8 ...

Newkirk (glances at his watch)
Wow, look at the time. I had no idea we'd been here so long. (looking towards the back of the café, he sees the proprietor precariously slouched in a chair, his head tilted back, mouth agape, and apparently sound asleep.)

(smiles at the others) He just did not have the nerve to ask you three titans of Rome to leave. It would be like telling the Pope to get out.

The Vatican at dawn

http://www.visitsitaly.com/tours/site_see_rome/vatican_at_night.htm

(Quietly they push back their chairs, stand and stretch. Newkirk leaves payment on the table with a generous tip for such respectful hospitality. Silently, the four slip out the door and stand together beside the predictable line of Vespas out front. The first whispers of morning in Rome greet them like gentle friends. It's the only time of day one can actually hear the occasional birdsong.)

Newkirk 
Since we began our conversation with Raphael's fresco in the Vatican, if you are game, perhaps we'll head back there to the Sistine Chapel, to see what Michelangelo can teach us now. Does that suit you, Michelangelo?

Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, 1508-12, fresco

Michelangelo
Oh, sure. This is a good time of day to be there. It'll be empty (then, with a sneer) with the possible exception of Bramante. Did you know that cretin could not imagine building a scaffold for my work without poking holes in both side walls to support the main beams? – holes that would have pierced my painting forever! I had to step in to get it done properly. And an ugly rumour I don't want to believe has it that he's been putting too much sand in the concrete he's using for the footings of his new St. Peter's. But ... he is without question, despite any shortcomings, the greatest architect since the ancients. I respect the man's genius, even though, like our pretty friend here, he is from Urbino, and therefore untrustworthy.

Donato Bramante, Tempietto, c. 1502

http://elizabethkramer.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/ancient-rome-at-columbia-university/

Raphael 
Here we go again. Dear fellow, it's well known that your nose is always out of joint (Michelangelo fumes silently, fists clenched, while Newkirk and Bernini stifle laughter, studiously avoiding any glance at the famously broken nose). But please, let us steer away from debating the political and artistic superiority of any one city; the argument could be interminable, and very tedious.

Newkirk 
Michelangelo, you refer to your own present, not to mine. The new St. Peter's has been finished for several hundred years now, and you and Gian Lorenzo are largely responsible for its final appearance. However, I think we'll concentrate on the Sistine for now, and perhaps come back to the architecture later. 

St. Peter's Basilica, Rome

7 ...

Newkirk
Let me quickly summarize some of the influence you have had on art and artists since your own time. In 1774, a young French painter by the name of Jaques-Louis David was awarded the very prestigious Prix de Rome by the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The following year, he travelled to Italy where he studied the ancient monuments, and the master artists of his more recent past. It was your work, Raphael, that he most admired. David was perhaps the most important painter of what was known as the Neoclassical style. He concentrated on historical subjects, and in his work, he applied those characteristics of elegance and refinement that he found in your paintings.

Jaques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates, 1787, oil on linen, 130 cm × 196 cm

Later, another talented young Frenchman, Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres studied for four years with David. The refined, sinuous and sensitive quality of line with which Ingres firmly defined the edges and outlines of his subjects evolved in large part from the style of David, and so also from Raphael. 

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Portrait of Louise de Broglie, Countess d'Haussonville, 1845

And in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ingres influenced Degas, and Manet and Matisse and Picasso, and arguably, according to Barnett Newman, the abstract expressionist movement. And so, Raphael, you can see that your work in particular, and the art of the High Renaissance generally, have left a legacy that stretches from your own time to mine.

Bernini
And let us not forget the influence of Raphael on the art of my time, David. Rubens, for example, greatly admired your work Raphael, as do I and most others of my generation, although your touch may not always be immediately evident in the art of – what did David call it? – the Baroque period.

Michelangelo
Fine. That'll be enough talk of Signore Congeniality for now. Everybody loves him. Everybody loves his art. We get it. Now please let us talk about some really great art ... (with a grin of false modesty, he leans back, tilts his head and extends his hands, palms up, in an "Aw, shucks – little ol' me?" gesture.)

Newkirk
OK, Michelangelo. Let's do just that. But before we leave Raphael's work, I want you to remember that, working in my studio, I feel an affinity with those qualities I just mentioned: the elegance, the clarity and the defined contours.

