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Title: Michelangelo

Author: Edward C. Strutt

Release date: November 7, 2022 [eBook #69303]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: George Bell & Sons, 1904

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHELANGELO ***







[Frontispiece: THE DAVID.]



  Bell's Miniature Series of Painters



  MICHELANGELO

  BY

  EDWARD C. STRUTT



  LONDON
  GEORGE BELL & SONS
  1908




  First Published, January, 1904.
  Reprinted, 1908.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


SOME BOOKS ABOUT MICHELANGELO

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHRONOLOGY OF THE ARTIST'S LIFE

LIFE OF MICHELANGELO

THE ART OF MICHELANGELO

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF THE ARTIST'S CHIEF WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES




SOME BOOKS ABOUT MICHELANGELO


"Carte Michelangiolescheinedite."  Milano, 1865.

"Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti," by A. Condivi.  Pisa, 1823.

"Michelangelo," by H. Knackfuss.  Berlin, 1895.

"Michel Ange," by E. Ollivier.  Paris, 1892.

"The Lives and Works of Michelangelo and Raphael," by Quatremere de
Quincy.

"Michelangelo," by L. von Scheffler.  1892.

"Michelangiolo in Rom, 1508-1512," by A. Springer.  Leipzig, 1875.

"Life and works of M. A. Buonarroti," by Charles Heath Wilson.
London, 1876.

"Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti," by John Addington Symonds.
London, 1893.

"Michelangelo Buonarroti," by Sir Charles Holroyd.  London, 1903.

"An account of the drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo in the
University Galleries of Oxford," by Sir J. C. Robinson.

"Michael Angelo," by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower.  London, 1903.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


THE DAVID _Accademia, Florence, Frontispiece_

PORTRAIT OF MICHELANGELO _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_

THE CREATION OF MAN _Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome_

TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI _New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence_

CENTRAL GROUP OF THE LAST JUDGMENT _Sistine Chapel, Vatican, Rome_

THE MADONNA DELLA PIETÀ _St. Peter's, Rome_

THE HOLY FAMILY _Uffizi Gallery, Florence_

THE MOSES _San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome_




CHRONOLOGY OF MICHELANGELO'S LIFE


1475. Born at Caprese.

1488. Is apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandajo.

1489-92. Studies sculpture under the patronage of Lorenzo il
Magnifico.

1504. Enters into competition with Leonardo da Vinci.

1505. Goes to Rome at the invitation of Pope Julius II.

1508. Begins painting ceiling of Sistine Chapel.

1512. Completes it.

1521. Commences Medicean Tombs in San Lorenzo.

1529. Fortifies Florence against Charles V.

1535-41. Paints Last Judgment.

1547. Begins building Cupola of St. Peter's.

1564. Dies in Rome.




THE LIFE OF MICHELANGELO

In the quaintly written diary of Messer Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, a
well-to-do Florentine citizen, the following entry, dated March 6th,
1475, may still be found: "To-day there was born unto me a male
child, whom I have named Michelagnolo.[1]  He saw the light at
Caprese, whereof I am Podestà, on Monday morning, 6th March, between
four and five o'clock, and on the 8th of the same month he was
baptized in the church of San Giovanni."  Messer Lodovico had been
appointed _Podestà_, or Governor, of Chiusi and Caprese in the
Casentino by Lorenzo de Medici only a few months before penning this
memorandum, so that, by a strange caprice of fate, it was here, in
the little town overshadowed by the rugged Sasso della Verna,
hallowed by the ecstatic visions of St. Francis of Assisi, and not in
Florence, in the Athens of the Italian Renaissance, where resurrected
Paganism ran riot and triumphed, that the longest and most glorious
career in the history of art and of human endeavour began.


[1] This is the archaic form of _angelo_.  The name is also sometimes
spelt _Michelangiolo_, but I have thought it advisable to adopt the
modern and more generally accepted _Michelangelo_.


Vasari and Condivi, Michelangelo's pupils and enthusiastic
biographers, maintain that the Buonarroti family was closely related
to the great house of the Counts of Canossa, a conviction fully
shared, curiously enough, by the artist himself, who rather prided
himself on his aristocratic connection.  But recent genealogical
researches have proved beyond all doubt that, although of gentle
birth (both his father and his mother, Madonna Francesca di Miniato
Del Sera, coming of ancient Florentine stock), Michelangelo could not
in reality lay claim to even distant ties of kinship with the Canossa
family.

On the expiration of his term of office as Podestà of Caprese, which
extended little over a year, Messer Lodovico returned with his family
to Settignano, the picturesque little village built on a vine-clad
slope overlooking Florence, where, in an old-fashioned mansion
nestling among olive trees and surrounded by a well-cultivated
_podere_, many generations of the Buonarroti had lived and died.
Before leaving Caprese, however, the proud father had the child's
horoscope cast, and greatly did he rejoice when the astrologer
announced that a singularly lucky combination of the planets had
presided over the birth of his boy, who was destined "to perform
wonders with his mind and with his hands," a prophecy which was amply
fulfilled.



FIRST FLORENTINE PERIOD

The removal of the Buonarroti family to Settignano, the little
village almost exclusively inhabited by stonemasons and workers in
marble, exercised a most decisive influence on the child's future
career.  Indeed, Michelangelo himself used to say half jestingly,
that as he had been given out to nurse to a stonemason's wife, the
mania for sculpture must have entered his blood together with the
milk which he had sucked as a babe.  A mallet and a chisel and bits
of marble were the only toys that the infant Michelangelo cared for,
and it is recorded of him that when he grew up to be a sturdy boy of
ten he could use his tools almost as skilfully as his foster-father
himself.  He soon became more ambitious, and would pass whole hours
with chalk and charcoal, trying to copy the marble figures and
ornaments plentifully strewn about.

For it was a busy time at Settignano, whose hundreds of stone-carvers
were hardly able to cope with the numerous commissions which poured
in upon them from the merchant princes of Florence, anxious to rival
Lorenzo the Magnificent in the building and decoration of splendid
palaces.  A spirited drawing of a faun by Michelangelo's boyish hand
may still be seen on a wall of the Buonarroti Villa.

Messer Lodovico did everything in his power to discourage these
marked artistic tendencies, and in order the better to uproot what he
regarded as a worthless inclination, he sent the boy to a
grammar-school in Florence, away from the dangerous _milieu_ of
Settignano, with its unceasing din of hammer and chisel on
reverberating marble, which was sweet music to Michelangelo's ear.
But although Maestro Francesco da Urbino, to whose care Messer
Lodovico had entrusted his son, frequently had recourse to the most
persuasive and forcible arguments, they were entirely lost on young
Michelangelo, who had instinctively drifted into the company of the
garzoni and pupils of leading Florentine artists, and sadly neglected
his books in order to devote himself with growing enthusiasm to the
study of art.

Amongst his new friends was Francesco Granacci, a pupil of Domenico
Ghirlandajo, who often lent him drawings to copy, and took him to his
master's _bottega_ whenever any work was going forward from which he
might learn.  "So powerfully," says Condivi, "did these sights move
Michelangelo, that he altogether abandoned letters; so that his
father, who held art in contempt, often beat him severely for it."
But it soon became apparent that blows and persuasion were equally
unavailing, and Messer Lodovico finally gave up the hopeless
struggle, apprenticing his thirteen-year-old son on April 1st, 1488,
to Domenico and David Ghirlandajo, reputed the best painters of the
time in Florence.  Although a mere child, Michelangelo was evidently
already able to make himself useful in the studio, for instead of
paying a certain sum for his apprenticeship, as was usually the case,
it was stipulated that he should receive twenty-four florins, about
£8 12_s._, during the three years of its duration.

Michelangelo's first picture was a strikingly faithful copy of Martin
Schongauer's famous _Temptation of St. Antony_, which he painted with
a realistic force considered wonderful for a child of his age.  A
number of anecdotes illustrative of the precocity of the boy's
genius, are related by Condivi and by Vasari.  "Michelangelo," says
the latter, "grew in power and character so rapidly that Domenico was
astonished seeing him do things quite extraordinary in a youth, for
he not only surpassed the other students, but often equalled the work
done by his master.  It happened that Domenico was working in the
great chapel of Santa Maria Novella, and one day when he was out
Michelangelo set himself to draw from nature the scaffolding, the
tables with all the materials of the art, and some of the young men
at work.  Presently Domenico returned, and saw Michelangelo's
drawing.  He was astonished, saying 'this boy knows more than I do;'
and he was stupefied by this style and new realism; 'a gift from
heaven to a child of such tender years.'"

Michelangelo derived very little advantage from his apprenticeship to
Domenico Ghirlandajo, who was actually jealous of his pupil and gave
him little or no assistance in his studies.  He may have picked up
some practical knowledge, however, transferring cartoons for his
master in the church of Santa Maria Novella, painting draperies and
ornaments, mixing colours for fresco painting, and generally
fulfilling the rather menial duties which fell to the lot of an
artist's apprentice in those days.  The boy had no fixed plan or
method of study, but devoted himself principally to drawing, in which
he soon acquired a boldness and security of line never attained by
his master, whose faulty cartoons Michelangelo often had the courage
to correct.

It was in the gardens of the Medici at San Marco, where Lorenzo the
Magnificent had collected many antique statues and decorative
sculptures, that Michelangelo finally discovered his real artistic
vocation, and here he would spend many hours every day, assimilating
the Hellenic spirit which emanated from the masterpieces before him.

Lorenzo's principal object in establishing a museum of antique
sculpture at San Marco had been to raise Florentine sculpture from
the state of comparative neglect into which it had fallen since the
death of Donatello.  He therefore appointed one Bertoldo, who had
been foreman of Donatello's workshop, keeper of the collection, with
a special commission to encourage and instruct the young men who
studied there.  But there was evidently a great lack of students, for
Lorenzo had recourse to Domenico Ghirlandajo, requesting him to
select from his pupils those he considered the most promising, and
send them to work in the garden of San Marco.  Domenico, nothing loth
to get rid of his two most ambitious apprentices, selected Francesco
Granacci and Michelangelo, and it was thus that the latter came under
the influence of Donatello's school.  Of Bertoldo, who must be
considered Michelangelo's first instructor in the art of sculpture,
and who doubtless had a great share in shaping his genius, very
little is known beyond Vasari's statement that "although he was old
and could not work, he was none the less an able and highly reputed
artist."  The magnificent pulpits of San Lorenzo, begun by Donatello
and completed by Bertoldo, amply suffice to confirm Vasari's
eulogistic estimate.

Under such a master Michelangelo made rapid progress, and by his
first attempt at sculpture, a mask of a grinning Faun, attracted the
attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who took the keenest interest
in the art school which he had founded.  So struck was Lorenzo with
the boy's genius, that he prevailed upon Messer Lodovico, not without
the greatest difficulty, to entrust the talented young sculptor to
his care.  Vasari tells us that "he gave Michelangelo a good room in
his own house with all that he needed, treating him like a son, with
a seat at his table, which was frequented every day by noblemen and
men of great importance."

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MICHELANGELO.]

Michelangelo's daily companions at this hospitable board were such
men as Pico della Mirandola, surnamed "the prince of wisdom,"
Marsilio Ficino, the expounder of Plato, and the poets Luigi Pulci
and Angelo Poliziano.  It was the latter who suggested the subject of
Michelangelo's first important work, a bas-relief, now in the Casa
Buonarroti, representing the _Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae_.
It is a singularly powerful composition, conceived and carried out
with a freedom and originality little short of miraculous in a boy of
fifteen.  The struggling groups of combatants, instinct with life and
energy, the masterful treatment of anatomical problems, and the
already profound knowledge of the human frame, reveal the future
author of the _Last Judgment_.

