A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [44]
These illustrations are deceptive, however. Dürer prospered through most of his career; Lotto was approaching the end of his life and had lost his talent; Crivelli’s real crime was that he had bedded the wrong wife, a Venetian noblewoman; Signorelli, as a political subversive, was asking for trouble; and Cellini was one of history’s great rogues—a thief, a brawler, a forger, an embezzler, and the murderer of a rival goldsmith; the sort of character who in any century, whatever the outrage, is wanted by the police to help them with their enquiries.
More to the point, and more revealing of the time, is the fact that after Crivelli had paid his debt to a hypocritical society in which a nobildonna might betray her nobiluomo nightly, he was knighted by Ferdinand II of Naples; and that despite Cellini’s criminal record, he enjoyed the patronage of Alessandro de’ Medici, Cosimo de’ Medici, Cardinal Gonzaga, the bishop of Salamanca, King Francis I of France, Cardinal d’Este of Ferrara, Bindo Atoviti, Sigmondo Chigi, and Pope Clement VII, whose other dependents included Raphael and Michelangelo.
That was typical of the age. The most powerful men knew artistic genius when they saw it, and their unstinting support of it, despite their deplorable private lives and abuse of authority, is unparalleled. All the wretched popes—beginning with Sixtus, who in 1480 commissioned Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Perugino, and Signorelli to paint the first frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, and including Julius II, under whom Michelangelo completed the chapel’s ceiling thirty-two years later—were committed to that greatness. Of course, their motives were not selfless. Immortal artistic achievements, they believed, would dignify the papacy and tighten its grip on Christendom. Nevertheless they were responsible for countless glories, including the paintings in the large papal apartment Stanza della Segnatura (Raphael), the frescoes for the Cathedral Library in Siena (Pinturicchio), and the soaring architecture of the new St. Peter’s (Bramante and Michelangelo). Nor was all Renaissance art supported by pontiffs. Their fellow patrons and patronesses included the Borgia siblings, and Isabella d’Este of Mantua, whose generous funding of the brilliant, handsome Giorgione Barbarelli is unmitigated by the fact that she was sleeping with him, since most of her friends were, too.
In an ideal world, genius should not require the largess of wicked pontiffs, venal cardinals, and wanton contessas. But these men of genius did not live in such a world, and neither has anyone else. In art the end has to justify the means, because artists, like beggars, have no choice. Other ages have provided different sources of support, though with dubious results. Five centuries after Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, and Titian, nothing matching their masterpieces can be found in contemporary galleries. No pandering to popular tastelessness, adolescent fads, or philistine taboos guided the brushes and chisels of the men who found immortality in the Renaissance. Political statements did not concern them. Instead they devoted their lives to artistic statements, leaving time to judge their wisdom.
It is incontestable that the Continent’s most powerful rulers in the early sixteenth century were responsible for great crimes. It is equally true that had this outraged the painters and sculptors of their time we would have lost a heritage beyond price. Botticelli pocketed thousands of tainted ducats from Lorenzo