(gentle piano music)
- [Harris] We're in the claustrophobic space
of the Medici Chapel in Florence.
This is a funerary chapel designed by Michelangelo.
Now it's unfinished,
so we don't know entirely what his vision was
for this space.
- [Zucker] This is now known as the New Sacristy,
and it was made as appendant
to what has become known as the Old Sacristy.
It was designed by Brunelleschi.
- [Harris] Both of the Sacristies are places
where priests would dress
before saying the mass,
and so they're part of the church
of San Lorenzo near the altar.
- [Zucker] San Lorenzo was the parish church
of the Medici family,
and there are four Medici buried in this room.
Although it's unfinished
and although we don't understand
Michelangelo's conception entirely,
he did at least from afar
oversee the implementation of this room.
He was the sculptor and the architect,
and we think he intended also to be the painter,
although the frescoes were never initiated.
- [Harris] This is a major undertaking
for a long period of Michelangelo's life.
First under Pope Leo the 10th, a Medici pope,
Michelangelo was given responsibility for projects
here at San Lorenzo
including the Laurentian Library,
and then after Leo the 10th died,
another Medici pope, Pope Clement the Seventh,
continued Michelangelo's work here in San Lorenzo,
specifically with this funerary chapel.
- [Zucker] Let's describe the space.
It is primarily a square.
It has a square apse where the altar is,
but the space is much taller than it is either wide or long.
- [Harris] And if we compare this
to Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy,
it seems as though Michelangelo's add another
layer of height,
but like other architecture here at San Lorenzo
by Michelangelo,
there's a feeling of the strength and power
of architectural forms that are normally decorative.
- [Zucker] Michelangelo is using architecture
almost as if it were sculpture.
It is expressive as opposed to functional.
There are so many blind windows.
- [Harris] It creates a real sense of confusion
and ambiguity,
what leads out, what doesn't,
and at least one art historian suggested
the idea of purgatory,
a place where you maybe can get out,
but you're not sure.
There's a sense of entrapment.
We move from a feeling of an earthly realm,
which is ambiguous and dense,
through a level which is intermediary,
and then a top area,
which has circles and semicircles
and begins to suggest through those kinds
of perfect shapes the heavenly.
And that makes sense in a funerary chapel,
which is about the possibility of salvation
and of resurrection,
and in fact, the subject of the fresco
that was supposed to be here was the resurrection.
We have four allegorical figures,
Night and Day, who frame the effigy
of Giuliano de'Medici,
and Dawn and Dusk,
who frame the effigy of Lorenzo de'Medici.
Let's take the figure of Night.
This is a female figure
who is twisted in an impossible way.
Her back arm comes forward across her torso.
Her forward arm moves back behind her.
This is a very elegant,
but almost unnatural position.
- [Zucker] When we think about Michelangelo,
we often think about the height of the Renaissance
and perfect proportion of the human body,
and yet here we see a body that is elongated.
It's as if there are extra vertebrae
and extra ribs in her torso.
The leg itself is impossibly elegant
because of its length.
She is much more highly polished and finished
than the figure next to her.
- [Harris] Although, it is important to remember
that we don't really know how much
Michelangelo intended to leave unfinished.
The male figure is Day,
but he seems more to be receding
than to be moving forward.
- [Zucker] His head is hiding behind that massive shoulder.
Now between them and above,
we have one of the deceased.
We have Giuliano.
- [Harris] To me, one of the most beautiful figures
in all of art history.
This is a period of Michelangelo's art
where he's looking for ideal beauty and elegance,
and yet expressing that through
these almost impossible positions of the body.
Look at that neck.
It's so long and so graceful.
- [Zucker] And like so many of Michelangelo's
sculptures before this,
we have the sense of potential movement.
He's about to stand up.
- [Harris] The figure of Day complements
the figure of Night.
Her back arm comes forward.
His front arm moves backward.
His back leg comes forward,
and we similarly see oppositions
in the figures of Dawn and Dusk
on the wall of Lorenzo de'Medici.
- [Zucker] That idea of Dawn and Dusk,
of that moment of transition,
is a reminder that this entire room
is about transition.
It's about matter and spirit changing,
and that's beautifully expressed
by the figure of Lorenzo.
Michelangelo apparently took great pains
to sculpt a figure whose face would remain in shadow.
- [Harris] And he seems very different
than his cousin Giuliano on the opposite wall.
- [Zucker] One of the ways that
that opposition has been discussed
is that Lorenzo represents the contemplative life
versus Giuliano who is a representation
of the active life.
- [Harris] We think about the subject of this tomb
the passage of time, Night and Day,
Dawn and Dusk, the days of our lives
that lead toward our deaths,
as something that erodes life,
and yet those very figures also seem to be eroded.
There's a sense of their passivity, their inactivity.
They seem very strong,
but unable to raise themselves,
unable to act even though they are the very forces
that bring down Giuliano and Lorenzo.
We know that poetry was part
of Michelangelo's working method.
- [Zucker] And in fact, there's a poem
that's directly associated with this chapel.
Michelangelo wrote Day and Night speak.
"We with our swift course have brought
"the Duke, Giuliano to death.
"It is just that he, the Duke, takes revenge for this,
"and the revenge is this,
"that, as we have killed him,
"he has taken the light from us,
"with his eyes closed,
"has locked ours shut,
"which no longer shine on earth.
"What then would he have done with us while alive?"
(gentle piano music)