In Development

As It Might Be Today

A Development Scene For five voices.

Narrator: In the the course of a Spring clean-out this year, in a dusty corner of the Vatican archives, a document has come to light that sheds a fascinating new light on the way in which a work of the Renaissance may have come about.

The year is 1508. The scene is the Apostolic Palace in Rome. Three men are in tight conclave.

Enter the Artist. He is upright, proud, certain in his vocation. He is unnoticed.

Mike: Hello.

Dom: And you are…who?

Mike: Michael.

Dom: Remind me.

Mike: Michael. The artist. Michael Angelo.

Narrator: Yes, it is he.

Dom: Jules. It’s Mike. Remember?

Jules: Dom, for Christ’s sake. We’ve got a nine p.m. deadline for this Encyclical.

Dom: Jules. It’s the- you know- artist-

(Gulps)

-we’ve talked about. Getting him to do the ceiling.

Jules: Oh, right. Mike. Yes.

Mike: Your Eminence.

Jules: Don’t worry about all that Pope Julius the Second. It’s Jules.

Mike: Right. Jules.

Jules: And this is Cardinal Alfrezi.

Ben: Benedict. Ben. Great to see you.

Jules: And Cardinal Corleone.

Dom: Dominic. Call me Don. So, welcome to Rome.

Ben: We heard you’d done some good stuff in the regions.

Mike: Seen it?

Dom: Didn’t quite get there. But we heard good things.

Mike: The critics said the Medici statues were a majestic expression of the new spirit sweeping Italy.

Ben: That was Lynolo, right?

Mike: Gave it a name. Called it the Ree-Naice-Arnce.

Jules: I’m sorry we didn’t get there. To be frank, Lorenzo and us-.

Ben: Medici.

Dom: We don’t always see eye to eye.

Ben: And Florence. It’s still a little bit…

Dom: Regional. This is Rome. This is, let’s say it, the capital. The regions and the capital. It’s a different ball park you’re in now, Mike.

Mike: Did you read what the critics said?

Jules: Didn’t you put the file together, Ben?

Dom: Yep.

Jules: Bring me up to date.

(Sound effect: flicking of parchment)

Dom: Mike’s right. Lynolo loves him.

Jules: Great critic.

Ben: Can’t fault Lynolo for enthusiasm.

Jules: Lynolo does go over the top a bit. Anything that’s new.

Mike: Billini liked it.

Ben: I’ve got them all. Carolus Spencerius, so-so. Michele Billini “structurally uneven but this first public commission shows evidence of an underlying talent that shows great promise.”

Mike: Have you got Johannes Petrus?

Ben: We’ve done our homework, Mike. Right, Johannes Petrus. “Michelangelo burns with a diamond-focused intensity…marble-like hardness to his work.”

Jules: It was marble, wasn’t it? Dom, Ben, should we get on with the meeting?

Mike: You’ve got the sketches?

Jules: Mike.

Mike: Michael.

Jules: Michael. I’ll explain how we work here. The way we do it it’s kind of collaboration.

Mike: But you’re the sole source of all temporal and spiritual authority.

Jules: That’s for the PR. We’re a team. Dom does the marketing side. The branding. Ben’s handles all the other stuff. Access, participation.

Ben: We’re hoping for project funding for this one.

Mike: Project funding? You’re the Holy Catholic Church. Every peasant and artisan has to pay a tithe. That’s ten percent. You’ve got pardons, indulgences to sell.

Jules: Mike, I won’t begin to tell you the overhead we have. Papal splendour, it doesn’t come cheap, you know. You wouldn’t believe it. Dom’s had a look at the sketches. He’s got something to bring to the table. Over to you, Dom.

Dom: Mike, the vision is great. Fab. But...the figure on the right. This big one.

Mike: That’s God. Yes.

Dom: At the moment he’s coming over as quite, what’s the word, it’s quite a patriarchal kind of thing.

Mike: He’s the creator of heaven and earth, and all the creatures who do walk upon them.

Dom: Right.

Mike: It’s a symbol.

Dom: It’s a symbol. Yep. So we were wondering, let’s throw it around, we were thinking that the Godhead could be rendered in a kind of less authoritarian way. Had you thought of maybe making him a cloud?

Mike: A cloud?

Dom: It fits our outreach strategy better. Ben’s been thinking quite a lot about this.

Jules: Let’s hear.

Ben: This outstretched finger.

Mike: It’s the spark of divinity crossing from God to Man.

Ben: I love it. It’s so strong. That’s it. Maybe it’s too strong.

Mike: Too strong?

Ben: We were thinking. Maybe we should make it an outstretched hand. Like it’s saying friendship.

Mike: Friendship.

Ben: Sort of connecting.

Mike: He is divine power. Majestic and all-encompassing.

Ben: This whole power thing it’s not really where we’re going as of now.

Mike: You want a cloud?

Ben: And then the positioning of this figure...

Mike: Adam.

Ben: How about we move him up a bit? So he and God are like looking at each other. We’re saying to our audience. God and man, we’re all equal here.

Jules: Dom, you’ve been looking at the whole Adam thing, haven’t you?

Dom: Right. He’s really great. He’s so powerful. I’m just a teeny bit worried. People might say. Where’s Eve? I mean we have to got Eve into the picture.

Jules: If you were to merge Adam and Eve into one. To symbolise the merging of the genders.

Dom: That would be so good.

Ben: Mike, you okay? You’re looking a bit hot. Is it the Rome heat?

Mike: I---am----fine. Anything else?

Dom: I’ve got this access agenda to think about. This whole ceiling idea. It’s going to mean heads bent back. Necks cricked.

Jules: Have we got the insurance cover?

Ben: No probs. We’re covered for everything. We couldn’t get coverage for Acts of God, funnily enough.

Dom: It’s not good for those who are short-sighted.

Jules: Good point. Remember glasses have only just come on the market.

Mike: I heard you people weren’t too keen on them. If too many get to read they might go off-message.

Jules: I didn’t hear that, Mike.

Ben: So we had been thinking…

Narrator: At this point the manuscript ends. It gives every appearance of having for some reason been torn violently in half. We are here now in 2011, in the Vatican. A guide is here with a group of visitors.

Guide: Here, ladies and gentlemen, we have it, the Sistine Wall. This fresco is of the amorphous cloud reaching out the hand of friendship to the sexless being. The verdict of the art critics is that it is of a remarkable blandness, but a few can detect a freedom of spirit in the detail of the paintwork.

Very little is known of the artist as he threw himself into the Tiber shortly afterwards in a fit of apparent existential despair. Now we’ll just move on Raphael’s mother symbol cradling the generic child…

author:Adam Somerset

original source:
01 April 2010