know this remarkable man a little bit better. And if you're curious to know more about life in the Renaissance, then why not scroll back to our episode on Renaissance beauty standards? Some incredible and deadly things were being concocted back then. Right, paintbrushes and easels at the ready, everyone. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Sarah Prodan. How are you doing?
- [05:31]
Sarah Prodan
Very well, thanks. You?
- [05:33]
Kate Lister
Oh, I'm beyond excited for today's topic. Michelangelo. I love this man. I love his art. But I couldn't claim to be a Michelangelo expert, so I'm so excited to speak to somebody who is. Sarah, what first brought you to Michelangelo's artwork? Do you remember when, like, you first met him?
- [05:55]
Sarah Prodan
I do I actually first met Michelangelo in a concrete way through his poetry, believe it or not, in a course on love and sex in the Renaissance. So Michelangelo was first and foremost a poet. To me, obviously, he's a great artist. And his art entered into picture quickly thereafter. I cried the first time I saw the David in Florence. And so I been very responsive to Michelangelo's art. But it was his words, it was his poetry that really drew me in. And his art, for me came second.
- [06:24]
Kate Lister
Yeah, wow. Now you're saying Michelangelo and I'm saying Michelangelo. Is there a proper definition? Because I recently found out that it's not Genghis Khan, it's Genghis Khan. So now I'm very open to. How's his name pronounced?
- [06:40]
Sarah Prodan
No, it's pronounced in both ways in Italian, it's Michelangelo. And I tend to favor. Also, like with the Medici, I say Medici, not Medici, which is more of a North American, the Medici. So, yeah, I tend to follow the Italian accent. But there's Michelangelo. Michelangelo. They're both perfectly acceptable.
- [06:56]
Kate Lister
Yeah, one name. So he's like, very much like Cher and Madonna. Just the one name will do it. What was his full name?
- [07:04]
Sarah Prodan
So his full name is, in fact, very long. So Michelangelo is sort of one of these rare artists who actually had minor patrician roots. And so he's got a long name. His father's name was Lorovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti, Stimoni. So he had two last names. We have Buonarroti, which is his last name, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Simoni. So he had a very, very long name, was named ultimately Michelangelo Buonarroti.
- [07:32]
Kate Lister
My God, Sarah, you sound sexy when you say that. Isn't Italian a sexy language, though?
- [07:37]
Sarah Prodan
It's the language, yeah. It's the language.
- [07:41]
Kate Lister
Okay. But we're going to get to the sexy bit. So Michelangelo Buonarroti, known for his paintings, known for poetry. I don't think a lot of people would know much about where he came from. So before we get to what he personally liked and didn't like, where did he come from?
- [07:58]
Sarah Prodan
So Michelangelo is Florentine, technically, born about 90 kilometers east of Florence. But Florence was a city state and a republic. He was very much Florentine with roots in the city. His father was a magistrate in the town of Caprese when he was born. And so he was sort of raised in and around Florence. He had a wet nurse in the hills of Settignano. That's where he was sort of exposed to roots in sculpture. There were not artists in his family, historically, family of merchants and bankers. So a lot of legend, but also unique points of verifiable biography in the story of his rise to sort of becoming an artist. But he was apprenticed in Florence to a painter's workshop, the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, but very much defined himself as a sculptor first and foremost. So he's known obviously for his masterworks in the Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and then the later Last Judgment that he did. But he, you know, he always called painting not his art. And in fact it was in part a conspiracy by his competitors to have been forced into the role of painter that he would somehow fail. So he was first and foremost a sculptor in his own mind, in his training, as his identification, and scarcely known as a poet for centuries. Many, in fact don't know that he was a poet, but 302 poems he was, he was quite prolific.
- [09:15]
Kate Lister
He was. Imagine being so good at art that you could look at something Michelangelo painted and he looks at himself and went, no, I'm better at other stuff. Like that's how good he is that he would look at his painting and think, oh, this is a conspiracy.
- [09:30]
Sarah Prodan
It's this great age of genius. I mean, when you look back on it, it's really remarkable. If you think that, you know, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci in Florence, you know, crossing paths at the same time, then that concept of polymothy, of being multiply talented, you know, across different domains is really you many explanations for why that was in the period. But being called upon to do and act across different domains is what cultivated that. So to be trained as a painter, but then to be asked to be an architect. Right. Michelangelo was, at the end of his Life, the last 17 years he spent as chief architect for St. Peter's in Rome. And so he was, you know, foreman and engineer and managing crews of 75 people. So, you know, this, this myth of the solitary artist was not really the case. And in fact artists before Michelangelo's day were. They really were artisans. This concept of the celebrity artist and artists as we understand it was really something that emerged from the Renaissance and grew through part of the myth making and repositioning of the production of art as a noble intellectual pursuit and not just a mechanical endeavor.
- [10:31]
Kate Lister
You'd have to change things after having Michelangelo, Raphael and da Vinci all knocking around at the same time. That's bound to change what you think of as an artist, isn't it? Did he train as an artist?
