Adventures in Basilica-Making

I am currently reading "Basilica - The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's" by R.A. Scotti. It is, as you might expect, about the construction of St. Peter's Basilica.

I'm about halfway through right now. Here are my favorite parts so far:
[These are not spoilers, by the way. First of all, you're never going to read this book anyway, even though I do highly recommend it. Secondly, you can't spoil real life events that have actually happened. The Basilica gets built. You can go visit it. That's the ending.]

[Also, just to clarify, this is the Vatican St. Peter's. It's in Rome. The Pope waves his popey hand from its balcony. Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor gallivant around it in "Angels and Demons." Ewan's the bad guy. (Now THAT'S a spoiler.)]

First favorite part --
Pope Julias II wants a new St. Peter's. The old one is nice, but the Pope has big ideas and wants something grandiose in its place. So he hires Donato Bramante, a talented and respected architect, to oversee the project. Bramante starts wrecking the old St. Peter's... with little regard for anything. People get upset because A) the church is over 1,000 years old, B) the church is a beloved icon and people from miles around make pilgrimages to it, and C) Bramante is destroying the priceless works of art inside. Bramante holds off on destroying the other half of the building and begins construction on the new St. Peter's.

I am convinced this thought went through Bramante's head: "Perhaps people will be more understanding about demolishing the rest of the old church once they see how totally awesome the new one is." He was a bit of a cavalier.

Second favorite part --
While the Basilica was slowly being constructed, the Pope wanted other buildings on site to be touched up. Bramante brought in seven highly regarded painters to do some frescoes in the Pope's domicile. He also brought in a young twenty-five year-old unproven artist named Raphael. Each set to work on four different rooms, and when Bramante came back several months later to check on their progress he was astounded by the beauty of Raphael's work. He was so impressed that he immediately told the other artists to take off, Raphael was to do their rooms instead. As they were packing their stuff workers came in and started chipping their unfinished frescoes off the wall. All that time and energy reduced to colorful flakes on the floor. Those rooms in the Popes house, by the way, are now called the Stanze di Raffaello and are defining examples of High Renaissance art. Google it. You'll find some stuff you recognize.

Third favorite part --
The Pope wanted Michelangelo in on the project. Everybody knew Michelangelo was the best sculptor in Italy and his talents would be appreciated. Everybody also knew Michelangelo was hard to get along with. He was paranoid, intensely prideful, and had a short temper. Bramante also didn't want Michelangelo's work to outshine his own, so he told him to paint the center portion of a chapel ceiling. The ceiling was 70 feet high, Bramante's scaffolding was questionable, and, of course, there was the challenge of paining on a ceiling. Michelangelo, feeling that Bramante wanted him to fail at this near-impossible task, went to the Pope to protest. He argued that he was a sculptor, not a painter, and his talents would be better served elsewhere on site. The Pope wouldn't budge, so, surprisingly, Michelangelo offered to paint the entire ceiling for only double the price.

This is where Michelangelo is a mad genius.

He built his own scaffolding and set to work, working from dawn to dusk, ruining his body, teetering seven-stories up, getting paint in his eyes, committing his life to this one task. He refused to let anybody see his work until he was completely finished, not even the Pope. It took him four years to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and upon its completion he had gloriously proved that you don't mess with Michelangelo.

"If Bramante thought that he was marginalizing Michelangelo by relegating him to the Sistina, the aerial act did not turn out exactly as he had hoped. Michelangelo dumbfounded his rivals and made their jealousy seem like petty malice. It was sweet revenge."

Each of these three incidents are completely hilarious to me, though they were never intended to be that way. I may need to work on de-evil-ing my sense of humor. But only after I finish this book.

Roadside Monument - "Egos the Size of Cathedrals"