Michelangelo himself, when at the height of his artistic greatness,
used to say that he had never quite fulfilled the splendid promise
contained in this youthful work of his.  Apart from its intrinsic
merit, this bas-relief is interesting as illustrating Michelangelo's
complete independence from the school and methods of Donatello.  His
bold and original genius had sought inspiration directly from the
antique, and the _Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae_ might easily
be taken for a fragment from some Roman sarcophagus.  In view of
these very pronounced characteristics, it is difficult to understand
why another bas-relief, also in the Casa Buonarroti, representing a
seated Madonna with the Infant Jesus, and chiefly notable for its
almost servile imitation of Donatello's manner, should be ascribed by
most critics to this same period.  Indeed, the execution and design
of this _Madonna and Child_ are so inferior as to render it a work of
extremely doubtful authenticity.

Although he applied himself principally to the study of sculpture,
Michelangelo continued to devote many hours every day to drawing,
and, like most young artists of his age, he drew and studied
assiduously in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of the Carmine,
containing the famous frescoes of Masaccio and his followers.
Conscious of his own superiority, Michelangelo was, it appears, in
the habit of frankly criticizing the work of his fellow-students in
the Brancacci Chapel, and one of these, named Piero Torrigiani, a
brutal and proud fellow, got so angry one day that he hit
Michelangelo a formidable blow on the nose, breaking the cartilage
and disfiguring his critic for life.  For this act of temper
Torrigiani was banished from Florence, but it is pleasant to know
that Michelangelo successfully interceded with Lorenzo on behalf of
the man who had assaulted him.

Michelangelo had just completed the _Battle of the Centaurs and
Lapithae_ when he lost his best friend and munificent patron, to whom
he had become deeply attached.  On April 8th, 1492, Lorenzo the
Magnificent died at Careggi, sincerely mourned, not only in Florence,
but throughout Italy.  The generous encouragement which he gave to
art and letters, the power and splendour which he bestowed on
Florence in exchange for her lost liberty, more as an infatuated
lover dowering a wayward bride than as a conqueror imposing his will,
the consummate ability displayed in his diplomatic dealings with the
other Italian States, these were the principal merits which justified
the proud title of _Il Magnifico_, conferred on him by his
contemporaries, and which caused Lorenzo's death to be regarded as a
public calamity throughout Italy.

So much grief, says Condivi, did Michelangelo feel for his patron's
death, that for some time he was quite unable to work.  He left the
Medicean palace, which had been his home during three years, and
returned to his father's house.  But his love for art was stronger
than his grief, and after a few weeks, when he was himself again, he
bought a large piece of marble that had for many years been exposed
to the wind and rain, and carved a Hercules out of it.  This statue
was placed in the Strozzi Palace, where it stood until the siege of
Florence in 1530, when Giovanni Battista della Palla bought it and
sent it into France as a gift to King Francis I.  It has
unfortunately been lost.

At this time Michelangelo applied himself most diligently to the
study of anatomy, a profound knowledge of which is apparent in all
his subsequent works.  He was indebted to the Prior of Santo Spirito
for many kindnesses, amongst others for the use of a room where he
dissected the subjects, for the most part executed criminals, which
the Prior placed at his disposal.  "Nothing," says Condivi, "could
have given Michelangelo more pleasure, and this was the beginning of
his anatomical studies, which he followed until he had completely
mastered the secrets of the human frame."

It is surprising that artists of the Cinquecento should have enjoyed
privileges for practically studying anatomy which were denied to
physicians.  When the famous Dr. Hunter saw Leonardo da Vinci's
anatomical drawings and their descriptions, preserved in the library
of George III., he discovered with astonishment that the artist had
been a deep student, "and was at that time the best anatomist in the
world."  Michelangelo, as Vasari tells us, "dissected many dead
bodies, zealously studying anatomy," whereas Cortesius, professor of
anatomy at Bologna, who wrote a century later, complains that he was
prevented finishing a treatise on "Practical Anatomy" in consequence
of having only been able twice to dissect a human body in the course
of twenty-four years.  To please his friend the Prior, Michelangelo
carved a crucifix in wood, a little under life size, which was placed
over the high altar of the church of Santo Spirito, but which has
since been lost.

Piero de' Medici, the Magnifico's son and successor, had inherited
none of his father's brilliant qualities.  He was proud and insolent,
and his coarse tastes and manners soon lost him that popularity which
had been Lorenzo's stepping-stone to greatness.  Michelangelo, who
had been his companion as a boy, and whom he persuaded to accept his
hospitality, was ill at ease in the house of a Prince who could so
far insult the sensitive artist as to boast that he had two
remarkable men in his establishment, Michelangelo and a certain
Spanish groom remarkable for his athletic prowess, thus placing both
on the same level.

Too proud to tolerate such treatment, and foreseeing Piero's
approaching fall, Michelangelo left Florence early in the year 1494
and went first to Venice, where he failed to find employment, and
thence to Bologna.  Here he was hospitably received by a gentleman
named Messer Gian Francesco Aldovrandi, who not only paid a fine of
fifty Bolognese lire to which the impecunious young sculptor had been
condemned for having neglected to provide himself with a passport,
but invited him to his house and honoured him highly, "delighting in
his genius, and every evening he made him read something from Dante
or from Petrarca, or now and then from Boccaccio, until he fell
asleep."

While staying with Aldovrandi, and thanks to his recommendation,
Michelangelo completed an unfinished statue of San Petronio in the
church of San Domenico and carved a statuette of a kneeling angel
holding a candlestick for the arca or shrine of the saint, begun by
Nicolò di Bari.  It is a beautiful and highly finished work, which
was greatly admired and for which he received thirty ducats.  His
success aroused the fierce jealousy of the Bolognese sculptors, and
it was under fear of personal violence from the native craftsmen, who
accused him of taking the bread out of their mouths, that
Michelangelo hastily left Bologna in the spring of 1495 and returned
to Florence.

In November of the preceding year Piero de' Medici had had to fly
from the city over whose destinies he was so unfit to preside, and
when Michelangelo returned to Florence he found that Savonarola had
established a popular government.  The fiery Dominican, with his
inspired eloquence, his ascetic fervour and an energy bordering upon
violence, was exactly a man after Michelangelo's heart, and
Savonarola's impassioned and gloomy appeals made an indelible
impression upon him.  The _Last Judgment_ in the Sistine Chapel might
almost be regarded as a pictorial rendering of one of the terrible
frate's sermons.

Although only twenty years of age, Michelangelo, of whom it has been
said "that he was never young," was made a member of the General
Council of Citizens.  But his political duties did not take up much
of his time, for to this period must be ascribed the statue of a
youthful St. John the Baptist, executed for Lorenzo di Pier
Francesco, a cousin of the exiled Medici, and now in the Berlin
Museum.  It is a charming but somewhat effeminate figure, differing
strangely from the powerful and rugged style to which we are
accustomed in Michelangelo's works.  Lorenzo, however, was delighted
with it and became a staunch friend and admirer of the young
sculptor, whose studio he frequently visited.  On one occasion he
found Michelangelo at work on a _Sleeping Cupid_ so perfectly
modelled and conceived in a spirit so truly Hellenic, as to appear a
masterpiece of antique art.  Lorenzo suggested that Michelangelo
should make it look as if it had been buried under the earth for many
centuries, so that the statue, being taken for a genuine antique,
would sell much better, and the artist, more out of professional
pride than in hopes of gain, followed his friend's suggestion.  _The
Sleeping Cupid_ was sent to Rome, where Raffaelo Riario, Cardinal di
San Giorgio, bought it as an antique for two hundred ducats, an
evidence not so much of the Cardinal's ignorance as of Michelangelo's
careful study of classical art.

This work was indirectly the cause of Michelangelo's first coming to
Rome, for the Cardinal having discovered that his Cupid had been made
in Florence was at first very angry at having been fooled, and
insisted on the dealer, Baldassare del Milanese, taking back the
statue and refunding the two hundred ducats (of which sum, by the
way, Michelangelo had only received thirty ducats), but when his
anger had subsided, the prelate, who was a liberal patron of art,
shrewdly concluded that a sculptor who could so well imitate the
antique was worth encouraging, and he forthwith despatched one of his
gentlemen to Florence for the express purpose of discovering the
mysterious forger and bringing him to Rome.

The Cardinal's emissary, after much fruitless search, chanced upon
Michelangelo in his studio, and was so struck with the masterful
manner in which the young sculptor made a pen-drawing of a hand in
his presence, that he began to cross-examine him discreetly about his
other works, and gradually learned all the story of the Cupid.
Michelangelo, who longed to see Rome, which his visitor extolled as
the widest field for an artist to study and to show his genius in,
readily consented to leave Florence.  In fact it appears that he was
not very popular among his fellow-citizens owing to his former
intimacy with the exiled Medici, and so, towards the end of June,
1496, he set foot in Rome for the first time.  As to the _Sleeping
Cupid_, nothing is known about its fate beyond the fact that it fell
into the hands of Cesare Borgia at the sack of Urbino in 1592, and
was by him presented to the Marchioness of Mantua, who in
acknowledging the gift describes it as "without a peer among the
works of modern times."

Michelangelo was greatly disappointed in his hopes of obtaining
lucrative employment from Cardinal Riario.  Indeed, the only work
which he did during the first few weeks of his sojourn consisted in a
cartoon for a _Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata_, to be painted
by the Cardinal's barber!  Fortunately for the young artist a wealthy
Roman gentleman, Messer Jacopo Galli, came to his rescue,
commissioning a _Bacchus_, which is now in the National Museum at
Florence, and a _Cupid_, believed by some to be the statue now in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington.  Of all Michelangelo's
works, this _Bacchus_ is certainly the most realistic and least
dignified, representing as it does a youth in the first stage of
intoxication, holding a cup in his right hand and in his left a bunch
of grapes, from which a mischievous little Satyr is slily helping
himself.

The statue was greatly admired in Rome and was the means of bringing
Michelangelo to the notice of the French king's envoy in Rome,
Cardinal De la Groslaye de Villiers, who commissioned him to carve a
marble group of _Our Lady holding the dead Christ in her arms_, for
the price of four hundred and fifty golden ducats.  The contract,
dated August 26th, 1498, is still preserved in the Archivio
Buonarroti, and concludes with these words: "And I, Jacopo Gallo,
promise to his Most Reverend Lordship that the said Michelangelo will
furnish the said work within one year, and that it shall be the most
beautiful work in marble which Rome to-day can show, and that no
master of our days shall be able to produce a better."  We shall see,
when describing this magnificent group, that Jacopo's boast and
promise were more than justified.

While in Rome, Michelangelo kept up an active correspondence with
Messer Lodovico, who, it appears, found himself in great financial
straits at this time.  Being a most dutiful and affectionate son, the
young sculptor sent every available scudo of his money to succour his
father and his three younger brothers, namely Buonarroto, born in
1477, whom he placed in the Arte della Seta; Giovan Simone, born in
1479, who led a vagabond life and was a source of continual trouble,
and Sigismondo, born in 1481, who became a soldier.  The letters
which Michelangelo, in the midst of his artistic labours, found time
to write home, full of tender solicitude and good advice and
invariably containing a remittance, give us a touching insight into
the beautiful and disinterested character which lay hidden underneath
his stern and decidedly unattractive exterior.

