Michelangelo
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It's 1509 in the Sistine Chapel, one of the most spectacular sacred places in Vatican City, the headquarters of the all-powerful Roman Catholic Church. But there is nothing somber about the space today. It's bustling with activity, as the assistants to the great artist working here rush about, attending to his demands. They mix paints, bring fresh brushes, and try to guess what he'll ask them for next to avoid angering him.

High above them, suspended from the walls, are brackets, supporting a system of walkways and platforms. And this is where the artist works. The irascible, bearded man in his thirties, measuring no more than five foot three, climbs up the last stretch of rickety ladder to the very top platform. Now, sixty feet up in the air, the apparatus creaks beneath him as he poses himself at a most unnatural angle.

His spine is curved, his neck jutting backwards so his face is pointed at the ceiling just above him. But moving around can be precarious, and as he settles, he nudges a loose plank. Before he can scramble to save it, it falls, crashing a second later onto the floor below. Someone lets out a cry as they duck out of its way. Luckily no one is hurt this time. He raises his brush and gets back to it. His canvas is the entire ceiling.

It's a vast expanse, around 12,000 square feet, and it is his job to cover every inch with biblical scenes. His aim is to astound all whose eyes fall upon it. As with all frescoes, the paint must be applied directly onto wet plaster, so his art dries into the body of the building itself. He dabs with his brush, bringing forth the muscular torso of a man.

But though the subject is beautiful, powerful, the artist's own face is etched deep with a grimace, and his entire body is wracked with pain. He has already been working on this project for months. Just getting the paint to stay on the ceiling has been challenge enough, what with mold infiltrating the plaster. A lump of dried material now dislodges itself and falls onto his face. He lets out a frustrated roar.

then bellows down at one of his helpers far below to mix some more pigments. Suddenly the door at the far end of the chapel swings open with a heavy creak. Footsteps echo through the chamber. The artist looks down and rolls his eyes at the sight of the visitor dressed in robes of red and white. It's the man who commissioned this vast enterprise, Pope Julius II. As his entourage fuss around him, he begins to climb a ladder for a better look at the work.

Though it's far from being complete, he wants to open the chapel back up to the faithful so that they may wonder at the artistry. But the artist is having none of it. Descending from his platform, he tells the Pope that he will allow visitors only when he is satisfied. The Pope is infuriated by such insubordination. Who is he to say what should happen in the house of God? He raises the cane he carries and strikes out at the artist. But as soon as it begins, the altercation is over. The Pope has made his point.

He makes his way back down the chapel and leaves. The artist rubs at his arm, but such is his constant pain that in truth he hardly notices the blow. He sighs, looks up, and starts the climb back to what he knows will be his masterpiece. Because the work is all that matters to the great Michelangelo. A child of a middling family from Florence, motherless by the age of six, Michelangelo became one of the giants of Renaissance art.

Works like the Sistine Chapel and his sculpture of David continue to awe audiences and inspire artists. Amid the complex politics of the Italian peninsula, he navigated a path between a powerful dynasty and religious upheaval to ensure that his art was always at the center of his life. And by pushing himself to the limits of his unsurpassable talents,

Whether working in paint or marble, or as an architect or engineer, he became not only the artist of his age, but one of the great cultural touchstones of all time. But how did his relationship with the mighty Merdici clan impact his career? What was behind his rivalry with superstar contemporaries like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael? What drove him to keep producing outrageously brilliant work almost until his dying day, and at what cost to him personally?

I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is a short history of Michelangelo. It's late March 1475, and in the small Tuscan town of Caprizi near Florence, a wet nurse is settling down with an infant. The baby, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simone, is just three weeks old. His father, a government official, happens to be serving as Caprizi's mayor, so the family are away from their native Florence for the time being.

Michelangelo's wet nurse is the wife of a stonemason, and in years to come the artist will joke that he traces his sculptor's abilities to her milk. There is certainly no great artistic heritage in his own bloodline. When he is six, his parents living back in Florence, his mother dies in childbirth, leaving a husband and five sons. Michelangelo is sent to grammar school, where he receives grounding in reading, writing, and maths. He seems set to follow his father into bureaucracy.

But Michelangelo's focus frequently strays from his lessons to drawing, for which he shows a natural talent. Dr. Bernardine Barnes is formerly a professor at Wake Forest University and author of three books on Michelangelo, including Michelangelo and The Viewer in His Time.