- [10:45]
Sarah Prodan
He did. Oh did, yeah. That was the training. So Usually around the age of about 13. You know, you would thereabouts, you know, you would sort of be apprenticed if you were going to be an artist. I mean, oftentimes the Bottega, where artists sort of worked, they were sort of connected to residences. So you had sort of artistic enterprises usually based around families and training and families. But that was obviously not the case for Michelangelo. He was sort of apprentice. So there were, there were assistants, apprentices and masters in a given workshop and a house style one learned by copying drawings from a master's book, for instance. So draftsmanship was part of the training as a painter, learning to mix pigments and things like this as well, and understanding how that was done. A lot of work like frescoes were collaborative endeavors. And so, yeah, there was sort of all of this training. And Michelangelo sort of distinguished himself sort of quite early. You know, the story that he was observed creating the head of a faun and, you know, garnered the interest of the leading patron in Florence, the Medici. And then they sort of supported him in his career. And the reality of the story is that there were distant kinship ties between his family and the Medici family. And so, you know, it was a bit more of a. Probably a different explanation for how it was he ended up apprenticed and trained. And then Michelangelo really worked for quite elite patrons. I mean, of the 13 popes there were during his 89 years of life, he worked for nine of them.
- [12:02]
Kate Lister
I mean, that's running with the big leagues, isn't it? That really is.
- [12:05]
Sarah Prodan
It is quite remarkable. And so that came with opportunity and also constraint and adversity. I mean, you don't work in these environments and not have, you know, tremendous exposure, opportunity in some sense, creative license as he got older, but also, you know, constraint. And he felt quite enslaved by the demands of patrons. It was a patronage based society. And that meant that issues of gratitude and reciprocity and all of this were really quite important. And he could be quite touchy about these things.
- [12:31]
Kate Lister
So he grows up in Florence. Now, am I right in thinking Florence at the time, maybe it still does, had a reputation for being. It was a bit of a wild place. It was sort of like maybe a bit more sexually permissive. I mean, is that completely wide of the mark? What was Florence like when he was growing up?
- [12:52]
Sarah Prodan
No, no, it's not. So, you know, Michelangelo in those years and he lived in the Medici family, was a vital place, sort of creatively. So I guess perhaps before we explain why, maybe describing what Florence was, I meant it was a city state and you Know, Italy, of course, was more of a cultural and sort of expression at the time as a concept than a geographical. When there were different city states, principalities, variation, local culture and language. Dialects in Italy were their own, as they are, and had their own language. And so what you had in a city state like Florence in the north, it was centered on a mercantile economy, is you had a certain kind of economic vitality. And you had the patronage of art, in part to legitimize power, in part also as a charitable act to give back for great wealth, tapped into sort of Christian ideas. There you had patronage of the arts, and this included literature, this included visual arts as we understand them, and diving into philosophy. And, of course, this was a moment of Renaissance. They called it a rebirth, Vinashvita Renaissance being a 19th century term. But it was a recovery of classical antiquity, the style and the ideas. And so that meant going back to examining culture of antiquity, which was in some ways centered on. On certain kind of Socratic modes of engagement, philosophically, that map down to certain kind of social relationships based around the notion of pederasty. And so what you have in Florence, but not only Florence at the time, but well documented in Florence, is homoeroticism and homosexuality. And so you have both a permissive culture around this as well as a sort of repressive one. So it went by the term sodomy. There was offices of the night that persecuted these sentences. One could incur anything from fines to imprisonment to risk of death, depending on the circumstances. And this was sort of the legal status. But also there was a culture of idealizing male relationships. There was a homosocial culture of relationships between older and younger men as part of a way of sort of growing into culture, coming to understand power relations. And there were both, you know, sort of beautiful stories of long standing relationships and also horrifying stories of rape and abuse of power. So, you know, all the things you might imagine tied up with questions of power and sex were very present in Florence. And there were context in which they were given expressive and artistic license, often because they were also mapped onto myth, you know, so, for instance, to depict an erotic relationship between two individuals might, you know, not be permissive, but to tell a tale of Leda and the swan or Zeus or a mythological tale that involved these things was okay. So, you know, it was a question of who and when, under what context certain things were discussed and where they operated. But yes, there was a high degree of. Of artists being associated with homosexuality in a period. But socially speaking, it crosses the social Spectrum. And people had many different fates before legal, the legal system and also perceptions of fellow Florentines.
- [15:50]
Kate Lister
When I was thinking and reading about the gay culture, and not the same thing, but also this pederastic culture that was happening at the time, I kind of thought that. It sounds to me like there's a parallel with modern drug culture, which is that at one point there are laws against it. The Office of the Night was persecuting anybody that it accused of it. And there's this really like, that's the official party lines. We're not supposed to be doing it. It's terrible. And you'll get in trouble if you do. But also there's this thriving subculture where it's very much an open secret. It is happening. People know all about it.
- [16:22]
Sarah Prodan
Exactly. That is absolutely the case. And then also the fact in some cases of accusations, the legal infrastructure is a really great way to sort of try and get rid of enemies, to introduce elements of scandal when you're vying for other things. So, you know, all the ways in which power plays out now was also true then.
- [16:41]
Kate Lister
Do we know anything about Michelangelo when he was growing up? Was he ever in one of these relationships as a young man, as a boy?
