The "Warrior Pope," greatest art patron of the High Renaissance
A Roman pope of the High Renaissance, called the "Warrior Pope" (Il Papa Terribile) — he donned armor and led armies in person, and also single-handedly drove the most glorious burst in the history of Western art. It was he who compelled Michelangelo to paint the Sistine ceiling, hired Raphael to decorate the papal rooms, and ordered the old St Peter’s torn down and rebuilt by Bramante and Michelangelo. Without this formidable, demanding patron, the Rome of the High Renaissance might look otherwise — he proved that great art, too, needs a great paymaster.
Michelangelo wanted to refuse the Sistine ceiling, but Julius II would not yield an inch, pressing him again and again; the two quarreled repeatedly over schedule and pay, and the pope is said to have struck the artist with his staff. It was this near-tyrannical insistence that forced out the Genesis, the summit of human painting — great patronage is sometimes also a kind of oppression.
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