I will teach the unjust your ways…

Let’s return again to the text on the back of the medal. The words that surround the image of the pilgrim: “DOCEBO INIQVOS V(ias) T(uas) E(t) IMPII AD TE CONVER(tentur)”. This short sentence is a fragment from Psalm 51:13 and translates to “I will teach the unjust your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you”. Whereas the front of the medal shows just a portrait of Michelangelo, basic information about him and the monogram of the artist, the back shows an entirely different story. The tone is very religious and serious and the image of the pilgrim continues this theme.

In his later life Michelangelo became a strictly religious man. Before this medal was issued he worked for multiple popes and was by no means unfamiliar with the Catholic faith, but the fanaticism he exhibited later in life was a change of pace nonetheless. He became fascinated by piety, especially in the form of the biblical figure of Nicodemus and ‘Nicodemism’. Nicodemians advocated for a simple celebration of the Christian faith and rejected the religious extravagance of golden statues and richly decorated altars common in Michelangelo's time.

At the end of his life, the aging Michelangelo identified with this rhetoric. The pilgrim on the medal, blind to the riches and beauty of this world, represents this idea. During most of his life, Michelangelo was the great artist many popes invited to decorate and embellish churches and chapels, yet in his old age he rejected this concept of extravagance entirely. He saw himself as the barefoot, blind pilgrim, someone cleansing himself from the sins committed during his lifetime to prepare for the eternity beyond. Whatever his sins may or may not have been, his wish to rectify them will always be part of his legacy in this medal. William E. Wallace, Michelangelo, God’s Architect. The Story of His Final Years and Greatest Masterpieces. (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2019), 140-41.