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Michelangelo's Ignudi, and the Sistine Chapel as a Symbol of Law
and JusticeAuthor(s): Christiane L. Joost-GaugierSource: Artibus et
Historiae, Vol. 17, No. 34 (1996), pp. 19-43Published by: IRSA
s.c.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483521Accessed:
28/11/2008 16:52
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
Michelangelo's Ignudi, and the Sistine Chapel as a Symbol of Law
and Justice
"A mme pare che ttu facci troppo"
These words, written by Lodovico Buonarotti to his son
Michelangelo in Rome on the 21st of July 1508, shortly after the
painting of the Sistine Ceiling had begun, foretell with an
astonishing accuracy the troubles historians of art have undergone
to discover the thematic goal, or goals, of this major monument of
art, history, and culture.1 Ever since the time of its creation,
when no less a per- son than its imperious patron, Julius II, was
allowed only limited access to the work in progress by its painter,
Michelangelo, the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 'the first chapel
in the world,' has occa- sioned considerable speculation with
respect to the mysteries of its thematic substance and whether or
not its still uncertain essence is connected with the rest of the
decoration of this famous papal chapel.2 It seems fair to say that
following almost five-hundred years of discussion of these issues,
consensus has not yet been achieved on either the fundamental
meaning of the Ceiling or the precise form, if any, of its
ideological relationship to the works that preceded and succeeded
it in that singular structure.
Because its first known decorations were commissioned by Pope
Sixtus IV in the late 1470s and executed by a variety of Florentine
and Umbrian artists (including Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, Cosimo
Rosselli, Perugino and Signorelli) during the early 1480s,
the Ceiling commissioned by Pope Julius II between 1506 (when we
first know that Michelangelo was being considered for this project)
and 1508 (when the first of three contracts we know of was drawn
up), a series of ten tapestries designed for its side walls by
Raphael in 1514-16 for Leo X, and the altar wall repainted by
Michelangelo during the 1530s and early 1540s under Popes Clement
VII and Paul III, art historians have tended to regard these
commissions in separate lights. Accordingly, the works involved are
often considered representative of different stylistic moments in
the development that we now assign to Italian art-Early
Renaissance, High Renaissance and Mannerism. This segregation would
also seem appropriate for the significant intervals of time between
each commission, and for the fact that only two of their
commissioning popes (Sixtus IV and Julius II) were members of the
same previously impoverished and lit- tle known Ligurian family,
the Della Rovere, while the other three (Leo X, Clement VII and
Paul III) belonged to highly visible, politically well established
and wealthy Florentine and Central Italian families, the Medici and
Farnese.
It will be the object of this study to show that a specific part
of Michelangelo's painted ceiling, not usually considered intrinsic
to thematic discussion, offers not only an important clue regarding
the underlying theme of the Ceiling itself but, moreover, suggests
that the Ceiling is-as some have suspected-inherently related to
the
19
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
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MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
2) Michelangelo,
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
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MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
Bartolomeo Platina's Liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum,
and oak leaves are used in the decoration of the bronze Tomb of
Sixtus IV completed in 1493 by Antonio Pollaiuolo, as well as in
the fres- coed 'tapestries' that cover the lower level of the
Sistine Chapel walls.8 In all these cases the oak tree or its
leaves appear as sym- bolic ornamental devices in backgrounds,
frames or borders.
The emblem is, however, not always prominent in monumental works
connected with this family. It is not evident, for example, in the
sepulchre of Giovanni Della Rovere, who died in 1483.9 Nor does it
play a conspicuous role in the architecture of the Roman church of
Santa Maria del Popolo,10 a structure essentially associated with
the reign of Sixtus, or in the painted decoration of the Sistine
Chapel walls where the rectangular Quattrocento frescoes are
separated by patterns of acanthus and palm leaves. References to
this hardiest of trees are likewise not prominent in Pinturicchio's
painted vault for Santa Maria del Popolo, completed during the
reign of Julius, or in the Stanza della Segnatura, a monument of
major importance that was the private library of Julius, painted
next door by Raphael between 1508 and 1511-during the very years
that Michelangelo was engaged in painting the Sistine Ceiling. Even
in the tomb of Julius, at San Pietro in Vincoli, begun by
Michelangelo and hastily completed after the death of Julius (which
occurred in 1513),11 only the old stylized emblem appears, crowning
the border decoration.
The distinctly ornamental use of this symbol in famous monu-
ments connected with famous members of this newly famous family
suggests that though indeed the oak figures in the family stemma,
it was not accorded elsewhere the importance and prominence that
its great boughs and sacks in the shape of cornucopias (suggesting
emblems of abundance), and garlands brimming with oak leaves and
acorns, have in the Sistine Ceiling. Nor does it suggest why the
association of oaks and acorns in the Ceiling should be peculiar to
the grand ignudi.
Given this tantalizing combination of circumstances, the ques-
tion arises whether thematic interpretations of the Ceiling have
wrongly relegated the ignudi to a role that Sydney Freedberg char-
acterizes as 'childish' in that they attend, like uncomprehending
innocents at play, the historical scenes which constitute for him
(as for others) the principal subjects of the Ceiling.12An
extension of this view, now widely held, draws in also the prophets
and sibyls. Charles de Tolnay suggests that it was their visions
that occasioned the histories along the central axis above, the
impact of which is 'reflected' in the surrounding ignudi.13 While,
on the one hand, little visible connection exists between these
figures and the prophets and sibyls below, on the other Tolnay
refrains-and perhaps wise- ly-from explaining which of the seers
had visions of the Creation of matter, light and dark, land and
water, and other accompanying scenes ranged along the spine of the
Ceiling. Indeed, the authors of the prophetic books were primarily
interesting to Christians for the gifts they offered regarding
future events, especially those concern-
ing the coming and passion of Christ, rather than for their
interest in past events such as the Creation.
The subject of the Creation was, however, a very important one
in the Renaissance [Fig. 6]. This importance was not new, consider-
ing the fact that attention to this subject in the Middle Ages had
been considerable. Medieval interest in the biblical creation had
been accompanied by a knowledge of how heaven and earth arose, in a
practical way, out of Chaos through the agency of the One (God) as
presented by Plato in the dialogue Timaeus.14 The Timaeuswas one of
the major works of antiquity that had survived throughout the
Middle Ages and is the very book that Plato holds in his hand in
Raphael's School of Athens, painted at the same time and for the
same patron by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura. During the
later part of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, other
works in which Plato discusses how the Cosmos evolved out of Chaos,
such as the Phaedo and the Protagoras, were well known to human-
ist scholars.15 So also were other works of classical antiquity
con- cerned with this subject.
Among these was the De caelo of Aristotle, which argues for an
ungenerated, eternal, universe with no beginning in time that
under- went a uniform circular motion around a central earth. This
was the leading book in the astronomical curriculum during the
thirteenth century. It influenced Nicole Oresme, one of the most
sophisticated natural scientists of the following century, to
compose the Livre du ciel et du monde, a work primarily concerned
with the question of the rotation of the earth. The Almagest of
Ptolemy, meanwhile, was well appreciated for its predictive power
by those who could understand its numerical tables but less so for
its failure to put the earth at the center of the universe. Not so
complicated as the mathematical astronomy of Ptolemy, the works of
Hesiod, an author much older than Plato, presented, by late
medieval times, a different alternative.
Both the Works and Days and the Theogony open with descrip-
tions of Zeus thundering in the heavens.16 However, in these works
the reader perceives that the loud thunderer and his race of gods
already exist on the peaks of Mount Olympus from the beginning of
time in an already created universe. For Hesiod, Zeus is above all
important for creating and supervising Law and Justice in the
world. In his Naturalis Historia, a work which Julius owned in his
private library,17 Pliny voic- es his uncertainty as to whether one
god or many gods rule the uni- verse which, at any rate, already
existed at the time of the imposition of divine rule.18 Relying on
the older Greek astronomers Anaxagorus and Melanippe, whose works
were still known to him in the first centu- ry B.C., Diodorus of
Siculus speculates, in his History, that all elements of the first
generation of the universe were intermingled in a kind of uni- form
mud. These eventually separated from one another by physical
processes which sorted out motion from immobility, wet from dry,
and hard from soft, in the end giving form (without the
intervention of a god or gods) to life itself.19 For him the first
men were therefore undisci- plined and ignorant beasts.20
23
-
CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
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6) Michelangelo, ((The Creation)), Rome, Vatican, Sistine Chapel
(Photo: Monumenti Musei e Gallerie Pontificie)
Pliny's ambivalence respecting the existence of a divine creator
receives complementary balance in the work of one of his contem-
poraries who asserted the existence of one God, the creator of the
Cosmos, and sought to reconcile the monolithic God (of Hesiod and
Genesis) with Plato's causal god. In replacing the confusing
picture offered by his predecessors with a coherent one that welded
togeth-
er the idea of a single God and a just God, Philo of Alexandria,
or Philo Judaeus, offered a God who was not only acceptable to
Platonists but also was the historical ancestor of Moses to whom
He, God, had entrusted the Law.21
Following Philo, variations of the Neoplatonic doctrine of ema-
nation or creation out of the indeterminate being or the nature of
God
24
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-
MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
alone survived in certain elements of Christian and Gnostic
thought as well as in Jewish Neoplatonism of early medieval
times.22 One of the early texts on this subject - and the oldest
extant one - that enjoyed a wide circulation and influence in
learned circles of the Middle Ages gave a distinctly mystical
character to the discourse on cosmology. This work, the Sefer
Yezirah (Book of Creation) contains Gnostic elements and is
strongly linked with Jewish speculations on Divine Wisdom which,
through a system of primordial numbers, including thirty-two
'secret paths,' explains the Creation of the Cosmos.23 Such
interpretations were known, through this and other texts, to early
Kabbalists for whom the idea of creation out of noth- ing
evolved-especially from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries
by which time it had nurtured on Italian soil-to a complicated mys-
tical paradox.24
It was, however, Ovid's Roman imagination that brought togeth-
er Plato's physical creation of the universe by an 'unmoved mover'
with the Hesiodic conception that linked the role of the supreme
god (Zeus, who already existed) with the origin of Law and Justice,
the Diodorian idea of the existence of a primordial race of men,
and Philonic insistence on a single God as creator of the
universe.25 Translated into elegant and heroic poetic analogy,
Ovid's writings contained a body of Neopythagorean thought that
came to be inter- preted as moral and thus could be harmonized with
religious doc- trine and become absorbed into the extensive body of
humanist learning of the early sixteenth century.26 Ovid's account
of the Creation, as presented in the Metamorphoses, moves from the
cre- ation of the world out of chaos by a God who acts
single-mindedly to his punishment of the sins of man through a
fabulous flood that excepted only a male and a female of the
species who, marooned on a mountain top, repropagated the
earth.