6 ...

Newkirk 

Well yes, the labels may be unfamiliar to you since they were applied by art historians long after – uh, again, it's difficult to put this delicately – long after your death. It's a strange feeling to be sitting with you three and explaining to you just how you have been classified and studied. And that brings me back to Raphael's work, and what I like about it.

Michelangelo

This shouldn't take long. 

Newkirk (ignoring the snide remark)

Raphael, I imagine that, in describing your paintings, you would be comfortable with adjectives like elegant, rational, poised, controlled, balanced and generously illuminated overall. Am I right?

Raphael 

As far as they go, I think these words apply, yes.

Newkirk

Those descriptions certainly seem to fit the School of Athens. That painting is symmetrically balanced within the architectural setting. By the way, it's generally assumed that the setting was designed by your brother-in-law, Bramante, who gave it to you for use in the painting. Is that true?

Raphael (with a sly grin)

What is it the children say? That's for me to know, and you to find out.

Michelangelo

Spoken just like the child you are. Of course it's true. Steal something from me one day and from Bramante the next. Humph.

Newkirk

Maybe we'll never know for sure. But back to the School. Nothing in the painting is hidden in deep shadow; the lighting is even throughout. Every character in the painting is posed with grace; no one is about to stumble and fall. The scene looks as though it were carefully laid out as a kind of lesson.

Raphael 

Which it is, in a way, a lesson about important philosophers, artists (glances at Michelangelo) and other thinkers, living and dead. Plato and Aristotle argue amicably in the centre, and the discussions flow towards the viewer as they spill gently down the stairs. 

Newkirk
And these characteristics appear in your work consistently. I'm thinking of the Small Cowper Madonna and the Sistine Madonna.

Raphael, Small Cowper Madonna, oil on panel, 1505,

59.5 cm × 44 cm (23.4 in × 17 in)

Raphael, Sistine Madonna, oil on canvas, 1512, 

265 cm × 196 cm (104 in × 77 in)

Even when the characters in your painting are in motion, as in your Galatea, they each seem to have been posed just so, in order to present each figure elegantly. And in that painting again, the composition is symmetrically balanced, top to bottom, side to side. 

Raphael, Triumph of Galatea, 1514, fresco, 

750 cm × 570 cm (295 in × 225 in)

Raphael (pouring more wine, and a bit cocky by now)

Yes, yes. It's clear that someone has been studying my work. Are you about to make a particular point?

Newkirk

These are the characteristics of High Renaissance painting in Italy, and you are its exemplary practitioner. Now, this is what I love about your painting: your work is elegant, your line controlled. And generations of artists have admired these same qualities. I say this with a qualification: I also like art that seems completely opposed to what you have done. 

(six eyebrows are raised in unison).

5 ...

Newkirk leans forward as he continues:
The Renaissance, in French: Renaissance "re-birth", in Italian: Rinascimento, implies that something that died has been reborn – in this case, referring to the artistic achievements of Classical Greece and ancient Rome. And to a large extent I think that all of you would agree that those ancient periods served as your models for what could be achieved and perhaps surpassed in the arts. 

Unknown Greek artist, Nike of Samothrace, marble, c. 200–190 BCE

(for Emperor) Publius Aelius Hadrianus, The Pantheon, Rome, c. 126 C.E.

Historians of the 19th century seemed to have relegated the art of the Middle Ages to a dusty shelf unworthy to be considered in the same company as that created in the time before and after it. I think that more recently we have come a long way in correcting these arbitrary biases.

Robert of Luzarches, Thomas and Regnault de CormontAmiens Cathedral East End, 1220-1270 C.E. www.stanparryphotography.com

A number of "forgotten" ideas actually did have a kind of rebirth, a renaissance. Since Florence was such a large city – it had about 94,000 residents in 1350 – and because for so long its governing bodies, especially under the Medici, were sympathetic and even encouraging towards the arts, it became the hub of the Italian Renaissance. Latin was spoken in churches and universities. Architects like Brunelleschi showed renewed interest in the many Roman ruins easily available for study, and sculptors left behind the Gothic 'sway' pose we see at Rheims, for example, in exchange for the convincing contrapposto used by the ancients. 

