CHANGING FORTUNES

A VISIT TO ROME

A PLAN FOR ST PETER'S

NEW FRIENDS

For Michelangelo was widely believed to be homosexual and it is true that he showed a preoccupation with the male nude unmatched by any other artist. In the 1530's, he seems to have fallen in love with a beautiful young nobelman, Tommaso Cavalieri, to whom he wrote many love sonnets. Michelangelo insisted that their friendship was Platonic - he believed that a beautiful body was the outward manifestation of a beautiful soul.

Michelangelo was naturally a recluse. He was melancholic and introverted, but at the same time emotional and explosive. He lived a temperate life, but in a fair degree of domestic squalor which no servant would tolerate for long. He preferred to be alone "like a genie shut up inside a bottle", contemplating death. In 1544 and 1545 he suffered two illnesses which did actually bring him close to death. Evidently the great papal commissions had weakened his condition.

Paul III made Michelangelo Architect-in-Chief of St Peter's, and his work on the church continued throughout the rest of his life, under three successive popes - Julius II, Paul IV, and Pius IV. He tried to return to the simplicity of his old rival Bramante's design, but St Peter.s was not finished in his lifetime, nor exactly to his designs.

Finally, in his old age, Michelangelo also had time to work for himself and the sculptures of this period, such as the Duomo Pieta' (below), reveal an intense spirituality and tenderness.

THE MAKING OF A MASTERPIECE