St Begga

17^th December is the saint’s day for Begga, a 7^th century abbess who was also an ancestor of Charlemagne, the founder of the Carolingian dynasty.

Begga was born in 615, one of two daughters of a high-ranking official in the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia (covering parts of modern Belgium, Luxemburg, northern France and northern Germany). Her younger sister Gertrude became a nun but Begga married Ansegis, the son of the bishop of Metz, and bore him three children.

When Ansegis died suddenly (possibly murdered, possibly due to a hunting accident), Begga made a pilgrimage to Rome and was so impressed by the seven churches she found there that she decided to establish seven churches in the town of Andenne (on the river Meuse) when she returned.

Begga also set up a convent in Andenne and she remained there as abbess until her death in 693. Her son Pepin became leader of the Franks by conquering the other kingdoms, and his illegitimate son Charles Martel continued to expand the Frankish empire into what became the Kingdom of France.

© John Welford

St Barlaam

On 19^th November each year the faithful are asked to bring to mind the painful story of St Barlaam, an illiterate labourer who lived in a village near Antioch (southern Turkey) in the early 4^th century. 

Barlaam was a Christian who was not shy in proclaiming his faith at a time when many Christians were suffering persecution. He was arrested and taken before a judge who ordered him to be tortured until he recanted his faith.

However, Barlaam was made of stern stuff and would not do as requested. The judge then came up with what he thought was a perfect plan, namely to trick Barlaam into making a sacrifice to the pagan gods. He reckoned that this uneducated man would fall for his ruse, but was to be proved wrong.

The judge ordered a fire to be lit on an altar dedicated to the pagan gods, into which people would throw incense to represent a sacrifice. Incense was placed on Barlaam’s open hand which was then forced over the flames. The idea was that Barlaam would flinch with the pain and drop the incense into the fire.

However, no pain would make Barlaam recount his faith and he left his hand in the fire until it had burned away completely. He was then taken away and executed.

© John Welford

St Edmund the Martyr

20^th November is the saint’s day of Edmund the Martyr, the only English monarch to be declared a Christian martyr until King Charles I in 1649.

According to the traditional account (which has been disputed) Edmund was only 14 in 855 when he was declared king by the leading men and clergy of Norfolk, who were soon joined by those of Suffolk, thus making Edmund the undisputed king of East Anglia (the Angles had accompanied the Saxons in their invasion of England after the withdrawal of the Romans).

Edmund proved to be devout as a Christian and a just ruler, modelling himself on King David of the Old Testament.

However, after only ten years of peaceful rule, a major threat arrived in the shape of the Danish “Great Heathen Army” that landed in Suffolk in 865 and proceeded to sweep northwards, taking York in 866. They then moved southwards again, arriving in East Anglia in 869.

Edmund was killed in the battle that ensued, after which the Danes overran East Anglia, which would become part of the “Danelaw” that later kings of England were forced to recognise as being beyond their power to control.

St Edmund came to be venerated after his death, including by the Danes who overthrew him. Coins have been discovered that circulated in the Danelaw and bear Edmund’s image.

Edmund’s remains were eventually buried in a shrine at what was originally called St Edmundsbury but is now more usually known as Bury St Edmunds. (The comic writer Clement Freud once named a racehorse “Dig Up St Edmunds”, but that’s another story!)

The shrine of St Edmund came to be a place of pilgrimage that was visited for several centuries, bringing considerable wealth to Bury St Edmunds Abbey. However, the shrine was destroyed in 1539 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII.

© John Welford

St Evaristus

26^th October is the official “saint day” for one of the early popes, namely St Evaristus, who is fifth on the official list of popes, of which St Peter was the first.

Not much is known about St Evaristus, so one can only write about what are generally understood to be the facts of his life although they could be wildly inaccurate.

Evaristus is believed to have been born a Jew in Bethlehem, which would have been an excellent feature to have on one’s CV if one wanted, after becoming a Christian, to aspire to high office!

