Why did Michelangelo and Raphael loathe one another?
While they have been deified beyond compare, Michelangelo and Raphael were, like so many artists, driven by jealousy, ego and passion. When the latter died at the tender age of 37 – reportedly from having too much sex with his wife – he was buried in the Pantheon in an extravagant marble coffin bearing the following inscription: “Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die”. Huge crowds gathered to watch the burial. It must have seemed as though the whole of Rome had come to pay tribute to the young artist, who had been so revered by his contemporaries. Well, revered by all but one. Michelangelo, Raphael’s famous rival, did not pay tribute to Rome’s golden boy. Instead, he composed a letter accusing him of plagiarism.
This was not the first sign of bad blood between the pair. Michelangelo and Raphael were united by a common passion but divided by personality, with the Caprese painter regarding Raphael as an over-indulgent, arrogant young upstart and Raphael viewing Michelangelo as a puritanical old miser. Despite these tensions, they continually drew from one another’s work. Indeed, when Raffello Santi entered the blossoming Renaissance art world in the first years of the 16th century, it was evident that his methods were highly influenced by Michelangelo, who was already revered as a master painter and sculptor.
The intricacy and realism of Raphael’s work won him the favour of Pope Julius II, who commissioned him to paint the frescoes in his private library in the Vatican, much to the dismay of both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti. At that time, Michelangelo was hard at work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the success of which was somewhat overshadowed by adulation for Raphael’s work, which Buonarotti’s ceiling had inspired. Raphael had even been seen sneaking into the Sistine Chapel to watch Michelangelo at work.
Raphael had already overtaken Michelangelo as the Pope’s favourite. Even when Julius II died, Raphael remained the favourite of Pope Leo X, who is believed to have been charmed by the young painter’s warmth, charisma and vitality. This ignited great envy in Michelangelo, who was further incensed when a Roman ambassador announced that the Sistine Chapel had been decorated by Raphael, winning the painter countless commissions that should have gone to Michelangelo.
Even excluding this colossal blunder, it would appear Michelangelo and Raphael were doomed to be enemies. Their personalities were too distinct, their ways of life too far removed. Where Raphael was charming and indulgent to excess, Michelangelo was bad-tempered and monastic. As a devout catholic, he chose to sleep in his clothes and boots, eating only out of necessity. There’s also the question of his repressed homosexuality, which some critics have argued may have influenced the jealousy he felt toward his younger, sexually-liberated rival.
But even Michelangelo couldn’t deny Raphael’s talent. When asked to estimate the value of his painting The Prophet Isaiah, the Caprese painter told Johannes Goritz of Luxemburg, who considered the price too high, that the leg knee alone was worth every penny. In the wake of Raphael’s death, however, he resolved to reestablish the natural order: “What he had of art,” Michelangelo wrote, “he had from me”.