MICHELANGELO, GOD’S ARCHITECT MICHELANGELO, GOD’S ARCHITECT The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpiece WILLIAM E. WALLACE Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2019 by William E. Wallace Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket illustrations: (front) Ponte Sant’Angelo and St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City; (spine) Jacopino del Conte, Portrait of Michelangelo, ca. 1540, oil on panel, 88 cm (34.6") × 64 cm (25.1") All Rights Reserved ISBN 978- 0- 691- 19549- 0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941489 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Jacket and text design by Leslie Flis This book has been composed in Adobe Jenson Pro and Trajan Pro Printed on acid-f ree paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Paul Barolsky, who taught me the value of a good story CONTENTS PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 MOSES 7 CHAPTER 2 FRIENDS AT SEVENTY MATTER MORE 28 CHAPTER 3 A LONG- LIVED POPE 56 CHAPTER 4 ARCHITECT OF ST. PETER’S 75 CHAPTER 5 A NEW POPE: JULIUS III 112 CHAPTER 6 ROME 1555 154 CHAPTER 7 ARCHITECT OF ROME 184 CHAPTER 8 GOD’S ARCHITECT 215 EPILOGUE 239 NOTES 243 WORKS CITED 261 INDEX 271 PHOTO CREDITS 279 PREFACE Having written a biography of Michelangelo, I thought I was “done” with the artist. But, as Leonardo famously mused, “Tell me if anything is ever done.” And as my mentor Howard Hibbard once remarked, “There is no such thing as a definitive book or a final word on great art or artists.” Indeed, as I wrote the final pages of my biography, I became increasingly drawn to the poignant narrative of an aging artist con- fronting the greatest challenge of his creative life: to build New St. Peter’s all the while knowing he would never see it to completion. I think I needed to pass age sixty before I could write a book about Michelangelo in old age, and that means that I have incurred many years of personal and scholarly debts. I would like to thank Nicholas Terpstra, Elizabeth Cropper, and the board members of the Renais- sance Society of America for the invitation to deliver the Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture in 2014, which permitted me to sketch the broad ideas for the book and to publish them in Renaissance Quarterly. For the rare privilege of visiting the Pauline Chapel on multiple occa- sions, I am grateful to Antonio Paolucci, Arnold Nesselrath, and Marco Pratelli. I would like to thank Vitale Zanchettin for an after- noon spent in some normally inaccessible parts of St. Peter’s; to Rich- ard Goldthwaite, Eve Borsook, Peggy Haines, and Joseph Connors for always asking the most penetrating questions; to Jim Saslow for many questions answered, especially about Michelangelo’s poetry; to Paul and Ruth Barolsky, Ralph Lieberman, Maria Ruvoldt, and Deborah