After reaching Rome, Evaristus agreed to become leader of the small underground community of Christians who lived in constant fear of persecution through their refusal to worship the pagan gods. According to one legend, Evaristus’s predecessor, Pope Clement I, had been martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea. It is therefore hardly surprising that Evaristus and his flock would have been highly secretive about their activities.

Evaristus probably became pope in around the year 99 AD (when Trajan was Emperor of Rome). Although Christians were never safe, there were periods when they were better tolerated than at other times. Trajan was more interested in defending and expanding the Empire than in persecuting Christians, so this was probably a relatively quiet time for the infant Church.

Evaristus is credited with having divided Rome into seven parishes for the purposes of missionary work, each parish being the charge of a deacon whose task was to serve the poor.

Evaristus died in about the year 107. He is listed as a martyr, but there is no reliable evidence either to confirm or deny this.

© John Welford

Rex Whistler

Reginald John Whistler, who was always known as Rex, was a painter of enormous talent and considerable wit who might have been one of the 20^th century’s all-time greats had his life not been cut short by World War Two.  

His early life

Rex Whistler was born in what is now part of south-east London on 24^th June 1905, the middle of the three sons of an architect, Henry Whistler, and his wife Helen. He produced drawings and paintings from a very early age, winning the first of his many prizes when aged only seven.  

On leaving Haileybury College he at first failed to impress at the Royal Academy Schools but was regarded very differently at the Slade School of Fine Art, where his talent for imaginative decoration was encouraged by Henry Tonks. It was on Tonks’s recommendation that Whistler was offered the job of painting a mural in the refreshment room of the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain). The result was “In Pursuit of Rare Meats”, a narrative in paint of a hunting party proceeding through a succession of imaginary landscapes. The commission took 18 months to complete, with the restaurant being opened in November 1927. The murals still adorn the walls today.

A latter-day classicist

Whistler’s style was somewhat out of phase with the modernism of his time; indeed, it harked back to the classicism of a bygone age, being reminiscent of artists such as Poussin and Claude Lorrain. However, this was precisely what attracted him to the landed gentry who wanted something original on their walls that was still in keeping with the architecture of their country houses.

Plas Newydd, Anglesey

The best example of his work in this genre was at Plas Newydd, the seat of the 6^th Marquess of Anglesey, where the dining room had a bare wall on one side but windows on the other side that looked out over the Menai Straits and the mountains of Snowdonia beyond. This being North Wales, the view was often obscured by rain and low cloud, so Whistler’s plan was to contrast this with a view of a Mediterranean harbour on which the sun always shone. This was not in fact a mural as the term is normally understood, because the painting was done on a huge piece of canvas, 58 feet in length. Some of the work was done in London and some of it in situ.

The work (see picture above) reaches from floor to ceiling and extends to the two side walls. The main work depicts a romantic harbour scene, with ships at anchor, castle turrets, and mountains in the far distance. In the foreground steps lead down to the water. Damp footsteps can be seen, leading towards the carpet of the dining room. It is clear that Neptune has just walked out of the sea, leaving his crown and trident on the sea wall.

To the left is a town scene, where the artist himself can be seen, sweeping the patio with a broom. To the right, a colonnaded passageway leads towards a terraced bathed in sunlight, with various objects in view that had significance for the family, such as a child’s cello and their pet dogs. So realistic is the scene that visitors have been known to try to pat the dogs and walk along the passage!

The painting is full of details that might be missed on a first viewing but which have symbolic significance, particularly for the Anglesey family. A boy tries to steal an apple while the shopkeeper is not looking. The model for the boy was the son of the Marquess; he succeeded to the title as the 7^th Marquess in 1947 and died in 2013.

While at work at Plas Newydd, Rex Whistler developed an attachment to the Marquess’s eldest daughter, Lady Caroline Paget, whom Whistler had met before gaining the commission, but his love was not returned. There are details in the painting that hint at his feelings, such as love taking flight in the form of a pair of swallows, and rose petals on the ground that the artist with the broom leaves unswept.