Early on in his account, Ovid explains the early chaos of
Nature, which was a rounded body of rolling elements unified into
one-per- haps not unlike Michelangelo's conception of the first
Creation scene. God separated land and water, and light from dark.
Yet the earth was not complete, Ovid asserts, until man was moulded
out of clay mixed with the living fluid of God so that he, man
created in the image and likeness of God and therefore different
from the beasts of the earth, was god-like himself.27
It is this race of men who constituted for Ovid's great hexame-
ter poem the Age of Gold. In this time, under the rule of the
primor- dial god Saturn, nothing was forbidden, and so there was no
need of Law. War did not exist. Peace and abundance reigned. The
earth was innocent. Agriculture was not necessary because the
miracu- lous tree of Jupiter (the Law giver) provided its luscious
fruit, the acorn, and sweet honey which flowed from its bark. In
addition, the soft shade of the oak made for an eternal Spring with
no harsh sea- sons and no need of shelter or covering. Indeed, the
reader is made to feel that the eternal Spring was reflected in the
eternal youthful- ness of this race.28
It was after the Golden Age of Satum, when men had lived hap-
pily as their god, that Jupiter began to rule the world. During
this time, the Silver Age, the discomfort of harsh changing seasons
first appeared and men were required to build shelters and to plant
grain. Men began to fear the Law (of Jupiter).29 In the Age of
Iron, which fol- lowed, love, innocence and truth gave way to
violence, profit and deceit. War and greed were invented and humans
began to distrust one another. In his anger with the sins of the
world below, Jupiter raised his thunderbolt and sent a mighty flood
to cover the earth as a sign of his ster Justice. In the Great
Flood, men tried to escape by rowing boats, climbing on roof tops,
and hanging on to fallen branch- es, not unlike the events depicted
in Michelangelo's Great Flood. The couple who were miraculously
saved found themselves, when the waters receded, on one of the twin
peaks of Mount Parnassus (a site of great importance for Raphael's
contemporary painting of the same name in the Stanza della
Segnatura).30 Dipping their hands into a sacred stream, the
Cephisus (also represented in Raphael's' Parnassus), the couple
performed a kind of baptism that allowed them to regenerate the
human race which eventually culminated, in Ovid's own time, in the
unparalleled magnificence of Rome as the Eternal and Immortal City,
and the apotheosis of its emperor, Julius Caesar (coincidentally
the civic 'patron' of Julius II as will be dis- cussed below), into
a star that burs forever in the sky.31 Thus, as Ovid put it,
Caesar, illustrious in war and peace, ruler of the world and
promoter of the Law, came to be a god in his own city for he
was
[made] a star in order that ever it may be the divine Julius who
looks forth upon our Capitol and Forum from his lofty tem-
ple...Wherever Rome's power extends over the conquered
world...through all the ages shall [he] live in fame.32
Mankind's happy days before the knowledge of commerce, agri-
culture, and war-and before the necessity of written laws which
were occasioned after Jupiter dethroned Saturn-are recalled towards
the end of the Metamorphoses when, in the so called "dis- course of
Pythagoras," Ovid makes a powerful argument for Neopythagoreanism
in recommending the foods of the earth's plants and trees be eaten
as in the 'pristine' age which was the "Golden" age blessed with
the fruit of the trees before men learned to defile their lips with
the blood of animals and to dread the judgment of the Law.33 This
extended speech also reminds men, through the thoughts of
Pythagoras, that in the Golden Age all men were youth- ful, for it
was only Time, that came with the Age of Iron and the advent of the
four seasons, that could weary, or age, men. Ovid refers again to
the divine pact with man and the dethroning of Saturn in the
Fasti.34
Though the Golden Age was well known also to Ovid's contem-
poraries, Virgil's picture, drawn in the Aeneid, is perhaps the
most
25
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
specific. Virgil remembered the Golden Age when men ate the
prod- ucts of the earth and, springing from the oak, were righteous
and not yet fettered by laws. The words of King Evander make it
clear that the reign of Saturn (or the Golden Age) was born in
Rome. Perhaps, as Jean Seznec suggests, Ovid's celebrated work was
at first more difficult to reconcile with philosophy and theology
than the Aeneid whose exaltation of Rome took the form of a more
closely defined goal.35 Yet Ovid was not forgotten in the earliest
centuries of Christianity.
By the ninth century, a French scholar bishop, Theodulph of
Orleans, began to discover moral value in the world of Ovid.36
Within the next four centuries Ovid was accorded a prominent place
among the edifying classical authors the authority of whose
enlightening texts were invoked in demonstrating Christian goals.37
An efflores- cence of extracts and commentaries based on the
Metamorphoses occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
when the work in its entirety came to be well known. Poets
especially drew inspiration from Ovid. Inevitably, they began to
allegorize his chief work. This tradition culminated in the many
versions of the so-called Ovide moralise, known primarily in France
but also in Italy from the early fourteenth century.38 Philippe de
Vitry, its probable composer, did not disguise the possibilities of
spiritual instruction to be derived from a Christian interpretation
of Ovid's celebrated work. From the begin- ning of his long poem he
advises his reader,
Se I'escripture ne me ment, Tout est pour nostre
enseignement.39
Thus, in associating with man made of clay in the image of God,
the reader is instructed that following the creation of the
firmament, of light and dark, of earth and land, the first man was
created. Instead of finding himself in an eternal Spring he found
himself in the Garden of Eden where, in a land without agriculture
and without greed, without arms, without war, and without laws, he
understood only one rule-his covenant to serve God. Though the
lengthy medieval work eventually deviates from its Ovidian source,
the early part, which discusses the Creation and establishes the
relation of man to his God-creator, remains intact and provides
occasion for extensive edifying allegorizing commentaries on the
duty of man to God.40 The importance of Ovid and his account of the
Creation is reflected in other Ovidian allegories of the same
century, for exam- ple the Allegorie and the Fabulae super Ovidium
ascribed to Giovanni del Virgilio, an early fourteenth century
scholar and friend of Dante. Giovanni gave courses in Ovidiana at
the University of Bologna and his influence appears to have reached
Coluccio Salutati and other Florentines by the end of the
century.41 That the mythical lore of Ovid was as important for
Dante as its Christian application is nowhere more evident than in
the Purgatorio, where Dante muses, as Virgil had before him, on the
'primo tempo umano'
which he associates with Justice and the Golden Age when men
were content to eat acorns.42 Again in the De Monarchia, a work
concerned with Justice in government, Dante refers to Virgil in
describing the Age of Saturn (the Golden Age) as the 'best' age of
mankind.43 Thus the most popular classical poet of the Middle Ages
had come to be immortalized for the Christian 'tendencies' in his
most celebrated work, the Metamorphoses.
Concurrent with these literary traditions, popular traditions
that tended to conflate classical fables with antique and biblical
history are known to have existed, especially in the later Middle
Ages. Epic-nar- rative poetry gave way, in Italy especially, to
songs, or musical poetry, in which biblical heroes came to be
celebrated together with classical heroes. Many of these poems and
songs included material drawn from Ovid which, mixed with biblical
history, became part of the leg- endary patrimony of Rome and
experienced a wide diffusion.44
The twelfth century author of the Mirablia urbis Romae repeat-
edly cites the witness of Ovid in describing the sites and
buildings of ancient Rome for contemporary pilgrims and travelers.