Rheims Cathedral: the famous Smiling angel at left, and Mary, in sway pose, in the centre, about 1240

Donatello's nude David, though tiny in comparison with yours, Michelangelo, was the first life-sized, nude bronze in contrapposto pose since antiquity – a rediscovery not only of the pose, but also of the technique of lost-wax casting.

Donatello, David, c. 1430-50

Michelangelo
A small and beautiful bronze by a giant of a sculptor. What a wonderful man he was ... is?

Newkirk
You all appreciate the influence an older artist can have on someone younger. And each of you has seen how style and materials and technique evolve with every new generation. The same historians who put artists and time periods into categories, also like to make generalizations about the characteristics of style in each period. Again, according to these scholars, what we refer to as the Renaissance in Italy has an early phase, roughly beginning with Giotto (or perhaps even Duccio), a middle that corresponds generally to the quattrocento, and then a High Renaissance, the start of which is often linked with Da Vinci beginning his Milano painting of the Last Supper in about 1495. 

Leonardo Da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1494-1498

The High Renaissance, a brief 25 year period, and the entire Renaissance in Italy, are said to end in 1520 with the death of Raphael. Please excuse that indelicacy, Raphael.

Raphael (grinning with a shrug as Michelangelo leans back with a belly laugh, pointing at the younger man, while Bernini is content to smile, eyebrows raised.)
No apology is necessary, David. Although I'm not sure I would call this heaven (gestures at the room, the people, the world in general), if this is any indication, death is not so bad after all. (more laughter around the table)

Newkirk
Well, if it's any consolation, I think it's fair to say that each of you has approached immortality by leaving your creations for future generations. Then too, in your case Raphael, as I said earlier, your achievement is considered to be the pinnacle of the High Renaissance.

Michelangelo
But if, as you say, this Renaissance ended when he did (wiping the tears from his cheek and glancing at Raphael), then where does the rest of my time fit? And what about Gian Lorenzo?

Newkirk
I promise that I am getting to that, Michelangelo, however slowly.

Bernini
Slowly is fine. I'm in no hurry. I am enjoying the detours into unfamiliar areas of history.

4 ...

Newkirk (topping up glasses of red wine):
Each of you has fairly particular ideas about what constitutes the best in painting, and in sculpture and architecture ... at least that is my understanding; please correct me if I'm wrong.

Bernini (looks around the table and the others nod in agreement):
Fair enough. Go on.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, self-portrait as a young man, c. 1623

Newkirk:
Let me tell you just what it is that I like about the work each of you makes. First, I guess I need to explain some of the historical categories, for lack of a better word, into which art historians have placed you and your achievements.

Raphael, your painting has long been considered to be the epitome of what is now known as the High Renaissance style. The term "Renaissance" is not one that you yourselves would be familiar with, as it was not widely used to describe the period in which you live, until the mid to late 19th century. 

Michelangelo (putting down his glass and challenging Newkirk gruffly):
What are you saying? What do you mean "renaissance?" Are you trying to tell us that he (nodding towards a grinning Raphael) is the best, the epitome? Pah. (returns to his veal limone)

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 1474 - 1564. portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti 

Chalk portrait by Daniele da Volterra

Newkirk:
Well, not quite, Michelangelo. It's not as simple as that. You too are considered the "best," as is Gian Lorenzo here. Historians love to package periods in our past, to make those periods more what ? ... understandable, easily digested, comfortably compared with other periods? You may be familiar with the term Middle Ages, which roughly refers to the period between the fall of Rome, and Giotto's time. As well as referring to that time as the Middle Ages, we have called that same "in between" time, the Medieval period, since the late 19th century. I think what I am trying to say is that, for the sake of explaining things to students of the history of art, we have packaged each of you – I know that sounds terrible – within larger packages called Renaissance, or High Renaissance, or in the case of Gian Lorenzo, Baroque.

Raphael (tearing off a piece of bread from the small loaf on the table):
Very well, you have placed us in categories. I understand this, although I do not necessarily approve. Now, explain how each of us is "the best."

Raphael, Self Portrait c1504 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford )

3 ...

Michelangelo continues:
Just what is it you think we are doing for you, or with you, or in spite of you?

Newkirk (smiling):
Let me see if I can articulate this clearly. (pausing, he looks up at Raphael's painting, seems to be lost in thought. Bernini's "cough" startles Newkirk and brings his focus back to the situation at hand).

