, Giotto, and Murder Norman E. Land

The literary legend of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), whom many still consider to be the quintessential Renaissance artist, is, to say the very least, complex. While he has been often represented as a saint­ ly and even "divine" being, most notably by Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his Vite de pili eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architetti (, 1568), he also has been portrayed as a less than perfect person . As early as 1524, the historian and biographer Paolo Giovio (1483-1552) noticed the dark or shadow side of Michelangelo's character when he referred to the artist's elevated genius, but also to his "rude and uncivilized" behavior. According to Giovio, Michelangelo lacked generosity in his domestic life and was unwilling to teach his art to others.' About two decades later, in the so-called "Dialogos em Roma" (1548) of the Portuguese painter, Francisco de Hollanda (1517-1584), a fictional Michelangelo, perhaps referring to his living counterpart, speaks of those who say that eminent painters are not only "strange, harsh, and unbearable" but "fantastic and capricious."? Both Ascanio Condivi (ca. 1520-1574) in his Vita di Michelangolo Buonarroti (, 1553) and Vasari say that some people viewed Michelangelo's solitary existence and anti-social behavior as out­ landish and peculiar) Michelangelo's alleged love of solitude and its effect on others are also the subject of an anecdote told by the Milanese painter and art the­ orist Gian Paolo Lomazzo (1538-1600) in his Idea del Tempio della Pittura (Milan, 1590). One day, as the story goes, solitary Michelangelo hap­ pened to come upon gregarious (1483-1520). Because many people accompanied the latter, Michelangelo remarked that he thought he had met the police captain ("il bargello") . To which Raphael respond­ ed that he thought he had encountered the public executioner ("il manigoldo"), who, as Lomazzoexplains, "always goes about alone, just as Michelangelo did."4 No doubt Michelangelo's contemporaries would have agreed with a famous saying of the younger Seneca (ca. 3 B. C.-65 A. D.) in his De Tranquillitate Animi (17.10) to the effect that there has never been a great genius who was not somewhat demented.' Vasari, however, defends Michelangelo, explaining that the artist's desire for solitude was not

EIRC 32.2 (Winter 2006) : 204-224 205 strange, "for he deeply loved his art, which wants a man to be solitary and thoughtful."6 He tells us, too, that when a friend asked Michelangelo why he had not taken a wife and produced children, the artist replied that his art was his wife and his works, his children." In Vasari's eyes, Art, the mother of Michelangelo's children, was a very demanding and jeal­ ous wife, requiring a deep and constant love and all of the artist's thoughts. The portrayal of Michelangelo's difficult personality by his contern­ poraries-veven Lomazzo's comparison of him to a solitary executioner-­ does not prepare us for the accusation that he murdered one of his mod­ els. Although the veracity of the charge was long ago emphatically denied by several prominent writers, the allegation deserves more atten­ tion than heretofore it has received because it provides a valuable, albeit limited, insight into the general perception of Michelangelo from about the middle of the Baroque period to the early decades of the nineteenth century. Consideration of the accusation and its history also provides an understanding of a specific and relatively unexplored dimension of the image of the artist in general. In other words, consideration of the alle­ gation allows for a review of the history of a particular tale, a tale that represents one way in which artists and their models are related, one to the other-va relation that has been profoundly significant for centuries.f

The Allegation

The first to accuse Michelangelo of murder in print is an obscure Englishman and Protestant convert named Richard D. Carpenter (died 1670?). In book 5, chapter 6 of his anti-Catholic treatise titled Experience, Historie, and Divinitie (London, 1642), Carpenter speaks out against the deceptive nature of art in a manner that is typical of con­ temporary anti-papists and iconoclasts. He says that after his conversion, he was delighted when on first entering Protestant churches, he saw peo­ ple listen to and participate in the "divine Service." Poor lay-Catholics, he explains, do not understand the service and seldom hear sermons. Indeed, they are like "beasts," for they go to church in order to please the senses with music and singing, and their priests willfully deceive them. Carpenter then cites several examples of the visual and verbal deceptions perpetrated by the Catholic clergy.? An instance of verbal deception occurred on the death of a priest in England. According to the false rumor that circulated among Catholics in Spain, the priest's body was cut into quarters, and those parts were hung beside slabs of venison so that the English judge in charge could