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Florentines inserted much stronger images in their work to settle old scores with the pope. Botticelli was the one who had the biggest grievance. After the execution of the conspirators who attacked the de’ Medicis, Botticelli had made a fresco showing their corpses hanging from the cathedral on public display. The painting bore sarcastic captions attributed to Lorenzo de’ Medici himself. As part of the official peace treaty between the Vatican and Florence in 1480, Sixtus insisted that this fresco be utterly destroyed. Botticelli was certainly not likely to forget or forgive that. So, in his panel of Moses’s Flight from Egypt, he inserted an oak tree—the symbol of the della Rovere family—over the heads of the pagan bullies that Moses chases away. Near the innocent lambs and the holy vision of the Burning Bush, however, he placed an orange tree bearing an oval of oranges—the family crest of the Florentine de’ Medicis. In Korach’s Mutiny, Botticelli cloaked the rebellious Korach in the blue and gold of the della Roveres, and in the far background showed two boats: a wrecked one for Rome, and a fine floating one with the flag of Florence proudly waving on top. In the Temptations of Christ, he inserted Sixtus’s cherished oak tree twice: a standing oak right next to Satan as he is unmasked and a chopped-up oak about to be burned in the Temple.
    Biagio d’Antonio, another proud son of Florence, did not want to be outdone. In his panel, the Parting of the Red Sea, he shows the evil Pharaoh wearing the della Rovere colors and a building looking suspiciously like the chapel itself being flooded by the raging red waters.
    The new chapel, still called the Palatine, was consecrated on the Feast of the Holy Assumption, August 15, 1483. The proud pope officiated. He was a happy man, totally unaware of the hidden insults heaped upon him.
    Sixtus IV was anything but a great strategist or diplomat. He had made many conflicting and impetuous alliances. He was clearly more concerned with increasing his family’s wealth and power than with strengthening the Church. Luckily, the Muslim invasion of Italy was halted by the unexpected death of Mehmed II, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, in the spring of 1481, but Sixtus took the credit for himself. He died a year later, still blissfully ignorant of how Lorenzo had managed to make a mockery of his attempt to have the chapel serve his egomania.
    In retrospect, it is remarkable to see how much the first artists got away with inside the Sistine Chapel. However, the real master of hidden messages would show up a generation later…and with much, much more to say.

THE LOST LANGUAGE OF ART
     

…and the understanding of their
prudent men shall be hidden.

—ISAIAH 29:14

     

    W HAT LORENZO’S ARTISTS were able to carry off in the Sistine Chapel is a powerful example of a practice with many parallels, even in modern times.
    During the Second World War, the Allied forces faced a grave threat in the Pacific theater of operations. The Japanese cryptographers were incomparably skilled at breaking every single code that the Air Force, Navy, and Marines could devise. The situation seemed lost, until the Allies hit upon two ingenious solutions.
    The first was to bring in a team of Native Americans from the Navaho tribe—the famous “wind talkers”—to translate all radio messages into their native tongue, a language completely unknown to the Japanese. The other took advantage of Japanese ignorance of American cultural trivia. To transmit numerical codes, the instructions began: “Take Jack Benny’s age, and then…” Only someone who had grown up in the United States, listening to the well-known comedian’s popular radio show, would be in on the reference. Jack Benny’s stage persona was known by all to be a tightwad, a horrible violin player, and a vain man—especially about his age. Even though the former vaudevillian was already in his middle years at that time, he would