monument than to endow his native city, Florence, with the works of the
great artist, employed Michelangelo almost exclusively in building the
façade and sacristy of San Lorenzo. During the short, austere pontificate
of Adrian VI, Michelangelo again devoted himself to the sculptures of the
monument, but under Clement VII he had again to abandon them in order
to execute in Florence the projects of Leo X, which the new Pope had
adopted. Toward 1531 the Duke of Urbino at last obtained permission for
Michelangelo to suspend the works at San Lorenzo in order to finish the
tomb so long since begun. Nevertheless it does not appear that he was
allowed much time to devote to it. At last, on the death of Clement
VII, he thought he had regained his liberty, and could, after such long
involuntary delay, fulfil his engagements; but hardly was Paul III
installed than he sent for him, gave him the most cordial reception, and
begged him to consecrate his talents to his service. Michelangelo replied
that it was impossible; he was bound by treaty to terminate the mausoleum
of Julius II Paul flew into a rage and said: "Thirty years have I desired
this, and now that I am pope I am not to be allowed to satisfy it! I
shall tear up this contract. I mean that you shall obey me." The Duke of
Urbino loudly complained, openly accusing Michelangelo of want of good
faith.
The sculptor, not knowing which way to turn, besought the Pope to allow
him to complete the work he was pledged to. He formed the wildest
projects in order to escape the amicable compulsion of Paul, among others
that of retiring to Carrara, where he had passed some tranquil years
among the mountains of marble. The Pontiff, to put an end to all these
discussions, issued a brief, dated September 18, 1537, wherein he
declared Michelangelo, his heirs and successors, released from all
obligations resulting from the different contracts entered into on the
subject of the monument. This fashion of terminating things could not
satisfy the Duke of Urbino nor relieve Michelangelo. The negotiations
were again resumed, and it ended in their agreement that the monument
should be raised in the form in which we now see it in the Church of
San Pietro in Vinculo, and should be composed of the statue of
"Moses" executed entirely by the hand of Michelangelo; of two figures
personifying "Active Life" and "Contemplative Life," which were already
much advanced, but were to be finished by Rafaello de Monte Lupo; of two
other statues by this master--a "Madonna," after a model by Michelangelo,
and the figure of "Julius," by Maso del Bosco.
Such is the very abridged history of this monument, which was not
entirely completed till 1550, after having caused for nearly half a
century real torment to Buonarroti. The Duke of Urbino was not satisfied,
neither was Michelangelo. The figures, originally intended to form part
of a colossal whole under the great roof of St. Peter's, appear too large
for the place they now occupy. The importance of the statue of "Moses"
misleads the mind, suggesting the idea that the monument itself is raised
to the memory of the Hebrew legislator, rather than to that of the
warrior-pope. At all events, in this statue is centred the principal, we
may say the unique, interest of the tomb. This prodigious work must be in
the memory of all. Amid the masterpieces of ancient and modern sculpture
the "Moses" remains ever unparalleled, a type, not irreproachable, but
the most striking, of a new art. I do not speak of the consummate science
which Michelangelo displays in the modelling of this statue; the Greeks
were learned in another fashion, but were so equally with him. Whence
comes it, nevertheless, that in spite of _bizarreries_ needless to defend
or to deny, and although this austere figure is far from attaining or
pretending to the serene and tranquil beauty which the ancients regarded
as the supreme term of art, whence is it that it produces upon the most
prejudiced mind an irresistible impression? It is that it is more than
human, that it lifts the soul into a world of feelings and ideas of which
the ancients knew less than we do. Their voluptuous art, in deifying
the human form, held down thought to earth. The "Moses" of Michelangelo
beheld God, heard that voice of thunder, and bears the terrible impress
of what he saw and heard on Mount Sinai: his profound eye is scrutinizing
the mysteries he vaguely sees in his prophetic dreams. Is it the Moses of
the Bible? I cannot say. Is it in this way Praxiteles and Phidias
would have represented Lycurgus and Solon? We may deny it boldly. The
legislators in their hands would have been the embodiment of law; they
would have represented an abstraction in a form whose harmonious beauty
nothing could alter. Moses is not merely the legislator of a people. Not
thought alone dwells beneath this powerful brow; he feels, he suffers,
he lives in a moral world which Jehovah has opened to him, and, although
above humanity, is a man.