The story that's always told is that his father was very irate when he expressed an interest to become an artist. There are so many myths and stories that have grown up around Michelangelo and his life that I think that's one of them that's been exaggerated. What we can all imagine is that a father who is a fairly middle-class, well-respected person would not be so happy if his son decided to be an artist.

when he's just been sent to school to learn how to read properly and write properly and know a little Latin and all those sorts of things. I mean, these things happen today too. In 1488, 13-year-old Michelangelo enters the Florentine workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the city's most celebrated painters. The master looks his latest apprentice up and down, unsure of what to make of him, and then sets him to work crushing pigments to make into paint.

There will be no shortcuts. He is to learn his trade from the bottom up. Michelangelo doesn't seem to mind. For now, it's his chance to find his place in the world. The Florence that Michelangelo inhabits is one of several powerful independent city-states on the Italian peninsula, a political, economic and cultural powerhouse. It had a population of about 100,000. It was one of the five biggest cities in Europe.

It was a city that was fiercely independent. It was a republic. But what it fundamentally meant is that they had a government of elected officials that

were elected for specific terms, rather short terms, actually. So there is a lot of politicking going on almost constantly. It was a prosperous city and a city that was very much involved with banking and also the crafts, the luxury crafts specifically. And I think painting and sculpture probably fits into that category of luxury crafts at this point in time.

There are rival political factions who jockey for dominance over the city, but the single most powerful family are the Medici's, whose name is known across the continent. Thanks in part to their sponsorship, Florence is the epicenter of an extraordinary art movement. It will eventually come to be known by historians as the Renaissance, although its exact parameters are difficult to pin down. The word itself translates as rebirth.

and is characterized by revival in the ideas and culture of classical antiquity, especially ancient Greece and Rome. With hindsight, it is a period that can be split into distinctive periods. The early Renaissance in the 15th century is associated with figures such as Donatello and Botticelli. But by the time Michelangelo starts his apprenticeship, it's evolved into the High Renaissance, the foremost figure of which is Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo is already well into his career by the time Michelangelo gets started in Ghirlandaio's workshop. Here, the young artist is taught how to paint on wooden panels, as well as how to paint frescoes. He is encouraged to follow his master's style, with a view to eventually helping him on larger commissions. Michelangelo's talents are soon evident.

We have some early drawings of his that were probably done when he was about 13 years old that are just spectacular. They are so careful, so carefully observed. They seem to all be copies from other frescoes from artists like Giotto or Masaccio. And they're just amazing drawings for a 13 or 14-year-old kid.

Though unusually, he is soon being paid to continue his apprenticeship. He's growing tired of life in the studio. He complains he's not learning anything from his master. But things come to a head one day when he refuses to share his drawings with another apprentice. Offended, his colleague swings a punch, which connects squarely with Michelangelo's head. The blow breaks his nose, a feature that he'll later detail in several self-portraits. It's time to move on.

and around 1490 he is invited to work directly for Lorenzo de' Medici. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, he has been the de facto ruler of Florence for the last 20 years. He has earned a reputation as a patron of the arts, putting Florence at the center of the cultural landscape. At de' Medici's family palace, Michelangelo is tutored in classical thinking by some of the greatest scholars of the age. It is a stark contrast with his time with Ghirlandaio.

Going to the Medici household was actually a little bit different. That feels more like almost a liberal arts education with art in it. But it does feel like that is less of a hardworking workshop than it is just a study space where he could actually explore different things.

Perhaps most importantly, he is schooled in sculpting at a time when Florence otherwise lacks a first-rate stone carving workshop. Sculpture is one of Lorenzo's passions, but he's also an avid collector of Greek and Roman artifacts. Michelangelo studies with a man who was himself a student of the great Donatello, linking him into a chain of Renaissance giants. But he's also building a network of contacts at the very pinnacle of Florentine society.

Some of them will later spread their influence to Rome and the Vatican, too. He was really a part of the family, it seems, that he was invited to share meals with the Medici family. It wasn't just that he was out there, you know, carving in the yard or something like that, but he became part of their culture.

He got to know Lorenzo de' Medici's son and nephew, who were about his age. Those two young men became popes later. So, you know, it's a great environment for just getting to know people. Michelangelo spends three years living in the Medici household, during which time he produces two of his most important early sculptures, The Madonna of the Stairs and The Battle of the Centaurs.

Both are marble relief carvings, done when Michelangelo is not yet out of his teens, drawing on the Bible and Greek mythology as their respective source material. Each bears the influence of past masters like Donatello, but with a sense of dynamic action that is Michelangelo's alone. In 1492, Lorenzo dies after a prolonged spell of ill health. Michelangelo initially stays with the family before returning to live with his father for a while.

He starts to visit the local monastery, where he is permitted to dissect and study cadavers brought from local church-affiliated hospitals. The treatment of the dead is, of course, a sensitive subject, so he goes in secret, but he emerges with a knowledge of the human body that informs his work for the rest of his life. Florence, though, is at a turning point. Lorenzo's rule has not been good for the city's finances.

He is succeeded by his son Piero, but he loses local support when he is forced into a humiliating deal with King Charles VIII of France, who has brought an army to Italy in search of territory. With Piero exiled, Florence falls under the spell of Girolamo Savonarola, a monk intent on breathing new life into the Roman Catholic faith. He preaches fanatical Puritanism, warning the Florentines against their dangerously decadent ways.

It is a tough time to be an artist in the city. Michelangelo is conflicted, having been personally drawn to Savonarola's emphasis on close personal relationships with God. For his part, the monk approves of Michelangelo's more religious artwork, but much of the rest, especially that depicting male nudity, is utterly unacceptable. Many of the works that have made Florence famous are now condemned as sinful.

Savonarola encourages his followers to erect a huge bonfire, 15 feet high, outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall. Over several hours, thousands watch as books, artworks and other cultural artifacts are incinerated in the largest of what become known as the Bonfires of the Vanities. There are swathes of laws governing morality too.

Bands of young men patrol the streets, looking to clamp down on drunkenness, lasciviousness, and any hint of same-sex attraction. Michelangelo looks for opportunities away from his increasingly unstable and hostile hometown. In Bologna, he is commissioned to produce funerary statues, before briefly returning to Florence, where he sculpts a marble statue of Cupid. Although he also works in other media, including wood and bronze,

It is chiseling hard stone that gives him his greatest joy. He skillfully ages his cupid, and his art dealer leads its buyer, one Cardinal Riario, to believe it's a genuine antique. How much Michelangelo himself is in on the con is up for debate.

That statue, that cupid, which was so good that it looked like it might be done by an ancient Greek artist, was revealed to be a fake, a counterfeit in a sense. But Cardinal Riario was so impressed that he asked for Michelangelo to come to Rome and in fact gave him a different commission for

It's 1496 and Savonarola's regime is at full tilt in Florence when Riario brings Michelangelo to Rome. He sets him to work on sculpting Bacchus, the ancient Greco-Roman god of wine and festivity. But Michelangelo's vision involves the god standing nude and teetering backwards as if inebriated. It is deemed too salacious for a man of the church. However, Michelangelo now has the eye of other cardinals.

One of them commissions a sculpture of Mary, cradling the body of her crucified son, to stand in a chapel attached to St. Peter's. Michelangelo duly produces a breathtaking masterpiece known as "La Pietà" or "Pity", a study in serenity and grief. With Michelangelo still just 25, it marks a major career breakthrough. But because he hasn't been inscribing his work with his name, not everyone knows who he is.

The P.I. Tao was really, I think, the statue that made him famous. And interestingly, it's the first and the only work of his that he signed. The story is that he was, in fact, still working on it when he overheard, I guess he was back behind the statue, but a couple of other people walked by and said that, isn't this an amazing thing? It is done by

our favorite artist of Lombardy. And Michelangelo, according to the story, heard this and said he's got to straighten out that misconception and went and carved his name into the sash of the Virgin Mary. In 1501, he returns to Florence. The Medici family are still largely out of favor, but by now Savonarola is long gone, executed by the authorities to appease a population who had grown tired of his regime.

Luckily for Michelangelo, the new leaders are more moderate when it comes to matters of art. Back in the 1460s, the committee responsible for Florence's Cathedral, or Duomo, had commissioned a statue of David, the biblical boy who defeats the giant Goliath. It was to be displayed high up at the eastern end of the cathedral, and a huge block of marble was purchased for the job. Several artists took on the brief and failed. But now the committee turns to Michelangelo to take up the challenge.

Early one morning in September 1501, tucked away in a works yard behind a cathedral, he begins chipping away at the stone. He is given two years to complete the job, and although he'll miss his deadline, it will be worth the wait. Slowly but surely, he draws out of the marble a figure of unearthly beauty. Michelangelo's David seems less a humble adolescent shepherd than an ideal of masculinity.

