How Michelangelo Will Help Choose the Next Pope
The Sistine Chapel glorifies God’s mercy
The Cardinals have gotten to know one other this week and have formed a general idea of the kind of pope the Church now needs.
But it is far from over. They still need to cast their ballots.
Perhaps Michelangelo can help.
You see, as the Cardinals process solemnly into the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday afternoon, the first thing they will notice is the Renaissance master’s Last Judgment, an astonishing mural of twisted torsos and furrowed brows subjected to Jesus’s ultimate authority on the Last Day. at how these figures come alive during the Liturgy, as if they were acting out the drama occurring on the altar. “When the Sistine Chapel is contemplated in prayer,” Benedict noted, “it is even more beautiful, more authentic, and it reveals all its hidden riches.”
What are those hidden riches?
You must look very, very closely to see.
For centuries, the meaning of Christ’s gesture above the main altar was hardly questioned. He presumably sits poised to cast the damned into hell with his menacing right hand, looking down on them as they wait to cross the river Styx, his left arm thrust out stiffly to block anyone attempting an end-around into Paradise.
But a major cleaning and restoration of the Michelangelo’s haunting masterpiece in the 1980s threw a wrench into that interpretation.
For if you look closely at Christ, you will notice that the musculature of his right art, patterned after the Laocoön (one of Michelangelo’s favorite sculptures), is portrayed in a pulling, not a pushing, motion.
Those familiar with the story of Laocoön from the Aeneid and other sources know that the Trojan priest was struggling to free himself from the serpent’s coils. A close study of Christ’s abdomen also reveals a contracting rather than an expanding motion. This comes as no surprise when we take into account its unmistakable resemblance to the Belvedere Torso, Michelangelo’s other favorite sculpture in the Vatican collection.
All of this suggests that Christ is drawing his right hand upwards rather than casting it downwards.
This upward motion is further corroborated by Christ’s left hand which calmly rests precisely at the center of the chaotic circle swirling around him and his Mother Mary. At the center of this vortex is the open wound in Christ’s side to which he is pointing with his left index finger. This wound in his side lay hidden under layers of soot and dust for centuries.
Out of that open wound flowed the blood that “speaks more eloquently than that of Abel,” as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews (12:24). Without diminishing Jesus’s overpowering physique and the gravity of his Judgment, Jesus manifests to the world the origin of God’s mercy, the stigma in his side that mysteriously gives meaning to pain, suffering, and death itself.
Faced with this sign of his mercy, we remain free. We have a choice.
Sadly, no one in the lower right-hand corner of the wall seems to notice Jesus’s wound. Some shield their eyes, stubbornly rejecting the invitation to accept the source of redemption. The most haunting figure is the one tugged by demons and situated just below and to the right of Saint Bartholomew who holds his flayed skin. The late Leo Steinberg called this figure “Michelangelo’s gruesomest image of man rejected.” It is the only figure looking directly out at the viewer. To return his gaze is to look into the depths of sheer anxiety. In this quasi self-portrait, a tortured Michelangelo assumes the role of someone who has gained the world but forfeited himself (cf. Luke 9:25). The blank stare peeking out through one eye is both a futile plea for help and an earnest admonition to reform our lives while there is still time.
There is, however, one pair of eyes transfixed on Christ’s open side. Thomas, standing to the right of Peter, gapes at the wound that proved to him the Master had risen, leading Thomas to make his profession of faith. The Apostle is no less amazed now as he was then. Michelangelo depicts this sign of Jesus’s life as the truth no one can deny on the Day of Judgment, though for years it had been covered and marred by smoke rising from the candles and thurible below.
The foregoing interpretation is not definitive, though it is corroborated by the entire chapel scheme. Everything, including the side panels painted fifty years earlier, points to how the new is foreshadowed by the old and the old fulfilled in the new. The promises of God triumph over the foibles of men. Suffering is transformed into glory. The symbolism intensifies as we get closer to the main altar and the Last Judgment depicted above it. The death of Haman, the bronze serpent, the prophet Jonah, the instruments of the passion: are all placed near the front of the chapel underlining their inextricable connection with Christ’s death and the resurrection as prototype and fulfillment. The wound in Christ’s side, originally intended as a confirmation of death (cf. John 19:33–34), has now become an affirmation of life. It is the consummation and meaning of every other figure and event depicted in the Chapel, including the creation panels on the ceiling. Heaven meets earth, prophets join sybils, light overcomes darkness.
The contact of heaven and earth displayed in the Sistine Chapel became palpable the day I hosted conductor Neeme Järvi, his charming wife Liilia, and the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt for a tour of the Sistine Chapel. Maestros Järvi and Pärt were enjoying a brief respite before delving into a second round of rehearsals prior to a performance of Pärt’s “Cecilia, vergine romana” for Pope Benedict XVI.
They were evidently enjoying my tour, but they had not detached themselves from the musical material to be rehearsed that afternoon. Every once in a while, one would wander off, lost in the images while humming some problematic passage in the score.
As we approached the sanctuary at the base of the Last Judgment, Pärt’s eyes flashed suddenly as he stood motionless in front of the ensemble of angels blowing their horns. Not wishing to disturb him, I went on explaining to Mr. and Mrs. Järvi the process of electing a new pope that takes place in the Chapel. Pärt somehow managed to shuffle back over to us without peeling his eyes from the wall. He then began to articulate to Järvi the percussive rhythm of a line the horns had been rehearsing that morning with little success.
Pah pa pa pah PAH pa pa pah PAH…!
Pärt had “heard” the sound he wanted by looking at Michelangelo’s fresco. The angels imparted a visual clue that made it possible for him to explain to Neeme how the line should sound. Tucking themselves in a corner and singing the passage to one another, they occasionally stole a glance at the angels to make sure they had it right. In the meantime, I did my best to prevent the guardsmen from throwing them out. This “pre-rehearsal” lasted no more than ten minutes and ended up being the turning point to a successful performance that evening. Heaven and earth met when the blast of angelic horns entered the soul of Pärt: not through his ears, but his eyes.
The eyes of the Cardinals will also soak in this music on Wednesday afternoon. A century ago, they would not have been able to see the wound in Jesus’s side. They would not have noticed the resemblance of the Jesus figure to the Laocoön or the Belvedere Torso. They would not have been privy to the “merciful” interpretation of Michelangelo’s masterpiece over the “wrathful” interpretation.
They will also enter the Chapel in a spirit that most tourists do not: in a spirit of prayer.
One neither need be Christian nor religious to catch a spark of the divine in the mass of twisted bodies and expressive faces filling the Sistine Chapel. After a half hour or so, most atheists whom I’ve guided through the Chapel grow uncomfortable with the idea that Michelangelo’s images are nothing more than a glorification of the human body. The Florentine genius was not only endowed with a soul attuned to spiritual realities, but a mind soaked in theological subtleties. No amount of time spent in anatomical studies at Santo Spirito would have prepared Michelangelo to paint like this, but only a drive to make his inward vision visible.
That inward vision is one of mercy.
The Cardinals have a big decision to make. Many factors will be swirling through their heads. Their hearts will be absorbed in prayer.
If there is anything Michelangelo can teach them — if there is anything about Pope Francis’s pontificate that can be passed on to his Successor — it is that, for those who show mercy, “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13) and “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