He lived not only very economically, but penuriously, in order the
better to help his family, and it appears that his health suffered
not a little from these privations.  His father heard of it, and
wrote a letter, dated December 19th, 1500, in which these passages
occur: "Economy is good, but above all do not be penurious; live
moderately and do not stint yourself, and avoid hardships, because in
your art, if you fall ill (which God forbid), you are a lost man.
Above all things, never wash; have yourself rubbed down, but never
wash!"

When Michelangelo returned to Florence in the spring of 1501, the
fame of the great works which he had accomplished in Rome had already
preceded him, and he was generally admitted to be the first sculptor
of the day.  Commissions came pouring in upon him, including one from
Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini, who afterwards became Pope Pius III.,
for fifteen statues of saints to adorn the Piccolomini Chapel in the
Duomo of Siena.

But he completely neglected this work in order to devote himself with
characteristic ardour to a more congenial task, that of carving a
colossal statue of David out of a huge block of marble which had been
previously spoiled by an inferior artist and abandoned as useless in
the Opera del Duomo.  Surmounting the enormous technical difficulties
which he had to contend with, Michelangelo succeeded, after nearly
two years of hard work, in evolving from the crippled block of marble
one of the greatest masterpieces of modern art.

On the 14th of May, 1504, _Il Gigante_, as it was called by the
Florentines, left Michelangelo's workshop and was dragged with much
difficulty to the Piazza della Signoria, where it stood until the
year 1873, when it was removed to the hall of the Accademia delle
Belle Arti.  It has fortunately suffered very little from its
exposure in the mild Florentine air, but the left arm was shattered
by a stone during the tumults of 1527.  The broken pieces were
carefully collected, however, by Vasari and a young sculptor,
Cecchino De' Rossi, who restored the arm in 1543.  Another giant
David in bronze was commissioned to Michelangelo in 1502 by the
Republic, who wished to make a present of it to a French statesman,
Florimond Robertet, but although this work is known to have remained
for more than a hundred years in the château of Bury, near Blois, it
has since disappeared.

While wrestling with the difficulties of his _David_, Michelangelo
found time to accomplish many other important works, including two
marble tondi in bas-relief, the first of which is now in the National
Museum at Florence and the other in the Royal Academy, London.  Both
represent the _Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John_, and
although lacking in finish they deserve to rank among the finest of
Michelangelo's works.  The composition is beautiful and simple, the
modelling bold and the expression of the Madonna singularly noble and
striking.

In April, 1503, Michelangelo was commissioned by the Operai of the
Duomo to carve out of Carrara marble twelve colossal statues of the
Apostles, one to be finished each year, and a workshop was specially
built for the sculptor in the Borgo Pinti, but the contract could not
be carried out, the unfinished _St. Matthew_, now in the courtyard of
the Accademia, in Florence, being the only work which resulted from
this commission: "And in order not altogether to give up painting,"
says Condivi, "he executed a round panel of Our Lady for Messer
Agnolo Doni, a Florentine citizen, for which he received seventy
ducats."  This tondo, representing _The Holy Family_, with nude
figures in the background, is now in the Uffizi Gallery, and apart
from its originality and artistic merit, it is especially interesting
as being the only easel picture which may be attributed with absolute
certainty to Michelangelo.

In August, 1504, Michelangelo was commissioned by his friend and
protector, Piero Soderini, Gonfaloniere of the Republic, to decorate
a wall in the Sala del Gran Consiglio in the Palazzo Vecchio, a most
flattering compliment to the young artist, as Leonardo da Vinci, then
at the height of his fame, was already engaged in preparing cartoons
for the opposite wall.  Leonardo's designs represented the famous
_Fight for the Standard_, an episode of the battle of Anghiari,
fought in 1440, when the Florentines defeated Niccolò Piccinino.
Michelangelo selected for his subject an episode in the war with
Pisa, which gave him an opportunity to display his wonderful
draughtsmanship and his profound knowledge of the human frame.

Benvenuto Cellini, who copied the cartoon in 1513, just before its
mysterious disappearance, describes it as follows: "Michelangelo
portrayed a number of foot soldiers who, the season being summer, had
gone to bathe in the Arno.  He drew them at the moment the alarm is
sounded, and the men, all naked, rush to arms.  So splendid is their
action that nothing survives of ancient or of modern art which
touches the same lofty point of excellence; and, as I have already
said, the design of the great Leonardo was itself most admirably
beautiful.  These two cartoons stood, one in the Palace of the
Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope.  So long as they remained
intact they were the school of the world.  Though the divine
Michelangelo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope Julius,
he never rose halfway to the same pitch of power; his genius never
afterwards attained to the force of those first studies."

Leonardo, after having begun painting a group of horsemen on the
wall, abandoned the task with characteristic fickleness, and
Michelangelo having been summoned to Rome in the beginning of 1505 by
Pope Julius II., left his work unfinished.  It is said that a
worthless rival named Baccio Bandinelli, envious of Michelangelo's
greatness, destroyed the famous cartoon of Pisa.  A sketch of the
whole composition may be seen in the Albertina Gallery at Vienna, but
perhaps the most complete copy of the cartoon is the monochrome
painting belonging to the Earl of Leicester, at Holkham Hall.



THE TRAGEDY OF THE TOMB

Michelangelo little suspected when he left Florence that he was
bidding adieu for ever to his happiness and peace of mind.  Hitherto
he had had to deal with generous tyrants, such as the Medici, with
rivals whose envy was shorn of dangers by their cowardice, and with a
protector such as Piero Soderini, whom Machiavelli taunted with being
a weakling only fit for the Limbo of Infants.  It was not until he
came to Rome that he was brought face to face with a man blessed or
cursed with indomitable energy, boundless ambition and a morbid
restlessness which was probably the resultant of these two forces.
Both Julius II. and Michelangelo were what their contemporaries
called _uomini terribili_, proud, passionate, given to sudden bursts
of fury, yet generous withal and truly great.  For two such men to
live together in uninterrupted peace and goodwill would have been a
sheer impossibility.

After some months of hesitation, Julius II. finally decided upon the
best way of employing Michelangelo's talents.  He resolved to have a
magnificent monument erected during his lifetime, and confided the
task to the young sculptor.  In an incredibly short time Michelangelo
prepared his great design, which pleased the Pope so much that he at
once sent him to Carrara to quarry the necessary marble.  During the
eight months which he spent at Carrara, Michelangelo blocked out two
of the figures for the tomb, so anxious was he to begin his colossal
work.

In November Michelangelo returned to Rome, where a house and spacious
workshop were as signed to him near the Vatican, and in January,
1506, most of the marble, which had come by water, was spread all
over the Piazza of St. Peter's: "This immense quantity of marble,"
says Condivi, "was the admiration of all and a joy to the Pope, who
heaped immeasurable favours upon Michelangelo, and was so interested
in his work that he ordered a drawbridge to be thrown across from the
Corridore to the rooms of Michelangelo, by which he might visit him
in private."

Michelangelo's original project of the tomb subsequently underwent so
many modifications and reductions, that Condivi's account of what the
monument should have been is deeply interesting: "The tomb was to
have had four faces, two of eighteen braccia, that served for the
flanks, so that it was to be a square and a half in plan.  All round
about the outside were niches for statues, and between niche and
niche terminal figures; to these were bound other statues, like
prisoners, upon certain square plinths, rising from the ground and
projecting from the monument.  They represented the liberal arts,
each with her symbol, denoting that, like Pope Julius, all the
virtues were the prisoners of Death, because they would never find
such favour and encouragement as he gave them.  Above these ran the
cornice that tied all the work together.  On its plane were four
great statues; one of these, the Moses, may be seen in San Pietro ad
Vincula.  So the work mounted upward until it ended in a plane.  Upon
it were two angels who supported an arc; one appeared to be smiling
as though he rejoiced that the soul of the Pope had been received
amongst the blessed spirits, the other wept, as if sad that the world
had been deprived of such a man.  Above one end was the entrance to
the sepulchre in a small chamber, built like a temple; in the middle
was a marble sarcophagus, where the body of the Pope was to be
buried; everything worked out with marvellous art.  Briefly, more
than forty statues went to the whole work, not counting the subjects
in mezzo rilievo to be cast in bronze, all appropriate in their
stories and proclaiming the acts of this great Pontiff."

As the monument would have covered an area of about 34½ feet by 23
feet, the church of St. Peter, although restored by Nicholas V., was
found to be too small to contain it, and Julius II. decided to
rebuild the whole church on a more magnificent scale, after designs
prepared by Bramante.

The eager enthusiasm with which Michelangelo attacked his colossal
task was not destined to last long.  One day a quantity of marble
arrived from Carrara, and Michelangelo, desiring at once to pay the
freight and porterage, went to ask the Pope for money, but found his
Holiness occupied.  He paid the men out of his own pocket, but when
he returned on several succeeding days he found access to the Vatican
more difficult than usual, and finally learned that the Pope had
given orders that he should not be admitted.  Julius II., always
entangled in warlike adventures, was evidently short of money and
could not or would not pay Michelangelo at the time.  The proud and
short-tempered sculptor flew into a passion, and exclaiming that
"henceforward the Pope must look for him elsewhere if he wanted him,"
took horse at once and returned to Florence, vainly pursued by five
messengers from the Pope.

It was thus that the gigantic work on which he had set his heart was
interrupted for the first time, and the curtain rose on the first act
of that "tragedy of the tomb," as Condivi appropriately calls it, by
which the rest of Michelangelo's life was darkened.

He had no sooner arrived in Florence than he received an imperative
order from the Pope to return immediately to Rome under pain of his
displeasure, but Michelangelo's blood was up, and he disregarded
alike the threats of the Pope and the exhortations of Piero Soderini,
who was greatly embarrassed, having received three official Briefs
from Julius II., demanding that the artist should be sent back either
by fair means or by force.  Fearing actual violence, Michelangelo had
made up his mind to go to Constantinople, but the Gonfaloniere
dissuaded him, saying "that it was better to die with the Pope than
to live with the Turk."

In the meantime, Julius II., after subduing Perugia, had entered
Bologna in triumph on November 11th, 1506, and he had not been many
days in the town before he despatched another urgent message to the
Signoria asking for Michelangelo to be sent to him.  The artist
finally gave in, and proceeded to Bologna, armed with a most
flattering letter from the Signoria, but feeling "like a man with a
halter round his neck."  His misgivings, however, were unfounded, for
Julius II., who was only too glad to have won his artist back,
welcomed Michelangelo most cordially and commissioned him to make a
great portrait statue of him in bronze, to be placed in front of the
church of San Petronio.  And thus were these two men, who had so many
points in common that they regarded each other with mutual fear, like
giants conscious of their strength, reconciled for the time.

[Illustration: THE CREATION OF MAN.]

The Pope returned to Rome in very good spirits, leaving Michelangelo
in Bologna to finish the colossal statue, which was only completed on
February 21st, 1508, after much hard work and many disappointments,
chiefly caused by the ignorance of the bronze-founder, who cast it
faultily.  It is greatly to be regretted that this work, which cost
Michelangelo over a year of unremitting labour, should have been
destroyed in 1511, when the Bentivogli returned to Bologna and drove
out the Papal Legate.  A huge cannon, ironically called La Giulia,
was cast out of the broken fragments.  Michelangelo, having completed
his task, hurried back to Florence, and three days after his arrival
Messer Lodovico emancipated his son from parental control, as we
learn from a document dated March 13th, 1508.