A story is told that illustrates Whistler’s ease with his medium. He remarked one day that the harbour scene was too busy, so he painted out a number of ships. He later commented that something was needed to fill the space, perhaps an island? He said this at 10 o’clock one evening; when the family came down the next morning the island, complete with houses, a church, a castle and quayside, had appeared.

His later work

Whistler’s final commission of this kind was at Mottisfont Abbey, near Romsey in Hampshire. Here he transformed a drawing room by giving it Gothic columns, plasterwork and drapery, all in paint, with a host of “trompe-l’oeil” features including books in alcoves and a paint pot with brushes. At one point visitors can see where the “careless” painter has left a box of matches high up on a painted cornice. It was years after the work was finished that an inscription was found that reads “I was painting this ermine curtain when Britain declared war on the Nazi tyrants, Sunday, September 3^rd. RW”

Whistler’s work extended far beyond the medium of the mural. He was, for example, a highly accomplished book illustrator, a characteristic feature of his work being to set the illustration in a rococo frame. He designed stage scenery and costumes, and also designs for textiles, china and carpets. 

Much of Whistler’s work, as well as the mural, can be seen at Plas Newydd, where the 7^th Marquess collected as much of it as he could. The collection includes a nude painting of Lady Caroline and letters written to her by Rex. Plas Newydd is now a National Trust property (as is Mottisfont Abbey), so there is public access for much of the year.

His death during World War Two

Soon after the outbreak of war in 1939 Rex Whistler took a commission (2^nd lieutenant) with the Welsh Guards, although he did not go overseas until 1944. In the meantime he continued to work, including producing a mural on the wall of the officers’ mess at the Brighton barracks. He commanded a tank during the advance into France following the D-day landings, but was killed by a mortar shell when the tank was disabled by a fouled tank track. This was on 18^th July 1944. He was buried in a British war cemetery in France.

Rex Whistler will always be one of the art world’s great “might have beens”. Had he lived, would his style, with its throwbacks to a distant past, have been forgotten as fashion and taste moved in a completely new direction? Or would his idiosyncracies and humour have stood out from the crowd and made him a popular favourite? Of course, we can only speculate.

© John Welford

St Andrew

30^th November is St Andrew’s Day, and is therefore a special day in Scotland of which St Andrew in the patron saint. The X-shaped St Andrew’s Cross forms the national flag of Scotland and is therefore an essential element of the union flag of the United Kingdom.

Andrew was one of the original twelve disciples. The gospel writers have somewhat different accounts of how the disciples were called, although the stories in Mark and Matthew are quite similar in describing how Andrew and Simon were brothers and fishermen who were invited by Jesus to become “fishers of men”.

Luke makes no mention of Andrew being a fisherman and neither does John, although they both state that he was Simon’s brother. According to John, Andrew was the very first disciple, having previously been a follower of John the Baptist. It was Andrew who then went to Simon to announce that he had found the Messiah.

Andrew does not feature a great deal in the gospel story, but he is mentioned as the disciple who finds the boy with the loaves and fishes in the story of the feeding of the five thousand, although this detail only occurs in John’s gospel.

Andrew is also mentioned (in Acts) as being in the upper room in Jerusalem when the disciples were blessed by “tongues of fire” and were thereby inspired to begin their missionary journeys. According to tradition, Andrew is believed to have preached in Scythia, Greece and Byzantium, and to have been crucified (on an X-shaped cross) at Patras in the year 60.

Andrew is recognised as the patron saint of a number of countries besides Scotland, including Ukraine, Russia and Greece. The link to Scotland comes from the supposed arrival of relics of St Andrew on the coast of Fife, where the town of St Andrews now stands. The patronage of Scotland by St Andrew dates from the 10^th century.

