In all his glory: Michelangelo's naked Christ comes to Britain
Michelangelo dared to sculpt Jesus naked, but for centuries the church covered him up with a bizarre metal veil. Now the National Gallery is revealing all
I have seen Jesus Christ’s penis at last. Michelangelo’s statue The Risen Christ stands in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. This masterpiece of his middle years – finished in 1521, when he was 46 – is more startling in some ways than his youthful David. After all, it is one thing to portray a young warlike hero naked, in the ancient Greek style, as the young Michelangelo did when he carved David. It is quite another thing to make a stark-naked statue of Jesus to go in a church.
Unfortunately, if you visit this statue in Rome, you won’t quite see everything. After Michelangelo’s death, it was given a bizarre baroque metal veil to cover the cock and balls he’d carved. This prudish accessory is still in place. Michelangelo’s belief in the total exposure of Christ’s humanity is still too modern for the 21st-century church.
But there is another version of this great sculpture that no one has got round to covering up. It has just come to Britain, and I got an exclusive first look at the manhood of Christ. Michelangelo’s first version has been lent to the National Gallery, in London, for its exhibition Michelangelo and Sebastiano, opening next month. It comes from San Vincenzo Monastery in Bassano Romano, where it languished in obscurity until it was recognised as Michelangelo’s lost work in 1997.
It seems amazing that its authorship could ever have been in doubt. Even though the head and face and most of the cross held by Christ were added to this unfinished work by unknown artists, there is no doubting the attribution to Michelangelo. The unique power of his imagination and the sensitivity of his chisel can be felt in its supple surface, the force of his intellect in its magnificent pose and innate authority.
As we contemplate this one-tonne masterpiece that has just been trucked from Italy to Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery’s director, Gabriele Finaldi, points out a dark flaw in the white marble that runs like a duelling scar across Christ’s face. Sources from the 16th century said that when Michelangelo was commissioned in 1514 to carve The Risen Christ, he set to work on a huge block of marble that he had almost finished chiselling out before discovering it had a flaw. Finaldi observes that he tended to work from the feet upward, so only found the imperfection in the upper part of the block when he’d already created Christ’s body.
In a rage, he abandoned this version completely, got a new block of marble and carved what stands to this day in the heart of Rome. His abandoned first attempt was forgotten, reworked, and finally ended up in a monastery, where few people have seen it. Now it is about to get the global attention it deserves – not least for its full uncompromising nudity.
The penis and testicles of this Risen Christ are reminiscent of David’s. The male member rests, flaccid, on well-rounded testicles. As Christ shows himself to be resurrected from death, he displays the heroic dignity and strength of a classical hero. This holy hunk has powerful muscles electrifying his mighty arms. His torso pulses with energy and strength. He has come back from the dead in triumph and that victory can be seen in the formidable power of his physique.
Why was Michelangelo compelled to portray Christ completely naked in a way that was bound to trouble some Christians? It was not out of a desire to blaspheme. On the contrary, this genius – poet, architect and painter as well as the greatest sculptor who has ever lived – was not only a faithful Christian but someone who thought deeply about theology. You can bet he had good religious reasons to give Christ the full equipment.
But it would be complacent to think there was no tension in showing Christ nude. The fact that The Risen Christ in Santa Maria still has its covering proves how real those tensions are. The fundamental reason Michelangelo could get away with it was that he was Michelangelo. By the time he created this statue, he had the Sistine Chapel ceiling (with all its male nudes) under his belt and was the most famous artist in the world.
The other reason he could glory in Christ’s nudity was that he lived in the remarkable free and experimental culture of the Renaissance. The penis of Christ is regularly shown in Renaissance paintings as evidence of his full humanity, his incarnation on Earth, with every feature of a human body. The art historian Leo Steinberg has argued this explicit stress on Christ’s anatomy was part of an optimistic Renaissance theology that celebrated life.
Still, those images tend to be of Jesus as a baby. To portray the full manhood of the mature, resurrected Christ is more threatening, and therefore rarer. Michelangelo’s Venetian contemporary Titian was no prude, but in his 1514 painting Noli Me Tangere he gives the risen Christ white drapery over his naked body. Where did he get this covering after escaping from the grave? It is surely the shroud that covered him in death. Christ has sensibly reused his burial sheet as a modest garment. In Raphael’s last great work, The Transfiguration, the body of Christ is completely swathed in a similar white robe, and even Caravaggio in his Supper at Emmaus depicts a well-clad risen Christ.
So it is simply not true that artists went around showing the manly genitals of the adult, let alone resurrected, Christ. Michelangelo has thought it all through, though. In his left hand, the Risen Christ holds a crumpled shroud. He has consciously decided not to wrap it around himself – or has just removed it. On his fully revealed body, we see not only his penis but also the wound in his side where he was pierced by the lance.
The truth of bodily resurrection is the miracle Michelangelo wants us to see. His Christ has been brought back from death, and his body, including its wounds, now stands triumphantly alive before us. The genius of Michelangelo gives this recently dead body an amazing vitality.
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