In 1999, art historian Antonio Forcellino began restoration work on one of Renaissance man Michelangelo Buonarroti's most famous statues, the figure of Moses on the tomb of the "warrior pope," Julius II (1443-1513), in Rome's Church of St. Peter in Chains. As he labored, Forcellino noticed a number of anomalies in the work, and in some of the tomb's other sculptures.

The startling theory about the artist's secret religious views that Forcellino eventually developed to account for these oddities is detailed in his biography, published in an English translation in Britain earlier this year as "Michelangelo: A Turbulent Life," and forthcoming in the U.S. His hypothesis also provides the basis for the thought-provoking "Secrets of the Dead" program "Michelangelo Revealed," which premieres on PBS stations May 13 (check local listings).

As Forcellino explains in Fabrizio Ruggirello's documentary --- which appealingly captures both Rome's artistic treasures and its beautiful cityscape --- he believes Michelangelo was a member of an informal group of church reform advocates known as the Spirituali. This circle included two powerful cardinals, Italian Ercole Gonzaga and Englishman Reginald Pole, as well as poet Vittoria Colonna, the scion of one of Rome's most august families.

Widespread ecclesiastical corruption had already contributed to the start of the Protestant Reformation and many faithful Catholics were demanding an end to such abuses. But the script contends that the Spirituali went further, agreeing with Luther's view of justification by faith alone and downplaying the role of the clergy and the sacraments in favor of direct personal enlightenment.

The first half of the 16th century was a complex era religiously, and the film occasionally paints it with overly broad strokes, as when it equates the sale of indulgences with the sale of forgiveness. That may have been a widespread perception at the time, but it was an erroneous one nonetheless, since indulgences presuppose that sins have already been confessed and absolved.

As for the Spirituali, their ideas may have been controversial, but were not as yet necessarily heretical, since the Council of Trent --- at which both Cardinals Pole and Gonzaga served as papal legates --- did not definitively articulate the Catholic understanding of justification, in contrast to Luther's teaching, until 1547.

While Forcellino's more sensational claims --- essentially identifying Michelangelo as a secret Protestant and a hidden enemy of the church his art served so effectively --- need to be carefully weighed, there are genuine insights into the launch of the movement that would eventually become the Counter-Reformation.

---John Mulderig