© John Welford

St Chaeremon and St Ischyrion

22^nd December is the day for remembering two obscure saints from 3rd century Egypt, namely Chaeremon and Ischyrion. They suffered under the persecution of Decius, the Emperor of Rome from 249 to 251. Decius had ordered all citizens of the empire to make sacrifices to the pagan gods. Certificates were issued as proof that people had done so and had also their sacrifice witnessed. Christians, as might be expected, refused to make these sacrifices and were therefore easily identified because they were not able to produce certificates when they were demanded.

One way of avoiding the demand to make sacrifices was to escape to somewhere that the Roman officials would not think of going, and this was the course taken by Chaeremon, the elderly bishop of Nilopolis. He and a group of companions simply upped sticks and disappeared into the mountains of Arabia. That was the last that anyone ever saw or heard of him, even when fellow Christians later went to try to find him.

Ischyrion was a more traditional kind of martyr in that he did not escape but stayed put and suffered the consequences. He had been employed by a magistrate in Alexandria who insisted that Ischyrion renounce his faith and make the prescribed sacrifice. When he refused to do so he found that his employer could be a ruthless enemy, because he was then flogged and killed by being impaled on a stake.

© John Welford

St Boniface

There are several recognized saints named Boniface, but the one featured here is also known as Boniface of Crediton (Devon, England) from his place of birth in around 680. His birth name was Wynfrith.

Until about the age of 40 he was a monk, firstly at Exeter and later at Nursling near Southampton. He was a scholar who expounded the Bible and produced the first Latin grammar written in England.

In 718 he left England for the Continent and never returned. He worked as a missionary among the heathen tribes in several areas of what is now Germany and had considerable success.

Boniface made several journeys to Rome and was made a bishop, his see being that of Mainz. He was later appointed archbishop by Pope Gregory III with a mission to organise church activities throughout Germany. He invited several missionaries over from England to help him in his work, these including women as well as men. He and his team established a number of monasteries, most notably that at Fulda (Hesse).

The story that is most often told about Boniface is that of the Oak of Thor near Fritzlar in Hesse. The tree stood at the top of Mount Gudenberg and was held sacred by the local pagans. Boniface determined to cut down this symbol of paganism but the locals were convinced that Thor would strike him dead when he attempted to do so. However, after only one blow from Boniface’s axe the oak broke into four pieces and crashed to the ground – or so it is said.

Boniface used the wood from the tree to build a chapel dedicated to St Peter. The current St Peter’s church in Fritzlar dates from the 11^th century. There is a statue of St Boniface close by.

When aged over 70 Boniface turned his attention to Holland, but his efforts to convert the Dutch pagans led to his martyrdom. He and several companions were killed by Frisians at Dokkum in 754. His body was returned to Fulda where he was buried. He is commemorated by the Catholic Church on 5^th June.

© John Welford

St Dominic

The founder of the Order of Preachers, otherwise known as the Dominican Friars, was born in about 1170 at Calaruega, a town in the Castile region of Spain.

Few facts are known about Dominic’s early life, other than that he was educated at the University of Palencia and became a canon of the cathedral at Osma and prior of the chapter in about 1201.

At about the same time he went to Denmark on a diplomatic mission, accompanied by his bishop. Their route took them through the Languedoc area of southern France, and Dominic thus became acquainted with the variety of Catholicism being practised by the people in Albi and other cities in the region.

Albigensianism was a heresy in that its followers adopted beliefs that were contrary to the official line taken by mainstream Catholicism and sanctioned by the Pope. Their general belief was that the worlds of spirit and matter were entirely separate, with the former being created by God and the latter by Satan. This led them to question the physical existence of Jesus as a person, as opposed to a purely spiritual angelic being, such that the New Testament accounts of Jesus could only be accepted as allegory.

The Albigensians were therefore anathema both to the Pope and the civil authorities in France, whom the Albigensians regarded as unworthy of obedience due to their worldly rather than spiritual existence.

Having completed their work in Denmark, Dominic and his bishop journeyed to Rome, where they hoped to be sent on a mission to Russia. However, Pope Innocent III was far more interested in sorting out the Albigensians, and the pair was instructed to bring the heretics to heel.

