Michelangelo's Medici Chapel

Book excerpt: There are no surviving documents that explain Michelangelo's complex sculptural program for the Medici Chapel. The work as we have it is no more than an unfinished, fragmentary realization of the artist's original conception. Speculation about its meaning began quite early, for Michelangelo's contemporaries were apparently no better informed than we. An interpretation made by Benedetto Varchi in 1549 & since universally accepted, was by his own admission a personal opinion, not confirmed by the artist. In the 16th century, interpretations quite at variance with modern scholarly assumptions were made. Here, Dr. Edith Balas contends that the artist deliberately veiled his meaning in obscurity, making his images, like the language of Neoplatonic philosophers, intelligible only to an intellectual elite. Assuming the role of the Magus, Michelangelo conceived a cryptic, magical world of potent allegorical images designed not simply or primarily to commemorate the departed Medici but to help achieve elevation for their souls. Illus.