One morning, the Consul's man-servant brought me a _permesso_ for the
Collection of Sculpture in the Vatican for the same day, and a future
_permesso_ for the Loggias, Stanzas, and the Sistine Chapel. I laid the
last in my pocket-book. It was the key of Paradise. I had waited for it
so long that I said to myself almost superstitiously: "I wonder whether
anything will prevent again?" The anniversary of the day I had left
Copenhagen the year before, I drove to the Vatican, went at one o'clock
mid-day up the handsome staircase, and through immense, in part
magnificently decorated rooms to the Sistine Chapel. I had heard so
much about the disappointment it would be that not the very slightest
suggestion of disappointment crossed my mind. Only a feeling of supreme
happiness shot through me: at last I am here. I stood on the spot which
was the real goal of my pilgrimage. I had so often examined
reproductions of every figure and I had read so much about the whole,
that I knew every note of the music beforehand. Now I heard it.
A voice within me whispered: So here I stand at last, shut in with the
mind that of all human minds has spoken most deeply home to my soul. I
am outside and above the earth and far from human kind. This is his
earth and these are his men, created in his image to people his world.
For this one man's work is a world, which, though that of one man only,
can be placed against the productions of a whole nation, even of the
most splendid nation that has ever lived, the Greeks. Michael Angelo
felt more largely, more lonely, more mightily than any other. He
created out of the wealth of a nature that in its essence was more than
earthly. Raphael is more human, people say, and that is true; but
Michael Angelo is more divine.
After the lapse of about an hour, the figures detached themselves from
the throng, to my mental vision, and the whole composition fixed itself
in my brain. I saw the ceiling, not merely as it is to-day, but as it
was when the colours were fresh, for in places there were patches, the
bright yellow, for instance, which showed the depth of colouring in
which the whole had been carried out. It was Michael Angelo's intention
to show us the ceiling pierced and the heavens open above it. Up to the
central figures, we are to suppose that the walls continue straight up
to the ceiling, as though the figures sat upright. Then all confusion
disappears, and all becomes one perfect whole.
The principal pictures, such as the creation of Adam, Michael Angelo's
most philosophical and most exquisite painting, I had had before my
eyes upon my wall every day for ten years. The expression in Adam's
face was not one of languishing appeal, as I had thought; he smiled
faintly, as if calmly confident of the dignity of the life the finger
of God is about to bestow upon him. The small, bronze-painted figures,
expressed the suspension and repose of the ceiling; they were
architectonic symbols. The troops of young heroes round about the
central pillars were Michael Angelo's ideals of Youth, Beauty and
Humanity. The one resting silently and thoughtfully on one knee is
perhaps the most splendid. There is hardly any difference between his
build and that of Adam. Adam is the more spiritual brother of these
young and suffering heroes.
I felt the injustice of all the talk about the beginnings of
grotesqueness in Michael Angelo's style. There are a few somewhat
distorted figures, Haman, the knot of men and women adoring the snake,
Jonas, as he flings himself backwards, but except these, what calm,
what grandiose perfection! And which was still more remarkable, what
imposing charm! Eve, in the picture of "The Fall," is perhaps the most
adorable figure that Art has ever produced; her beauty, in the picture
on the left, was like a revelation of what humanity really ought to
have been.
It sounded almost like a lie that one man had created this in
twenty-two months. Would the earth ever again produce frescoes of the
same order? The 360 years that had passed over it had damaged this, the
greatest pictorial work on earth, far less than I had feared.
A large aristocratic English family came in: man, wife, son, daughter,
another daughter, the governess, all expensively and fashionably
dressed. They stood silent for a moment at the entrance to the hall.
Then they came forward as far as about the middle of the hall, looked
up and about a little, said to the custodian: "Will you open the door
for us?" and went out again very gracefully.