Dominic was convinced that the best way to convert the heretics was through patience, love and preaching, but that was not the method favoured by the French crown or, as it turned out, the Pope. Instead, a fearsome “Albigensian Crusade” was launched that employed extreme violence against the people living in a number of towns and cities. At Beziers in 1209, for example, the entire population was slaughtered, whether they were heretics or loyal Catholics.

Although he was powerless to stop the violence, Dominic remained convinced that this was the wrong approach. Heresy would only be prevented, in his view, through preaching and prayer, and he proposed to set up an order of trained preachers who would travel among the people and depend on them for their sustenance. The order was officially licenced by Pope Honorius III in 1216.

These men became known as “black friars” from the colour of their robes, and Dominican friaries were established in many parts of Europe. By the time that Geoffrey Chaucer was writing his Canterbury Tales in the late 14^th century, it was doubtless true that some friars had taken the instruction to live off the alms of the poor as an excuse to extort as much wealth from them as possible, but just how typical Chaucer’s friar was of his fellow Dominicans is a matter of debate.

Dominic spent the rest of his life establishing friaries and convents throughout Spain, France and Italy. A feature of these establishments was their organisation along democratic lines, with elections to office and regular consultations with the members.

Dominic died in 1221 and was canonised only thirteen years later.

© John Welford

St George

There cannot be many saints like St George, in that so many people can tell you his story but there is so little evidence to support it, especially as he may never have existed at all!

If George was a real person, then he was a martyr who died in Lydda, Palestine, possibly in the year 303 during the persecutions ordered by Emperor Diocletian.
The story goes that he was a Roman soldier and a member of the imperial guard, one of several who were Christians. The emperor took offence when these Christian guards made the sign of the cross when witnessing some heathen priests performing a fortune-telling exercise. They were promptly dismissed from the emperor’s service.

Things got worse when the emperor further ordered the Christian clergy in the town to make sacrifices to the pagan gods. This was too much for George, who tore down the edict when it was posted on the door of the emperor’s palace. His punishment was, not surprisingly, a lot more severe than for his earlier misdemeanour and he ended up being tortured and executed.

At least, that is one version of the story, and something like it might actually have been true. However, the story that “everyone knows” is far less likely to be based on reality!

The legend is that George was riding through the city of Sylene in Libya when he was told about a terrible problem that the local people were experiencing. This was that a fearful dragon lived nearby and the people were forced to feed it on demand. They had run out of sheep and other livestock and were now drawing lots to see who would be the first human sacrifice. On the day of George’s visit the unlucky candidate was the king’s daughter, the ultimate damsel in distress.

George made a bargain with the citizens to the effect that he would kill the dragon on condition that they converted to Christianity. One could imagine that the debate was a short one and George was soon given permission to tackle the dragon, which he did with notable success. The net result was that George made 15,000 converts to Christianity. Did he also win the hand of the rescued princess? It depends on which version of the legend you choose to believe – if any!

The earliest version of the dragon story dates from the 11^th century, this being part of a cult of veneration of George that spread across Europe during the medieval period. In England his feast day of 23^rd April was declared in 1222 and he became the country’s official patron saint and protector of the royal family in the 14^th century. His banner of a red cross on a white background became the flag of England and this forms the central part of the union flag that is used to this day.

It is, however, highly unlikely that George ever set foot in England or can be said to have done this country any favours in particular.

Of course, many people have tried to fill in the blanks of George’s story, such as maintaining that he was born in Cappadocia (central Turkey) to a Christian family and that he joined the Roman army at the age of 17. His name George was of Greek origin, which reflected his family background. However, one is always free to believe as much or as little of the story of St George as one likes!

