A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE TALE OF MICHELANGELO AND BIAGIO DA CESENA Norman E. Land One of the most famous stories about Michelangelo involves Biagio Baroni de' Martinelli, better known as Biagio da Cesena (1163-1544), who in 1518 became masterof ceremonies to Pope Leo X and filled the same positionunderPopes Adrian VI, Clement VII, and Paul III. As Leo Steinberg (1920-201 1) observed decades ago, there are three sixteenth-century variants of the story.r Lodovico Domenichi (1515-1564)publisheda version in his collection of stories,or facezie (Venice, 1548).'Z Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) provides two additional versions in his Lives of the Artists, one in the first edition (Florence, 1550) andthe otherin the second (Florence, 1568).3 A fourth variant, which Steinberg does not mention, appears, seemingly for the first time, in a little-known collection of jokes entitledA Banquet of Jests (London, 1630), which is attributed to the Scotsman Archibald Armstrong (died 1612), a court jester to King James VI and laterto King Charles I of England.a Over the last two centuries, several prominent scholarsof Michelangelo and his works have unwittingly repeated elements of this versionof the tale eventhough they do not originate with Vasari or Domenichi. Vasari's first version of the tale, which might have beenwritten as early as 1547, is brief and bald.When the pope comes to see Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel, his unidentified master of ceremonies, who "presumptuously" arrives with him, con- demns the Last Judgmenr for its many nude figures.In revenge, Michelangelomakesa portrait of the offender as the figure of Minos, who is in hell with a "mountain" of other devils.5 In this version, Michelangelo seems to be offended that the master of cere- monies has entered the chapel without his foreknowledge or consent. The hapless man then makes matters worseby condemning the artist's painting for the nudity of its figures. In Domenichi's version of the story, Michelangelo represents Biagio in hell, tor- mented by demons because the master of cer- emonies has presumptuously insisted on seeing the Last Judgment rn the Sistine Chapelbeforeit is completed. Biagio com- plains to Paul III, who is "a prince of the raresfprudence and most marvelous clever- ness," but the painted figure remains un- changed. At last,the pope,seeing that there is no remedy to the situation and wishing to be free of Biagio's persistent complaints, says: "Messer Biagio, you know that I have from God power in heaven and on earth;but my authoritydoesnot extend into hell, and you must have patience if I cannotfree you from there."6 Domenichi's tale represents an example of PopePaul'sverbalwit. But in the second edition of the Lives,Vasari uses the story to a differentpurpose: he portrays an example of Michelangelo's biting visual wit. When the Last Judgmenl was about three-fourths completed, the pope, accompanied by Bia- gio, "a personof great propriety," went to SOURCE: Notes in the History of Art, 32, 4 (2013) © Norman E. Land Text