An Artist in the Time of the Renaissance

The following is a story written as an experiment in 1999. All of the characters herein existed during the time period, except the protagonist who did not.

I convalesce under my favorite fig tree and look back over my fortuitous and endowed life. Only now, in the autumn of my years, do I realize it as a gem in an era of unequaled artistic progress. I have been surrounded by genius throughout my days and have embodied the product of this mind. I am a painter whose hand was moved by the progress of Italy in its renaissance as the renaissance of Italy moved in me.

Yes, I have been wealthy and successful but today I have become old and fragile, too far from health to be mobile but these aged hands, ones that commanded brushes to dance with accuracy, have become withered and bent. What keeps me satisfied in this world of the living are the memories of the time I spent learning, teaching, and creating works that have graced my canvasses. In my prime I was deemed one of the best of my day and my contemporaries were of the most accomplished in all of Italy. Yes, it is the memory of a retinue of names—Rafael, Botticelli, Bellini, Titian, the great Michelangelo—that fills my head and heart with colors vibrant as the ones to grace their palates. It is this and the work from my own hand that keeps me content in my old age.

I was born a healthy and energetic child, son of Michaello Crisafulli, a tradesman, in the city of Florence, October 28, 1474, during the flourishing years of the house de’ Medici. They were happy years for me, my childhood, and, for those in proximity to the family de’ Medici, it was a golden age. Because of the Medici and their benevolence toward the people of Florence that we thrived, ventured with our brushes fixed, into the colorful and satisfying world of the arts.

Florence, due to the artistic appreciation and diplomatic finesses of Lorenzo de’ Medici, was a proud and energetic city, one built on two hundred years of commerce with much of the continent of Europe and great world beyond. It was an ideal atmosphere in which a person could know a youth. I remember running through cobblestone streets, wonder in my eyes, gazing up at cathedrals and statues larger than life and broad as my youthful imagination. One building in particular was my obsession, and not surprisingly, the Duomo, the Florence Cathedral, the biggest and most beautiful of them all, with its pattered walls and towering red-tile dome so recently completed in 1436 by the master builder Brunelleschi.

My youth was thrilling. I recall peeking my head through the knees at the boisterous parades as they coiled through the streets, staring wide-eyed and enraptured as the nobles and philosophers gesticulated wildly, stroking their beards with an empire of thoughts crowding their heads. It was these things, and things such as Fabriano’s ten-foot tall Adoration of the Magi altarpiece a mile tall inside the Santa Trinità that filled my young heart with reverence of God and the sublime. It also served to seed my youthful head with a yearning to be of this mind, to think and create and to produce works of religious art.

I anxiously awaited my eleventh birthday, for it was then that I could begin my first apprenticeship. My father was eager for me; he saw my energy and budding creativity and knew well of the quality of instruction to be had in our city.  The day finally came with a grand celebration and a gift from my father to attend the bottega of the master Andrea del Verrocchio. My father was happy and honored to be able to send me to such a prestigious school, one graced by Leonardo DiVinci himself. It was in Verrocchio’s bottega that I spent my youth, feeding the creative fires the burned in me and leading me to the true artist’s trade.

My years spent in the bottega were crucial to my art. They gave me a firm grasp of the quintessential concepts—perspective and foreshortening to name a few—tactics utilized by the likes of Mantegna and the celebrated Perugino, two of the greatest painters of the day.

It was during the winter of 1488, after I had spent three years in the bottega, that Verrocchio became ill and passed away. It was a terrible moment for everyone in the school and to be without the guiding hands of our master was a torment we hadn’t previously known. But there was an aspect for which, upon reflection, I am grateful. It was after the disassembling of the Bottega de Verrocchio that I met a man who would come to be a tremendous influence on my career. His name was Sandro Botticelli. My luck turned out strong because it wasn’t long afterward that I fell into the company of the great and benevolent house of Il Magnifico: Lorenzo de’ Medici. I was to be embellished with all that Botticceli and the house de’ Medici had to offer—a pragmatic Humanist and Neoplatonic philosophy, an essential incubating atmosphere, and most of all, an arena from which I would emerge four years later a disciplined and well-rounded artist.