© John Welford

St Margueritte d’Youville

This is Margueritte d’Youville, a Canadian nun who in 1990 became the first native-born Canadian to be recognised as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

She was born in 1701 in Varennes, Quebec, and died in 1771. At the age of 20 she married a fur trader who was also engaged in the illegal liquor trade with tribespeople in the province’s interior. He died after they had been married for 8 years, leaving her with considerable debts and a family of six children to look after (although four of them died young).

Margueritte opened a store to help make ends meet and also established a mission in a poor area of Montreal to look after the city’s most destitute people, although she faced considerable opposition from other citizens.

Other women joined her work and they became the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal. Due to the colour of their habits they became known more generally as the Grey Nuns.

They became a nursing order in 1747 when Marguerite was asked to take over the running of the city’s hospital during hostilities between England and France over the colonial ownership of Canada. When the hospital was destroyed by fire in 1765 the Order rebuilt it.

Margueritte d’Youville died in 1771. She was beatified by Pope John XXIII in 1959 and canonized by Pope John-Paul II in 1990.

© John Welford

St Patrick and the snakes

Many stories told about saints have the flavour of myth to them, which is hardly surprising given that the Catholic Church only recognizes someone as a saint when it can be “proved” that they have performed at least two miracles, and “myth” and “miracle” have always been close companions.

The further back one goes in history, the more mythical the stories become, simply because the stories have suffered from the “Chinese whispers” effect of being told many times over with extra details being added each time.

One such story concerns St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, who lived in the 5th century. It is said that it is thanks to him that there are no snakes in Ireland. They apparently annoyed him when he was conducting a 40-day fast and he waved his staff to command them all to slither into the sea and never return.

It should not take too much application of common sense to appreciate that this would be highly unlikely – the action of one man inducing collective suicide by every snake over hundreds of square miles – but the story can be disproved even more easily by pointing out that there never were any snakes in Ireland for Patrick to banish!

The event that banished snakes from the whole of north-western Europe was the Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago. When it ended, snakes returned from further south but could not reach Ireland because it was already an island (the land bridge between Britain and Europe lasted long enough for some snake species to slither across).

Ireland is not the world’s only snake-free zone. The same applies to Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica and – perhaps more surprisingly – New Zealand.

The story of St Patrick and the snakes may have been intended purely symbolically, in that snakes were traditionally regarded as embodiments of evil – hence the serpent in the Garden of Eden – and what Patrick was credited with was banishing the Devil and all his works.

Whatever the truth of the matter, you won’t see any snakes in Ireland other than in zoos!

© John Welford

Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo did not want to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling and only started the job because he was ordered to by Pope Julius II. He was first and foremost a sculptor and that was what he wanted to spend his time doing. As he wrote in his journal, “This is not my profession. I am uselessly wasting my time”.

It was not as though Michelangelo was the only person around who could do the job. His younger contemporary Raphael had already achieved great acclaim for the fresco work he was currently doing elsewhere in the Vatican, and Michelangelo suggested that Raphael should be given the Sistine Chapel commission. Although one motive of Michelangelo’s might have been to hope that the young upstart would overreach himself, he also recognised that Raphael had more experience than he had in fresco painting and would do a better job than he could do himself.

An awkward Pope

Michelangelo also resented the fact that the Pope was playing fast and loose with him. Michelangelo, regarded as the greatest sculptor of his day at the age of 33 (in 1508), had been commissioned to create an impressive mausoleum for Pope Julius, hopefully in plenty of time for when it would be required. This would involve the sculpting of some 40 individual pieces. Michelangelo was extremely keen to undertake this commission and spent eight months doing nothing but selecting the marble blocks, in the Carrara quarries, that he would need for the task.

However, no sooner had Michelangelo returned to Rome, with the blocks starting to arrive, than the Pope cancelled the commission. He had been advised by Donato Bramante, the artist and architect who designed St Peter’s Basilica, that it was unlucky to build a tomb in one’s own lifetime. Pope Julius promptly dropped the plan and dismissed Michelangelo, sending a servant to eject him from the Vatican.