As long as I can remember, I have looked at art ... great art. In fact it's safe to say that I have seen a much richer variety of great art than any of you has seen. When I was a child, my parents – who knew nothing of art but were content to encourage my artistic impulse – would take me on occasion to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, 

http://www.adamson-associates.com

or to the Detroit Institute, which has a particularly wonderful collection, (then, aside) that is at least until they sell it off to pay the city's debts,

The Thinker, a sculpture by Auguste Rodin is seen outside the Detroit Institute of Arts.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

but that is another story. I still have a hazy memory of standing in front of those amazing Rivera murals, a scrawny 10-year-old looking up, mouth wide open.

Photograph by Jason Lacey, Flickr

And then there were local artists in my hometown who liked to encourage me. But I'm wandering – back to your question. It's only within the last few years that I have realized just how wonderful it is to have so many images of ground-breaking art swirling around in my memory. I mean, if you took all of those memories away, I'm not sure who I would be. So I am increasingly grateful to artists for the things they have made, and consequently I think about these people and their work almost constantly. (murmurs of assent from the others ... "yes, I know what you mean," "sure, of course," "uh huh, yes." Names are muttered - Donatello, Giotto, Perugino and others.) These artists have given me so much of who I have become that it feels almost as if they are keeping me company when I work in the studio, watching, commenting quietly, critiquing. And you, of course (gesturing toward the three) are often with me as I work.

Maybe it would make sense to give you a little background about art in my time, and to explain just how my own particular interests embrace that art, and that of historical periods as well. But it's getting late. Why don't we adjourn for some dinner. I know a place nearby where the food is good, and inexpensive.

Trattoria Vaticano Giggi

Everyone agrees. They walk quietly to the nearby Trattoria Giggi. Conversation resumes over dinner and wine.

2 ... 

Raphael:
Have we met this fellow?

Michelangelo:
Well, yes. You can't have forgotten the event in Venice? The three of us and hundreds of other artists from different centuries and many countries were invited to exchange ideas and pleasantries during Venice's most recent Biennale – an interesting, if naive idea. I kept to myself most of the time, sketching and re-acquainting myself with the city. No doubt you were partying and ... what do they call it now? ... networking! I call it something less polite. Anyway, it was this same artist, Newkirk, who arranged the Venice event.

Raphael:
Oh yes, that's right – so many great artists all in the city at once. I introduced myself to Brunelleschi when some friends and I met him strolling in the Giardini. What a genius. We all owe him a great debt as the man who systematized perspective drawing, to say nothing of his amazing achievements in architecture. But like you, Michelangelo, he seems to be a bit of a cazzo, not overly friendly.

Sculpture of Brunelleschi looking at his cathedral dome

Michelangelo:
Maybe he's simply such a keen observer that he recognized you for the powdered and scented fop you are, and escaped before you could bore him to death.

Bernini:
Oh come on now; you don't mean that Michelangelo. That gathering in Venice was quite enjoyable, I thought. But I'm curious now to know just how we can be of help to Newkirk. Where is he anyway? (at that moment, as though scripted and on cue, Newkirk enters the room hurriedly and flustered). Ah, David, there you are.

Newkirk
So sorry to have kept you waiting. How on earth did you manage to empty the room of tourists? I just could not escape the throng of people packed into that slowly moving parade that joins these rooms to the Sistine. My god, they won't let you out! I asked several of the security guards to show me an exit and they all shrugged and gestured that I must follow the crowd. Any truly claustrophobic person would really freak out.

Michelangelo:
(with a sarcastic edge) I'm sure that what you said just now makes sense in some language or other. How did we empty the room, you ask? It's amazing what powers one develops when he discovers that he is a character within the fictional musings of someone from five centuries in the future. We can, of course, do absolutely anything you choose to imagine. Don't you think that carrying us around in your head like this is a bit, uh ... eccentric would be the kindest description. You might prefer "weird." 

Newkirk (looking at his feet, blushing slightly and smiling)
A bit weird, maybe; but this is not a convention I invented. It has been used in creative writing quite frequently in fact. And here is a short passage I ran across the other day – this person's feeling of familiarity with an historical figure is, I think, even weirder than mine. "Massimo Ricci [is] an architect from an ancient Florentine family ..."

