Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512. Though now the fresco, depicting 343 figures, is one of the artistic works that Michelangelo is best known for, at the time he was reluctant to take on the project, since he was better known as a sculptor. He wrote a miserable poem to a friend about the job, with the incredible opening line “I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture.” The end of the poem, though, is dark:
My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.
This has turned out not to be true. The Sistine Chapel opened up the possibility for Michelangelo to become a painter, and a painter he became. He returned to paint the Last Judgment on the Sistine Chapel altar wall in 1536.
The Sistine Chapel frescoes would not have happened if not for the patronage of Pope Julius II. Pope Julius requested the project—originally frescoes of the twelve apostles—and footed the bill. Later, two other popes oversaw the completion of the ceiling. Michelangelo, in turn, agreed to work on the project but only with free creative rein, leading to the famous depiction of the creation of man, the other dramatic biblical scenes that adorn the ceilings, and the portraits of biblical prophets and classical sibyls. Though he complained about his job and pushed back on his patron’s requests, Michelangelo did the work, and was paid for it for years. The result was the synthesis of the patron’s and artist’s visions that we see today.
Julius II was one of a long line of medieval and Renaissance patrons of the arts. Though much can be and has been said about the dubious history of some patronage practices (the sources of the Church’s wealth in the Renaissance and the self-glorifying nature of some of the patronized artwork among them), the fact remains that we owe many of the great works of European art to the practice of patronage. Patrons commissioned specific pieces of art or, in some cases, retained an artist to their court, where the artist would be available for any artistic requests of the patron. Without patronage, by which an artist was paid to pursue his art for a certain period of time, we would not have the Pietà, the painting The School of Athens, the Divine Comedy, or the Mona Lisa.
Nowadays, an artist’s life looks very different. Art is often commoditized, for better or for worse; rather than being forced to make paintings he did not want to do, Michelangelo in the modern age might well have kept on making sculptures. Artists create works of art designed and intended to sell, or they create them as their own artistic endeavors and don’t sell them. Best-case scenario, they are faithful to their own visions and sell their art. Worst-case scenario, they conform their ideals to what they think they will sell and don’t sell them after all. But in all these scenarios, art is a product that changes hands, something that people buy and sell.
Art as product conforms to supply and demand or to the sensibilities of the artist, with frequent tension between the two. But the resurgence of patronage has changed this somewhat: some people are supporting artists in their work, whether they are podcasters or writers or poets or visual artists, through platforms like Patreon or Substack.
This frees up the artists to do the work that calls to them, but it also restores the push-and-pull that Julius II and Michelangelo experienced. Patrons can exert influence on an artist’s work, nudging him toward the art they think he should make. While in a worst-case scenario an artist can be trapped in audience capture, where he presents only what his audience wants from him, this dynamic can also lead to the refinement of the artist’s work—to Michelangelo becoming a painter.
Substack, in particular, exemplifies this—writers have free rein to make things free or paid, and people can subscribe to their work if they like it or move on if they don’t. At the same time, writers are encouraged to build a relationship with their readers and to tailor their work to what interests those readers, because those readers are supporting them.
In that spirit, Dubious Analogies is now unrolling a patronage system. If you just got here (and even if you didn’t), I’ve got great news: you’re now subscribed to a free monthly Substack, and there are six free essays for you to read already, which I’m linking below.
I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from my early subscribers indicating that the work is better when I spend more time on it. But the State Department, like the Medici family, is currently patronizing me to work on a PhD in theology, the imagination, and the arts, so that’s the priority at the moment. With both these things in mind, I’ve decided to write two essays a month: one free and one paid. The next one will be free. Patron-only content will start appearing next week, with an exclusive analogy on October 28.
If you are not into patronage, I’m thrilled you’re here anyway and you’ll hear from me once a month. But if you, like Julius II, want to have some influence on my work and perhaps even someday enable one person on this planet to devote her full attention to making dubious analogies, you can subscribe to double your analogies for $5/month. Paid subscribers will also get the ability to comment on pieces, a chance to vote in polls/surveys I’ll send out to help direct future work, and stickers, eventually (vote in a poll about that soon). I’ve got a lot of ideas—roundtables, commissioned analogies, perhaps audio—but more importantly I’m interested in hearing yours.
I’m hoping that the patronage system can here become that dance between artist and audience that worked so well in the case of the Sistine Chapel, that between what you want to read and what I want to write we can build something exceptional. I’m not asking you to “buy” Dubious Analogies as a finished product (a corollary to all this is that the worse you think it is, the more you should be a patron). Instead, by asking for your patronage, I am asking for your influence.
Come back in two weeks: to find out why children’s literature is like the AI system DALL-E.
In honor of: Lizzo playing James Madison’s 200-year-old crystal flute, here is the story of a saxophonist who smuggled secret information disguised as sheet music into the USSR.
In retrospect, the last six weeks of Dubious Analogies: