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Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling

Born in Florence at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance on March 6, 1475 when “Mercury and Venus were in the house of Jupiter,” [1] Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni seemed destined to become a famous in the arts. And as fortune had it, he was able to study at the famed Garden of San Marco started by the famous patron of the arts, Lorenzo de’ Medici.[2] Michelangelo’s skill as a sculptor soon became apparent with him creating “two extraordinary bas-reliefs, the Madonna of the Steps and the Battle of the Centaurs”[3] by the age of fifteen or sixteen as noted by Thomas Cahill. However it wasn’t sculpting that would propel him into the realm of the uber famous, but rather it would be his skill with a paint brush that would set him apart. The canvas for his art, as the fates would have it, was a box-shaped chapel in Rome whose foundation was laid a mere two years before his birth.[4]

The journey from sculptor to painter was not an easy one for Michelangelo. Rather it was a journey full of political upheavals, family drama, personal rivalry, and four long years perched on a scaffold bend backward staring at a ceiling. In his book Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, Ross King weaves these complex issues together into a single story showing how Pope Julius II pushed Michelangelo beyond his comfort zone and into the history books.

Like most people I had heard about Michelangelo’s paintings on the vault of the Sistine Chapel and even seen replicates of famed Creation of Adam fresco. However my knowledge of these amazing paintings did not extent beyond simply recognizing their existence in the world. King’s book was a ray of sunlight into the darkness of my ignorance, bringing with it the understanding that the context surrounding the creation of a piece of art is just as important as the piece itself. This realization may sound simple as it is a common method of exegesis for literature, especially the Scriptures. Yet I must admit that before reading King’s book I had never considered studying the cultural and history context of a piece of art.

Though it was not the topic of the book, King did provide some crucial information about the cultural and political context of the Protestant Reformation. Pope Julius II steadfast focus on recovering control over the Papal States, for example, was new information previously unknown to me. Similar to some of the cardinals of the day, I was “thunderstruck” that the “vicar of Christ” would personally “lead an army into battle.” [5] Add sexual misdeeds to this tragedy misinterpretation of the role of the church in the world and it is no small wonder that Martin Luther would say that “Rome was the seat of the devil and the pope worse than the Ottoman sultan.”[6]

In closing I have to admit that while Ross King’s book Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling was outside my typical reading patterns, it proved itself to be a valuable text. Ross King does a great job painting a picture of why Michelangelo is considered one of the great Renaissance painters and sculptors. Somehow this gentleman managed to capture the “expressive possibilities of the human form” [7] in a way that no one else had ever done before while working in an unfamiliar medium in the midst of a city full of political upheaval and human indecency. Writer and Episcopal priest Ian Cron once stated that “artists help people to see or hear beyond the immediate to the eternal.”[8] Perhaps this is why Sir Joshua Reynolds described Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel as “the language of the Gods”[9]

End Notes

[1] Ross King. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling (New York: Walker & Company, 2003), 1.

[2] Ross King. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, 2.

[3] Thomas Cahill. Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2013), 111.

[4] “Sistine Chapel,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed December 19, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sistine_Chapel&oldid=810499765.

[5] Ross King. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, 34.

[6] Ross King. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceilingg, 217.

[7] Ross King. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, 299.

[8] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2013), 110.

[9] Ross King. Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling, 313.

Book Reviews, Church History

“Chasing Francis: A Pilgrims’ Tale” by Ian Morgan Cron

Written in the style of wisdom literature with a “delicate balance of fiction and nonfiction,”[1] Chasing Francis takes the reader on a journey with Chase Falson as he embarks on a pilgrimage to St. Francis’ hometown of Assisi, Italy, in search of a deeper, more robust faith. The story begins with Falson, an American evangelical megachurch pastor, having a crisis of faith after years of having an “unshakable confidence in [the] conservative evangelical theology”[2] he learned in seminary. Despite his attempts to prop himself up through visits with a psychiatrist, Falson falls apart on stage during a Sunday morning sermon a few days after burring a nine-year old children who died in a freak accident. During this sermon he finally admits to himself and the congregation that his “faith is gone”[3] and he no longer has all the answers for everything in life.

The days after this breakdown Falson, who has been asked by the church elders to take some time off, decides to visit Assisi, Italy, on the advice of his uncle who is a Franciscan priest. Once in Italy, his uncle introduces him to St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226 C.E.) and the radical nature of his faith in Jesus. Falson initially tries to deflect his uncle’s comments about St. Francis because of his suspicious of Roman Catholic theology. However he soon embraces the pilgrimage as he realizes that he really wants to find “a new way of following Jesus.”[4]

Using the pilgrimage of Chase Falson as a guide, Ian Cron masterfully guides the reader through a deconstruction of a faith of certainty as commonly held by the American evangelical subculture before reconstructing that faith around “serving Jesus completely and unreservedly”[5] as modeled by St. Francis. Topics addressed within the book include the nature and role of the Bible in our faith, the role of arts in the church and the world, the need to stand with the less fortunate members of our society, the connection between humanity and the rest of nature, and a critique of the rampant materialism that holds sway in a large part of the church.

The oldest surviving depiction of Saint Francis (1228-1229 C.E.)

Though some may see this book as controversial, if not outright dangerous, I found it refreshing and delightful. Like Falson, I got “fed up with the baggage that frequently goes along with the Christian subculture”[6] and sought refuge among the writings of those who traveled the road of Jesus-centric mysticism before me. And while I might have used different words then Falson did in his final talk to his church, the concepts of transcendence, community, beauty, dignity, and meaning are ones that I have wholeheartedly embraced.[7]

The writings and mission of St. Francis of Assisi, however, remained largely unknown to me before this book. After reading Ian Cron’s depiction of St. Francis, I am intrigued by the saint and his message to radically follow Jesus. St. Francis does seem, as Cron put it, to be a “wonderful integration of all the theological streams we have today.”[8] Perhaps in addition to helping repair the Christendom of his time, St. Francis will help us straight the bend heart and mindset of our churches today as we join him in chasing Jesus.

End Notes

[1] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2013), 215.

[2] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 12.

[3] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 30.

[4] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 47.

[5] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 208.

[6] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 216.

[7] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 196-208.

[8] Ian Morgan Cron. Chasing Francis, 55.