His account of the foundation of Rome takes into consideration
medieval Jewish legends about Noah as the founder of Rome which,
mixed with Ovidian inspired ideas about Saturn and Janus, suggest
that after its foundation by Noah the kingdom passed to Janus who
eventually shared it with Saturn.45 Saturn had also founded a city
on the Capitoline- a 'fact' about him that was known to Flavio
Biondo in the fifteenth century and that would be recorded in the
great ency- clopedia of Roman humanism, the Commentaria Urbana,
published by Raffaelo Maffei in Rome in 1506 and dedicated to
Julius 11.46 Indeed, it was to Saturn, the god of the Golden Age,
above all other gods that the Pantheon was, according to common
regard, conse- crated,47 and it was in his honor that the day
Saturday was named.48 Representations of Saturn were known from
Roman ruins and even came, from late medieval times, to be imitated
in Christian churches where Roman, biblical and mythological heroes
were sometimes brought together with the Virtues.49 This Trecento
interest was to persist well into the Cinquecento when, in Vasari's
time, the impor- tance of Saturn for Italy was a major subject for
architectural and fes- tival decoration.50
The memory of Ovid was enriched and devotion to him acceler-
ated in late medieval popular imagination. His purported house and
garden were shown to travelers in Rome; he was regarded as a saint,
and attempts to find his tomb were taken seriously.51 In Sulmona,
the place of his birth, statues of him were still to be seen in the
fifteenth century. One of these showed him dressed in the attire of
a doctor.52 Other traditions through which, as a result of its
great popularity, the Metamorphoses came to be known as the Pagan
Bible and the Bible of Poets, and its author as Ovidius mag- nus,
Ovidio maggiore and Ovide le grant, are also known.53
By mid Quattrocento times, information found in Ovidian works
came to be considered as evidence in early archaeological texts,
as
26
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MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
in the first comprehensive survey of ancient Rome, Flavio
Biondo's Roma instaurata. In 1510, Francesco Albertini also cited
Ovid's authority in the Opusculum de mirabilibus.54 Meanwhile,
Ovid's crit- ical fortune had been expanded through the interest of
Poliziano and others in his writings, culminating in the editio
princeps of his work, printed by Azzoguidi in Bologna in 1471, to
be superseded by a famous edition published by the Aldine Press in
Venice in 1502, just six years before the Sistine Ceiling was
commissioned.55 Printed editions of Ovid's individual works were
among the most popular printed books of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth cen- turies. An Italian translation of the
Metamorphoses, by Giovanni Bonsignore, was printed by Giovanni
Rosso for Luc'Antonio Giunta in Venice in 1497.56 The many editions
of this work published in Cinquecento Italy include a famous
translation into Italian by Ludovico Dolce, first printed in 1533,
which received many subse- quent printings.57 The special
popularity of Ovid's account of the Creation (and the Golden Age)
is reflected in the fact that some printed editions of this work
presented only Book I, which covers the Creation, the Golden Age
and the Great Flood.58
Numerous surviving early sixteenth century editions of the
Metamorphoses are illustrated with woodcuts that show the primor-
dial god guiding his way among the rolling clouds of the untamed
universe, separating land from water, creating the sun and moon
with the expansive spread of his arms in opposite directions, and
making the first man from clay [Fig. 7]. Though their style is
consid- erably different, the painted images of the Ceiling are not
dissimilar in thematic substance to subjects of woodcuts printed in
editions of this work that may be dated prior to the unveiling of
Michelangelo's Ceiling-which took place on All Saint's Day, 1512.59
Not only does this underscore the apparent relationship between the
Ceiling and this literary work, to which clearly the ignudi seem to
be related, it also reminds us that the legendary patrimony of
Rome, which con- flated classical and biblical subject matter, is
still very much alive. Moreover, it suggests that illustrated
editions of the Metamorphoses might be taken into account as
precedents for at least some of the subjects in the Ceiling.60
Most significantly the abundant appearance of acorns, oak boughs
and sacks of oak leaves in the Ceiling and their exclusive
association with the ignudi provoke the interpretation that the
pop- ulation of grand, unclothed, youthful images represent the
Golden Age of man. The coincidence of their association with the
Della Rovere name thereby provided a compliment to its patron and
explains an otherwise mysterious remark of Vasari. Describing the
ignudias upholding festoons of oak leaves and acorns, he suggests
that the governance of Pope Julius constituted a Golden Age for
Italy:
...sedendo e girando, e sostenendo alcuni festoni di foglie di
quercia e di ghiande, messe per I'arme e per I'impresa di papa
Giulio; denotando che a qual tempo ed al governo suo era I'eta
dell'oro, per non essere allora la Italia netravagli e nelle
miserie che ella e stata poi.61
Indeed the return of Saturn, who had provided sweetness in life
before the appearance of avarice, was to be celebrated by Vasari
himself as a symbol of good government and the successful admin-
istration of Justice. Perhaps it was precisely with the precedent
of the Sistine Ceiling in mind that Vasari applied this analogy to
Leo X and even to Clement VII.62
The connection of the Golden Age with Justice is neither new nor
inappropriate at this time. The association was as old as Hesiod,
who had stressed that man from the beginning of time flourished
under Zeus, the originator of Justice. Before cities and war
existed Peace was the handmaid of Justice. It was the eye of Zeus
that supervised mortal men and kept watch over their judgments and
deeds.63 Linked to the Creation and the origins of man in the
thought of Plato as well, Justice-or civic wisdom-was the gift of
Zeus to man after the Golden Age, when man had begun to build
cities and engage in war. As he described this first and greatest
of civic virtues in the Protagoras, 64 Plato linked it with
punishment and approval and, ultimately, with grace. Thus did
Cicero inherit the idea that the Law by itself, which was too
technical, must be complemented with grace.65 And Dante, who knew
the moral lessons to be derived from the Metamorphoses, could note
the connection of Justice, in its purest (original) form, to the
Golden Age:
Secol si rinova; torna giustizia e primo tempo umano, e progenie
scende da ciel nova.66
Even in so remote an outpost of the Sienese Republic as the vil-
lage of Lucignano, the unknown Quattrocento painter of a fresco of
Janus carrying a cluster of oak leaves and acorns knew this mean-
ing [Fig. 8]. For accompanied by words borrowed from Dante's
description of early men eating acorns during the Golden Age, this
fresco was commissioned with its inscription to adorn a chamber of
law, the Sala del Tribunale. In this room-a rare example of a sur-
viving courtroom from early Renaissance times-Justice was dis-
pensed.67
The association of the oak with Justice would have been appar-
ent to any educated person, for Hesiod had insisted in the Works
and Days that the oak branch brimming with acors is a symbol of the
earth that flourishes in times of Justice. This symbol was shared
with Zeus, the giver of Justice, who watched over the golden race
of mortal men who were born during his reign.68 In tracing the
history of Rome, Virgil remembered the oak tree that had first
nourished man during the Golden Age and he reminded us that Saturn
gave the first law at this time-which was Peace. It was in an oak
vale that
27
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
7) , from Ovid, , Venice, Georgius de Rusconibus pub., 1509,
fol. 1(r), Washington, D.C., The Folger Shakespeare Library (Photo:
The Folger Shakespeary Library)
Venus presented Aeneas with the magnificent arms that would
enable him to put down Turnus and achieve Justice for Rome.69 Pliny
asserted that the acorn-bearing oak that had first produced food
for mortal man was sacred to Jupiter,70 and Ovid himself con-
firmed this in the Tristia, a work which Julius owned in his
private library.71 In the Metamorphoses, Ovid recounted a fable
that con- firmed the miraculous nature of this sacred tree.72 An
Italian edition of this work, printed as late as 1538, presents an
illuminating com- mentary in lieu of the poetry itself as Book I.
Its text explains that the reader will find this work related to
the Law and especially to the Old Testament because even though
Ovid did not have the benefit of being a Christian he understood
the beginning of the world in the same way that Moses did (and
Christians do), as well as the Flood
which punished man for breaking the Law. In the text that
follows, describing the Golden Age, the importance of the oak is
stressed.73
If the hypothesis that the ignudi represent the Golden Age of
man and the Justice of the primordial God is correct, this would
sug- gest that they perform an important, and primary, role in the
devel- opment of the theme of the Ceiling as their attributes and
location suggest. The notion that the historical scenes alone are
primary may therefore be modified to suggest that the following
general subjects were included in the overall thematic layout: The
Golden Age of man when man lived happily and in a state of eteral
youth according to his covenant with his primordial God, who had
created the Cosmos which functions according to a system of order;
the Fall of Man, who subsequently had discovered greed and sin and
required punish-
28
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MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
ment by the Law of God; the Great Flood, which came because man
had become depraved and required a more serious punishment; the
emergence of Noah as the 'lust" man who was chosen by God to be the
first savior of man.74 Therefore God made the firmament, God made
man, man was intrinsically good (in the Golden Age and in the
Garden of Eden) until he disobeyed the Law of God and created sin.
This occasioned the Great Flood and the regeneration of mankind and
the need for a Redeemer. In this way the Hebrew and Christian Bible
(the Old Testament) and the "Pagan" Bible (the Ovidian lega-
cy)-familiar sources that did not require theological expertise-
were effectively combined and harmonized as the patrimony of
Christian Rome.
Michelangelo grasped the very essence of this conflation in the
distribution and arrangement of the ignudiand their attributes.
Thus the theme of the Law and Justice would appear to prevail in
the Ceiling, and to fit with Edgar Wind's reading of the altar
spandrel scenes as representing the association of Law and grace as
well as with Charles Hope's reading of the medallions as
constituting a group of recognizable exempla exemplifying divine
authority and allegorizing submission to Divine Law.75 Thus the
Ceiling may be construed to represent the Law of God (Primordial
Law). Its relation to the previously painted subjects below as well
as to their inscrip- tions, which stress the importance of the law
for Moses and Christ, suggests a thematic continuity in that
through their dual roles as law- giver and priest, Moses and Christ
are harmonized in the pairing of the scenes. Through the coming of
Christ the Old Law was both ful- filled and supplanted in the New
Law.76 In reigning above all, Primordial Law is the source for
Mosaic and Christian law (suggest- ing a Ciceronian interpretation
in that Cicero had suggested in the De Legibus, a work first
published in 1498-which is set beneath the branches of an
acom-laden oak tree, that Divine Law is supreme and reigns over
civic law and religious law). In this context, the Last Judgment
(or the Final Law) on the West wall may also be regarded as an
extension of the same theme as will be seen below.
Our thanks are due to a little known English humanist and bib-
liophile, Robert Flemmyng, for having noted, in a poem of 1477,
that the Sistine Chapel was at that time close to completion.
Sixtus IV, he informs us, had planned the building as well as its
decoration which had, as yet, not begun.77 Though other extant
documents are silent on the precise date of its foundation, we may
speculate that it was begun sometime between 1473, when its
predecessor-a chapel founded by Pope Nicholas III in about 1287-was
still in use, and 1477, at which time Pope Sixtus had wom the tiara
for six years.78 Good cause exists to speculate that its founding
was announced in 1475, for reasons that will be discussed below.
