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Posted on 02/18/2007 4:40:29 AM PST by NYer
VATICAN CITY - A 450-year-old receipt has provided proof that Michelangelo kept a private room in St. Peter's Basilica while working as the pope's chief architect, Vatican experts said.
While going through the basilica archives for an exhibit on the 500th anniversary of the church, researchers recently came across an entry for a key to a chest "in the room in St. Peter's where Master Michelangelo retires."
The Renaissance painter and sculptor whose frescoes adorn the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in the Vatican was put in charge of the restoration of St. Peter's basilica by Pope Paul III at age 71 in 1546, a job he held until his death in 1564.
Michelangelo's greatest contribution to the basilica was his design for the central dome or cupola, a universally acknowledged architectural triumph.
"We now know that Michelangelo definitely had a private space in the basilica," said Maria Cristina Carlo-Stella, who runs the Fabbrica di San Pietro, the office where the basilica's archives are kept. "The next step is to identify it."
The entry for the key was in a parchment-covered volume listing the expenditures of the Fabbrica for the years 1556-1558. It refers to the payment of 10 scudos to the blacksmith who forged the key, but offers no details about the chest or the location of the room.
Vatican officials reported the find during the current exhibition, although the volume was not put on display.
The basilica - 610 feet long and 449 feet at its widest - took 120 years to build over a previous Roman basilica, constructed by the emperor Constantine. The first stone was placed by Pope Julius II in 1506 and Pope Urban VIII consecrated it in 1626.
At least 10 architects succeeded each other as directors of the construction, among them Donato Bramante, who drew up the initial project, and Michelangelo.
A frescoed room with a cozy fireplace in the area where the archives are housed has traditionally been called "la stanza di Michelangelo," or Michelangelo's room. Located on an upper floor in the left wing of the basilica, it is connected to the ground floor by a winding, marble staircase - fueling speculation that the room could have been the artist's private sanctuary.
However, research shows the room was added during renovations after Michelangelo's death.
"The theory is very romantic and conspiratorial, but totally unfounded," said Federico Bellini, an art historian who works in the archives department.
He said a 16th-century sketch of the left wing of the basilica shows it was nothing more than a pile of rubble intertwined with vegetation during Michelangelo's time at the Vatican.
The Fabbrica, whose documents date from as far back as 1506, was originally housed in the right wing of the basilica, which had already been built at the time of Michelangelo. Research indicates that artisans had been allotted lodgings there, leading experts to direct their search for Michelangelo's studio to that area.
One detail the 450-year-old receipt does reveal is that Michelangelo had requested a very expensive key.
According to archivist Simona Turriziani, 10 scudos in the 1550s was more than the monthly salary of many of the artisans working on the basilica.
"The key was surely meant to keep that chest tightly locked," she said.
Thank you for posting this great article. I loved it.
Can you imagine being up on that scaffold all day when in your 70s? And Michelangelo lived to be 89.
No artist today could accomplish the beauty Michelangelo created because art today has no soul. It is only two-dimensional.
They must had low cholesterol diets back then.
I wish Michelangelo was still around....I'd have him do my living room.
Just keep Hildy or Doug far, far away.
So? Small is beautiful!
I just got back from Rome, where, of course, I made several trips to visit the Vatican. They are doing incredible research work there, and all sorts of interesting things are turning up.
One of the highlights of my trip was the Scavi, btw. These are the excavations under the Vatican, where they have found the actual burial place of St. Peter. They take you down into the narrow little corridors under the main altar, which was built over the burial place of St. Peter, at that time at the edge of the wall of the Roman necropolis located on the site. I kept thinking of all those early Christians, passing the word along to each other about where St. Peter was buried, and coming out to scratch some little prayer or symbol on the wall near the simple burial site (six large tiles leaning together).
When the current basilica was designed, it was laid out so that if you dropped a stone from the very top of the dome, the stone would fall directly all the way down to the very spot where St. Peter was buried. So when you look at the dome of St. Peter's from the outside, you are seeing a vast crown over the site where he is buried.
Was it paid by credit card or check or cash??
No doubt the Pope complained about the expense of that key, too. Ah, those wonderful Italians!
I still recall visiting the Coliseum. One can almost hear the screams of the christians and the crowds.
10 scudis was equivalent to about 750$. he must have had a safe there.
It was, actually. An interesting thing is that in the 1970s, they found bones in the area, near where someone had scratched the words Petrus eni (Peter is here). The bones had been taken out of the burial spot, wrapped in a piece of purple cloth and hidden in a hole in some part of the wall. However, they disappeared right after they were found. Years later, when an elderly monsignor who was a scholar and had been supervising the site died, the bones turned up on the top shelf of his closet! He had taken them out and stashed them there, I suspect either because he thought he was protecting them (this was during the real ravages of Vatican II) or because he wanted to be the first to study them and produce some work that would be a sort of scholarly coup. So far as I know, he never wrote anything about them, though.
I believe they have been reburied where they were found. The whole area had been a necropolis, and in the 4th century, Constantine bought the entire site, paying to have the bones of the earlier pagan residents placed elsewhere, since ancestors were very important to the pagan families who had owned the tombs. Then he levelled the surface and began construction of the Vatican on that site, so that the main altar would be directly over the tomb.
Prior to that, part of the area had been a circus where Christians were martyred. So saying that the Church is watered with the blood of martyrs is literally true in this case, because it is built on this site. Fascinating area, and if you ever go to Rome, visit the Scavi. You have to write months in advance to get a ticket, and they take you through with a small group of people based on the language you speak. The ticket costs about $20, and the tour only lasts about 45 minutes to an hour, but it will be one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking things you will see in Rome.
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