- [16:50]
Sarah Prodan
So we don't have documentation of Michelangelo's involvement. We do know that he had homoerotic longings and homosocial relationships, most definitely. And one young man by the name Gerard. And of course, quibs in the contemporary literature of the Girardos around Michelangelo. But Michelangelo was one of these also incredibly devout Christians for most of his life. He was also quite oriented that way, quite susceptible to guilt. And so a contrast might be drawn and has been drawn between, say, Leonardo da Vinci, who was also known for these things, but did not seem to feel the same compunction to sort of hide it. Having said that, the great tale of homoerotic longing and love in Michelangelo's life actually takes place when he was considerably older. Michelangelo moved to Rome. He was back and forth between Rome and Florence between 1532, 1534, definitively moved to Florence, never to return again until after he was dead because of political situation in Florence. So he moved to Rome. And there was a beautiful Roman nobleman known for sophistication and refinement among the patriciate, also engaged in antiquarian culture. And Michelangelo became enamored with him. Tommaso di Cavalieri was his name. And. And so this was not a relationship that was engaged in physically, for what we know it operated and functioned very much as an open secret with intermediaries carrying documents and letters sort of back and forth. Tommaso on his part expressed great admiration for Michelangelo and his work and respect, you know, for the artist and the older sort of established artist that he was. Michelangelo enamored of the beauty that he described also as sort of spiritual, as sort of an old soul that he saw in this Cavalieri. So there was a period defined as a courtship of a couple years letters from Michelangelo. It occasioned some of his most beautiful poetry, including idealizing poetry, you know, the stuff of the soul. But then translated into this friendship that lasted a lifetime. Tonazoto Cavalieri was there on Michelangelo's deathbed.
- [18:43]
Kate Lister
Wow.
- [18:44]
Sarah Prodan
So there's a lot in that relationship. Beautiful polished gift drawings, erotic drawings, mythological in content. One of them, the rape of Ganymede, the cupbearer that Zeus carried up. And so, yeah, I mean, the discussions of a sort of erotic art in Michelangelo ties to these ideas of the revival of antiquity, equity, mythology, contemporary notions of sacred versus carnal love and the ways in which that could be expressed. So Michelangelo tended to sublimate and idealize, which was an ideal of the cultural elite. You know, so trying to read between the lines, between what's expressed in literature and what was lived on the ground. But in Michelangelo's case, he was given to asceticism, to like I said, to guilt, to living in a certain abstemious kind of a way. And so he was tended to sublimate.
- [19:27]
Kate Lister
It must have been so difficult for anybody who wasn't, you know, heterosexual growing up in this environment where you've got these urges and you're growing up where clearly there are outlets for this, it's all around you. But also the church is completely condemning it. And you said that he was a man of great faith and he kept that all of his life. It must have been so conflicting for him.
- [19:50]
Sarah Prodan
Yeah, it was also conflicting culture. I mean, you could find, you know, in the character the papacy changed with the character of the pope. And they weren't all great. I mean, this is at time the pope that brought Michelangelo to do the sacred temple sealing was known as the warrior pope, Pope Julius II and of course temporal ruler expanding the Papal states. And so, you know, a lot of anti clerical sentiment, the kind of things that gave rise to Protestantism and, and, and pushes both within and outside the church for renewal had to do with those kind of contradictions within the papacy where, you know, sodomy could be practiced without, you know, by certain individuals and you know, without sort of being penalized. And there was you know, great indulgence and lascivious things and accumulation of great wealth. And so, I mean, it was a time where we saw these contrasts. And so, you know, there were seasons of great repression and enforcement and seasons of much greater flexibility, even within Michelangelo's life in certain circles. And, you know, the death of a patron and the character of that patron could change everything. You know, it wasn't like the systems we have now. So, you know, the character of the local ruler, whether that was the pope or a prince or a ruler who conducted himself like one, you know, the first citizens in a city like Florence, This. This really dictated so. Yes, of course, being conflicted, probably, with the urges one couldn't express, that would also have been true, you know, for. For women and other people in the period as well. There was greater freedom among the lower classes. I mean, you had, in Italy at the time, a relatively pronounced urban culture. Believe it or not, about 25% of people lived in cities, but even villages among the peasants were quite. Were sort of quite dense, and society was hierarchical. So, yes, he would have, absolutely. And his. His poetry really makes clear the ways in which he struggled with that, but also the idea of struggling against any desire in the passions or something, you know, reason. The senses are to be submitted to reason in the periods, I guess, no matter what. It was. One of the most beautiful lines from Michelangelo's poems, I think, Tell me plays on this with. About desire. And he uses the word to will, to desire, volere, to wish, to want. And this is the theme that comes up in poetry, it comes up in religious culture. But he writes, I wish I wanted, my Lord, what I do not want. And it's this concept of the divided will, about wanting thing you can't have, or wanting you can't want, or wishing you wanted something different. And, you know, so what that experience is, and, you know, it's an achingly profound poem that then turns into a mystical longing for, you know, kind of Christ. He characterizes himself as the mystic bride, and. But it is very much about reconciling with, you know, the flesh and the spirit and with conflicting desires. And so this was rooted in the culture commonly expressed in poetry, but poignantly so and in a way that very much speaks to biography.