Ricci's identification with Brunelleschi has been so intense that at times he says he almost feels the great architect standing, silent and invisible, beside him. "We've developed a special, almost spiritual relationship," Ricci says in his throaty growl. "Sometimes I'm filled with gratitude for what he accomplished, what he left us. Other times he frustrates me so much, I tell him to go to hell." Having Brunelleschi's spirit whisper in your ear may be about the only way to know for sure how he worked. Secretive to the end, he carried many mysteries of his dome to the grave.

But Michelangelo, as someone whose creativity extended to sculpture, architecture, painting and even poetry, you of all people can understand the "weirdness" in the creative impulse. And, admit it, this is nowhere nearly the weirdest thing you've seen during your lifetime. Life is stranger than art, no?

Michelangelo:
Si vince! You win. Fine, so you are not a hopeless lunatic, we hope. But let us get down to business; I don't want to be stuck here forever. 

1 ...

The three men are quiet for the moment, standing together in the Stanza della Segnatura in the papal residence in Vatican City. Each silently appraises Raphael's fresco, Scuola di Atene, the School of Athens. Raphael breaks the silence.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, Scuola di Atene, fresco, 1509-10 (as seen from below, in the Stanza della Segnatura)

Raphael (smiling indulgently):
Ah, Michelangelo. Why do you always have to be such a grouch? At least our guest has the courtesy to be diplomatic when he feels inclined to criticize.

Bernini, laughing:
For as long as I have known the names of Michelangelo and Raffaello, I have imagined the squabbles between the two of you. Michelangelo, the gruff curmudgeon, and Raffaello, irresistibly charming. What a pleasure it is to meet you both (extends his hand over Michelangelo's shoulder in a comradely embrace). Come, come Signore Buonarroti.

Michelangelo:
Oh, bugger off, both of you. I didn't say it was terrible. But it still pisses me off to see these dainty forgeries of my figures in the Sistine. I mean just look what you've done with your image of me! He might as well be one of my prophets or sibyls. You and your pal Bramante, that bum. Just because he has the key to the chapel ... that's no excuse to let you in to copy my work! Do people think that it was you who revolutionized painting? Ha.

Michelangelo, the Prophet Jeremiah, Sistine ceiling, 1508-12

Michelangelo, the Prophet Daniel, Sistine ceiling, 1508-12

Raphael
But surely you know that my tribute to you in this painting is simply a small token of my great respect and admiration for you and your achievements.

Bernini
And, Michelangelo, it was inevitable that the Sistine – a work of such towering genius – would influence others. In many ways I owe my own success to you – just look at the muscular and contorted figures I have created.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Rape of Proserpina, 1621-22

 – and in recent decades, there have been so many who tried to follow your lead that the writers and historians now call the period Mannerist ... in the manner of Michelangelo. Pontormo and Fiorentino have made some marvellous paintings.

Rosso Fiorentino, Deposition, oil on panel, 1521

375 × 196 cm. Pinacoteca Comunale di Volterra, Italy 

Jacopo Pontormo, Deposition from the Cross, 1526-1528, Santa Felicita, Capponi Chapel, Florence.

Remember what happened to the cartoons for your Battle of Cascina? Artists from all over came to scavenge pieces from the drawings you left when you were called to Rome, and now they are lost forever. You cannot escape the fact that others have imitated or interpreted your style. How can that displease you?

Michelangelo, (quietly, blushing slightly, and with obvious distaste, he confesses):
I suppose ... I suppose I am pleased that others look to me for inspiration. But it never occurred to me that anyone would ever produce work as good as mine. That is what I find intolerable. It seems that a few, only a few, have almost equalled me. Perhaps (to Bernini) you are one of the few. (now scowling dismissively) Perhaps not.

(shaking off any evidence of humility) ... but whether Raphael's painting is cloying, or yours is kitschy (the others smile) should not be the focus of our discussion, I think. We may not be able to avoid talking about these unpleasant possibilities, but, as I understand it, we have been brought together to see what we can offer by way of advice to this fellow who paints in a Post-Modernist style. It's an interesting problem though. How can stylistic ideas from our time be incorporated into work that seems to bear no resemblance to anything we have created?

Bernini:
Well, yes ... and just as interesting is the suggestion that ideas from your work might co-exist with ideas from mine, or Raphael's. What would that look like?