It appears that Michelangelo intended to settle down for several
years in his native city in order to decorate the Sala del Consiglio,
for which he was to receive three thousand ducats, and to carry out
other important commissions, including that of twelve statues of the
Apostles for Santa Maria del Fiore, but "his Medusa," as he called
Julius II., would not suffer him to remain in peace, and summoned him
to Rome.



THE SISTINE CHAPEL

The artist obeyed, hoping that the Pope would allow him to go on with
the tomb, but, during his absence, Michelangelo's rivals had
persuaded Julius II. that it was unlucky to have a monument erected
during his lifetime, and that it would be much better to set
Michelangelo to work on the vault of the Sistine Chapel.

This they did maliciously, because they never suspected that
Michelangelo was as great a painter as he was a sculptor, and hoped
that he would prove himself inferior to the task, and thus lose the
Pontiff's favour.  "All the disagreements which I have had with Pope
Julius," wrote Michelangelo to Marco Vigerio, "have been brought
about by the envy of Bramante and of Raphael of Urbino," who were the
cause that his monument was not finished during his lifetime.
Bitter, unscrupulous rivalry was the leper-spot that marked the
Italian Renaissance, especially at the Papal Court.

Michelangelo would gladly have declined the commission, for which he
considered himself unfit, but, seeing the Pope's obstinacy, he
reluctantly set to work on May 10th, 1508.  The difficulties which he
had to surmount were enormous, but he was not a man to be frightened
by obstacles, however formidable.  Knowing little or nothing of the
technicalities of fresco painting, Michelangelo at first called six
Florentine painters to his aid, including his old friends Francesco
Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini.  But he was too exacting, and aimed
at an ideal of perfection which his assistants could never attain, so
that in January, 1509, he sent them all away, and destroying the work
done by them, shut himself alone in the chapel to wrestle
single-handed with his gigantic task.

The result fully justified his confidence in his own powers.  To
attempt an adequate description of the vault of the Sistine Chapel in
this little book would be a hopeless task.  The stupendous frescoes
which adorn it, although described in hundreds of volumes, still
afford material for much original study and research, but we must
here content ourselves with a mere enumeration of the principal
motives which go to make up this grand pictorial symphony.

Michelangelo chose for his subject the Story of the Creation, the
Fall of Man, the Flood, and the Second Entry of Sin into the World,
illustrated by a series of nine compositions on the central space of
the ceiling.  Twenty magnificent nude figures, representing Athletes,
decorate the corners of these central compositions, and support
bronze medallions held in place by oak garlands and draperies.  The
shape of the ceiling is what is commonly called a barrel vaulting
resting on lunettes, six to the length and two to the width of the
building.  The second part of the decoration demonstrates the need
for a scheme of Salvation, promised by the Prophets and Sibyls, whose
majestic figures are painted alternately in the triangular spaces
between the lunettes, in the lower part of which is a series of
wonderful groups representing the ancestors of Christ.

Michelangelo, although engaged on a great pictorial work, never
considered himself as anything but a sculptor, and followed in
painting the same systems that he would have adopted in his own art.
Sir Charles Holroyd, in his recent most valuable contribution to
Michelangelesque literature, very justly remarks: "When Pope Julius
prevented Michelangelo from going on with his beloved project of the
tomb and made him paint the vault, the master set to work to produce
a similar conception to the tomb in a painted form.  The vault became
a great temple of painted marble and painted sculptures raised in mid
air above the walls of the chapel.  The cornices and pilasters are of
simple Renaissance architecture, the only ornaments he allowed
himself to use being similar to those he would have used as a
sculptor.  Acorns, the family device of the della Rovere, rams'
skulls, and scallop shells, and the one theme of decoration that
Michelangelo always delighted in--the human figure.  The Prophets and
Sibyls took the positions occupied by the principal figures designed
for the tomb, like the great statue of Moses.  The Athletes at the
corner of the ribs of the roof were in place of the bound captives,
two of which are now in the Louvre, and the nine histories of the
Creation and the Flood fill the panels like the bronze reliefs of the
tomb."

Michelangelo must have toiled with almost superhuman energy at his
great work.  In a letter to his favourite brother, Buonarroto, dated
October 17th, 1509, he writes: "I live here in great distress and
with the greatest fatigue of body, and have not a friend of any sort,
and do not want one, and have not even enough time to eat necessary
food."  This is not surprising when we remember that as early as the
1st of November, 1509, the first and most important part of this
colossal work, which comprises three hundred and ninety-four figures,
the majority ten feet high, was exposed to view, and greatly admired
by the Pope, who, being vehement by nature and impatient of delay,
insisted upon having it uncovered, although it was still incomplete.

Such was the impatience of Julius II. that on one occasion he
threatened to have Michelangelo thrown down off the scaffolding if he
did not hasten the completion of the work, and even went so far as to
strike the artist with a stick.  Thus urged, Michelangelo uncovered
his work on the 1st of November, 1512, although he used to say in
after years that he had been prevented by the hurry of the Pope from
finishing it as he would have wished.  "Michelangelo's fame and the
expectation they had of him," says Condivi, "drew the whole of Rome
to the chapel, whither the Pope also rushed, even before the dust
raised by the taking down the scaffolding had settled."



SECOND FLORENTINE PERIOD

Julius II. died on February 21st, 1513, four months after the
completion of the great work with which his name will remain as
indelibly associated as that of Michelangelo.  Shortly before his
death he had ordered that the tomb which Michelangelo had begun
should be finished, and had instructed his nephew, Cardinal Aginense,
and Cardinal Santi Quattro, to see that everything should be carried
out according to the original designs.  But his executors, finding
the project far too grand and expensive, had it altered, so that
Michelangelo began all over again.

He set to work with great energy and goodwill, determined to finish
the monument now that its completion appeared to him almost as a
sacred debt to the memory of his dead patron.  But the strange
fatality that presided over the tragedy of the tomb again interfered.
Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who had been Michelangelo's friend and
fellow-pupil at the Medicean Court, succeeded Julius II. on the
pontifical throne and assumed the name of Leo X.  No sooner were the
magnificent festivities over with which he celebrated his accession,
than he sent for Michelangelo and ordered him to proceed to Florence
to ornament the façade of San Lorenzo with sculpture and marble work.
It was in vain that Michelangelo protested, saying that he was bound
by contract to finish the tomb before undertaking any other
commission, for Leo X. was as self-willed and imperious as his
predecessor, and "in this fashion," says Condivi, "Michelangelo left
the tomb and betook himself weeping to Florence."

It is not surprising that the artist should have wept tears of bitter
disappointment, for we learn from a letter to his brother Buonarroto,
dated June 15th, 1515, that at this time not only had he completed
the Moses and the Captives in marble, but the panels in relief were
ready for casting.  Had he been left in peace, Michelangelo would
certainly have finished the monument to Pope Julius in its modified
form in half the time which he wasted quarrying marble from Carrara
and Pietrasanta for the façade of San Lorenzo.  For over two years
Michelangelo was engaged in the tedious work of roadmaking and
quarrying.  In August, 1518, he wrote: "I must be very patient until
the mountains are tamed and the men are mastered.  Then we shall get
on more quickly.  But what I have promised, that will I do by some
means, and I will make the most beautiful thing that has ever been
done in Italy if God helps me."

He had evidently warmed to his work, and it is melancholy to think
that Fate again interposed to prevent its completion.  Giuliano de'
Medici, the Pope's only brother, and Lorenzo, his nephew, having died
at this time, Leo X. ordered Michelangelo to interrupt the façade of
San Lorenzo and to build a new sacristy in which he proposed to erect
a monument to their memory.  The document exonerating Michelangelo
from all duties and obligations in connection with the façade is
dated March 10th, 1520.

Michelangelo only now found time to carry out a commission which he
had received seven years previously from a Roman gentleman, Metello
Vari, namely a nude statue of Christ bearing the cross.  It was
finished in the summer of 1521 and sent to Rome, the extremities
being left in rough to prevent their being broken during the journey.
Pietro Urbino accompanied the statue to Rome, with orders to complete
it, and very nearly spoiled it by his careless and inferior
workmanship.  The _Risen Christ_, now in the church of the Minerva,
is one of the most noble and majestic of religious statues in
existence; the torso and arms are particularly fine, but the hands
and feet, which were spoiled by Urbino, are stumpy and defective.

Leo X.'s pontificate, which, although short, was one of the most
glorious and eventful in the history of art, came to an abrupt
conclusion on December 1st, 1521.  By a strange irony of fate, the
magnificent patron of art and letters was succeeded by a pious and
simple-minded Dutch prelate, who regarded statues as pagan idols, and
said that the Sistine Chapel was "nothing but a room full of naked
people."  There is little doubt that he secretly longed to have it
whitewashed.  Fortunately for art and artists, his pontificate was of
brief duration, and in 1523 Cardinal Giulio de' Medici was elected in
his stead, under the name of Clement VII.

In the following year Michelangelo finished the new sacristy of San
Lorenzo, and immediately set to work on the Medicean tombs.  But he
was constantly worried and interrupted by new commissions from the
Pope, who wanted him, among other things, to build a library in which
to place the famous collection of books and manuscripts begun by
Cosimo de' Medici: "I cannot work at one thing with my hands and at
another with my brain!" exclaimed the artist in despair.
Nevertheless he undertook to build the library, and carried on both
works at the same time, constantly urged on by Pope Clement, who
wrote to him in an autograph letter: "Thou knowest that Popes have no
long lives, and we cannot yearn more than we do to behold the chapel
with the tombs of our kinsmen, and so also the library."

These were troublous times for Italy.  After the disastrous battle of
Pavia, in which he had lost everything "except honour," Francis I.
concluded with the Sforza of Milan, with Venice, Florence, and Pope
Clement VII. a league against Charles V., which proved fatal to all
who took part in it.  In 1527, a rabble of German and Spanish
soldiers of fortune, led by the renegade Connétable de Bourbon, took
and pillaged Rome, and the Pope himself was besieged in the Castle of
Saint Angelo for nine months.  The Florentines availed themselves of
this opportunity to shake off the despotic yoke of the Medici, but
two years later, Charles V. concluded the peace of Barcelona with
Clement VII., one of the conditions being that he should re-establish
the Medicean rule in Florence.  But the citizens would not give up
their newly-acquired liberty without a struggle, and prepared for a
desperate resistance.  Michelangelo was appointed Commissary-General
of defence, and showed himself worthy of the confidence placed in him
by his fellow-citizens.

It was in a great measure due to the skill with which he fortified
the town, and more especially the hill of San Miniato, that Florence
was enabled to withstand the attacks of the Imperial troops for
twelve months.  But the treachery of Malatesta Baglioni, who
commanded the troops of the Republic, paralyzed the efforts of
Michelangelo and of its other brave defenders, and in August, 1530,
the city fell.  Alessandro de' Medici returned in triumph to
Florence, and would certainly have beheaded Michelangelo, who only
saved himself by hiding in the bell-tower of San Nicolò beyond the
Arno, until the first fury of his enemies was over.

In spite of his important military duties, Michelangelo continued
working at the Medicean tombs during the siege, and also painted a
panel picture, representing _Leda and the Swan_, originally intended
for the Duke of Ferrara, but which he afterwards gave to his pupil
Antonio Mini, together with many cartoons and drawings, that he might
dower two sisters with the proceeds.  It was sold to the King of
France and hung at Fontainebleau until the time of Louis XIII., one
of whose ministers ordered it to be destroyed as an improper picture.
According to another version, however, it was only hidden, and
afterwards brought to England.  The _Leda and the Swan_ now in the
National Gallery is regarded by some as the damaged and much restored
original of Michelangelo's famous picture.  Clement VII.'s anger soon
abated, and Michelangelo was able to return to his work, thanks
chiefly to the kind offices of Baccio Valori, the Papal envoy in
Florence, to whom the sculptor presented, out of gratitude, the fine
statue of _Apollo,_ now in the National Museum at Florence.