The night of Sunday, April 8^th, 1492, a horrible event occurred. As a great bolt of lightning struck the dome of the Florence Cathedral, Lorenzo de’ Medici, my inspiration and personal icon, passed from this earth. It was a desolate day for every Florentine, especially those who appreciated the arts and philosophies. Two tumultuous years later and through a painful chain of events, the empire of the Family de’ Medici crumbled and they were expelled from Florence altogether. This horrible climax put to an end over a hundred years of Medici prominence in Florence and what followed was a nearly maniacal disemboweling of my native city. Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola rose to power that following year preaching lugubriously of the wrath of the Lord if we didn’t repent our so-called “secular and sinful” ways.  He lectured on the carousing of the Florentines who subscribed to the “depraved” Humanist philosophy. I can remember the urge I had to speak out violently against him—but did not lest I be chastised or, worse, burned for heresy.

Anyway, it was beyond me to get involved in politics. My rapture was for painting. But with the artistic core of Florence deteriorating and many artists fleeing to cities where the arts would be better received and the patronage more plentiful, there was nothing left to do but to abandon my most endeared Florence. On February 28^th, 1494, as an energetic and insatiable nineteen-year-old, I left Florence to begin an artistic pilgrimage across the countryside—I would visit some of the more bountiful cities in Italy. Among my destinations was the lovely hilltop town of Siena (it was there I saw the antiquated mastery of Duccio di Buoninsegna emblazoned in the vivid gold and crimson hues of the Maestà Altarpiece). I later went to Lucca to study Bonaventura Berlinghieri’s pious and masterful figures of the St. Francis Altarpiece. In Pisa, I contemplated the sinister yet captivating handling of The Triumph of Death by Buonamico Buffalmacco. These travels, and a near zealous inspection of sacred religious themes, would have a lasting impact on my future painting. It can be seen readily in my 1498 rendering of The Virgin with Child and the Infant St. John.

During these wanderings I would receive news of barbarian episodes occurring in Florence. I discovered that during that summer, a French army led by Charles VIII had marched over the Alps and down through Tuscany (ironically traveling many of the routes I had taken in my pilgrimage) with an army of 30,000 men to invade what was left of our cherished house de’ Medici. In a very cowardly move, Piero de’ Medici, the last ruling Medici family member, sided with the French to avert his own destruction. After that unspeakable and treasonous act, his family forced him into exile. Later, with Charles at the city gates and the dark prophesies of Friar Savonarola still echoing through the streets, Florentine mobs smashed into the Medici palace and looted four generations of the family’s treasure. It was a dark day for all of us and I shed many tears upon hearing the news.

These events, and the danger adherents to the Medici family faced if they returned to the city, weakened my spirit. I felt the only thing left for me to do was to follow the exodus of Florentine painters to Venice and paint out all the emotions that had built up inside me.

While in Venice and working on my Christ in Majesty piece, I came under the influence of the great and wise Giovanni Bellini. Incredibly, Bellini was fascinated by my youthful talent and took me under his hallowed wing. With Bellini’s master instruction, I learned many of the techniques I am known for today. His Venetian Style can be seen unquestionably in my Assumption piece of 1502 and my Madonna of the Trees of the year following. From Bellini I learned the true virtue of color and space and also, something I would come to embrace in my later years, the beauties of nature, poeticisms, and sensual pleasure. My schooling in Venice taught me to loosen my style from the rigid intellectual themes I embraced to ones dealing with emotion and the passion for life, qualities my fellow Florentines never could quite come to grips with.