- [22:29]
Kate Lister
In Michelangelo's case, would he have been around at the. Was it the Bonfire of the Vanities where that mad Pope turned up and decided that everyone was a sinner and he was going to burn everything? What he would have been there for that?
- [22:43]
Sarah Prodan
This would have been Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola, yes, that's the guy, the mad monk, yeah. So he had been a Dominican preacher in Florence, centered in a place of San Marco. And one of the interesting points emphasized in one of M's biography, by a contemporary's writing of him is how much the voice of that preacher echoed in Michelangelo's. He carried it forward. Not only Michelangelo, because it was a call also. So this is a moment in history where events in nature, cataclysmic events, phenomenon of war, are very much read through a religious paradigm. Right. These were God's response to immorality in a city. And so challenges to say to Florence was inevitably tied to the moral character of the people and the way that they lived. And so Savonarola was someone advocating a certain kind of asceticism and advocating a theocratic state, actually, which he temporarily, after he ousted the medicine, got to sort of start. And so it was in that period during his reign, I mean, he was summarily gotten rid of and executed publicly. So Savonarola was not around for long. But the apocalyptic fervor that was a part of his preaching was something that also appealed to or had an impact, rather, on Michelangelo. And so, yeah, millenarian concerns, concerns for the end of times, concerns in this case, of a scourge coming to bring about purification. This was also the world in which Michelangelo lived. Ironically, sodomy was persecuted less under Savonarola's reign than it had been under the Medici. So, I mean, we find all these interesting juxtapositions, you know, where the focus is. And so despite the rigors and the enforced rigors of a certain kind of morality, sodomy specifically was. There were fewer cases during that particular window, but I suppose they were fighting battles on many moral fronts. And so that perhaps explains it. But yeah, one of the many sort of of unexpected sort of coincidence of things.
- [24:35]
Kate Lister
Yeah, absolutely. And you've mentioned the Medici there. And I should probably just ask for anyone that's, that's unfamiliar, who were the Medici? Like, they were Michelangelo's patrons. But what does that even mean?
- [24:46]
Sarah Prodan
But what does that even mean? Exactly. So two things. So one, about the family. So, Lawrence, historically a republic in the context of city state, in the context of early modern Italy. And this meant that it was run by groups of citizens, citizens. And so not everyone counted as, you know, as people. You had to be a member of the Patricia. There's this sort of long standing thing. But the Medici were one of the more powerful families historically in Florence. That managed to consolidate power and so had become de facto rulers by the time Michelangelo's day, through successive generations. And so Lorenzo de Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, it was responsible for sort of maintaining a certain kind of political stability in Italy at the time that allowed for the flourishing of culture and accumulating of wealth. And so they were great patrons, as anyone with great money was in the period. The distinction between the power of the family and the dignity of the state, where the political and the personal sort of merged, this became quite hard to parse out. And in the decades of Michelangelo's life, certainly in the wake of Learns what I Medici, there seemed to be this turn towards more of a princely, a sort of a discourse in the period of tyranny and a prince versus a republic and sort of how that looks. Michelangelo was very partial to the traditional republican conception of Florence, to the point that when members of the Medici family also started to become popes and Rome children of Lorenzo de Medici that Melangel grew up with also got positions in the papacy. There were two Medici popes. And so this family became quite powerful between Rome and Florence, and the center of the Renaissance moved to Rome during McLencho's lifetime, shortly before he did. And where I'm headed with this is that they were engaged in patronage in many different forms, and it was entangled also with questions of power. And so in this fascinating period between 1527 and 1530, where Florence had reverted back to a republic, they'd ousted the Medici, Michelangelo was in Florence and he defended and participated in the fortifications of Florence to defend against the Medici. All of this while one of the Medici was pope, Pope Clement VII in Rome. And when the Medici were restored, this pope brought Michelangelo back to work on projects for the Medici himle in Florence. So there's this long story of, you know, what is loyalty and what is gratitude and how do we sort of work together. But, I mean, it also speaks to the importance of artists and certain kind of celebrity for also legitimizing power. So there's this case of mutual need, you know, asymmetry of power, obviously, but also a delicate balance. And so great art and the patronage of great art was fundamental to legitimizing power. And, you know, Michelangelo was central to many such projects in the period.
- [27:27]
Kate Lister
I'll be back with Sarah and Michelangelo after this short break.
- [27:46]
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- [29:34]
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- [30:16]
Kate Lister
Let's talk about some of Michelangelo's work and then we'll get onto his poems. Because I think that that's probably a piece of evidence in the case that I'm going to make now, which is that I am quite confident saying that he was a gay man who was attracted to men. I think, and I think possibly the biggest piece of evidence you've got for that is his artwork. Look at his artwork like it's just a boy bonanza. It's beautiful. Men. Even when he tries to do women, they end up as Men with tits on. Maybe that's me being really harsh.
- [30:48]
Sarah Prodan
No, it's you being very discrete. I mean, it's an accurate description of what. This has been commented on by many of Michelangelo's figures. Very masculine. There are a number of explanations for this.
- [30:57]
Kate Lister
Yes.