Flemmyng's poem is, in a sense, corroborated by documents of 1481
and 1482 which indi- cate that the painted decoration, representing
the Old and New Covenants, was underway.79 Most importantly, the
poem suggests
8)
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
gious structure. Its unique dimensions suggest it was modeled,
Battisti argued, on the basis of those of the Temple of Solomon as
described in 1 Kings 5-7.80 To Battisti's observations Johannes
Wilde added additional evidence suggesting the height of the build-
ing conformed as well to that of the Solomonic structure.81
Significant support to Battisti's theory lies in the fact that an
inscrip- tion provided by Perugino in one of the frescoes
decorating the Chapel refers to Solomon's Temple.82
If such a coincidence was, as it appears, planned from the point
of view of the physical structure, one might wonder what this might
have signified as an idea. The First Book of Kings describes the
Temple of Solomon as the House of the Lord built to Him in thanks-
giving for peace and in the expectation of God's cooperation. This
cooperation was realized in the gift of wisdom which was recognized
in the construction of a Portico of Judgment, the site of Solomon's
throne which was known through medieval times as the seat of wis-
dom. Sixtus IV (who may, in embellishing Rome with a magnificent
building to be decorated with a series of paintings illustrating
events from the Old and New Testaments, also have been imitating
the example of his namesake Sixtus III who had constructed and
deco- rated Sta. Maria Maggiore), had good reason to hope to
emulate Solomon's purpose, authority and wisdom.83 Devoted to
establish- ing relations with the 'universal' Church, the early
years of Sixtus' reign presented a number of problems which
prompted him to turn his attention on politics and Law. Plagued by
disobedience within his own order, he may have also discovered that
in his early enthusiasm to wage a grand crusade against the Turks
and to take on the King of France his image as an impoverished
Franciscan theologian and scholar of Greek was insufficient to
build upon. Aggrandizing the Papal State and building the Vatican
Library were certainly two of Sixtus' most visible goals. In this
way he could assert his supreme authority as a sovereign prince.
Perhaps the idea of a new monu- ment of the Ecclesiastical State
first occurred to him in 1475 when, on the occasion of the
celebration of the Jubilee Year, numerous European monarchs and
princes traveled to Rome to gain the spe- cial indulgences, pardons
and privileges that were granted on that solemn and festive
occasion.84
In following the example of Solomon, Sixtus no doubt enhanced
his status as a sacral king, perhaps in hopes of improving his
rela- tions with Louis Xl and other European rulers who were
critical of his practices. This antagonism led to abortive attempts
to curb his power and to reconvene the Council of Basle with the
goal of ending his reign. In order to ensure his survival, Sixtus
surrounded himself with his relatives and became devoted to
exalting their estates. Such causes led him to establish a chamber
of one-hundred legal experts to oversee the affairs of the Papal
States; in 1472 he reorganized the primary judicial office of the
Vatican, the Sacra Romana Rota.85 Not only did Sixtus himself
author a treatise on the functions of the pope, the De potentia
Dei, his reign produced a number of treatises on the
authority and powers of the pope.86 The authority of Solomon had
been recognized throughout medieval times, and the idea that his
temple, which survived in spirit if not in fact in medieval
imagination, prefigured the Church of the New Law established by
Christ had first been suggested by Eusebius and Prudentius.87 The
imagery of the new monument of the Ecclesiastical State designed by
Sixtus thus most likely was intended to signify the authority and
duties of his high office in that it was the universal setting for
the most solemn official ceremonies of the Church of the New
Law.
Aside from these practical considerations, it must be remem-
bered that the Sistine Chapel was never meant to be a basilican
church or a private family chapel. From the beginning it had a spe-
cific function as the papal sanctuary, and as the most visible
expres- sion in the world of Sixtus' papal majesty and the
authority of the order and rule of the Church. Thus its
identification with the Temple of Solomon, which as Rudolph
Wittkower noted had a universal sig- nificance in that it
incorporated the numerical ratios of the Pythagorean-Platonic
celestial harmony that demonstrated a cos- mological theory of
proportion, 88 would have been particularly appropriate. In
Renaissance Italy it was believed that Solomon's Temple was based
on the proportions given by God to Moses for building the
Tabernacle which was to be 'the fabric of the world."89
The location of this unique building in the city of Rome showed
that Rome and the papacy were inseparable. The site of this city
was reputed in medieval legend to have been selected by Solomon,
and two copper columns from Solomon's temple, which were considered
miraculous, were still to be seen in the Basilica of Saint John
Lateran in the twelfth century. For Dante, for whom Rome was the
perfect empire, Solomon's words were the model of perfect Justice.
Another tradition identified Rome as the new Jerusalem, and spoils
from the Temple of Jerusalem, once in the Temple of
Solomon-including the rods of Moses and Aaron-were relics of
Judaica vaunted by the Lateran.90 Such reasons may have inspired
papal humanists to become interested in the works of Philo at the
time the Chapel was being planned. As Leopold Ettlinger has shown,
manuscripts of Philo's writings were collected in Italy during the
fifteenth century.91 One of these, known from 1425, contained
twelve works.92 Another, brought to Italy by Filelfo in 1427,93
included the Vita Moyesi - Philo's life of Moses, who remains, as
the giver of the Law, at the center of all Philo's works. These
include a lengthy explication of the Decalogue. By 1455, two
manuscripts of Philo's works were in the library of Pope Nicholas
V.94 References to Philo had begun to appear in contemporary
literature. The Greek scholar who translat- ed the complete works
of Philo for Sixtus, at the suggestion of Cardinal Bessarion, was
Lilus Tifernas.95 The translation, completed in about 1479,96 is
dedicated to Sixtus and was well known to humanist members of
Julius Il's curia in 1506.97
As Ettlinger suggests, the rediscovery of this important work,
which holds that Mosaic Law reflects the order of the universe,
must
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MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
have been a significant source for the planning of the
decorations drawn from the life of Moses that line the south wall
of the Sistine Chapel. Ettlinger notes the sudden emergence of
Moses as the hero of a series of monumental frescoes which,
otherwise, is without precedent in the Middle Ages. Perhaps this
may also be related to a tradition still alive in the Cinquecento
that attributed the founding of Rome to Moses; and, according to an
older medieval tradition still highly respected in the Cinquecento,
the Tables of the Law given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai and the
Ark of the Covenant were among the spoils of Jerusalem brought to
Rome from the Temple of Solomon, where they were preserved together
with the most pre- cious Christian relics in the Lateran. It is not
unlikely that the impor- tance placed on these relics central to
Judaism and Christianity throughout medieval times and into the
Renaissance may be intri- cately related to the choice of subjects
for the Sistine wall paintings which include numerous references to
these relics.98
The Sistine wall frescoes, including the Finding of the Infant
Moses that was destroyed on the far wall, originally numbered eight
Old Testament scenes. So also did their counterparts on the north
wall illustrating the life of Christ, including the destroyed
Baptism of Christ number eight scenes. These are sequentially
arranged and paired in such a way that the scenes representing the
life of Christ parallel those representing the life of Moses
through a series of events explicitly chosen to illustrate the
giving, institutionalization, and receiving of the Law, as is
explained by the accompanying inscriptions on the walls above. For
the Pythagoreans, as Renaissance humanists knew, the number eight
was associated with egalitarian justice.99
Designed to separate the enclosed presbytery from the open body
of the Chapel, an elegant marble choir screen, now consider- ably
altered,100 formed the entrance to the most sacred part of the
Chapel, which included the altar and the papal throne, raised on a
platform by three steps from the pavement level. The triple
division of the screen into seven sculptured lower bays and seven
gilded grilles above surmounted by seven magnificent gilded
candelabra must have formed an exalted introduction to the most
sacred zone of the Chapel. While the triple steps, complemented by
the triple zones of the marble structure and the three tiers of the
painted walls to either side, might be viewed as reflecting
traditional Trinitarian concerns, the seven gleaming divisions to
which the beholder's view was attracted and focused on entering was
organized not only to separate spatial areas, but also to support
the seven great lights that majestically illuminated the
interior.
Keeping this symbolic sacred function in mind, we may specu-
late that the choice of sevens may have been derived from current
number theories which were considered, especially by Neopythagorean
writers who were widely read at this time by the young Pico della
Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and others, to have mys- tical
significance.101 (It should be noted in this connection that
Pythagoras has a prominent location in Raphael's School of
Athens.) Neopythagorean ideas current at this time regarding the
significance of the number seven which, reflecting the number of
strings in Apollo's lyre, symbolized the musical harmonization of
the planetary universe are described by Plato, Cicero and Macrobius
and noted by Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura. Dante describes
the seven planets in the firmament, or heaven of fixed stars, as
seven "lights." Pico della Mirandola stresses, in the Heptaplus,
that the number seven symbolized the number of days involved in the
Creation.102
Here too the influence of Philo may have been felt for, noting
the seventh day of the Creation, Philo elaborates at length on the
sig- nificance of this number and its relation to the Law. By this
number all things in the universe are brought to order and
perfection, includ- ing essential forces that move the planets, the
circuits of the moon, the formation of every organic body, the
stages of man's physical growth and the divisions of his life.
Heaven is girdled by seven zones, the major constellation contains
seven stars according to which the earth is oriented; man's soul is
divided into seven parts as is also his body. In addition, the
sciences, grammar and music are dependent on this perfect number
which the Romans called septum, meaning reverence. These regulatory
rules, all dependent on the number seven, are linked to the
Creation in that the '"orld is in har- mony with the Law, and the
Law with the world, and...the man who observes the law [sic] is
constituted thereby a loyal citizen of the world...in accordance
with which the entire world itself also is admin- istered."103
Philo's source is Moses, who he repeatedly assures us authored our
information on the Creation as the greatest work of Order (and
therefore of Law). Moses introduced the Law because he understood
the Order of God. And, because order involves number, Moses paid
great honor to the number seven.104
The connection with Moses may, however, have a more specif- ic
relation to Rome, suggesting that the illumination of the Sistine
Chapel was linked to important surviving Roman medieval traditions.