And where other artists, including Donatello, favored showing him with Goliath's severed head, here there is no sign of the giant. Instead, the hero has his slingshot over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought. The focus is very much on David and his extraordinary body. By early 1504, plans are afoot to give the piece a new home somewhere even more prominent than originally planned. It's a little past eight o'clock in the evening of the 14th of May.

In the courtyard of the Cathedral Workshop, Michelangelo stands at the center of a throng of burly men, hollering orders. His brow is moist with perspiration. It's been a long day. There is still much to be done. The work here centers around an enormous wooden construction, unlike anything they've seen before. It is an extraordinary piece of bespoke engineering, designed for the unique task that lies ahead. From a timber frame hangs an arrangement of thick ropes.

At the center, suspended in mid-air, its base several feet clear of the ground, is the magnificent figure of David, all seventeen feet and six tons of him, his white marble skin glowing in the slowly fading light. Part of the wall above the courtyard entrance has already been dismantled to make way for this colossus.

Now he is to embark on a journey some 300 yards to the Piazza della Signoria, where he is to be displayed for all to see. The air fills with the sound of heaving and grunting as Michelangelo directs the workers to hoist the statue in its wooden frame onto specially prepared greased wooden beams. Dozens of men tug at the ropes and turn winches to inch David along. It's a painstaking business.

As soon as David clears one length of beams, they are picked up and carried to the end of the next set, ready to take the weight again. But now, a fault in one of the beams causes the framework to jolt as it passes across. The sculpture swings precariously in its mid-air position. There is a collective inhalation of breath, but then the process begins again, another inch of ground covered. The sculpture emerges through the yard gate, into a waiting crowd. But their reaction is not so much adulation as bewilderment.

A shout of "Giant!" goes up. As David travels slowly along like an ancient deity, the townsfolk are not awed by his aesthetic beauty, but instead overwhelmed by its sheer scale. Suddenly there's a commotion and the sound of stone against stone. Michelangelo turns to check on his sculpture. Thankfully all is well. But then comes another crash. Rocks are being thrown.

He spots the culprits, a group of youths who were lobbing missiles at his David. Though fortunately, without much accuracy. Are these Job's Medici loyalists intent on sabotaging this new emblem of the civic authorities? Or maybe it's David's nakedness that outrages them? Or simply high spirits? Whatever their motivation, they're soon chased off. It is a lengthy operation, but eventually David finds his way to the piazza.

With a last great effort, the team of workers shift him from the wooden beams and turn the winches a final time to lower him into position. This wondrous statue, destined to become not only the symbol of Florence, but an icon of human cultural achievement, is finished and here for the world to enjoy. Michelangelo may look to classical antiquity for inspiration, but his David exemplifies how the artist is treading new ground.

He was not satisfied with merely reviving classical antiquity in any sense of the word, that his works really do go beyond that. It is not just a classical nude. It's very irregular in many ways. The proportions are off and people recognize that, and yet it's extraordinarily powerful. He could have

Among the committee charged with deciding where David should be put on display was an artist some 20 years older than Michelangelo.

Less enthusiastic about David than the others, he had suggested homing the work in a more discreet setting on the square, where it wouldn't interfere with the ceremonies of state. His name is Leonardo da Vinci, and as Europe's leading artistic light, he's got his eye on Michelangelo as the young pretender to his throne. The pair could hardly be more different. Leonardo comes from humbler origins, but he is a charmer at ease in society. Michelangelo, on the other hand, is notoriously difficult to get on with.

Although Leonardo has spent many years away from his native Florence, the two have met along the way. Rumor has it that a while back they had a public spat, during which Michelangelo belittled Leonardo over a failed attempt to cast a giant bronze horse. For his part, Leonardo regards the sculpture as a secondary art to painting. He likens the ultra-muscular male figures produced by Michelangelo and epitomized by David to sacks of walnuts.

Their rivalry, however, is about to take on a new intensity. Leonardo has been commissioned to paint a 50 by 20 foot war scene depicting Florence's 1440 victory over Milan on one wall of Florence's town hall. And Michelangelo is given a similar job, but his will show the defeat of troops from Pisa on another wall inside the spectacular chamber. Leonardo's battle scene showed a horse battle, a cavalry battle.