- [30:57]
Sarah Prodan
But, you know, the place of the body and the place of the nude sort of in Renaissance culture is complicated because, of course, there were very strong religious ideas about these things, but also a variety of ways to think about this and to think sort of about the body. So, I mean, first and foremost, the body was a social signal fire, sort of in the Renaissance. And so how one decorated the body, what could be seen of a body, how when conducted himself in gestures, the clothing one could wear, this was all determined by social status and rank. So, you know, it spoke to sort of community, to rank, to place in the system. And in that sense was sort of very. Sort of very important. There were concepts, broader concepts of the body politic as well that mapped onto these ideas. And then there was a more personal component, I guess, if you will, of this compass itself. I mean, in Michelangelo's world, in the Christian world world, the body was composed of or the individual, the person, personhood implied a conjunction of body and soul. And so how the body related to the soul, proper uses of the body in light of the soul became very topical. And that brings us into the, I mean, philosophical and metaphysical sort of realm, but also religious.
- [32:01]
Kate Lister
Yeah.
- [32:01]
Sarah Prodan
And so we sort of get both. And so there could be a championing sort of the body. So the. The athletic male nude, like Michelangelo's David, for instance, could convey heroism, it can convey courage, it could convey dignity. Beauty was a sign in Neoplatonic thinking, revival at the time of virtue. And so beauty in a beautiful body could signify the best of things. It was an ideal of sorts. But also the nude body was a nude body. And so, for instance, Michelangelo did a nude Christ that's in the Church of Rome. That's boldly seven. It was attacked. They ended up putting a loincloth over it because people found that indecorous. And so it's been pretty persuasively argued that the way the nude was managed and the way erotica and various degrees of, you know, expressions of the body and of sex in the period were filtered and validated were through concepts of sort of obscenity, honesty and dishonesty is the Italian word, but meaning obscenity and decency. And that this just went beyond whether a body was naked or not. It was. Where was the Body displayed. What was it signifying? Was it in a bedroom? And was it tied to themes of myth? And was it in service of conception and procreation, which was legitimized by the church? So there were these sanctioned areas for sort of erotica and sort of nudity. And, you know, some of Michelangelo's drawings and artwork sort of veer into that area. Others, like. Like the 20 nude nudes that he included on the Sistine Nudes. Right. These were also studies in the body. They were studies in anatomy. And in that sense, you know, there was also conceptions of the. The human body being dignified because humans were sort of at the center in this great chain of being. They brought together the divine. The. The great universe was replicated in the human form. And so there was a dignity ascribed as well to the body and an interest in anatomy. It's not all to be condemned, but obviously, but. But. But it was commented on. But the masculine, definitely. We do have actually drawing of a nude woman that Michelangelo had done. It's not that he couldn't draw a nude woman, but it didn't appeal in his art. And there was a certain kind of heroism, Michelangelo, for the body was expressive of, obviously of the psyche, of other things. And so how do you make a body express things that can't be articulated, whether it's divine inspiration or struggle? So the model for that was the Laico one. It was a sculpture described in Pliny's Natural History that was actually excavated in Rome in 1506. And Michelangelo got to be a party to that, got to be part of restoring it. And it's described as S curve, as the serpentine vision of the body that conveys torsion and tension. Also could be, you know, divine inspiration or erotic kind of longing. I mean, it can capture this intensity of emotion. And it's a form that shaped Michelangelo's art and expression of the body as well. And so, yeah, you know, size and musculature, these could be powerful conveyors of inner experience as well.
- [34:51]
Kate Lister
The Aeneudi fascinate me. I love them because, like, if you're looking at what he did in the Sistine Chapel, which is unbelievable that any human being could have done that just in itself. It's incredible. But when I'm looking at it, I'm going like, he's made God buffed. That's quite a ballsy thing to have done as well. But like this, like, these are biblical scenes, and, you know, there's God and there's religion and then there are the anuzi who are just 20 beautiful naked twinks. They're not religious. And he's got one of them leaning on. Is it acorns that look an awful lot like penises?
- [35:28]
Sarah Prodan
Yeah. A lot of fascinating things on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. So a couple of things about that. You know, one, Michelangelo didn't, you know, come up with the entire program for the Sistine Chapel ceiling without theological consultants. Right. So some of the imagery and the things that they could mean, they would have been.
- [35:43]
Kate Lister
No, they wouldn't have just let him just have at it.