The seven-branched Candelabrum which, according to Exodus 25:31-35,
was made together with the Ark of the Covenant by the Israelites in
the wilderness was used by Moses, according to the command of God,
to illuminate the Tabernacle. A screen was set up inside the
Tabernacle in front of the altar. The most precious object
contained in the altar of the Tabernacle was the Ark of the
Covenant. Inside the Ark of the Covenant were the Tables of Law
inscribed by God and given to Moses as described in Exodus 25-40.
The Ark of the Covenant, which later found a resting place in the
Temple of Solomon, was among the spoils pillaged from the Temple of
Jerusalem by Titus and brought, together with the Tables of the Law
and the seven-branched Candelabrum, to Rome. Early medieval Roman
tradition held that these precious Hebrew relics were given by
Constantine to the Basilica of the Lateran, where they were buried
in the high altar. Among Constantine's documented gifts to
31
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
9) Pinturicchio (?), ">, preparatory drawing (?), Vienna,
Albertina, Inv. 4861, (Photo: Lichtbildwerkstitte 'Alpenland')
32
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MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
the Lateran were seven golden candelabra, each ten feet high,
that were placed before the altar. These candelabra still existed
in late medieval times. Thus just as the Old Law was preserved in
Rome and continued to be illuminated by seven great candelabra, so
also does it appear that the New Law, symbolized by the church of
St. Peter as the new Moses and his successors, the popes, was
illumi- nated by seven magnificent candelabra.105
The choice of historical scenes above was not fortuitous. Though
we may never know precisely why Julius was interested in having the
essentially new ceiling of the vault repainted, the reasons
presented by Wilde and others do not appear to provide sufficient
explanation.106 Merely to keep Michelangelo in his employ could
have been accomplished in other ways by Julius, including by allow-
ing Michelangelo to continue work on his monumental tomb. Nor does
the "addition" of a "new" program seem a satisfactory explana-
tion. It is evident from a letter of May 10, 1506, that Julius had
already decided on the repainting of the ceiling and that
Michelangelo was his choice for the commission.107 To remove
Michelangelo from work on the tomb, in itself a major commission,
and to put him to work on the Sistine Chapel suggests that Julius
had a firm resolve to change the ceiling previously painted by
Piermatteo d'Amelia for Sixtus.108 Perhaps, originally, this idea
was bound up with a Julian notion of expressing his own high office
by replacing the papal arms of his predecessor, essentially the
only image in the vast original ceiling.
Assuming Julius' determination to continue the theme of the Law,
this might have been met with a. series of twelve enthroned
apostles painted on the twelve pendentives for they would have
symbolized, as Esther Dotson points out, the twelve thrones (of
judgment).109 However the new theme, as it evolved, was far rich-
er.110 It served well to transform a 'poor' program which was not
appealing to Michelangelo into a vastly more enriched one in which
he could demonstrate his virtuosity. Moreover, Julius-himself a
canon lawyer-could thereby express his admiration for the supreme
law of God and, as well, his passionate and consuming interest in
memorializing ancient Rome (and through this, himself). Though the
new program was indubitably more challenging to the many talents of
Michelangelo, as the artist himself suggests in a later letter, it
is not yet clear precisely to what extent Michelangelo himself was
its inventor.111
The basic theme of Law and Rome corresponded to Julius' goals in
rebuilding the Ecclesiastical State as it did with the immense
flattery he enjoyed in being hailed as a second Julius Caesar (also
a 'Giulio'), from whom his flatterers imagined him descended and
whose imperious duty as governor of Rome, and therefore of the
world, he had inherited. In suggesting that he was a descendant of
the Caesars, Julius' right to rule Rome could be sanctioned and
extended to a universal power over cannon and civic law. Since
the
emperor had abdicated his Roman duty in being absent from Rome,
the providential mission given by God to the Roman people noted by
Virgil and Dante had been disregarded. Thus was it incumbent upon
Julius to remind his contemporaries that it was the Roman emperor
who had power over all other monarchs. This concept of the univer-
sal jurisdiction of Roman law suggests that since Roman law is the
Divine Will, then obedience to Rome is obedience to Divine
Will.112
For a leader who had such quarrelsome relationships as did
Julius with the civic princes of Italy as well as with the French
king, Louis XII, and the emperor, Maximilian I, such a concept
might have been more than appealing. To Julius a widely expanded
world now looked for the extension of Christianity. As an ardent
consolidator of papal administration deeply motivated to embellish
his see and memorialize himself, the triumphs in which he appeared
in the guise of a Roman emperor to the cries of "Giulio!" cannot
but have recalled his great namesake who Ovid had obligingly borne
to heaven as a god. Through his accomplishments as a warrior, his
work as the Vicar of Christ, and the magnanimity of his
commissions, Julius could no doubt imagine himself immortalized as
Ovid had seen Julius Caesar high in the sky over the Eteral City.
Thus the hurried unveiling of the Ceiling on All Saints' Day would
have constituted yet one more 'triumph.' Surely this was well
understood by Vasari in commenting that the oak leaves and acorns
of the ignudi signified that at this time and under the government
of Julius was an Age of Gold. Pietro Bembo, too, had noted in a
poem in praise of Julius that the sacred oak of Julius whose acorns
had once nourished heroes would return the world to its pristine
honor; even Egidio da Viterbo, not always so lavish in his praise
of his patron, had noted in a 1507 sermon that the reign of Julius
represented the fulfillment of the Golden Age which had flourished
in ancient Italy.113 Thus extolled, Julius II became the
representative of God's law on earth.
Taking into account the themes of the Old Law of Moses and the
New Law of Christ pictured below and emphasized by their
accompanying inscriptions (which were clearly visible when the
Ceiling was painted), the portraits of the popes on the upper walls
underline the idea of the primacy and supremacy of the pope and the
message of Petrine authority. This authority was cited even in the
(now lost) altarpiece of the Assunta located on the west wall of
the Chapel, in which Sixtus was portrayed kneeling under the pro-
tective hand of St. Peter, the new Moses, who, placed on the side
of the Moses wall, rests his key-symbolic of his role as legislator
of the New Law-on the shoulder of Sixtus. [Fig. 10]114 So too the
tapestries designed by Raphael (commissioned by Leo X) to cover the
fictive tapestries of Sixtus can be read as examples of Divine
Authority expressed in the acts of Peter and Paul, the Christian
guardians of Rome and the co-founders of the Roman Church. Medieval
tradition in Rome, well known in visual imagery since the fourth
century (especially through the theme of Traditio Legis), showed
Peter and Paul as magistrates, or legislators, that is, as
33
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
10) Michelangelo,
-
MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
11) Michelangelo, , Rome, Vatican, Sistine Chapel (Photo:
Monumenti Musei e Gallerie Pontificie)
The above hypothesis provides good reason to suggest that the
historical painting traditionally regarded as the Sacrifice of Noah
relates rather to the sacrifice of Abel and Cain, as both Condivi
and Vasari had identified it-Condivi in 1553 and Vasari in 1568
[Figs. 10-11].116 Rejecting Condivi's and Vasari's indications,
modem criti- cism has insisted that the sacrifice is Noah's. It is
often pointed out that Genesis 8:20 states that Noah sacrificed
beasts and birds of every kind.117 Because, it was imagined, the
fresco showed a fowl
being sacrificed, Noah's sacrifice was therefore exemplified.
The doubts of many that the subject of this scene might be related
to the sacrifice of Abel and Cain has also depended on the fact
that no cor, or fruit of the ground (Cain's offering) is
represented here.118 Consequently scholars have remained unable to
explain why Michelangelo would, in such an important work, have put
one event out of sequence (the sacrifice of Noah occurred after the
Flood yet it is represented before it in chronological order of the
Ceiling).
35
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1.
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CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
Perhaps they have assumed, as Freedberg, that Michelangelo
changed the order of events for (unspecified) 'compositional' rea-
sons.119 Hartt proposed a most ingenious reason to explain why this
might be the case. Such a discrepancy in the order of the
paintings, he suggested, is in reality a "key" to understanding
"the deeper meaning of the whole."120 Though James Beck recently
suggested that Condivi and Vasari should be taken seriously, his
argument was primarily stylistic.121 As will be seen below, there
is good reason to believe that the subject of this fresco is the
Sacrifice of Abel rather than that of both brothers. This subject
fits perfectly the contents of Michelangelo's painting as well as
the sequence of events in the Ceiling. It is also harmonious with
the overall theme of the Law.
Though the silhouette in the darkened center foreground of the
fresco might, in the pre-cleaned Ceiling, have resembled a cooked
chicken-tied, trussed, and table-ready-there is no explanation as
to why the bundle believed by many to be a fowl would be previous-
ly cooked (fit for a modem Western table) and presented as ready to
eat while the other animals are still alive. The altar behind is
being prepared as wood is brought in, so the moment appears to
represent the beginning, not the end, of the sacrifice. In effect,
I am unable to discover a fowl anywhere in the painting. The bundle
being passed in the foreground is certainly not a fowl but-as the
recent cleaning reveals-a bright, red and bloody mass. This can
suggest nothing other than animal viscera that, as we know from
Ovid and other Roman writers, constituted the first part of the
appropriate sacri- fice.122 Essentially, the only animals in the
foreground are rams (the animal that Abel sacrificed), and one of
them is being prepared for sacrifice while being subjugated by a
man who sits over it, control- ling it from both sides while
passing the bundle of viscera he has just extracted. Another ram is
being subjugated to the far left.
It is again Philo who helps the viewer here. Though his account
of the Creation leads to the Great Flood, and though he alludes to
the Drunkenness of Noah by including a chapter on Drunkenness, the
Sacrifice of Noah does not appear as a subject in his writings.