[Illustration: TOMB OF LORENZO DE' MEDICI.]

The Medicean tombs progressed but slowly, for all this time
Michelangelo was worried almost to death by the Duke of Urbino, a
nephew of Julius II., who insisted upon his finishing the famous
tomb, while Clement VII., on the other hand, threatened the artist
with excommunication if he neglected his work in the new sacristy for
anything else.  Probably the first statue to be finished was the
beautiful Madonna suckling the Child Jesus, represented as a strong
boy straddling across her knee.  It is one of Michelangelo's noblest
works, possessing all the majestic simplicity of his earlier Madonnas
enhanced by greater power.

To give an adequate description of the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo
de' Medici would be impossible within the narrow limits of this
little book.  Suffice it to say that the princes are represented in
the garb of ancient warriors, each seated in a niche above a
sarcophagus, on which two allegorical figures recline.  Lorenzo
appears to be plunged in sorrowful meditation; at his feet recline
the colossal statues of _Evening_, represented by a powerful male
figure, apparently on the point of falling asleep, and _Dawn_,
symbolized by a beautiful young woman in the act of awaking, not to
joy and hope, but to another day of sorrow.  The beauty of this last
figure cannot be described; it is such as the imagination of the
ancient Greeks might have endowed a goddess with.  The statue of
_Dawn_ was finished in 1531, soon after the fall of Florence and the
return of the Medici, and there is little doubt that Michelangelo
intended his mournful figures to express sorrow at the loss of
Florentine liberty, rather than at the death of the two young
princes.  The same idea is evident in the tomb of Giuliano, with the
two figures of _Night_, symbolized by a sleeping woman of singular
beauty and power, and _Day_, a vigorous bearded giant just rising to
his work and looking over his shoulder as if dazzled by the glare of
the rising sun.  Although the head of _Day_ is unfinished, it is a
striking example of how Michelangelo was able to give life and
expression to his work from the first stroke of his chisel.



THE LAST JUDGMENT

In 1534 Michelangelo left Florence for the last time.  His proud and
independent spirit was unable to tolerate Alessandro's petty tyranny.
The unfinished bust of Brutus, now in the Bargello, a vigorous and
striking piece of work, is another proof of his intense longing for
liberty.  On arriving in Rome he found that Clement VII. had died two
days previously, and that Paul III., Farnese, had been elected Pope.

Michelangelo had finally come to an understanding with the executors
of Julius II., the agreement being that he should make a tomb with
one façade only, using the marbles already carved for the
quadrangular tomb and supplying six statues from his own hand, the
rest of the work to be completed by other artists under his
supervision.  He therefore hoped to finish the tomb which had
embittered thirty years of his life, but once more he was doomed to
disappointment, for Paul III. immediately appointed him chief
architect, sculptor and painter of the Vatican, with a pension of
1,200 golden crowns, and ordered him to carry out a commission which
Clement VII. had given him shortly before his death.  It was no less
a task than to paint the end wall of the Sistine Chapel.  Prayers and
remonstrance were alike unavailing, and the doors of the Sistine
closed once more upon the master, not to be opened again until the
Christmas of 1541, when his _Last Judgment_ was uncovered "to the
admiration of Rome and of the whole world."

Thirty years earlier Michelangelo had depicted the Creation on the
vault of this same chapel; he now took for his subject the final doom
of all things created.  The colossal work which cost him eight years'
labour is a magnificent but almost terrifying pictorial rendering of
the _Dies Irae_, the Day of Wrath, when "even the just shall not feel
secure."  Awe and terror are equally apparent among the spirits of
the blessed crowding round the dread Judge, and on the despairing
countenances of the condemned souls dragged down by hideous demons
towards the infernal river, where Charon in his boat "beckons to them
with eyes of fire and beats the delaying souls with uplifted oar."
The rendering of the subject is thoroughly Dantesque, and very
different from the conventional treatment of the same theme by all
preceding artists.  The composition, however, and indeed several
individual groups and figures, remind us forcibly of the Campo Santo
at Pisa.

Although all true artists received this work with enthusiasm, as
Vasari says, and came from every part of Italy to study it,
Michelangelo's enemies, including Pietro Aretino, the most immoral
writer of his age, criticised it as a highly improper painting,
because most of the figures were nude.  So incensed was Michelangelo
at this that he revenged himself by painting one of his critics,
Messer Biagio da Cesena, as Minos surrounded by a crowd of devils.
Some years later Paul IV. obtained Michelangelo's consent to partly
drape most of the figures, and the work was done with commendable
discretion by Daniele da Volterra, who thereby earned the nickname of
Il Braghettone, or the breeches-maker.

Unfortunately the smoke from the altar candles and censers, and the
dust of centuries have darkened and almost completely destroyed the
original colour of this fresco; ominous cracks have also appeared in
several places, but it is to be hoped that time will spare one of the
greatest masterpieces of modern art for many centuries to come.

No sooner had Michelangelo finished the _Last Judgment_, than Paul
III. set him to work on the side walls of the chapel which Antonio da
San Gallo had just completed, and which is now known as the Cappella
Paolina.  Michelangelo was nearly seventy years old at this time, and
fresco painting over a large surface is a fatiguing task even for a
young man, but the veteran artist obeyed, and in 1549 he completed
what was to be his last pictorial work, the two frescoes representing
the _Conversion of St. Paul_ and the _Martyrdom of St. Peter_.

The composition of these pictures is as masterly as ever, and the
drawing, especially in the fore-shortened figures, faultless, but for
the first time we are aware of something cold and unnatural, very
different from the glorious life and power with which the frescoes of
the Sistine literally glow.  Michelangelo was getting old, and even
his Titanic frame could not withstand the insidious attacks of time.
He was seventy-five years of age when he carried these frescoes to
completion, and he himself confessed to Vasari that he did so "with
great effort and fatigue."  Nevertheless he found sufficient time and
strength to complete the famous monument of Pope Julius II. during
the intervals of his fresco painting, and in 1545 the tragedy of the
tomb finally came to an end.

It must have been with feelings of mingled relief and bitterness that
Michelangelo surveyed the much modified tomb in the church of San
Pietro in Vincoli.  The mighty design which had fired his youthful
ambition forty years previously had dwindled down to a comparatively
unimposing monument, but everybody will agree with Condivi when he
says that "although botched and patched up, it is the most worthy
monument to be found in Rome, or perhaps in the world; if for nothing
else, at least for the three statues that are by the hand of the
master."  Of the central figure, representing Moses, we shall have
occasion to speak later on; the remaining statues by Michelangelo to
which Condivi alludes are two female figures of rare beauty,
representing Active and Contemplative Life.  The rest of the tomb was
finished by Raffaello da Montelupo and by other assistants under the
master's supervision.

Having, as best he could, fulfilled his sacred pledge to the memory
of Julius II., Michelangelo appeared to consider his artistic career
as practically at an end.  He was always inclined to sadness, but a
cloud of deeper melancholy seemed to settle over him, and like
Titian, Tintoretto, and other artists who attained to great old age,
he turned his thoughts almost exclusively to religious speculation.
In one of his sonnets he beautifully expresses the yearning for peace
and rest which had taken possession of his storm-tossed soul:

  Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
  My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
  Whose arms to clasp us on the Cross were spread.[2]


[2] "The Sonnets of Michelangelo."  By J. A. Symonds, No. lxv.


Henceforward he regarded his art as a devotional exercise more than
anything else.  The unfinished marble group of the _Deposition_, now
in the Duomo at Florence, and which he intended should be placed over
his tomb, was carved by the master during these years of serene
preparation for his approaching end.

Throughout his long and laborious career, devoted to the threefold
worship of God, art and his country, Michelangelo had constantly
refused to think of other ties, remarking that he had "espoused the
affectionate fantasy which makes of art an idol."  From some of his
sonnets, however, it would appear that while at the court of Lorenzo
the Magnificent he had secretly cherished a deep and hopeless passion
for the beautiful Luigia de' Medici, who died in 1494.  Forty years
were to elapse ere in his heart, yet youthful at the approach of age,
another woman, and she the first of her era, Vittoria Colonna,
occupied the place left vacant by Luigia de' Medici.  The friendship
between these two lofty spirits, based upon mutual admiration and
esteem, is one of the most beautiful romances in history, and
inspired Michelangelo with some of his finest poems.  It was brought
to a close in 1547 by Vittoria Colonna's death, which left
Michelangelo "dazed as one bereft of sense."  "Nothing," says
Condivi, "grieved him so much in after years as that when he went to
see her on her death-bed he did not kiss her on the brow or face, as
he did kiss her hand."



ST. PETER'S

It will be remembered that Pope Julius II. had ordered Bramante to
rebuild the church of St. Peter's on a more magnificent scale, in
order that his tomb should derive additional grandeur from its
stately surroundings.  Bramante was succeeded by Raphael, Peruzzi and
Antonio da Sangallo, and when the latter died in October, 1546, Paul
III. conferred the post of architect-in-chief upon Michelangelo.  But
the aged master at first refused, saying that architecture was not
his art, and it was only when the Pope issued a peremptory _motu
proprio_ that he set to work, on condition that he should receive no
payment for his services.

Michelangelo returned to Bramante's original design of the Greek
cross, which had undergone considerable alterations, his object being
to erect a perfectly symmetrical building in such a manner that its
dominant feature, both from within and without, should be the cupola.
He began by demolishing most of Sangallo's work, and severely putting
a stop to all jobbery, thereby creating a number of enemies who did
all in their power to have him removed from his post.  But Julius
III., who succeeded Paul III. in 1549, had implicit faith in
Michelangelo, and the colossal work proceeded so rapidly, in spite of
intrigues and opposition, that in 1557 the great cupola was commenced.

The master was now unable, owing to his extreme old age, to
personally superintend the building, so that he constructed a wooden
model, still preserved at the Vatican, after which his assistants
carried on the work.  From the window of his house Michelangelo used
to watch for hours together the huge cupola slowly rounding itself
against the sky, and wondered, perhaps, in how many years after his
death it would be finished.  The evening of Michelangelo's long life
was saddened by the loss of nearly all who were near and dear to him.
His two remaining brothers (for Buonarroto had died of the plague in
1528) passed away in Florence, and the only representative of the
family, besides the aged artist, was his nephew Leonardo, only son of
his favourite brother, Buonarroto.  Although a confirmed bachelor
himself, Michelangelo prevailed upon his nephew to marry, and
Leonardo became the head of the still existing branch of the
Buonarroti family.  Another terrible loss to Michelangelo was the
death of his faithful servant Francesco Urbino, of whom he wrote to
Vasari: "While Urbino living kept me alive, in dying he has taught me
to die, not unwillingly, but rather with a desire for death.  The
better part of me has gone with him, and nothing is left to me now
but endless sorrow."