On his return to Rome in 1508, Michelangelo had found Julius II not
cooled toward him, but preoccupied by new projects. The Pope made no
allusion to his monument, and was absorbed in the reconstruction of St.
Peter's, which he had confided to Bramante. Raphael was beginning at the
same time the frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura; and two biographers
of Michelangelo, whose testimony, it is true, on this point may be
suspected, agree in saying that the architect of St. Peter's, jealous
of the superiority of the Florentine sculptor, fearing lest he should
discover the mistakes committed in his recent constructions, and the
malversations of which perhaps he was not innocent, advised the Pope to
confide to him the painting of the ceiling of the chapel built by Sixtus
IV, hoping to compromise and ruin him by engaging him in works of which
he had no experience.
Julius adopted the idea, sent for Michelangelo, and ordered him to begin
forthwith. Buonarroti had had no practice in fresco-painting since his
student days under Ghirlandajo. He knew that the painting of a ceiling
was not an easy matter. He pleaded every excuse, proposed that the
commission should be given to Raphael, saying that for his part, being
but a sculptor, he could not succeed. The Pope was inflexible, and
Michelangelo began the ceiling on May 10, 1508, the most prodigious
monument perhaps that ever sprang from the human mind.
Julius had ordered Bramante to construct the necessary scaffoldings,
but the latter did it in so inefficient a manner that Michelangelo
was obliged to dispense with his assistance, and construct the whole
machinery himself. He had sent for some of his fellow-students from
Florence, not, as Vasari, by some strange aberration, states, because
he was ignorant of fresco-painting, since all the artists of the time
understood it, and the pupil of Ghirlandajo had himself practised it, but
because his fellow-students had had more experience in it, and he
wished to be helped in a work of this importance. He was, however, so
dissatisfied with their work that he effaced all that they did, and,
without any assistance, if we are to believe his biographer, even
grinding his own colors, he shut himself up in the chapel, beginning
at dawn, quitting at nightfall, often sleeping in his clothes on the
scaffolding, allowing himself but a slight repast at the end of the day,
and letting no one see the works he had begun.
Hardly had he set to work when unforeseen difficulties presented
themselves, which were on the point of making him relinquish the whole
thing. The colors, while still fresh, were covered with a mist, the cause
of which he was unable to discover. Utterly discouraged, he went to the
Pope and said: "I forewarned your holiness that painting was not my art;
all I have done is lost, and, if you do not believe me, order someone to
come and see it." Julius sent San Gallo, who saw that the accident was
caused by the quality of the time, and that Michelangelo had made his
plaster too wet. Buonarroti, after this, proceeded with the utmost ardor,
and in the space of twenty months, without further accident, finished the
first half.
The mystery with which Michelangelo surrounded himself keenly excited
public curiosity. In spite of the painter's objection, Julius frequently
visited him in the chapel, and notwithstanding his great age ascended the
ladder, Michelangelo extending a hand that he might with safety reach the
platform. He grew impatient; he was eager that all Rome should share
his admiration. It was in vain that Michelangelo objected that all the
machinery would have to be reconstructed, that half the ceiling was
not completed; the Pope would listen to nothing, and the chapel was
accordingly opened to the public on the morning of November 1, 1509.
Julius was the first to arrive before the dust occasioned by the taking
down of the scaffolding was laid, and celebrated mass there the same day.
The success was immense. Bramante, seeing that his evil intentions, far
from succeeding, had only served to add to the glory of Michelangelo, who
had come triumphant out of the trap he had laid for him, besought
the Pope to permit Raphael to paint the other half of the chapel.
Notwithstanding the affection he bore his architect, Julius adhered to
his resolution, and Michelangelo resumed, after a brief interruption, the
painting of the ceiling; but rumors of these cabals reached him. They
troubled him, and he complained to the Pope of Bramante's conduct. It
is probable that the coolness which always existed between Raphael and
Michelangelo dates from this period.
The second part of the ceiling, by much the most considerable, was
finished in 1512. It is difficult to explain how Vasari, confusing the
dates, and appearing to apply to the whole what referred only to the
first part, could have stated that this immense work was completed in
the space of twenty months. If anything could astonish, it is that
Michelangelo was able in four years to accomplish so gigantic a work. It
is needless, for the purpose of exciting our admiration, to endeavor to
persuade us that it was done in a space of time materially insufficient.