However, Philo does place a great importance on that of the sons of
Adam and Eve. A separate treatise, entitled De Sacrificiis Abelis
et Cainiforms part of the works translated for Sixtus IV. In this
work Philo explains that Abel and Cain did not make their offerings
at the same time. Abel made his first, and alone. Cain followed
with his offering later, after many days. This interpretation of
the biblical text is crucial to explaining why only one sacrifice
(Abel's) occurs in this scene.
That sacrifice is alive. Abel's offering, Philo stresses, was
alive; this is important because Cain's would be lifeless and dead
and therefore not an appropriate sacrifice. Abel offered the
firstlings of his sheep, which fulfilled the sacred ordinance
decreed in Exodus. Because young animals are wild, Philo explains,
they have to be tamed or subjugated. When controlled, they respond
submissively, and this is pleasing to God. Abel offered not only
the young live ani- mal that had to be subjugated, Philo continues,
but also the "fat" (the
innards) because to be pleasing to God the sacrifice had to be
'whole'-the entrails had to be offered first, followed by the live
bod- ies.123 Throughout the discourse, Philo reminds the reader
that his knowledge of this event is derived from the Law of Moses,
who taught that wildness is equivalent to anarchy. The sacrificial
animal had to be subjugated because to obey is to pass through the
will of God. Thus the act of obedience to subjugation represents
submis- sion to authority.
The idea of Justice in this scene is supported by the prophet
Isaiah whose presence, as designed by Michelangelo, is surely not
accidental. Preoccupied with the sins of Israel and the evils of
the present, Isaiah predicts a day of doom for Israel through the
judg- ment of God. The words of the Lord, reminding the Israelites
He will save them, stress the importance of live sacrifice: 'The
beast of the field shall honor me..." In this passage (Isaiah
43:19-24), the Lord asserts his pleasure in burnt offerings that
include the "fat." Seldom represented in the history of art, the
sacrifice of Noah would have offered few parallels with the idea of
Justice (and obedience and punishment) whereas the Sacrifice of
Abel, in which God chose the sacrifice of the 'good' brother, Abel,
and rejected that of the 'bad' one, Cain (who is subsequently
punished), fits well with the theme of Justice and the Law, as well
as with the chronology of the historical paintings and the
descriptions of Michelangelo's friends.
In addition, this subject fits well the Roman character of the
theme. The Collatio Legum Romanarum et Mosaicarum, probably the
most important document of jurisprudence and law of pre-
Constantinian times, offered the first integration of Roman law and
religious (Old Testament) law, for it held that the antiquity and
author- ity of Roman law lay in the fact that it was based on
Mosaic law. It was this synthesis which led to what Charles Pietri
describes as its natural cultural extension, Christian legislation
emanating from Rome.124As Dante had regarded the Romans as chosen
people who through their providential history came to be trustees
of universal peace and just government until the end of time, the
jurisdiction of the Roman empire over humanity had been recognized
previously by St. Augustine. Just as God had allowed Troy to be
destroyed so that Aeneas might come to Italy and found the
families, including that into which Julius Caesar and Augustus were
born (and from which Julius II was purportedly descended), which
were to govern the world, Augustine argued, Cain was the founder of
the City of the Devil whereas Abel was the founder of the City of
God. Julius II (who was not an Augustinian) owned five copies of
Augustine's De Civitate Dei in his private library, more than any
other single literary work.125
Though it involved the obliteration of at least three
Quattrocento paintings on the wall beneath, the Last Judgment is by
the very nature of its subject thematically connected and
continuous with the
36
-
MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
previous painting programs. So also was the plan for the
Expulsion of Lucifer and the Bad Angels that, as described by
Vasari, was designed to complete and complement the Last Judgment
on the altar wall.126 Though it might be argued that Clement VII
had good reason, in vindicating the desolation and despair of Rome,
to desire as ardently as Vasari says he did the execution of the
LastJudgment by Michelangelo, its subject-which involves the final
expression of the Law at the end of history-forms appropriate
juxtaposition with its predecessors which are concerned with the
Law at the beginning of time and durng the course of history. In
this sense, the cycle is complete.
The glory of its revelation fell to Clement's successor, the
pow- erful and brilliant Paul III, who in obvious respect for the
subject declined to ordain any changes. Perhaps, as Vasari
speculated, the greatest painting on earth showing the 'true'
Judgment and the 'true' Damnation, was decreed by God to show how
Destiny works.127 No less an occasion than Christmas Day of 1541
was chosen for its unveiling. Perhaps this was intended to convey a
message to the world shortly after the issuance of the papal bull
that established the world-wide mission of the Jesuits and on the
eve of the formal establishment of the Inquisition with its wide-
ranging punitive powers.128 As Colin Eisler has observed, the shape
of the altair wall suggests the Tablets of the law; perhaps this
was an intended coincidence.129
Given the disparities of artistic style contained in the various
major moments of decoration of the Sistine Chapel, it is clear that
each of these moments was of intense future importance for the
his-
This article was presented as a paper at the 1995 meeting of The
Renaissance Society of America in New York. I would like to extend
most grateful appreciation to Wemer L. Gundersheimer and the staff
of The Folger Shakespeare Library, whose particular helpfulness and
hospitality contributed significantly to its realization; also to
Colin Eisler and O.J. Rothrock for their comments and
encouragement. I am also indebted to Herbert L. Kessler and Carolyn
Valone for suggestions on the subject of Early Christian Roman
tradi- tions. Appreciation is also expressed to the University of
New Mexico for a Research Allocation Grant that helped make this
study possible.
1 The words of Michelangelo's father are taken from a letter to
Michelangelo reprinted in G. Poggi, 1/ Carteggio di Michelangelo,
ed. P. Barocchi and R. Ristori, I, Florence, 1965. no. L.
tory of art in Rome, a city that-ironically-during the earlier
Renaissance had lacked a 'school'of painting of its own. The impor-
tance of the capital of Christendom throughout this time as the
great- est center of archaeology in the world may be considered to
have interfaced with the idea of symbolizing through the
construction of this building and its adomrnment a theme far more
simple than the complex theological schemes that have been imagined
and on which there is so far no general agreement. The idea of the
Garden of Eden corresponds with the innocence of the Golden Age.
Like the Silver Age, Original Sin was the loss of the innate
faculty of Justice. The theme of Justice, authority and obedience
to God's Law culmi- nates in the Last Judgment, the last event in
world history. There is no doubt that the main subject of the
Sistine wall frescoes does not consist in allusions to events in
the life of Sixtus IV, so much as in expressing and underlining the
authority of the pope as lawgiver.130 According to the message of
the Sistine Chapel as a whole, the authority of God was transmitted
to Moses, to Christ, to St. Peter and to the popes to the end of
the world. Such a theme, incorporating well known sources,
required, as Hope suggested with respect to the medallions, no
complex theological planning.
Thus the overall theme of the universality of the Law,
conflating biblical and classical ideas as Dante had compared Zeus,
the giver of Law with Christ,131 paid substantial and triumphal
tribute to its presence in the city of Rome and to the authority of
its commission- ers. In this theme, whose continuity of purpose
prevailed through the reigns of at least four popes, the twenty
nude male youths and the bags of acorns they carry are of no small
consequence.
2 The term 'first chapel of the world' is that used by Paris de
Grassis, papal Master of Ceremonies, as cited by J. Shearman, in
'The Chapel of Sixtus IV," in The Sistine Chapel. The Art, the
History and the Restoration, C. Pietrangeli, ed., London, 1986, 25.
No attempt will be made here to cite the vast literature connected
with the Sistine Chapel and the various stages of its adornment.
The most essential historical sources are, of course, contained in
the works of two of Michelangelo's contemporaries, Ascanio Condivi,
Vita di Michelangelo Bvonarroti raccolta per Ascanio Condivi de la
Ripa, Rome, 1553; and Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' piu eccellenti
pittori scultori ed architettori...(1568), G. Milanesi, ed.,
Florence, 1881, VII, esp. 173-216; as well as in letters and other
documents connected with the Chapel and its works. Among the
mod-
37
-
CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
ern sources that were most useful for this study are: E.
Steinmann, Die six- tinische Kapelle, 2 vols., Munich, 1901-05 (a
rich source of historical and doc- umentary information concerning
the various stages of building and enrich- ment of the Chapel);
Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo, 5 vols., (1945), esp. II,
Princeton, 1969 (containing important critical information as well
as docu- ments and letters); F. Hartt, "Lignum Vitae in Medio
Paradisi: The Stanza d'Eliodoro and the Sistine Ceiling," The Art
Bulletin, XXXII, 1950, 116-45 and 181-218 (including the "Critical
Statement" of E. Wind in The Art Bulletin XXXIII, 1951, 41-47 and
Hartt's reply in the same issue, 262-73); J. Wilde, 'The Decoration
of the Sistine Chapel," Proceedings of the British Academy, XLIV,
1958, 61-81; H. von Einem, Michelangelo, Stuttgart, 1959, 49-71; E.
Wind, "Maccabean Histories in the Sistine Ceiling," Italian
Renaissance Studies, E.F. Jacob, ed., London, 1960, 312-27; Charles
de Tolnay, "Michelangelo," in Encyclopedia of World Art, IX, New
York and London, 1964, esp. cols. 884-98; L. D. Ettlinger, The
Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo, Oxford, 1965 (which brings
together much of the information since Steinmann's publication and
presents a comprehensive interpretation of the first stages of the
Chapel and its adornment); Staale Sinding-Larsen, "A rereading of
the Sistine Ceiling," Institutum Romanum Norwegiae Acta ad
Archeologiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia, IV, 1969, 143-57
(which sug- gests an ecclesiological iconography for the Chapel as
a whole); C. Seymour, Michelangelo, The Sistine Ceiling, New York,
1972; Esther G. Dotson, "An Augustinian Interpretation of
Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling," The Art Bulletin, LXI, 1979,
198-223 and 405-30 (which puts forward an Augustinian interpre-
tation of the Ceiling based on the 'universal' knowledge of St.
