Federico Gonzaga was a real person, born in 1500 in the city-state of Mantua, in a castle with five hundred rooms. This portrait shows him at age 10, just as he left Mantua to serve as hostage to the pope in Rome.
Today a city and a province of Italy, Mantua for centuries remained independent by playing its neighbors against each other, including France to the northwest and the Holy Roman Empire to the north. In this map of Italy in 1494, Mantua is the tiny red triangle between Milan and Venice.
Federico’s father, Francesco II Gonzaga, was a renowned condottiero—sometimes translated as knight but closer to a mercenary, with his own private army. In 1509, Francesco was captured in battle, and imprisoned for months in Venice. Desperate for his release, his wife Isabella d’Este reluctantly agreed to send her ten-year-old son Federico to Rome as a hostage of the Pope Julius II, as a guarantee that Francesco would not defect to the pope's enemies in France.
We know so much about young Federico's life because his mother, Isabella d’Este, saved all the letters to and from his tutors in Rome. Isabella was one of the leading figures of the Renaissance. She commissioned paintings, operas, dances, poetry; she governed Mantua when her husband was gone, ordering her ladies-in-waiting to charm foreign diplomats; she set fashion standards so that the queen of France begged for advice. She felt Titian made her look too plump, and insisted he repaint this portrait.
Leonardo da Vinci drew Isabella when he lived in Mantua in 1499, a "painting with pencil" as it was called at the time. Apparently he promised to turn it into a painting with oil, for Isabella wrote him many prodding letters. Da Vinci took the drawing with him to France, and it is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Isabella often clashed with grown-up Federico, who became ruler of Mantua upon the death of his father in 1519. He refused to marry the woman she'd picked. Instead he built the fabulous Palazzo del Tè for his mistress, with portraits of his favorite horses and a domed fresco of Greek gods fighting Titans.
Titian captures 25-year-old Federico's spark and vanity. Bee discovers a copy of this portrait in Herbert Bother's office.
Doubtless Federico absorbed his bad behavior from Julius II, known as "il papa terrible," the thunderstorm pope. Hot-tempered, vain and ruthlessly ambitious, Julius II considered himself the new caesar of Rome, conquering cities, ordering vast new construction, and terrifying his enemies. Here Raphael depicts Julius II being carried in state on a sedan chair in "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple," in the pope's palace in Rome.
Raphael included portraits of many other people in his work, including of course Federico in "The School of Athens." (Fresco means paint applied to wet cement—a painting technique that is highly difficult but that lasts lasts for centuries once dry.)
In the fresco, Federico stands at the left behind the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd. There is some dispute over whether this boy is in fact Federico, but note the similarity to his other portraits.
Michelangelo, too, painted Julius II, depicting him as the prophet Zachariah on the Sistine ceiling. The cupid is making a gesture that was considered very rude at the time—a not-so-subtle criticism.
Built in the 1400s and larger than a basketball court, the Sistine Chapel was meant for large crowds such as the election of a new pope. Julius II ordered Michelangelo to paint the ceiling with scenes from the Old Testament. Michelangelo, who considered himself a sculptor and sculpture the highest form of art, resented the job; he believed his enemies orchestrated it to see him fail. This photo shows Zachariah/Julius II at the far end in orange and green.
Michelangelo worked on the ceiling for four years, grumbling constantly, and unveiled it in 1512. In this letter, he illustrates how he must stand to work, his neck aching.
In Da Vinci's Cat, Bee sees the ceiling when it’s half-done, and focuses particularly on the scene of Adam and Eve expelled from Eden. Note Eve’s muscles: Michelangelo used only male models.
Michelangelo had to buy his own paint, and the color blue cost almost as much as gold because it came all the way from Afghanistan. He used as little as he could.
Bee also studies beautiful “Delphica,” the oracle of Delphi, who looks anxiously to her left. She’s painted on the curve of the wall around the corner from Zachariah/Julius II, so that she's looking toward him. I think Michelangelo did this intentionally as a way of saying “watch out for that guy!”
Finally we come to Leonardo da Vinci's actual cats. He loved cats, and often sketched them. This page depicts 23 cats plus one squirming dragon.