- [35:46]
Sarah Prodan
No, no. I mean, he had a lot of creative license, but not entirely. And so, you know, some of what reads to us looking back as obvious, manifest, you know, expressions of physical things were also had different signifiers. They were read allegorically in the period. They signified sort of other things. So not only the ignudi are part of this sort of artificial framework Michelangelo created sort of around the scenes, they occupy this liminal space between physical, not physical. So, you know, how do we sort of read these? But it's true. One of them, the hand dang around near the buttocks of Adam, and McClendell's kind of scene of Adam in a way that others have found it's really quite suggestive. So, I mean, it is there, but ambiguity in imagery and being able to interpret and the burden of interpretation. You know, the Sistine Temple ceiling. As much as prints of his work circulated widely and were influential, and people came to see it was. It was a rather educated, elite, restricted audience that was also being catered to there. This is the Chapel of Cardinals. And so. So what enters into this is humanist culture and a play on wit. The idea of reading a thing on multiple levels. The idea of biblical allegory, a bit of creative play. So it's all of these elements of culture that go into the multiple layers of meaning. We could have a literal level and then layers superimposed. And so in that, there was room for play. And one could pretend that you were doing one thing and it signified another. But there is deep eroticism that's sort of manifest even there. The temptation scene and the expulsion is another one of those scenes. So Michelangelo divided the scene into two parts. We've got, you know, Adam and Eve being expelled on the one side, the viewer's right fear sort of looking at. And he conflated the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. And to the left, we have Eve on the ground, Adam reaching above her to grab the fruit. It's Adam reaching for the fruit. The Way their bodies come together is suggestive, as I pointed out, a sort of fellatio. So what. What is he indicating here is the sin and who's complicit in it? And what does that mean? And. And, you know, sexual sin, of course, stood for sin broadly, and it was about a certain kind of moral behavior and sex. But it was also, on a more fundamental level, a turning away from God. It had less to do with the thing itself and more. Less to do with, you know, senses are bad at large. And more. If God is not the center of how we relate to things, then we've fallen into sin. So it's a life orientation. It's not that the body and all expressions of sexuality were. Were. Were wrong, but it was order of things and where God fit in, what the purpose was, and who was the one doing it. So, you know, the comp. All of the complexity of these dimensions of Michelangelo's culture are readily identifiable. They come together in Sistine Chapel sealing, where we have these nods towards naughtiness and erotic behavior and also an understanding of, you know, how the body can be subjected to and come to embody the spirit and raise one higher. So, yeah.
- [38:36]
Kate Lister
Isn't that crazy, though, that he, like, put this, it's the Vatican. It's the Vatican. Like, I just love the idea that, you know, that there's the spiritual and the temple and the bodily and all of it and the allegorical. But also I just love the idea of him sitting there just maybe having a little chuckle to himself at putting what is effectively a gay bonanza on the wall of the Vatican. Maybe he did that. That's far too reductive of me. But do we have any idea who were the models for? Like, who was the model for David? Was there a model for David that we know?
- [39:06]
Sarah Prodan
That's a really great question. They tended to typically be men. If there was a specific model. I don't know. You know, the story of the David is really quite. It's quite long. You know, Michelangelo sort of inherited the block of stone that had sort of been worked by others and sort of how he went about producing that. It's sort of a fascinating story. Particular art history and contracts and patronage and then questions of decency and then also scale and what McClentil is trying to achieve there. The David has this large hand and sort of large head. It was originally meant to be. I don't know how many people know this, but actually one of many statues on top of the basilica in the dome in Florence. It was not originally Meant to be in front of City hall where the replica now stands. And so yes, great question of who the physical models were, I don't know. That may be known, but I don't know offhand specifically who that might have been.
- [39:56]
Kate Lister
Whilst you're here and we're talking about stuff, I want to ask you, because I've asked this question of lots of people, why was the penis so small? What was that like? Why was that an artistic choice that is made again and again and again. And Michelangelo makes it repeatedly like, why not do a regular sized one?
- [40:14]
Sarah Prodan
That's a great question. When perhaps the reasons of decorum not to sort of emphasize it. In the case of the David, I think much of the sizing of the various components were meant to cater to the viewing angle and so how things would look to scale when viewed from a different angle. So if you're viewing from below, it's questions of foreshortening and what you sort of where you're going to be seeing something if you're viewing it from below and above. And then how the scale and the size of things look and the proportion, the relative proportion of them depending on the viewing angle. So we've got a sort of, in the case of The David, a 14 foot statue which is large, but also if it was to be viewed up above originally on a basilica, you know, that's a very different viewing angle. So things would have looked proportionately different viewed from that angle. But the emphasis on the head and the hand, for obvious reasons, of course, the biblical tale of David and Goliath and what's being emphasized there was first and foremost. But David also stood beyond basic courage and heroism. And as this sort of divine character, also a symbol of republican Florence, was sort of being reappropriated, you know. And so, yeah, different things were being emphasized. The face has leonine features, you know, and the gaze even where it ended up being positioned, you know, it was committee that decided ultimately where to place this place this. And it took 40 men and four days to actually move this statue into place. They moved it on greased sort of logs, you know, it was this huge, you know, just even getting that statue there. But what it represented and sort of defense, it was meant to be a value of the common good, defense of the common good. Against would be tyrants within and without. So the penis was not central to that narrative, you know, would be another way to say important that it really wasn't. And it was in fact covered. You know, in Michelangelo's day, there was a crown and Also a loincloth and a covering on the day of it as well. So for questions of decorum, wow. Not unlike the manner which they were then later painted onto some of his nudes on the Last Judgment, sort of the painting behind the altar on the Sistine Chapel ceiling later for very different reasons. That's a different question of decorum and decency in terms of what Michelangelo painted there and the naked bodies and interesting poses, you know, there too, there's a. The one that gets Pointed out is St. Catherine leaning over her wheel. One of these saints is looking over her shoulder. And of course, that's been read as sort of. It looks like she's engaged in some kind of, for some viewers, sodomitic kind of activity with a person standing behind her. And so whether or not this was Michelangelo's intention, you know, this is what others have seen. You know, of course, then is now there is, there's circulated this idea that, you know, what you see in a work of art has more to do with you than with the art intended. And, you know, these ambiguity to draw these things out. And to what extent was the kernel meant to be offered up so that you could become aware of your own sinfulness and get past it? But, you know, more practical minded or, you know, pragmatic, you know, thinkers among us would say, no naked body is a naked body. And they told stories about this and, you know, but, you know, it really depended on the individual, you know, So I think McLenter really could see dignity and sublimation in these things, but I think he was well aware of that. Many others didn't.