I stayed in Venice for a full eight, prosperous years, developing my style and mastering my oeuvre. I mingled in the same auspicious circles as Carpaccio and Georgeoni and generally enjoyed life as it was. But it was the warming of the political landscape in Florence in January of 1504 that drew me back. I do believe it was because of the deaths of tyrannical Pope Alexander VI and the ignoble Piero de’ Medici in ’03 that allowed it to happen, not to mention the glorious election of Piero Soderini. I returned also (I think it was for this reason over any other) because I received news that there was to be a gathering in Florence of some of the most prestigious artists in all Italy. It was a committee of such notorious names as DiVinci, Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Fillipino Lippi, my old friend Botticelli, and the great Michelangelo. They were unveiling Michelangelo’s heavily anticipated masterpiece David and it promised to be an electric time in the city–I would be there at all costs.

The proliferation of my paintings while in Florence that year was remarkable. The freshly receptive climate in the city of my birth, a host of private and profitable commissions, as well as the multitude of talent, working, mingling, and communing together filled me with a vitality I hadn’t had since my youth, and my work showed it. It was in this sublime atmosphere in 1504 that I created my greatest and most well known work to date: The Venus of the Waves. I was twenty-nine years old.

I do believe it was because of my handling of color and tone in Venus that I caught the eye of a face I had yet to encounter in my travels, a man who would become a very dear friend and a welcome critic of my work. His name was Raffaello Sanzo, or, as known to his patrons, Raphael. I had already known of a number of his paintings, my favorite being The Coronation of the Virgin, which he’d recently completed, and someone whom I’d admired greatly. Raphael had an eye for beauty the likes I’d never seen; it is quickly apparent in his renderings of the Virgin. His softness of touch and his mastery of the sfumato technique is equaled only by the virtuoso Leonardo. Likened to Michelangelo’s, Raphael’s career was prodigious—from paintings to frescoes, portraiture to mosaics (his design for the dome of the Chigi Chapel in Rome is unparalleled) and architecture as well bore his name. It is Raphael’s precocious genius that remains, in my opinion, one of the finest in all Christendom and I feel his death at thirty-seven, so utterly premature, is of the most tragic in history.

I remained in the eclectic atmosphere of Florence for six more years, working diligently and successfully, when I received a letter from the beneficent, though abrupt, Pope Julian II. He commissioned me to work with Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican in Rome. I was a bit unnerved to work for such a brusque and impatient pope but my joy and excitement were so bountiful I immediately convinced Raphael that we depart at once.

The work I did for Pope Julian in Rome was of the most intensive and laborious of my career. Working in the same building as Raphael (I was in a Papal chamber while he was down the hall in the judicial tribunal) and in the proximity of the great Michelangelo arduously painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, was an ecstasy previously unknown to me. It only soured when the Pope decided to interfere with his patented meddling. Raphael and I got off lightly, escaping the battering Michelangelo received for his time-consuming attention to detail on the ceiling—the Pope nearly dropped Michelangelo’s commission in a fit of anger!

With a brief hiatus to mourn the deaths of my longtime companions Botticelli and Giorgione in 1510, the painting of the Stanza della Segnatura took a full and painstaking four years. Needless to say, my physical body suffered; the strain on my eyes working in the dim light of that chamber was extreme and those cold stone walls were perpetually sweating, making it a tedious process of applying more and more lime to bond to the tempora. Also, the incessant interruptions from the Pope bidding for the piece’s hasty completion vexed me. My protests for time to attend to detail added to the strain I experienced to see its finalization. It turned out, however, to be quite a beautiful piece—a delicate synthesis of Florentine iconography mixed with the brilliant tonality of my Venice Style along with a subtle hint of the Roman classicism I imbibed while in Rome (it hung in the air like a sensual mist) combined to make the fresco a wholly original venture. I christened it, The Virgin with St. Anne and the Host of Heaven.

With the success of the fresco, the years following spiraled me into a lapse in my career. I wasn’t sure if it was twenty-five years of near constant productivity, my Florentine upbringing or perhaps Rome’s sedating effects that I fell pray to lethargy and vice. The reason unimportant, I accomplished little while reaping the benefits of my previous work. My Venus of the Waves of ’04 was receiving high acclaim and because of it I lived like a prince. These vices, I state adamantly through reflection, were great detriments to me, and hence, my work suffered. I lacked the energy of my youth and the focus I had in my previous years. I chose to relax in the suckling Roman atmosphere while appreciating the persistent product of Michelangelo. He busied himself carving more and more blocks of marble into incredible masterworks, the most beautiful of which, in my opinion, was his work on Moses. It now graces the tomb of Pope Julius in San Pietro. Ironically, he invested more effort on the tomb of a man who had caused him more grief than anyone else. It remains unfortunate that Michelangelo’s work on that tomb was an embitterment to him. It would never come to meet his always lofty expectations—such was the torment of that so inspired soul.