Michelangelo was understandably furious, especially as he was now left unpaid for the time he had spent on the project to date and in debt to the quarry for the marble blocks. He therefore left Rome and headed back to his home city of Florence. It was some years before he was able to resume work on the tomb, and then only sporadically. It was not finished until 1545, and then only in a much reduced version of the original concept.

Almost immediately after his arrival back in Florence, Michelangelo received another summons from the Pope. This was the famous command to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Bramante clearly had a particular dislike of Michelangelo, and had proposed the latter’s name to Pope Julius in the apparent hope that he would fail in the task and be banished from Rome for ever as a result.

Pope Julius, on the other hand, may have seen the commission as a way of softening the blow caused by his previous action. He may indeed have been eccentric and inconstant, but he does not appear to have been an unkind man. Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, though, when the Pope commanded something, it had to be done, and Michelangelo’s pleadings to be relieved of the task were never likely to get him anywhere.

Working in the Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel was named after its creator, Pope Sixtus IV, who was the predecessor (and uncle) of Julius II. The greatest artists of the preceding generation, including Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Perugio, had been engaged on painting the walls with religious and historical scenes, but at Sixtus’s death the ceiling remained unpainted and the duty fell on Julius to see the work finished.

The area in question was enormous, measuring some 130 feet by 43 feet, or more than 5,500 square feet, about 65 feet above the floor. Even if one can picture oneself slapping on an undercoat plus a covering of magnolia, this would strike anyone as a huge undertaking, but the Pope wanted more than that! His idea was for twelve huge images of the apostles, but Michelangelo, with his sculptor’s eye for proportion, did not think that this would work. Instead, he persuaded the Pope to let him design the project his own way. Perhaps out of a sense of obligation to a wronged man, but also taking a huge gamble in trusting a sculptor who had not wielded a paintbrush since he was a teenager, Julius agreed.

Bramante was clearly less trusting than the Pope. When Michelangelo arrived to start work, he found that Bramante had built scaffolding for him to work from, and proposed to drill holes in the ceiling from which ropes would hang to support a working platform. Michelangelo ridiculed this idea, as it would obstruct the surface on which he was to paint, and he may also have had suspicions about the safety aspects of this arrangement.

Instead, Michelangelo built a wooden platform under the ceiling, supported by brackets fixed into holes above the upper windows. A screen, possibly of cloth, was suspended beneath the platform to catch any paint or plaster that might fall. This was particularly necessary because the Chapel would have been in use for services and other occasions while the work was in progress. The platform was moved as required along the length of the Chapel, with only half of the ceiling being scaffolded at any one time. However, the screen was probably in place for the entire length of the ceiling, given that very few people seemed to know what was being painted before it was finally revealed.

Michelangelo at work

In the 1965 film “The Agony and the Ecstasy”, Michelangelo, played by Charlton Heston, is depicted as painting while lying on his back. However, this would not have been practical, as the painter would have needed much more freedom of movement. Instead, Michelangelo stood on the platform with his head tilted back. This was not a particularly comfortable posture, and Michelangelo suffered greatly from neck pains and swollen glands as a result.

Bramante also supplied Michelangelo with a team of experienced fresco-painters brought in from Florence, but Michelangelo was not prepared to work as a team leader in this way. He may also, of course, have been highly suspicious of Bramante’s motives in bringing in his own people to keep an eye on the work and report back to Pope Julius. Michelangelo therefore dismissed all the assistants and got on with the work in his own way.

That is not to say that he worked entirely alone for the whole four years that it took to complete the project, although another Sistine Chapel myth is that this is what he did. He would have needed people around him to mix the paints and prepare the plaster, so that it was at the correct state of moistness to accept the paint. He may indeed have thought at first that he could do everything single-handedly, but he was completely new to fresco painting and would soon have realised that the business of running up ladders carrying buckets of plaster was something that he could leave to others!

