Is it true that in 1505 Pope Judaeus hired Michael Angelo to paint a picture of Jesus…?
In 1505, Pope Julius II summoned Michelangelo to Rome, but it was to design the pope’s tomb, a project that the artist worked on (with many interruptions) for 40 years. It was not completed at the time of his death. It was common for artists of the time to use the faces of wealthy and powerful patrons, or their relatives, as subjects in paintings. In the religious paintings of the time, you may find whole families who wielded religious/political power portrayed as angels, saints, apostles. It is entirely possible that such a one would be used as the face of Christ, though I could find no certain reference to support the idea.
Nope, wrong artist and no pope by that name existed. Michelangelo’s great work was the Pietà as he was first and foremost a sculptor. Pope Julius II commissioned him to do several works, then changed his mind, then changed his mind again and basically drove Michelangelo to the brink. In fact, the sculptor almost left Rome for Constantinople and the Eastern Church. But he was a great friend of the Medici family of Florence, the uber-rich family that gave us the advances in economics of profiting from financial risk, several Popes and some of the world’s great art. The Medici’s basically “paid” for the Renaissance; Florence was a hub of exploration and hence opportunity for financiers to make money on the risks of the shipping industry. So Michelangelo worked in this environment. It wasn’t uncommon for artists to use the rich and famous for models of artwork. The Popes of that era were living long after the building of the famed Gothic cathedrals like Reims or Chartes. These monuments to