Michelangelo showed a bunch of nude men climbing out of a river. They had been bathing in a river. And it's pretty clearly just a display of a bunch of nude men. It is not a battle scene at all. There might have been a battle scene in the background. But this is people climbing out of a river and trying to get their armor on. It's just a kind of an odd thing, but that shows you the difference between Leonardo and Michelangelo. When the two men are in the same room, the tension is palpable.

Yet neither artist finishes the commission, Leonardo's paint fails to adhere, and Michelangelo is summoned by the Pope before he even raises a paintbrush in earnest. Nonetheless, his preliminary drawings do survive for a while, and artists from Florence and beyond flock to view them, in the hope of absorbing some of the magic. At the Vatican, Pope Julius II explains that he wants Michelangelo to work on his burial tomb.

It's a prestige project, and Michelangelo has ambitions that it should become his crowning achievement. Envisaging something grander and more expensive than even Julius has in mind, he plans a three-story creation adorned with some forty figures. For nine months he looks for suitable materials, but the Pope gets cold feet. Michelangelo, affronted at being ignored by the Pope and refused additional money, leaves Rome.

but then decides it's unwise to make a mortal enemy of God's representative on earth. He engineers a reconciliation, and by 1509 Julius has a new project in mind for him: the painting of the Sistine Chapel. Initially, Michelangelo is apprehensive. Not only does he regard himself more as a sculptor than a painter, he also suspects there may be dark forces at play. The architect Bramante is working on plans for a new St. Peter's Church,

an immense volume of artwork will be required to fill it in the years ahead. And for this, he favors an artist a few years younger than Michelangelo, by the name of Raphael. Rumor has it that Bramante wants Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel gig in the expectation that, with his inexperience as a fresco painter, he will fail, paving the way for Raphael. If this is the plan, it backfires spectacularly.

Michelangelo puts himself through physical and mental torment to see the project through, using the ceiling to tell the story of creation, of Adam and Eve, and the saga of Noah and the great flood. But he does have a drawing of himself. It's actually kind of, it's a very funny drawing.

It's almost a cartoon of himself painting God on the Sistine ceiling. And he is actually standing up and his neck is really, his head is really way back. And he talks in this kind of funny poem he writes to go along with this drawing about how his neck is just killing him and his chest looks like a bow. And this is, and he's got paint all over his face and all of these things.

So that is his own statement of how he painted the ceiling. In a little over three years, he is finished. The results are stunning, spectacular enough that people begin calling the 37-year-old "Il Divino," the divine. Not long after the chapel ceiling is completed, Julius dies.

With support from the Spanish crown and the Vatican, the man appointed as his successor is a member of the Medici family, signaling their return to power in Florence after a long hiatus. This is good news for Michelangelo, who is rewarded with many new commissions. He continues to work on the now scaled-back tomb for Julius, but also several artistic and architectural commissions from the Medicis.

Though he has no formal training for structural work, he studies the drawings of past masters and applies his own sculptural vision to create bold new designs. Another Medici pope soon follows, taking the name Clement VII, but there is more trouble brewing in Florence. In 1527, Italy is still centuries away from becoming a unified nation,

but a power battle is underway across Europe between the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by King Charles V of Spain, and France under King Francis I, and both sides are vying for the Pope's allegiance. In an attempt to force Clement's hand, Rome is sacked by troops from the Holy Roman Empire. With their Pope severely weakened, the Medici are suddenly vulnerable to their opponents in Florence, who seize the moment to expel the family from the city.

Amid the ongoing conflict, Florentine authorities now make the curious decision to appoint Michelangelo chief of fortifications, a key figure in the defense of the city. It is presumed that, given his seemingly unending talents, the design of defensive infrastructure is well within his capabilities. But the truth is that he comes to the task with precious little practical experience.

In 1529, a complex series of agreements between Europe's great rulers puts Florence in a perilous situation. Charles comes out on top in peace deals with the Vatican and France, and then turns his attention to Florence. Determined to re-establish the Medici's role there, in 1529 he sends his imperial forces to besiege the city. To begin with, the fortifications that have improved under Michelangelo, especially vast new earthworks, repel the assault.

But the days turn into weeks, turn into months. It is only a matter of time before the city succumbs. It is a baking hot August day in 1530. With the city running out of supplies and its troops losing crucial battles, Florence has been forced to surrender. Medici loyalists are back in town to reassert their authority. Michelangelo, by now in his mid-fifties, looks out of his window.

A boy walks past, his hands held out, coughing hoarsely and begging for food. Hunger and sickness stalk the streets. But there is an even more pressing danger. Every now and then, the artist hears the terrified cries of his neighbors as their homes are invaded. He rushes around his studio, gathering together a few essentials, tools for his art, a few clothes and valuables. He needs to move.

The job he undertook to help defend his beloved Florence has inadvertently put him in opposition to the interests of his old comrades, the Medici's, on two scores. Firstly, he has been working for the civic authority that expelled them, and secondly, he has been fighting against an army intent on restoring them. When he spies a small group of men in uniform coming up the street, he ducks out of sight. Their footsteps ring out, and he braces himself for a knock on the door.

but they walk past his home and stop at another nearby property. Michelangelo can just make out the sound of a front door creaking open, then a scuffle as the officials barge their way inside. The household shouts in protest as they turn the property upside down, emptying chests, flinging pots and pans aside, inspecting every hiding place. They are looking for evidence of treachery against the Medici. If they cannot find it here and now, they will take the poor, unfortunate resident off for questioning and likely torture.

And if they're convinced of his guilt, the chances are he will never return. As for his own safety, it's not looking good. Michelangelo has already heard that someone has been charged with the job of killing him. With his small stash of provisions, he slinks out of his home, deftly navigating the back streets. He keeps his gaze low, avoiding eye contact, moving as quickly as he can without attracting attention.

After what seems an eternity, he arrives at the home of his friend, the prior of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. He raps sharply on the door. The prior answers and steps aside, ushering his guest inside and checking he hasn't been followed. Without wasting a moment, the artist is directed through a door and down a dark flight of steps. He is safe, at least for now.

A story will emerge that Michelangelo is hidden by his friend in a secret room under the church, where he stays for several weeks. Centuries later, the room is excavated and drawings are discovered on the walls. Some believe that they are the work of the artist during his underground exile. Whatever the truth of that, a deal is now struck that gives him new hope. Pope Clement offers to forgive him for his supposed treachery in return for his resumption of the work on the Medici Chapel.

It is, perhaps, the best deal of his career. By 1532, against the odds, he is sufficiently back in favor that he returns to Rome to work on Julius' tomb again. Although Michelangelo has long been known for his tetchiness, he has always had friends to call upon. But there is little evidence of serious emotional entanglements. Back in Rome, though, he strikes up a relationship with Tommaso de Cavalieri, a 23-year-old Italian nobleman.

The exact nature of their attachment is unclear, although it is certainly intense and lasts for the rest of Michelangelo's lifetime. The question of Michelangelo's sexuality comes to fascinate future generations, and many look to his art for clues. He clearly appreciated male beauty, and that was really the ideal, the perfect male body. But he did do some spectacular images of women.

They are not necessarily delicate women, with possibly the exception of a couple of Madonnas early in his career. But the other women that he shows in the Sistine Chapel or either in the ceiling or in the Last Judgment are very robust. They're very strong and they're extraordinarily energetic. I applaud him for showing women in all sorts of ways.

but I also applaud him for showing women as very strong visionary types. Michelangelo dedicates some 350 poems to his muse, and though they're never published in his lifetime, the verses reveal a talent that, if not equal to his visual works, is nonetheless striking. Later in life, he also strikes up another important, yet strictly platonic, friendship with Vittoria Colonna, the Marquise of Pescara.

It is a meeting of minds. Victoria Colonna is a similarly very aristocratic woman, but a very devout woman, a person who is very interested in Catholic reform. This is a period when the Reformation, of course, is a very divisive phenomenon in Europe at this time. And there is a response where at least some people within the Catholic Church actually protest.

believe that the Protestants are right about some of these things and that reforms need to happen. Vittoria Colonna was one of those. Michelangelo became very close with her, and that's probably his closest female friend in his entire life. Whatever the state of Michelangelo's romantic life, nothing gets in the way of his work. In 1536, he begins his next landmark project back in the Sistine Chapel.

Under yet another new pope, he sets about covering one of the vast end walls with a depiction of the biblical last judgment. He once more pushes the boundaries of both content and form. With Leonardo and Raphael now dead, he is the greatest artist of the age. He depicts God's ultimate judgment of humanity with over 300 figures centered around Christ: the redeemed taking their place in heaven and the damned descending to hell.