Augustine, an interpretation not necessarily incompatible with the
material presented here which is of a more general nature);
Shearman, op. cit., 22-91; J. O'Malley, 'The Theology behind
Michelangelo's Ceiling," The Sistine Chapel. The Art, the History
and the Restoration, Carlo Pietrangeli, ed., London, 1986, 92-148;
Charles Hope, "The Medallions on the Sistine Ceiling," Journal of
the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, L, 1987, 200-04 (which offers
a persuasive argument for Michelangelo's responsibility for the
program of the Ceiling); M. Finch, 'The Sistine Chapel as a
Temenos: An Interpretation Suggested by the Restored Visibility of
the Lunettes," Gazette des Beaux Arts, LXV, Feb. 1990, 53-70 (which
argues that a basic theme of the Ceiling is the reconstruction of
an ancient temenos fashioned according to a Roman language); and K.
W. G. Brandt, "Michelangelo's Early Projects for the Sistine
Ceiling," in Michelangelo Drawings, Craig H. Smyth, ed.,
Washington, D.C., 1992, 57-87 (which discusses the evolution of the
layout and planning of the Ceiling.
3 Rather than analyzing the many different interpretations and
theories put forward so far with regard to one part or another of
this monument, this paper will assume the importance of these
existing interpretations in, for want of space, restricting itself
to a discussion of a new consideration regarding a possible overall
theme pursued throughout the history of the adornment of this
building.
4 That the ignudiare captives of ancient ignorance was proposed
by S. J. Freedberg (Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and
Florence, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, 97). That they are symbols of the
beauty of the human body was suggested by J. Klaczko (Rome et la
Renaissance: Essais et Esquisses: Jules II, Paris, 1902, 384-86)
and repeated by A. Michel (Histoire de l'art depuis les premiers
temps Chretiens jusqu'a nos jours, IV (I), Paris, 1909, 565-71) and
others; that they are genii was suggested by Tolnay n Michelangelo,
II, 1945, 63-66; that they are slaves or Atlantean strong men was
proposed by Heinrich Wolfflin ("Die sixtinische Decke
Michelangelos," Repertorium fir Kunstwissenschaft, XIII, 1890,
264-72 and again in "Ein' Entwurf Michelangelos zur sixtinischen
Decke," Jahrbuch der koniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen, XIII,
1892, 178-82), Steinmann ("Die Atlanten," in op cit., II, 241-61);
A Venturi ("La volta della Sistina," L'Arte, XXII, 1919, 85-94),
and frequently repeated in survey materials (e.g. I. Earls,
Renaissance Art, New York and London, 1987, 139); that they might
be
angels is suggested by surviving earlier drawings for the
Ceiling as noted by Tolnay in Michelangelo, II, 1945, 63 and
disputed by Freedberg in op. cit., 96. R. Kuhn suggested (in
Michelangelo Die sixtinische Decke, Berlin-New York, 1975, 52-58)
they are cherubim such as had decorated Solomon's temple. That the
ignudiare adolescent heroes specially invented by Michelangelo for
this occasion was suggested by A. Foratti ("Gli 'Ignudi' della
Volta Sistina," L'Arte, XXI, 1918, esp. 110-13). That they are
symbols of eternal life was sug- gested by Seymour (op. cit., 86);
that they are acolytes of Christ by Hartt (op. cit., 136-138); that
they are "athletes" of God by C. Eisler (in 'The Athlete of Virtue:
the Iconography of Asceticism," De artibus opuscula XL, Essays in
Honor of Erwin Panofsky, New York, 1961, 82-98 and n. 76); that
they are celestial images or "Victory angels" by Finch (op. cit.,
64-65); that they are merely decorative supporters of medallions by
Tolnay (Michelangelo, II, 1945, 64), Freedberg (op. cit., 95-97)
and O'Malley (op. cit., 100) who adds that they lack narrative or
symbolic meaning. While all these interpretations assume the
ignudito be secondary in terms of their importance for the
iconography of the Ceiling, this view is most clearly stated in the
explanation of Freedberg (/oc. cit.).
5 See illustrations of ducato or fiorino di camera and a doppio
grosso (1471-84) of Sixtus, with bibliography, in G. B. Picotti,
"Sisto IV Papa," in Enciclopedia italiana, XXXI, Rome, 1936,
922-23. Cf. with stemma illustrated in G. Castellani, "Della
Rovere," in Enciclopedia italiana, XII, Rome, 1935, 544-55. See
also R. Weiss, The Medals of Pope Sixtus IV, Rome, 1961. On the use
of this symbol by Julius II in papal coinage and medals see G. L.
Hersey, High Renaissance Art in St. Peter's and the Vatican,
Chicago, 1993, 12 and 44-45.
6 See E. Bentivoglio and S. Valtieri, Santa Maria del Popolo,
Rome, 1976, fig. 83.
7 Bentivoglio and Valtieri, op. cit., 41 and fig. 46. 8 The
miniature, from Vatican Cod. Lat. 2044, is reproduced as the
frontispiece of Pietrangeli, op. cit. On the tomb of Sixtus IV
in St. Peter's Basilica see L. D. Ettlinger, Antonio and Piero
Pollaiuolo, Oxford, 1978, 148- 51. Regarding the subtle pattern of
oak decoration that appears throughout the fictive tapestries of
the lower wall, see Shearman, op. cit., esp. 41-42.
9 Bentivoglio and Valtieri, op. cit., fig. 87. This tomb is,
however, richly ornamented with acanthus and palm leaves.
10 It should, however, be noted that Bentivoglio and Valtieri
speculate that a small sculptured medallion inserted by Bramante in
the heart of the shell covering the choir of Sta. Maria del Popolo
may have contained the oak tree emblem. Surviving visible evidence
to support this suggestion (ibid., 26 and figs. 35, 36 and 37) is
lacking.
11 Written in Michelangelo's lifetime (the revised version
published shortly after his death), Vasari's account provides us
with a detailed descrip- tion of events associated with the
completion of the tomb of Julius (op. cit., passim). Regarding the
complex history of this monument, see esp. Tolnay, Michelangelo,
IV, 1945.
12 Freedberg, op. cit., 95-97. 13 Tolnay, Michelangelo, II,
1945, 63-65 and, more specifically, Idem,
"Michelangelo," 1964, col. 886. 14 The Timaeus, a part of which
had been translated by Cicero, was
known throughout the Middle Ages largely through the 5th century
translation and commentary of Chalcidius. The literature on the
survival of Plato into Renaissance times is extensive. See P. 0.
Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, V, Conant trans.,
New York, 1943; Idem, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, New
York, 1979; and esp. James Hankins, Plato in the Italian
Renaissance, 2 vols., Leiden, 1990.
15 See Plato, Phaedo, secs. 96-98, and Protagoras, 320D-327C.
That both works were known in Italy before the time of Marsilio
Ficino is certain for a manuscript containing the Phaedo was
translated by Leonardo Bruni in about 1405. On this see R.
Sabbadini, Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne'
38
-
MICHELANGELO'S IGNUDI, AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL AS A SYMBOL OF LAW
AND JUSTICE
secoli XIV e XV, I, Florence (1905), 1967, 50-52. Another, of
the Opuscula (including the Protagoras) was copied by Bartolomeo da
Montepulciano in about 1418. On this see R. R. Bolgar, The
Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, Cambridge, 1954, 483 (and
regarding Bartolomeo see Sabbadini, op. cit., I, 70-80 and
passim).
16 Hesiod, Works and Days, esp. lines 5-55; and Theogony, esp.
lines 40-75. Regarding manuscripts of Hesiod collected during the
15th century see Sabbadini, op. cit., I, 52-53; and Bolgar, op.
cit., esp. 497-98.
17 An inventory (of uncertain date but possibly 1513, in which
case it was compiled on the occasion of the death of Julius) of
Julius' books exists in Vatican Cod. Lat. 3966, fols. 111-17.
18 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, esp. II. iv-v. 19
Diodorus of Siculus, History, 1.7 (on the Creation). The first five
books
of Diodorus' monumental work were known in the 15th century
through a Latin translation of Poggio Bracciolini.
20 Diodorus of Siculus, op. cit., 1.8 (on the first men and
their undisci- plined and bestial life).
21 See the following commentaries on the Creation by Philo: De
Opificio Mundi (On the Creation), Legum Allegoriae (Allegorical
Interpretation), and Quaestiones et Solutiones in Genesin
(Questions and Answers on Genesis).
22 A vast literature exists on this broad subject. See esp.
Robert McQ. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, New York,
1959, and Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism
and Talmudic Tradition (lec- tures at Jewish Theological Seminary
of America), New York, rev. ed., 1965. On Saturninus' 2nd century
revision of Genesis, which presented the origin of man as a
luminous image in the mind of God, see Grant, op. cit.,
98-102).
23 On the Sefer Yezirah, cf. the older literature (Hirsch
[Heinrich] Graetz, Gnosticismus und Judenthum, Krotoschin, 1846,
esp. 102-32; and Louis Ginzberg, "Yezira Sefer," in Jewish
Encyclopedia, XII, New York and London, 1906, 602-06) with the
newer literature (Gershom Scholem, "Yezirah, Sefer," in
Encyclopedia Judaica, XVI, Jerusalem, 1971, cols. 782-88).
24 On the early Kabbalah, its origins in southem France, its
doctrine and its development, see G. Scholem, Origins of the
Kabbalah (1962), R.J. Zwiwerblowsky, ed., A Arkush, trans.,
Princeton, 1987, passim. By the 1480's the Florentine humanist Pico
della Mirandola- had become extremely interest- ed in the Kabbalah,
as would become Egidio da Viterbo, appointed Vicar General of the
Augustinian order in Rome by Julius II in 1506, during the
1520's.