There have been suggestions that Michelangelo employed assistant artists to do the “boring bits”, such as background sky and decorative detail. However, the amount of such assistance would have been extremely small, especially as Michelangelo was such a perfectionist, and so temperamental that it is extremely unlikely that many artists would have lived up to his exacting standards. We can imagine him grumpily examining a patch of ceiling painted by an assistant, complaining about it, then re-doing it after the assistant had gone home.

The project had its setbacks, especially at the beginning when mistakes were made through inexperience and misfortune. For example, a panel devoted to Noah’s Flood had to be re-done when the plaster went mouldy due to having been painted when too wet or at the wrong temperature. There were also interruptions due to political circumstances and one occasion when it looked as though the Pope was dying, which was a false alarm. Nevertheless, Pope Julius clearly grew impatient at the apparently slow progress that Michelangelo was making. However, the story that he threatened to throw the artist off his scaffolding if he didn’t hurry up is probably another myth.

Fresco painting is a particularly difficult art, as the paint needs to be applied quickly on to plaster that is correctly moist. Once the plaster has dried, no more paint can be applied. The artist therefore has to work at speed and only on as much plaster at a time as he can paint before it dries. Michelangelo would have sketched out his designs, as “cartoons”, before applying the plaster and painting it in small sections. He would therefore have had to ensure that each batch of paint was of exactly the same shade as the previous one, so that, for example, a character’s robe did not look like a patchwork quilt.

There is evidence that, once Michelangelo got the hang of fresco painting, he worked very quickly. The suggestion is that any other artist, working under the same conditions, would have taken much longer than four years.

The finished work

When the work was finally complete and the scaffolding and screens were removed, on All Saints Day (1st November), 1512, there was universal acclamation for what Michelangelo had achieved. Raphael was unstinting in his praise, despite the fact that he and Michelangelo were hardly the best of friends. Nobody could criticise what was universally acknowledged as a work of genius, all the credit for which had to go to one man.

Instead of the twelve figures originally imagined by Pope Julius, Michelangelo supplied more than 300. Featured in the centre of the ceiling are nine scenes from Genesis, including the iconic image of God’s finger reaching out to that of Adam to give him life. They fall into three groups of three, featuring the Creation, the Fall of Man and the story of Noah, every scene being a masterpiece in its own right. Surrounding the centre are figures of prophets, other biblical figures and figures from pagan mythology, such as sybils, which might have seemed out of place in the headquarters of the Christian Church. However, Michelangelo never saw the two worlds as being completely divided, with many of his greatest sculptures being on pagan themes, and the sybils could be interpreted as foretellers of the future, which included the birth of Christ.

Often overlooked is the clever way in which Michelangelo incorporated architectural features into his design, such that pediments and columns appear to make a three-dimensional framework for the other images, despite being on a two-dimensional ceiling that is flat in the centre but curved at the sides. Michelangelo would not have been able to see his work from the ground when he was designing it, so his success in achieving this “trompe d’oeil” must be put down to his genius as a sculptor that allowed him to visualise the final effect in three dimensions. Perhaps getting the world’s best sculptor to paint the ceiling was not such a bad idea after all!

After the ceiling

Michelangelo was rarely fortunate during his long life, and his good fortune did not continue for long after completion of the ceiling. Pope Julius died within three months, and his successor, Leo X, had work to offer Raphael, but not Michelangelo.

One irony about Michelangelo’s life, as compared to Raphael’s, is that the latter’s, which was serene and well-favoured, only lasted for 37 years, whereas Michelangelo lived to the age of 88, much of it spent in poverty and loneliness. After completing the ceiling he went back to his first love, namely sculpture, but he had not seen the last of the Sistine Chapel.

In 1534 he was commissioned by Pope Paul III to paint the wall at the Chapel’s entrance, which he did with a fresco of the Last Judgement that took him five years to finish. One can wonder how often the sculptor in his 60s looked up to the ceiling he had completed more than 20 years previously. Did he marvel at his previous efforts, and did they inspire him to produce the same quality of work on his current assignment? Or did the old curmudgeon tut-tut to himself as he spotted his mistakes?

© John Welford