In spite of old age, illness and afflictions, Michelangelo's last
years were perhaps the busiest of a life of uninterrupted work.  To
this period must be attributed the plan for the improvements upon the
Capitol; the design for the church of San Giovanni del Fiorentini;
the drawing for the monument to Giangiacomo de' Medici which Leone
Leoni erected in the Milan Cathedral; the plans for the conversion of
the Baths of Diocletian into the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli,
and a number of other drawings and sketches for palaces, statues,
monuments, which other artists carried out.  He found time for all
these things while actively superintending the construction of St.
Peter's, and yet his restless spirit was not satisfied.  In a
beautiful sonnet, beginning with the words

  Giunto è gia' il corso della vita mia,

he laments the loss of his former creative power, and says that he
has already felt the pangs of one death, while another is fast
approaching.  Nothing could be more pathetic than the spectacle of
this strong creative spirit, already imprisoned in the iron embrace
of death, yet struggling, like a Laocoon, against inevitable
dissolution.  Although nearly ninety years of age, Michelangelo would
still walk abroad in all weathers, taking no precaution whatever.  On
February 14th, 1564, a friend of the master, Tiberio Calcagni, met
him in the street on foot.  It was raining hard, and Calcagni
affectionately upbraided the old man for going about in such weather:
"Leave me alone," cried Michelangelo fiercely, "I am ill, and cannot
find rest anywhere."

He spent the next four days in an armchair near the fire, not
complaining of any particular suffering, "quite composed and fully
conscious," as Diomede Leoni wrote to Leonardo, "but oppressed with
continual drowsiness."  In order to shake it off, the brave old man
tried to mount his horse and go for a ride, but he was too weak.
Without a word he sat down again in his armchair, and on the
afternoon of February 18th, 1564, a little before five o'clock,
Michelangelo peacefully breathed his last.  "He made his will in
three words," says Vasari, "committing his soul into the hands of
God, his body to the earth, and his goods to his nearest relatives."

Leonardo arrived in Rome three days after his uncle's death.  He had
some difficulty in fulfilling Michelangelo's wish to be buried in his
native town, as the Romans, who had conferred the citizenship on the
artist, would not allow his body to be removed.  At last the remains
were smuggled out of Rome in a bale of merchandise and conveyed to
Florence, where they were buried with great pomp and solemnity in the
church of Santa Croce.  For some unaccountable reason the group of
the Pietà which Michelangelo had intended for his monument, was not
placed over his tomb.  The present very ugly monument was designed by
Vasari at Leonardo's request.  It bears the following inscription:

  D. O. M.
  MICHAELI ANGELO BONAROTIO
  VETUSTA . SIMONIORUM . FAMILIA
  SCULPTORI . PICTORI . ET . ARCHITECTO
  FAMA . OMNIBUS . NOTISSIMO
  LEONARDUS . PATRUO . AMANTISS . ET . DE . SE . OPTIME . MERITO
  TRANSLATIS . ROMA . EJUS . OSSIBUS . ATQUE . IN . HOC . TEMPLO
  MAJORUM . SUORUM . SEPULCRO . CONDITIS
  COHORTANTE. SEREN. COSMO. MED. MAGNO. ETRUR. DUCE. P. C.
  ANN. SAL. M. D. LXX
  VIXIT. ANN. LXXXVIII. M. XI. D. XV.


Other monuments to Michelangelo exist in the church of the Santissimi
Apostoli at Rome, and on the hill of San Miniato, overlooking
Florence, which he so bravely defended.  But the noblest monument of
Michelangelo the artist are his undying works, and the highest praise
of Michelangelo the man and the Christian is contained in these
simple words of a contemporary, Scipione Ammirato, "During the ninety
years of his life, and in spite of numberless temptations,
Michelangelo never did or said anything that was not pure and great."




THE ART OF MICHELANGELO

In the history of Art, Michelangelo stands isolated, a colossal
figure looming terrible and majestic, a Titan towering far above the
sons of men.  Yet his was an age of giants.  When Michelangelo came
before the world the glorious tide of the Renaissance was still
rising; sculpture and architecture had been brought to an
unprecedented degree of excellence by such men as Lorenzo Ghiberti,
Donatello and Brunelleschi, and following in Masaccio's footsteps, a
host of great painters had successfully striven to renovate and
perfect their art until it culminated in a Raphael.  Leonardo da
Vinci was already famous before Michelangelo had touched chisel or
brush, but neither Leonardo's encyclopaedic achievements nor
Raphael's meteorlike career can be regarded as the ultimate
expression, the high-water mark of the Italian Renaissance.

In Michelangelo we behold the giant embodiment of the true spirit of
that wonderful period, the synthesis of its various forms of beauty
and perfection, the final manifestation of its aesthetic
possibilities.  When Art first shook off the trammels of
mediaevalism, she was content to worship at the shrine of Truth; with
Botticelli and Leonardo she passed into vague regions of poetry.
Raphael touched a more human note, often soaring to sublime
harmonies: with Michelangelo the Renaissance reached its fullest
development, attaining to a spiritual height, an almost superhuman
loftiness hitherto undreamt of.  Other men had excelled in painting,
in sculpture, or in architecture before him, but Michelangelo was the
first to attain perfection in every branch of Art, and such was his
strong creative individuality that he left nothing to which he
applied himself at the same stage where he had found it, bringing
every manifestation of Art to the highest degree of perfection of
which it was capable, and crowning all with that glorious aureola of
spiritual grandeur which is the most awe-inspiring characteristic of
his works.

We have said that Michelangelo stands alone.  Of other artists it is
easy to trace the aesthetic derivation, but he is the product of no
school, the result of no external influence.  Michelangelo, the most
perfect emanation of the Renaissance, came before an astonished world
like Minerva leaping from the head of Jove, all armed and beautiful
in her strength and wisdom.

Although he lived in an age when tradition was almost an artistic
canon, and when the pupil felt in duty bound to follow his master's
methods, even his early works reveal a singular originality and
freedom from all imitative tendencies.  Take for instance his _Battle
of the Centaurs and Lapithae_, which he carved when working under
Bertoldo at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent: it has nothing in
common with the school of Donatello, but is instinct with the spirit
of antique art, showing that the young sculptor derived infinitely
more profit from the close study of the antique masterpieces which
Lorenzo had collected in the gardens of San Marco than from
Bertoldo's precepts.  That he succeeded in mastering the style and
manner of the ancients to perfection is proved by such works as the
_Sleeping Cupid_, now unfortunately lost, but which was bought by
Cardinal Riario as an antique, and was the cause of Michelangelo's
first coming to Rome; the _Bacchus_, hardly inferior to the _Dancing
Faun of the Capitol_, and the beautiful statues of the Medicean
tombs, which might easily be mistaken for the work of a Greek chisel.

It is certain that during the first years of his long sojourn in Rome
he gave himself up enthusiastically to the study of its ancient
monuments and works of art.  When the famous group of the Laocoon was
discovered in 1506, Michelangelo greeted it as a "miracle of art,"
affirming that the only statue worthy of being compared with it was
the torso of Hercules, which he was never tired of drawing, and
evidently had before his mind when painting the magnificent _ignudi_
of the Sistine Chapel.  In the Wicar Museum at Lille there are
several copies by Michelangelo of various decorative motives in the
Baths of Titus, showing how deeply he studied ancient art even in
minor details.  But he was far from being a servile imitator; indeed
his powerful originality is never so strikingly manifest as in those
of his masterpieces which appear to be conceived in a purely
classical spirit.

Although deeply religious, even to the point of regarding his art,
especially during the latter part of his life, more as a devotional
exercise than as a stepping-stone to glory, Michelangelo had one
essential point in common with Pagan artists, namely, a boundless and
reverent cult for beauty in all its forms, and especially in its
highest and most wonderful manifestation, the human frame.  "He loved
the beauty of the human body," says Condivi, "as one who best
understands it, and likewise every beautiful thing--a beautiful
horse, a beautiful dog, a beautiful country, a beautiful plant, and
every place and thing beautiful and rare after its kind, admiring
them all with a marvellous love; thus choosing beauty in nature as
the bees gather honey from the flowers, and using it afterwards in
his works."  In one of his sonnets Michelangelo thus expressed his
highest idea of beauty--man created in the image of God:

  Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
  More clearly than in human forms sublime,
  Which, since they image Him, alone I love.[1]


[1] J. A. Symonds, "The Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella," n.
lvi. p. 90.


It is certain that he studied anatomy far more deeply than any of his
contemporaries, not excluding Leonardo da Vinci, and devoted so much
time to dissecting that "it turned his stomach so that he could
neither eat nor drink with benefit.  Nevertheless," adds Condivi, "he
did not give up until he was so learned and rich in such knowledge
that he intended to write a treatise on the movements of the human
body, its aspect, and concerning the bones, with an ingenious theory
of his own, devised after long practice."

Michelangelo has been accused by some critics, not wholly without
reason, of having somewhat ostentatiously availed himself of his
anatomical knowledge.  In some figures of his _Last Judgment_, for
instance, the muscular masses, the bones and tendons and other
anatomical details are hardly concealed by the skin, as if he had
painted from the _subject_ on the dissecting-table rather than from
the living model.  The result is undoubtedly striking and terrible,
and we may even hazard the conjecture that the master purposely
exaggerated his efforts in a picture representing the final
resuscitation of the flesh, the awesome reconstruction and starting
back into life of bodies long since reduced to dust.  This
"stupendous defect," if such it may be called, is far more apparent
in Michelangelo's frescoes than in his works of sculpture.

Having taken the human frame as the highest possible standard of
beauty, Michelangelo made use of it in all his works not only as the
principal theme, but as a decorative element.  The ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, with its magnificent nude Athletes and allegorical
figures, is the apotheosis of the human frame as the noblest means of
decoration.  By introducing nude figures in his tondo of the _Holy
Family_ and by his powerful but utterly unconventional treatment of
the angels and saints in the _Last Judgment_, Michelangelo once more
affirmed his faith in the beauty and purity of the "human form
divine" as a decorative element of religious art.  He went even
further, for in a letter to Cardinal Ridolfo da Carpi, which he wrote
when engaged on the construction of St. Peter's, Michelangelo hazards
the strange theory that the study of the human figure is
indispensable not only to sculptors and painters, but to architects
as well: "For it is very certain that the members of architecture
depend upon the members of man.  Who is not a good master of the
figure, and especially of anatomy, cannot understand it."

Michelangelo's system of working was as powerful and original as his
art.  Before he began a statue he could already discern the finished
masterpiece lurking within the rough-hewn block of marble, which he
would attack with reckless assurance, great splinters flying in all
directions as he feverishly cut away the waste stone, and saw the
figure spring slowly into life under his magic chisel.  A
contemporary, writing in 1550, when Michelangelo, then seventy-five
years of age, was carving the _Pietà_ which he intended for his tomb,
thus describes the master at his work: "I have seen him, although
over seventy years of age and no longer strong, cut away more
splinters from a block of very hard marble in fifteen minutes than
three young men could have done in a couple of hours, and with such
fierce recklessness that I thought the whole work must fall to
pieces.  For he knocked off splinters the size of a hand, following
the line of his figures so closely, that the slightest mistake would
have irreparably spoilt the whole group."

In one of his finest sonnets Michelangelo mentions this wonderful
gift of the true artist to penetrate dull marble and to perceive, as
through a veil, the perfect work of art within:

  Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
  Ch' un marmo solo in se' non circoscriva
  Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
  La mano che ubbidisce all' intelletto.


Even such colossal works as the _David_ were carved by Michelangelo
directly from the marble, without previously modelling a full-size
clay figure.  In none of his finished masterpieces, however, is it
possible to observe Michelangelo's methods better than in the
unfinished statue of Saint Matthew, now in the Academy, Florence,
which, although little more than a rough-hewn block of marble,
already reveals all the power and beauty of the perfect work of art.
When quarrying marble at Carrara for the façade of San Lorenzo, he
could tell to a nicety the exact measurements of the blocks required,
although he had not yet prepared a model or even accurate drawings to
guide him in his work.  The whole monument was already complete, even
to its minor details, in his mind.