25 It should be noted that though Philo was younger than Ovid,
who he outlived, they were nonetheless approximate contemporaries.
The comment in the text does not mean to hold that a specific
textual relationship existed between their works.
26 An example of an early Cinquecento Roman humanist work that
incorporates information based on Ovid's authority is the vast
encyclopedic compendium on famous men, the natural world and the
history of Rome and its emperors and pontiffs authored by Raffaelo
Maffei (also known as Raffaelle Volterrano), the Commentaria
Urbana, first published in Rome in 1506. A different approach to
Ovid's appeal to humanists can be seen in Vasari's description of
the festivities for the nuptials of Prince Don Francesco of
Tuscany, where a special car was devoted to Saturn (who presided
over the Age of Gold) in "Per le nozze di Francesco de'Medici," in
Vasari, op. cit., VIII, 587-95.
27 Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, lines 1-88. 28 Ovid, op. cit., I,
lines 89-113. 29 Ibid., I, lines 114-25. 30 Ibid., I, lines
125-319. On the significance of the Parnassus as a site,
see C. L. Joost-Gaugier, "Sappho, Apollo, Neopythagorean Theory
and Numine Afflatur in Raphael's Fresco of the Parnassus," Gazette
des Beaux Arts, CXXII, Oct. 1993, 123-34.
31 Ovid, op. cit., I, lines 320-440 and XV, lines 745-870.
32 Ibid., XV, lines 840-42 and 877-79. The quoted passage is
trans. by F. J. Miller in Ovid, Metamorphoses, Cambridge, Mass. and
London, 1944, 425 and 427.
33 Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, lines 60-479. Here 'Pythagoras'
contrasts the men of the Golden Age, who received food from the
earth, with the 'new race' of men who committed sin and came to
dread the Styx.
34 Ovid, Fasti, I, lines 295-306 and III, lines 795-800. 35 J.
Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods (1940), trans. B.F.
Sessions, Princeton, 1972, 91. For Virgil's description of the
Golden Age see Georgics II, lines 536-43, and Aeneid VI, lines
792-97, VII, lines 202-05, and VIII, lines 315-30.
36 Seznec, op. cit., 91-92. 37 On this see ibid., 91-94.
Regarding 12th century imitations of Ovid
and Ovidian works in reading lists of the 12th and 13th
centuries see Bolgar, op. cit., 189, 197, 210, 223-24 and 423. On
Ovid and his influence in the Middle Ages see esp. Giovanni Pansa,
Ovidio nel medioevo e nella tradizione popolare, Sulmona, 1924; F.
Ghisalberti, "Mediaeval Biographies of Ovid," Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, IX, 1946, 10-44; and J.B. Trapp,
"Ovid's Tomb, The Growth of a Legend," Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, XXXVI, 1973, 35-76. Generally useful are E.
K. Rand, Ovid and His Influence, Boston, 1925, and W. Brewer,
Ovid's Metamorphoses in European Culture, Boston, 1933. See also C.
Lord, Some Ovidian Themes in Italian Renaissance Art (diss.
Columbia University 1968), University Microfilms, Ann Arbor,
1977.
38 Regarding this tradition see A. Graf, Roma nella memoria e
nelle immaginazioni del medio evo, Turin, 1923, esp. 595-610; Paul
Lehmann, Pseudoantike Literatur des Mittelalters, Leipzig, 1927,
esp. 2-16; Edmond Faral, Recherches sur les sources latines des
contes et romans courtois du moyen age, Paris, 1913, esp. chapters
1-3; and Idem, Les Arts poetiques du 12e et 13e siecle, Paris,
1924, esp. 43-60.
39 P. de Vitry, Les Oeuvres de Philippe de Vitry [Ovide
Moralise] in Oeuvres publiees par Prosper Tarbe, Geneva, 1978, 3,
lines 1-2.
40 Philippe de Vitry, op. cit., esp. 3, 10, 12, 14, 16 and
passim. 41 See esp. P. Wicksteed and E. Gardner, Dante and Giovanni
del
Virgilio, Westminster, 1902, esp. 220-50 and, on Giovanni's
treatise on Ovid's Metamorphoses, 314-21. On Giovanni and other
Trecento Ovidian writers, see the thorough study by F. Ghisalberti,
"L'Ovidus Moralizatus di Pierre Bersuire," in Studj romanzi, XXIII,
1933, 1-134. Especially useful is Chapter I of this study, "I miti
ovidiani e le dottrine della Chiesa." See also Idem, "Giovanni del
Virgilio espositore delle Metamorfosi," Giornale Dantesco, XXXIV,
1931, 1-32 and, on Ovidian traditions in the late Middle Ages,
Idem, "Amolfo d'Orleans, un cultore di Ovidio nel secolo XII,"
Memorie del Real Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, XXIV (IV),
1932, 157-234.
42 Dante Alighieri, La Divina Comedia, Purgatorio XXII, 70-72
and 148- 50; also Paradiso XXI, 25-33.
43 Cf. Dante's discussion in De Monarchia I.xi.1 to Virgil,
Eclogues IV.6: "iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna" (now
Justice returns as the reign of Saturn returns).
44 On the subject see F. A. Ugolini, I cantari d'argomento
classico, Geneva and Florence, 1933, esp. 1-29, 97-135 and
180-82.
45 The Marvels of Rome [Mirabilia Urbis Romae], F. M. Nichols,
ed. (1889), New York, 1986, I: The Foundations of Rome (3-4). On
Noah's connec- tion with Italy, and his reputation (in medieval
legend) as the founder and builder of the city of Rome, which
originally bore his name, see C. L. Joost-Gaugier, "Dante and the
History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune, Part I, The First
Triumvirate at Lucignano," Artibus et Historiae, XXI, 1990, esp.
23-25.
46 Maffei, op. cit. (as cited in n. 26 supra), LXXIIII (r). Book
VI, in which Maffei presents the history of Rome, opens with a
discussion of Satum who, as the first King of Italy, reigned from
the Capitoline. On Satur's importance for Italy, through Maffei's
eyes, see CCCCXVI (v), CCCCXVIII (r), and CCC-
39
-
CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
CLXXI (r). Cf. to Flavio Biondo's description of the Capitoline
as a sacred location formerly known as Monte Saturninun in Roma
instaurata, I, secs. 66 and 74 (in De roma trivmphante libri X...
Romae instavratae libri III De origine ac gestis venetorum liber
Italia illustrata..., Basel, 1559). Surely known to these writers
were the comments of Virgil, who had noted Saturn's role in first
building the Capitoline (Aeneid, VIII, lines 345-59), while Pliny
(Naturalis Historia XXXIV.v) and Livy (Ab urbe condita libri
Vll.xxxviii.2) cited it as a sacred location on which the temple of
Jupiter the Thunderer was later built.
47 Graf, op. cit., 103. This is in accordance with Cicero's
statement (in De Natura Deorum IIl.xvii.44) that Saturn is held in
the highest reverence by people in the West-surely meaning Italy as
opposed to Greece. Elsewhere in the same work (lI.xxv.64) Cicero
describes Saturn as responsible for the forces of nature. On the
significance of Saturn in the Roman pantheon see A. Brelich, "I
primi re italiani," in Tre variazioni romane sul teme delle
origini, Rome, 1955, 48-94; Georges Dumezil, Le religion romaine
archaique (1974), 2nd ed., Paris, 1987, 281-82, 461 and 606-07; R.
Schilling, Rites, cultes, dieux de Rome, Paris, 1979, 228-29, and
G. Pucci, "Roman Saturn: the Shady Side," in Saturn from Antiquity
to the Renaissance, ed. M. Ciavolella and A A. lannucci, Toronto,
1992, 37-49.
48 Graf, op. cit., 660. 49 A statue of Saturn is described in
1480 as still existing in the ruins of
a Roman temple dedicated to him and Bacchus by the (anonymous)
author of La Edifichation de molti pallazi & tempii de Roma
(Venice, 1480), reprinted in Five Early Guides to Rome and
Florence, P. Murray, ed., Heppenheim, 1972 (no pp.). On Satur in
Christian churches see Seznec op. cit., 131-33.
50 See, e.g., the description of the Sala di Saturno in the
Palazzo Vecchio by Vasari in "Ragionamento Secondo," and that of
Saturn's carriage in the festival decorations for the marriage of
Francesco de'Medici cited above. Both are contained in Vasari, op.
cit., VII, 35-44 and 593-95 respec- tively. On the imagery of Satur
in decorations for the Palazzo Vecchio see J. Cox-Rearick, Dynasty
and Destiny in Medici Art, Princeton, 1984, esp. 72-74 and 132-42.
See also L. Mendelsohn, "Saturnian Allusions in Bronzino's London
Allegory, " in Ciavolella and lannucci, op. cit., 101-39.
51 Graf, op. cit., 598; and Trapp, op. cit., 41-46. 52 R. Weiss,
The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969),
2nd ed., Oxford, 1988, 121. See also Pansa, op. cit., esp.
Chapter XII, "Le statue e le immagini d'Ovidio," 133-50.
53 Graf, op. cit., esp. 602-03. See also Le Bible des poetes
methamor- phoze, a prose translation of the Metamorphoses into
French published as late as 1523 by P. Le Noire, Paris, a copy of
which exists in the Library of Congress.
54 Biondo, op. cit., II secs. 52-53 and passim. Biondo
frequently cites the authority of Ovid throughout his text. The
work opens with a reference to the Fasti describing Janus and
Saturn sharing the first kingdom of Italy. Albertini's work, the
Opusculum de mirabilibus novae & veteris urbis Romae, is
reprinted in Murray, op. cit. (as cited in n. 49 supra).
55 On these see Bolgar, op. cit., 249, 26