The Sculptor

“We see such a dynamic in Michelangelo’s sculptures as well-the majority of which are male. The figure of the woman is only incidental for him, and Michelangelo’s lack of understanding of the female anatomy-such as his awkward placement of breasts and the rendering of female figures with large, manly frames-is evident throughout his career. For example, in another one of his famous sculptures, the Rome Pietà, we see the Madonna not only with oddly shaped breasts and an unusually large frame out of proportion with the Christ figure, but the entirety of her body is covered in heavy robes-almost as if Michelangelo is hiding her.”

“Yes,” said Markham. “You have some lovely photographs of it in your book.”

“I’m sorry if I’m getting off track, Sam, but what I’m saying is that the male figures in Michelangelo’s work are always exquisitely rendered with a kind of detail and authenticity out of proportion to the female-detail that indisputably proves the artist’s obsession with the male anatomy. And so it is also through such flawless rendering that we see the classical dynamic of ancient Greece played out not only in the final execution of Michelangelo’s sculptures, but also in his experience of sculpting them, for it was only through his work that Michelangelo could come close to communing with what he saw as divinely inspired beauty-a beauty, for him, accessible only by the sculptor’s hand.”

“So, if I follow you, you’re saying that, for Michelangelo, it was as much the experience of carving as it was the finished product?”

“Yes. Think of the torment the artist must have gone through, born as he was with an inherent appreciation, an inherent love for the male-both spiritually and sexually. A love that he saw bestowed upon him by God and intrinsically woven into the very nature of his gift-that miraculous gift, given only to the sculptor, to release the figures slumbering in the stone. And thus it was the very nature of this gift that was both Michelangelo’s sanctuary and his prison. This was a gift bestowed upon him by a God who at the same time forbade him to commune with his figures in the flesh-a God who condemned the kind of deep, spiritual love that Michelangelo so desperately craved with Tommaso Cavalieri; a God who gave Michelangelo the power to create beauty, but, in essence, not the permission to touch it.”

“So then Michelangelo is also speaking about himself. That he, too, is a figure trapped in the stone-a figure imprisoned in the marble shell of his homosexuality, and that only through the act of carving could he, for lack of a better phrase, make love with another man.”

“You could put it that way, yes.”

Markham was silent for a long time-a silence in which Cathy thought she could hear the special agent’s brain ticking; a silence that made Cathy so uncomfortable that she told Markham the gist of her Socratic dialogue on the sofa-neglecting, of course, to tell him that he had played Socrates to her Gorgias.

“Yes,” said Markham when she had finished. “In your book you quite often contrast Michelangelo’s artistry, as well as the world of the Italian Renaissance, with the artistic output of our culture today-specifically with regard to the media. How it dominates our culture, how it dictates what is important, but most significantly, how it physically shapes our intellect-literally, our physiological capacity not only to process information, but also to appreciate beauty. You speak of the detrimental effects of the Internet, of television and movies, and how they are altering, actually conditioning our brains not only to focus for shorter periods of time and with less efficiency, but also to accept a standard of excellence that gets progressively lower and lower. In essence, you are saying that, today, the quality of the marble from which we as human beings are shaped is meager stuff compared to the metaphorical marble of Michelangelo’s time.”

“That’s a lovely way of putting it, yes.”

“And only the sculptor’s hand-whether it’s Michelangelo’s or the twisted psychopath’s who murdered Campbell and Wenick-can free us from the marble prison that is the media. Our society today, we children of this celebrity infatuated culture, we are the figures slumbering in the stone.”

“Yes, Sam. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“That would explain why he chose Campbell, and perhaps even that little boy. Or maybe, as you experienced in your examination of the statue, why he chose to portray them as Michelangelo’s Bacchus in the first place; a sculpture in which the god, the celebrity-by virtue not only of his size and orientation but also of the mythology he carries with him-dominates our thoughts.”

“It would also explain his contacting me via the quotes, don’t you think? Like the sculpture, the medium itself was part of his message-just as the quote at the beginning of my book was part of mine. In essence, the killer was saying to me, ‘I understand.’”