Michelangelo followed the same strenuous methods in painting.  We
have seen that the first part of his most colossal work, the vault of
the Sistine Chapel, comprising three hundred and ninety-four figures,
the majority ten feet high, was begun on May 10th, 1508, and finished
on November 1st, 1509.  Indeed, as Michelangelo may be said to have
only commenced work in earnest about the beginning of January 1509,
after dismissing his incapable assistants, it is far more probable
that the stupendous fresco was painted in two hundred and thirty-four
days, at the rate of more than one figure a day.  The artist could
only paint on the plaster while it was wet, so that it is easy to
tell in how many days he finished the larger figures by observing the
divisions of the separate days' plasterings.  For instance, Sir C.
Holroyd, whose judgment is thoroughly to be depended upon, maintains
that "one of the largest and most prominent figures, as well as one
of the finest and most finished, the Adam in the Creation of Man, was
painted in three sittings only.  The lines of the junctions of the
plaster may be seen in a photograph; one is along the collar bone,
and one across the junction of the body and the thighs.  There is
also a division all round the figure, an inch or so from the outline,
so we know that the beautiful and highly finished head and neck were
painted in one day; the stupendous torso and arms in another; and the
huge legs, finished in every detail, in a third.  Such power of work
and of finish is utterly inconceivable to any artist of to-day."

Michelangelo rightly attributed his capacity for rapid and finished
work to the great pains he had taken in thoroughly mastering the
difficult art of drawing.  There is a sketch in the British Museum
with the following piece of advice in Michelangelo's own hand, to his
pupil, Antonio Mini:

  _Disegna Antonio, disegna Antonio, disegna, e non perder tempo._
  Draw Antonio, draw Antonio, draw, and do not lose time.

[Illustration: CENTRAL GROUP OF THE LAST JUDGEMENT.]

Like Donatello, he used to say to his pupils: "I give you the whole
art of sculpture when I tell you--_draw_!"

Although it would be difficult to decide whether he excelled most in
painting or in sculpture, Michelangelo, with singular modesty,
persisted in regarding himself as exclusively a sculptor.  Even when
engaged on his greatest pictorial works, such as the frescoes of the
Sistine Chapel, he invariably signed his letters with the words:
Michelangelo, Scultore.  It is, therefore, not surprising that his
paintings, and more especially his earlier works, were conceived in a
purely sculptorial spirit, and carried out according to the methods
of his favourite art.  The _Holy Family_, now in the Uffizi, for
instance, differs but little in treatment and composition, from the
two marble _tondi_ in the Bargello, and in the Royal Academy, and
from what we know of the famous _Cartoon of Pisa_, it is evident that
Michelangelo, when composing that famous masterpiece, was influenced
by the antique bas-reliefs, representing battle scenes, which he had
seen and admired during his first visit to Rome.

That he did not consider himself a painter is further shown by his
utter disregard for colour, so apparent in his earlier paintings,
such as the _Holy Family_.  But in the Sistine Chapel he ceases to
regard perfection of form as all sufficient, and the sculptor
suddenly becomes the greatest colour-painter of any age.  For in
these stupendous frescoes, remarkable for their imposing, yet
extremely simple colour scheme, Michelangelo has succeeded in making
colour serve a higher purpose than that of merely clothing his
inspiration with beautiful tints.  Colour is no longer an accessory,
but an integral factor as important as the mighty figures, the inner
meaning of which it helps to bear out, and the result of as much
thought and care.  In no other work of art has such perfect harmony
of form and colour ever been attained.

Michelangelo was so entirely absorbed in his art, to the exclusion of
every other thought or passion, that it is possible to trace in his
works not only the gradual development of his genius, but also the
vicissitudes of his long and stormy career.  Of his youthful works
only two, the bas-relief of the _Madonna and Child_ in the Buonarroti
Collection and the _St. John_ in the Berlin Museum, bear evident
traces of Donatello's influence; in the _Battle of the Centaurs_ and
_Lapithae_ the young artist already asserts his powerful
individuality, and the _Bacchus_ shows how thoroughly he had become
imbued with the spirit of antique art.  It was not until he carved
the deeply religious group of the _Pietà_ that he revealed his
spiritual personality, while in the _David_ we are first confronted
with that _terribilita_ which is the most striking characteristic of
his subsequent works.  All Michelangelo's masterpieces, whether of
sculpture or painting, are instinct with power and strength, like
combatants in some fierce, mysterious battle; but whereas the
youthful David appears to breathe forth a triumphant defiance, his
later conceptions, such as the brooding athletes of the Sistine
Chapel, the Louvre captives writhing in their bonds, the sombre
giants of the Medicean tombs, and the terror-stricken figures of the
_Last Judgment_, appear to be weighed down and overshadowed by the
consciousness of inevitable doom.  What was formerly a brave,
fearless fight becomes a hopeless struggle of Titans against Fate.

Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner are
the elements of Michelangelo's style.  As painter, as sculptor, as
architect he attempted--and above any other man succeeded--to unite
magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts with
the utmost simplicity and breadth.

His line is uniformly grand; character and beauty are admitted only
as far as they can be made subservient to grandeur.  The child, the
female, even meanness and deformity, are by him indiscriminately
stamped with grandeur.  A beggar rises from his hand the patriarch of
poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women
are moulds of generations; his infants teem with the man; his men are
a race of giants.  In that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which
exhibits the origin, the progress and the final dispensations of
theocracy, he may be regarded as the inventor of Epic painting.

Among the glorious titles which have borne the name of Michelangelo
to so high a pitch of celebrity, the least popular is that derived
from the composition of his poetical works.  The best judges,
however, regard these productions with profound esteem.  For
Michelangelo lived during the "golden age" of the Lingua Toscana, and
among the poets who filled the interval between the publication of
the _Orlando_ and that of the _Aminta_--first, in order of date, of
the poems of Torquato Tasso--not one has raised himself above, nor,
perhaps, to the level of Michelangelo.

Michelangelo's architectural works reveal the same characteristics
which excite our admiration when contemplating his paintings or his
marbles, namely, simplicity and grandeur.  Although he always
protested that architecture, like painting, was not his profession,
he stood head and shoulders above Bramante or any other architect of
his time, and the majestic cupola of the greatest temple in
Christendom is a sufficient proof of his genius.

Although Michelangelo left no school in the narrower sense of the
word, his influence upon art, and, what is even more important, on
the minds of men, has undoubtedly been greater than that of any other
master, and successive generations will agree with an illustrious
contemporary, Ariosto, in proclaiming him

  Michel, più che mortal, Angel divino.




OUR ILLUSTRATIONS

It is difficult to grasp all the sublime significance of
Michelangelo's works, even when we find ourselves face to face with
the actual masterpieces, such as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel
or the beautiful statues which adorn the Medicean tombs.

To attempt an accurate description of his principal works within the
narrow limits at our disposal would be indeed a hopeless task,
especially as the size of these pictures will only allow of their
conveying a somewhat remote idea of the grandeur and awe-inspiring
dignity which are the principal characteristics of Michelangelo's art.

In selecting the following eight illustrations, we have endeavoured
not only to give an idea of Michelangelo's gradual artistic
development, but also to throw some light on his powerful and most
interesting personality.  Although the _Portrait_ now in the Capitol
Museum is in many respects inferior to the one in the Uffizi, and has
even fewer claims to the honour of being regarded as by the master's
own hand, we have selected it because it tallies perfectly with the
descriptions which Michelangelo's contemporaries, and more especially
Condivi and Vasari, have left us of the master's rugged and
expressive features.  There is an aspect of profound melancholy,
almost of discouragement, in the wan face, disfigured by the
flattened nose; the eyes are sunk deep under the massive and somewhat
slanting brow, and the whole picture has an indescribably mournful,
hopeless expression.  It was probably painted when Michelangelo was
about fifty-five years of age, and the tragedy of the tomb was
causing him bitter grief and disappointment.  In the Uffizi portrait
the most interesting feature is the hand, strangely resembling an
eagle's talon and immediately giving the impression of strong
individuality and creative power, which were Michelangelo's most
striking characteristics.


It has been rightly observed that nothing closes the fifteenth
century so fitly as the magnificent marble group of _The Pietà_,
which, although carved by Michelangelo in 1498, already prophesied
the power of sixteenth-century art.  Numerous other artists had
already been attracted by the pathetic theme of the Virgin Mother
mourning over her dead Son, their principal aim, however, being
almost invariably to convey as forcibly as possible to the beholder
the grief and despair of the bereaved Mother.  With characteristic
originality Michelangelo departed from the traditional manner,
successfully endeavouring to give the theme a simpler but far more
dignified and lofty interpretation.  The Madonna is seated on the
stone upon which the Cross is erected, with her dead Son on her lap.
Her beautiful face is not contracted with grief, but wears an
expression of sublime peace and resignation, and the graceful head
reclines slightly on her right shoulder, as if pitying Heaven had
sent sleep to temper the extremity of her grief, and sweet dreams of
the past, when the Virgin Mother fondled her Infant Son, had
mercifully cancelled the horrible vision of the Redeemer's lifeless
body now lying on her lap.

Michelangelo's contemporaries criticised the figure of the Madonna,
remarking that the Mother is far too young compared with the Son.
"One day," writes Condivi, "as I was talking to Michelangelo of this
objection, 'Do you not know,' he said, 'that chaste women retain
their fresh looks much longer than those who are not chaste?  And I
tell you, moreover, that such freshness and flower of youth, besides
being maintained in her by natural causes, it may possibly be that it
was ordained by the Divine Power to prove to the world the virginity
and perpetual purity of the Mother.  It was not necessary in the Son,
but rather the contrary, wishing to show that the Son of God took
upon himself a true human body subject to all the ills of man,
excepting only sin.  Do not wonder then that I have, for all these
reasons, made the most Holy Virgin, Mother of God, a great deal
younger in comparison with her Son than she is usually represented.
To the Son I have allotted His full age.'"  This grave theological
statement gives us an interesting insight into Michelangelo's pious
and meditative character, showing how earnestly he took his art and
how reverently he thought out every detail, especially when
interpreting some religious theme.

The figure of the dead Redeemer is, if possible, even more admirable
than that of the Mother.  "He is of so great and so rare a beauty,"
exclaims Condivi, "that no one beholds it but is moved to pity.  A
figure truly worthy of the humanity which belonged to the Son of
God."  No other sculptor has ever succeeded in giving marble the
absolute _abandon_ of death quite so pathetically as Michelangelo has
done in this _Dead Christ_.  Here it was that his profound knowledge
of anatomy, and the long hours spent over the dissecting table at
Santo Spirito, first stood him in good stead.  In the Albertina
Gallery at Vienna there is a magnificent study of a subject placed in
almost exactly the same position as the Dead Christ, which the
sculptor evidently transferred to _The Pietà_, if indeed he did not
make the sketch expressly for this group.  Although Michelangelo
always professed to be a sculptor and nothing else, he shows all a
true painter's sensitive appreciation of light and shade in this
work, having so arranged the graceful, but somewhat complicated folds
of the Madonna's draperies, as to form a comparatively dark
background which enhances the whiteness of the lifeless body lying on
her lap.

To students of Michelangelo's art this work is especially interesting
as it shows the master equally free from the influence of his
Florentine predecessors, and from that of the antique.  Michelangelo
was conscious of the merit and of the originality of this group, for
it is the only one which he considered worthy of bearing his great
name.