- [43:20]
Kate Lister
I'll be back with Sarah and Michelangelo after this short break.
- [43:39]
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- [44:10]
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- [44:52]
Kate Lister
So let's talk about some of the loves of his life. We sort of covered that he had these passions and things he found beautiful. And I think that kind of. Most people agree now that he was attracted to his own sex and da, da, da. But who did he love? You mentioned. Was it Tomaso Tommaso?
- [45:08]
Sarah Prodan
Yeah, to come in the 80s. So the ones that really influenced his poetry and that we learn a lot about from his poetry, Artemazara Kavanieri. And that was someone for whom he felt deep passion. And then a woman, very different kind of relationship that came after that occasioned his spiritual poetry and other things. A woman named Vitoria Colonna. That was not a passionate love relationship, though historically that's been characterized that way. That was more of a relationship rooted in spiritual discourse and ideas about body and soul and the path to the divine. So that was very much a spiritual relationship. Although idealism comes out in both Michelangelo's love poetry and in his spiritual poetry, Michelangelo had other friendships that were deeply important to him, including friends that helped revise his poetry throughout his life. These are documented in letters and in other things, but are not present in his poetry and are not necessarily reflected in his drawings. So, for instance, Michelangelo rarely drew portraits, but he did do a portrait of a young man named Andrea Quarratesi. So, yeah, Michelangelo's loves come out in his art in that sense. But I would say that the prototypic and the one that's garnered the most attention, in part because of how it shaped his drawings and his poetry, but also for the impact on his life, was Tommaso da Cavalieri. I mean, I can share some of the verses of the things that he sort of wrote.
- [46:24]
Kate Lister
Please do. Yeah.
- [46:25]
Sarah Prodan
First, on the perils of love. You know, very early on, Michelangelo kind of writes about feeling sort of very bound and enslaved by these desires. So he writes, for instance, in one poem, it is this who leads me to you against my will. Alas, alas, alas. Bound and confined though I'm still free and loose if you can chain others without a chain in without hands or arms you've drawn me in who will defend me from your beautiful face?
- [46:53]
Kate Lister
Oh, wow.
- [46:53]
Sarah Prodan
So this wasn't for Tommaso, but this was how he experienced and wrote poetically about experiencing love. And so we're beyond poetic tropes. Michelangelo is quite insistent in picking up on this theme. But what he does write in a poem that seems to have been occasioned by his relationship with Tommaso is what I yearn for and learn from your fair face is Poorly understood by mortal minds. Whoever wants to know it must die first.
- [47:22]
Kate Lister
Wow.
- [47:23]
Sarah Prodan
And so there's this idea that the beauty speaks to something far beyond that. So that whatever it is on the surface, it's not just that, it's something beyond that and it can lead beyond that. So he says, I, I see in your beautiful face, my Lord, what can scarcely be related in this life. My soul, although still clothed in its flesh, has already risen often with it to God. So yeah, he talks about rising up to God and holding death sweet. So this is the kind of spiritual dimension that sort of comes in this sort of divine component that he expresses in his poetry. Sublimation, you know, something he aspired to feel versus felt, he used to say, but definitely speaks to his values and what he sought to experience, how he sought to contextualize or to contain or. Or to honor. What this individual gave rise to in him, what beauty gave rise to in him.
- [48:12]
Kate Lister
Do we know how Tommaso felt back? Is this a sort of a one sided romance or was it reciprocated?
- [48:20]
Sarah Prodan
Well, yes, I mean, in terms of romance, it was one sided. But in terms of respect and admiration, no. I mean, I think he did great admiration for me. Look at Michelangelo as an artist. And they exchanged drawings that had certain meaning. Like I said, a myth of all of the faith. But also, you know, in these drawings it's clear that melange is helping Tony de Villa learn how to. How to draw. So there was an element of sort of intellectual engagement with things into kind of training of an artist, that gift. Drawings and poetry also circulated in their circles. So it wasn't even that it was necessarily kept sort of between them. But there is a suggestion it's one of Michelangelo's most beautiful poems. And some of Michelangelo's poetry is put to music in his day. This particular sonnet was not one a really, really beautiful, I think one of his most beautiful lyric poems, but it ends with a towards only anger, being able to untie and break a bond as strong as the one that they had. And this had to do with perhaps Michelangelo fearing that perhaps Tommaso, through the influence of others, were perhaps maligning him, trying to suggest that maybe Michelangelo's attraction to him was anything less than noble. And so Michelangelo expressed concern sort of for this. He describes in a letter being overwhelmed, like falling into a sea, by the things evoked in him by Cavalieri. But at the same time he speaks, speaks to the nobility of Cavallieri's soul. And so for Michelangelo, it's very important that it be read, whatever it was, that it be read and perceived by its recipient. To know that his intentions with this were of the highest. That the love was of the highest order. However, that was. So, yeah, one of his most beautiful poems, he actually drew on a passage in the Bible to convey this notion of inspired friendship.