It is in many ways a shocking work. Some of the figures are painted in a grotesque manner, such as the martyr St. Bartholomew, carrying his own flayed skin. But as noted by Michelangelo's contemporary, the writer and gossip Pietro Arentino, it is another aspect that raises eyebrows.

It's full of naked people. There is so much nudity, males and females, mostly males, but there are some nude women in there as well. Some of them very obviously nude, genitalia exposed or buttocks exposed or whatever else. And as people like Aretino said, this is supposed to be in the most sacred space in Christianity today.

And here's all these people, not just were they nude, but they were acting like jugglers and dock workers. That was another one of his phrases that they were all this kind of muscular, intense movement, twisting movement, which is so powerful.

exaggerated and so copious in The Last Judgement was just completely over the top and was in many ways, Artino's right. It's really sort of offensive that this is going on. In the future, the fresco is censored with loincloths added and one pair of saints removed entirely, their pose considered overtly sexual. But no one doubts that the master has pulled off another thrilling, unprecedented artistic achievement.

Michelangelo finishes The Last Judgment in 1541. Now 66 years old, he is expecting his own death at any time. Not an unreasonable assumption given that 50 is considered a good age, and many die before they are 30, but he works on nonetheless. He did drawings?

And he did sculpture and the drawings related to architecture often. But he did keep working. He's a rather amazing, hardworking person. And I think he was always proud of himself as a person who worked hard.

not as, as he said, of Leonardo, not as a person who just sits there in his fine clothes painting. But he was a hard worker and thought of himself as a stone carver and dressed like a stone carver. He's really, he's an interesting, interesting person. He paints two more frescoes for the Pauline Chapel, just a short walk from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. There is also a pieta that he intends for his own tomb.

In 1546, he is appointed chief architect on the new St. Peter's. It is not a posting he much relishes, but he is devoutly religious in his own way, and the uproar that greeted the Last Judgment has caused him to question his spiritual health. He feels duty-bound to accept the St. Peter's role. He follows in the footsteps of Bramante and Raphael, setting aside his previous personal differences with both to build upon and improve much of the good work they had already laid down.

Although he will never see his designs come to fruition, he leaves a major mark on the future building. And what he came up with was a much more compact but a more grand building that is really centered on the dome.

The dome that we see now on St. Peter's is more or less Michelangelo's design, although it is more pointed than Michelangelo intended it to be. Now what we see now when people go to Rome and they see St. Peter's, they are seeing an awful lot of post-Michelangelo work. So what actually is his design is still visible on the body of St. Peter's, three quarters of it

is Michelangelo's work. It is the 14th of February, 1564. Until just a day or two ago, Michelangelo was chipping away at yet another Pietà, breathing new life into stone with as much innovative zeal as ever. But now, a few weeks short of turning 89, he wanders the streets by his house. He is pale, his speech faltering. He cannot find any rest at home, so he has come out in the rain. He wants to go horse riding, as is his habit,

but his legs are giving up on him. Instead, he eventually goes home and sits by the fire, a fever overtaking him. Friends and relatives are summoned. He makes clear to them what he wants done with his possessions, then commits his soul to God. Within a couple of days, he's dead. The Pope wants him buried at the Vatican, but his body is smuggled by a relative back to Florence. There, he is given a funeral attended by great crowds,

Not just those in the artistic community, but ordinary people, for whom his work has become a totem. It is their chance to say farewell to a man whose achievements seem divinely inspired. His legacy has spanned the centuries since. Multi-talented, he changed the path of painting, sculpture, and architecture. His work has an emotional engagement as strong today as it ever was, at once immediate and timeless.

one of just a handful of individuals whose names are familiar to those with little knowledge of art. He not only produced Peerless work, but redefined the very boundaries of what it is possible for humans to achieve.

He still is thought of, rightly or wrongly, as this kind of quintessential artist who is a romantic figure, who works alone, who is misunderstood, who has conflicts with patrons, all of those sorts of things.

There are some images that have entered into popular culture and that are just these indelible things. The fingers from the Sistine ceiling, the pose of David, for example. I mean, he's become this kind of meme in our society where at least those few things actually continue to have a life of their own. Next time on Short History, we'll bring you a short history of the ninja.

One of the interesting things about the ninjas is that there's a lot of emphasis on right-mindedness. That is, you have a cause and you fulfill the cause as best you can. And what you do not do is what the samurai did, which is to seek death. The whole idea is it's about toughening of the mind and spirit and about survival. Exactly the opposite of the samurai. That's next time.

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