[Illustration: THE PIETÀ.]

The _David_, now in the Accademia at Florence, inaugurates the series
of Michelangelo's colossal statues.  It will be remembered that the
master undertook to utilize a huge block of marble already rough-hewn
by an unskilful sculptor, and that he succeeded in hewing this
magnificent statue, without adding any other piece at all, so exactly
to the size that the old surface of the marble may still be seen on
the top of the head and in the base.  What most surprises the modern
artist when studying not only this, but all Michelangelo's colossal
works, both in painting and in sculpture, is the perfect finish of
every detail.  The fearless eyes, the shapely ear, the firm set
mouth, the powerful hand nervously grasping the death-dealing
missile, could not have been more carefully modelled in a statuette,
and casts of each individual limb are still set before students to
copy and admire in every studio of the world.

In 1501, when Michelangelo began this work, he was still free and
unfettered, justly proud of the fame which his _Pietà_ had brought
him, and with the world literally at his feet.  This young giant
boldly taking aim at an unknown but formidable enemy, might well be
regarded as an allegorical representation of the artist himself, on
the eve of grappling with his fate.  It may be taken for certain that
a quarter of a century later he would have interpreted the same theme
very differently, and would perhaps have given us David the King, or
David the Psalmist and the Prophet, instead of this magnificent
embodiment of conscious power and hope.  The fierce frown, the
expression of strenuous force victoriously struggling against
overwhelming odds, all those characteristics, in short, which have
been summed up in the word _terribilità_ by his contemporaries, would
have been replaced by the sombre majesty of the _Moses_, or the
despairing expression of conquered, impotent strength which is the
key-note to such works as the Medicean Tombs, the Louvre Captives,
and the _Last Judgment_.  Critics casting about for an artistic
derivation of Michelangelo's earlier works maintain that the
_David's_ face bears a resemblance to the features of Donatello's
Saint George in Or San Michele, but the type is far more virile and
energetic, recalling, if anything, the masterpieces of ancient art.


The _tondo_ representing _The Holy Family_, now in the Tribuna of the
Uffizi, is doubly interesting as a work of art and as an instance of
Michelangelo's fearless originality.  It was painted about the year
1503 for that Florentine merchant prince, Angelo Doni, who sat for
his portrait to the divine Raphael.  Although Signorelli had once
before introduced nude figures as a decorative element in a Madonna
and Child which he painted for Lorenzo de' Medici (and it is possible
that Michelangelo saw this picture), no other artist of the
Renaissance had ever dared to interpret a sacred subject such as the
Holy Family in so Pagan a spirit.  An ancient Greek would quite
naturally have supposed the beautiful group in the foreground to
represent Juno playing with the infant Bacchus, only wondering,
perhaps, why the artist had neglected to place a garland of vine
leaves and clustering grapes round the Wine God's curly head.  St.
Joseph might easily be taken for a momentarily uxorious Jupiter or
for a sober Silenus, and the nude shepherds idling in the background
place the scene in a pleasant corner of Arcadia, while a grinning
little Faun does duty for St. John the Baptist.

Nevertheless there is not the slightest hint at irreverence; it is
merely a Pagan translation, by a master hand, of an oft-repeated
Christian theme, a transposition as beautiful and as harmonious in
its way as the original score.  Indeed, Vasari tells us that
Michelangelo painted this strikingly original _tondo_ merely "to show
his skill," and the magnificent modelling and foreshortening of the
Madonna's arms, the masterful composition, and the wonderfully
accurate drawing more than achieve his object.  As to the colouring,
he entirely disregarded it in his sculptor's pride.  He might as well
have carved this remarkable work in marble.  Before painting the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo appeared to be wilfully
colour-blind, as if afraid that painting would wile him away from the
sister art, to which he had plighted his troth.


There is very little doubt that the original design of the _Creation
of Man_ was inspired in Michelangelo by one of the antique gems which
he admired as a boy in Lorenzo de' Medici's collection.  A similar
origin may be assigned to the group of Judith and her maid, also in
the Sistine Chapel, to several of the Athletes, and to the Leda and
the Swan which he painted for the Duke of Ferrara.  But this
magnificent recumbent figure of Adam far surpasses anything in
ancient as well as in modern art, and is indeed a worthy centre round
which the remaining stupendous compositions appear to gravitate like
planets round the sun.  It is here, more than in any other of his
works, that we can appreciate Michelangelo's wonderful gift of
interpreting the highest and most inaccessible themes in a simple yet
imposing manner.  Resting heavily on the curved surface of the globe,
his powerful limbs and finely modelled flesh clearly outlined against
the indigo blue of the sky and the solemn lines of the landscape,
Adam gives one the impression of a huge primeval being instinct with
strength which he is as yet unable to understand or to use, and just
awaking into life, a divine spark of which he receives from the
Deity.  Michelangelo's conception of God the Father, as an old but
powerful and majestic figure, has ever since remained the only
possible pictorial symbol of so lofty a subject.

[Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY.]


Apart from its great artistic merit, a pathetic interest attaches to
the statue of _Moses_ because it represents the last act of that
tragedy of the tomb which darkened the greater part of Michelangelo's
life, and influenced his art more than any other circumstance of his
eventful career.

The leader and law-giver of the Hebrews is seated in an attitude of
thought and wisdom, holding under his right arm the tables of the
law, and supporting his chin with his left hand, like one tired and
full of cares.  His beard escapes in long waves between the fingers
of his right hand.  The hands and strong bare arms of the _Moses_ are
magnificent, beyond comparison the finest ever modelled by
Michelangelo.  The expression of the face is one of commanding power
and almost fierce energy, a face capable of inspiring terror rather
than love, a veritable embodiment of the cruel, uncompromising Hebrew
legislation.  The powerful, massive form is clearly apparent beneath
the beautiful folds of the draperies, for here, as in all
Michelangelo's clothed figures, whether in painting or in sculpture,
dress does not hide but almost enhances the shape and beauty of the
body.  "This statue alone," exclaimed the Cardinal of Mantua, when he
saw the finished work, "is enough to honour the memory of Pope
Julius."

[Illustration: THE MOSES.]


In the Medicean tombs Michelangelo may be said to have equalled if
not surpassed the masterpieces of ancient sculpture.  We have
selected the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici for our illustration, as the
statues which adorn it, symbolizing _Evening_ and _Dawn_, although
conceived in the same spirit of profound melancholy, are, if
possible, even more beautiful than the Day and Night of Giuliano's
tomb.  _Evening_ is represented by an old man, brooding and dejected,
but hardly less powerful and muscular than the giant Day.  It is
evident that he is not suffering from bodily fatigue, but that he is
sinking under the weight of some unbearable, irremediable calamity.

The virgin _Dawn_ is perhaps the most beautiful female figure of
modern or of ancient art.  She is represented as only half awake and
almost unable to rise from her couch, while there is a suggestion of
ineffable bitterness in the expression of the face with its
half-closed eyes wearily greeting another day of sorrow.  The
powerful yet graceful limbs are magnificently modelled, and the whole
figure may be regarded as the perfection of the female form, redeemed
from any breath of sensuality by a commanding loftiness of
expression, such as the Greeks gave to the statues of their goddesses.


Michelangelo's _Last Judgment_ is a work of so colossal a nature that
it would be impossible to give even a remote idea of the whole
composition in this unpretentious little book.  We have therefore
selected for our illustration the central group representing Christ
the Judge, a dread figure enthroned on clouds, with hand upraised in
an attitude of stern command, surrounded by the Blessed, who press
round the Son of God with eager, frightened looks and gestures, as if
hardly secure of their final salvation in that terrible day of
retribution, "cum vix Justus sit securus."  Nestling timorously close
to her Son, half sitting, half crouching, with head averted, as if to
avoid seeing the coming wrath, and arms crossed on her bosom, is the
Mother of God, a wonderfully sweet and pathetic figure, full of pity
and sorrow for the condemned souls, and contrasting strangely with
the inexorable Judge rising in his stern majesty to pronounce
sentence on the frightened, shuddering mass of humanity.  The action
of the Judge, and indeed every part of the composition, forcibly
remind us of the _Last Judgment_ in the Campo Santo of Pisa, but
there is not a figure or a detail in the whole of this colossal work
which does not bear the imprint of that powerful originality and that
wonderful gift to express the most varied emotion and to interpret
the loftiest themes, which were the principal characteristics of
Michelangelo's genius.




LIST OF CHIEF WORKS


AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

VIENNA, ALBERTINA GALLERY.

  Several drawings and sketches.


BELGIUM

BRUGES, CHURCH OF ST. BAVON.

  Marble group of Virgin and Child.  (Executed
  at Carrara in 1506 for two Flemish merchants.)


BRITISH ISLES

LONDON, NATIONAL GALLERY.

  No. 790, Entombment.  Unfinished painting on
  wood.  (Between 1501-1504.)

ROYAL ACADEMY, DIPLOMA GALLERY.

  Madonna and Child.  Tondo bas-relief (1501-1504).

LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM.

  Several drawings.

OXFORD, TAYLOR COLLECTION.

  Drawings.


FRANCE

PARIS, LOUVRE.

  Two colossal statues of Captives, originally
  intended for the tomb of Julius II.  (1513).

  Numerous drawings, including Head of Faun.

LILLE, MUSÉE WICAR.

  Drawings.


GERMANY

BERLIN MUSEUM.

  Statue of youthful St. John the Baptist (about 1495).

WEIMAR MUSEUM.

  Drawings and studies for the Last Judgment.


HOLLAND

HAARLEM, TEYLER MUSEUM.

  Many important drawings.


ITALY

BOLOGNA, CHURCH OF SAN DOMENICO.

  Statue of kneeling Angel (1494).

FLORENCE, ACCADEMIA.

  Colossal statue of David (1501-1504).

  Statue of St. Matthew (unfinished).

BUONARROTI COLLECTION.

  Madonna and Child (bas-relief), 1489-1492.

  Fight between Centaurs and Lapithae (bas-relief), 1489-1492.

  Numerous sketches, studies, architectural drawings
  and three hundred autograph letters.

DUOMO.

  Unfinished group representing "The Deposition from the Cross."

MUSEO NAZIONALE.

  Statue of Bacchus (executed in 1497 for
  Jacopo Galli).

  Dying Adonis (1501-1504).

  Apollo (unfinished statue, executed in 1530
  for Baccio Valori).

  Victory (group intended for Julius II.'s Tomb,
  1521).

  Bust of Brutus (1544?).

CHURCH OF SAN LORENZO.

  Medicean Tombs (begun 1521).

  New Sacristy and Library of San Lorenzo.

UFFIZI GALLERY.

  The Holy Family (tondo in oil-colours, painted
  for Angelo Doni in 1503).

  Numerous drawings, including _The Resurrection
  of Lazarus_, _Prudence_, the _Last Judgment_.

BOBOLI GARDENS.

  Four Slaves (unfinished statues).

ROME, ST. PETER'S.

  Group of La Pietà (1499).

CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA SOPRA MINERVA.

  Statue of the Saviour (1521).

CHURCH OF SAN PIETRO IN VINCOLI.

  Tomb of Julius II. and statue of Moses (completed 1545).

VATICAN, SISTINE CHAPEL.

  The Creation and Fall of Man (1508-1512).  }
                                             }  Frescos.
  The Last Judgment (1535-1541).             }

PAULINE CHAPEL.

  The Conversion of St. Paul.  } Frescoes
                               } (1542-49).
  The Martyrdom of St. Peter.  }



  CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.









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