- [49:54]
Kate Lister
Am I right in thinking that? Was it his great grand nephew who translated his poems or published them? And he changed the pronouns in it so it sounded like he was writing. Writing to women.
- [50:04]
Sarah Prodan
Yeah. So it was. Yeah. There was a reworking of Michelangelo's poetry in the 1600s by his relative. And there was a changing of the pronouns and also cleaning up of some of the language for other reasons. You know, Michelangelo did undertake a project of publication for his own poetry. It never was published. So his poem circulated in manuscript form. You know, the nature of the publishing project he sort of undertook, we don't really know. So Michelangelo did not publish in print his poetry in his lifetime. That did happen with his Three Square Nephew. And then Michelangelo's poetry, really, the first critical edition we have, is actually in the 1900s. So it circulated in sort of different ways. So, you know, there's a long and complicated history. Michelangelo's autograph folios, where you find his poetry, there are different variants. Sometimes they are juxtaposed with art and things he was working on. So in the study of how Michelangelo wrote poetry, what he was doing, he tended much like the bodies of the Inudiana chapel ceiling. He tended to take an idea or a concept and draw it out in a lot of different forms. So he might take a concept of love. Right. And then develop that idea in different contrasting ways in different poems. So it was part of the way his mind worked and the way he operated creatively as well. That explains this, the number of poems that he wrote. But in the case of the ones I've shared, they're read autobiographically because they are rooted and can be contextualized in the context of this relationship.
- [51:21]
Kate Lister
So as a final question, do you think that he ever managed to reconcile within himself his desires and his spirituality? Because it must have. It must have been a torment for him to try and understand why he has these longings. And he's writing poems saying, you know, that, like, I can't remember exactly what it was, but like, I almost wish I didn't feel this way. Do you think he ever reconciled that within himself?
- [51:44]
Sarah Prodan
The really tough question. So the question with Blanche's death is he thought it was gonna happen for decades before it did because he lived to 89. And much of the backup of his life and the poetry at that time, it became increasingly spiritual for reasons of what was happening in the culture, but also the progression of a life. There was an archetypal kind of journey where you became focused on these things. But Michelangelo in poetry came to lament his art, that he had put it before God, that as much as he lived as a pious artist, that he conceived of his art and the work that he did in service of the faith, that pursuit of glory, putting sort of invention and creative expression before tenets of the faith, was something he sort have wrote about and that he had to turn to Christ in the end of his life. And he did. He wrote Christ eccentric poetry. We have these gorgeous, almost mystical drawings of Christ on the cross at the end of Michelangelo's life that. Where he just works and reworks and keeps drawing, that's been shown almost like a meditative sort of meditation on Christ. So there was this incredibly devout phase at the end. Did he reconcile, I don't know. He writes of fearing the double death, which is, once I die, I'm then condemned. The death of the soul that follows the death of the body. This torture tormented him, but he did die, supposedly, you know, from a fever, but ultimately in peace, with the benefit of the sacraments and in the good graces which mattered to him. Because for all of his sometimes progressive engagement with spiritual ideas, he was very much rooted to the practices of the Church and the ideals. So did he reconcile them ultimately? I don't know. Did he struggle to reconcile them in very intense ways? And did he give expression to this? Yes, quite anguished. So it's hard to tell how much, because to express one's anguish and regret as a way to expiate it was also part of devotional practice at the time. So to what extent did the anguish become more pronounced? Or was it just that his devotional engagement in trying to overcome these issues express itself in a doubling down on how guilty he felt, how much of it was in service of struggle and how much of it was expressive of struggle and how much. Much of it was an indicator of his intense engagement and devotional processes aimed at a good death. But Savonarola spoke of always having death in mind, that fiery preacher. And it stuck with Michelangelo. He had a skull on the wall of his home to always keep death in mind. When you could go, they always focused on the end. And so that very much shaped his final decades. And, yeah, suggested a lot of guilt and a lot of regret about some of his choices in that time.
- [54:07]
Kate Lister
Sarah, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
- [54:13]
Sarah Prodan
They can find me@SarahProdin.com or through my profile at Stanford University where I am. And if they want to hear that beautiful poem that Michelangelo wrote, if one chased love, if one sublime compassion, they can also find that through my website. We put it to music. I did a piano and song. So they want to learn more about Michelangelo. They want to hear that music. They can look there.
- [54:36]
Kate Lister
Amazing. Thank you so much for talking to me. I've enjoyed everything. Second of it.
- [54:40]
Sarah Prodan
Me too. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
- [54:47]
Kate Lister
Thank you for listening. And thanks so much to Sarah for joining us. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just fancied saying hi, then you can email us@betwixtistoryhit.com Coming up, we've got episodes on the dark history of London's drug world and a new miniseries on the real wives of dictators, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaghi and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again. Betwixt the Sheets the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
- [55:35]
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- [56:04]
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