Myself, I remained in Rome until 1516, leaving to mourn the death of my close friend and mentor Giovanni Bellini. It was the passing of Bellini that snapped me from the Roman stupor in which I existed for the greater part of five years. Awakened, I quickly moved my residence from the court of the new Pope Leo X back to my old studios in Venice. While in Venice and reclaiming my hand in painting I became friends with a renowned and talented artist thriving on the Venetian painting ideal. His name was Tiziano Vecelli or more commonly, Titian. Titian, like me, was a member of Bellini’s school (after I had left Venice for Florence) and epitomized the Venice Style with his glowing and lustrous tones. His work with the nude was unprecedented.

Titian and I spent a number of years working together and it was a very peaceful time. Venice, for me, was an elixir, spurring my painting to new levels of achievement. It was in those sheltered environs that I stayed, creating, and contemplating an emerging trend in Italian painting—Mannerism. I found Mannerism to be interesting, while a little crude, straying brazenly from the old styles I was so fond of. The Mannerists, to which Florentine painters Pontormo, Fiorentino and Bronzino belonged, dealt almost exclusively with the human figure, portraying it in a very dramatic, choreographed sense. There was a strong feeling of movement in their works but laden with a self-indulgent, exaggerated quality that would strike the viewer with restlessness. It was this unsettled feeling that I could not swallow. Call me old fashioned, but I feel one must gather placidity, not figitity, when viewing art, a feeling of calm instead of agitation. In that, I remain true to my classic style above all others.

So it was until 1549 that I stayed in Venice. There, I heard of the deaths of more and more of my contemporaries. The greatest loss (to me and to the whole of Italy—if not the world) was of Raphael on his birthday of April 6^th in 1520. Raphael will live within me, inspiring my hand and my notion of beauty until I cease to exist. He will live forever in me, in his art, and in the hearts of those who view it as truly, il divino.

In Rome, Michelangelo forges on. The work of his later years has been exhaustive, as he’s seemed to thwart the effects of aging. His following work in the Sistine was in, of course, his grandiose fashion, completing the thirty-foot Last Judgement on the altar wall at the astounding age of 71. With eclectic talent, Michelangelo designed the Capitoline Hill in Rome at 62 and, in a remarkable show of dedication to his trade, at 75 years of age, he is presently working on his coup de grace: St. Peter’s Basilica. His is a wondrous persona the likes the world has never seen and might never see again. I am utmost indebted to have shared his so immaculate limelight.

Today it is autumn in the year of our Lord, 1550, and I have grown old and withered. I have moved back to the city of my birth and will remain contentedly in Florence until my dying day. The patrons still beseech me for anything from my hand and with intrepid sprit I paint. I paint because it is all I can do. The patrons take it hungrily but it is not for them that I do it. If I did not paint I would surely pass away, and that time I know, by cannon of nature, is nigh.

As I add more crimson to my current painting, Christ at Calvary, lying unfinished in my fading sight, I fear I might never complete it. But I know that if I do not my young associate and accomplice, Tintoretto, will be there to do it for me. What gives me hope in this faded autumn is my inevitable passing into the mighty kingdom of God. As I mourn my departed friends, acquaintances, teachers, and students, I am content with the idea of seeing them again within His paradise.

Mine has been a privileged life and I thank the Lord for granting me the ability to paint and make my success unfold. As I look back through history I can’t see a more appropriate time for me to live; it has been a great journey, this life of mine, and the people of Italy have been there for me, appreciating my work. With closing eyelids and waning strength I say to them all, Saluté.