Such was the impatience of Julius that again he nearly quarrelled with
Michelangelo. The latter, requiring to go to Florence on business, went
to the Pope for money. "When do you mean to finish my chapel?" said the
Pope. "As soon as I can," answered Michelangelo. "'As soon as I can! as
soon as I can!'" replied the irascible Pontiff; "I'll have you flung off
your scaffoldings;" and he touched him with his stick. Michelangelo went
home, set his affairs in order, and was on the point of leaving, when the
Pope sent him his favorite Accursio with his apology and five hundred
ducats.
This time, again, Michelangelo was unable to finish his work as
completely as he would have wished. He desired to retouch certain
portions; but, seeing the inconvenience of reërecting the scaffoldings,
he determined to do nothing more, saying that what was wanting to his
figures was not of importance. "You should put a little gold on them,"
said the Pope; "my chapel will look very poor." "The people I have
painted there," answered Michelangelo, "were poor." Accordingly nothing
was changed.
These paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine transcend all description.
How give an idea of these countless sublime figures to those who have not
trembled and turned pale in this awful temple? The immense superiority of
Michelangelo is manifest in this chapel itself, where are paintings of
Ghirlandajo, of Signorelli, which pale near those of the Florentine as
the light of a lamp does in the light of the sun. Raphael painted about
the same time, and under the influence of what he had seen in the
Sistine, his admirable "Sibyls of the Pace"; but compare them! He also no
doubt attained in some of his works--the "St. Paul" of the cartoon, the
"Vision of Ezekiel," the "Virgin" of the Dresden Museum--the summit of
sublime art; but that which is the exception with Sanzio is the rule with
the great Buonarroti. Michelangelo lived in a superhuman world, and his
daring, unexpected conceptions are so beyond and outside the habitual
thoughts of men that they repel by their very elevation, and are far from
fascinating all minds as do the wonderful and charming creations of the
painter of Urbino.
It is necessary, however, to combat the widespread opinion that
Michelangelo understood only the extreme feelings, and could express
these only by violent and exaggerated movements. All agree that his
figures possess the highest qualities of art--invention, sublimity of
style, breadth and science in the drawing, appropriateness and fitness of
color, and this character, so striking in the ceiling of the Sistine that
it is not of the painter that the paintings make you think, that looking
at it you say to yourself, "This tragic heaven must have come thus all
peopled with its gigantic forms"; and it is by an effort of the mind only
we are brought to think of the creator of this sublime work. But it is
denied that he understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms
which express the tender and delicate feelings, those which the divine
pencil of Raphael so admirably represented. I own that he took little
heed of the pleasurable aspect of things; his austere genius was at ease
only in grave thoughts; but I do not agree that he was always a stranger
to gentle beauty, to feminine beauty in particular. I shall not cite
the "Virgin" of the London Academy, nor in another order the admirable
"Captive" of the Louvre Museum; but, without quitting the Sistine, could
we dream of anything more marvellously beautiful than his "Adam" awaking
for the first time to light? or more chaste, more graceful, more touching
than his young "Eve" leaning toward her Creator, and breathing in through
her half-opened lips the divine breath that is giving her life?
What is the meaning of this terrible work? What means this long evolution
of human destiny? Why did these two beings that we see beautiful and
happy in the beginning, why did they people the earth with this ardent,
restless, at once gigantic and powerless race? Ah! Greece would have made
this ceiling an Olympus, inhabited by happy and divine men! Michelangelo
put there great unhappy beings, and this painful poem of humanity
is truer than the wondrous fictions of ancient poetry and art.
"Michelangelo," says Condivi, "especially admired Dante. He also devoted
himself earnestly to the reading of the Scriptures and the writings of
Savonarola, for whom he had always great affection, having preserved in
his mind the memory of his powerful voice." Besides, the country of the
great Florentine, the glorious Italy of the Renaissance, was in a state
of dissolution. Such studies, such reminiscences, such and so sad
realities, may explain the visions that passed through the mind of the
great artist during the four years of almost complete solitude he passed
in the Sistine. The precise meaning of these compositions will probably
never be known, but so long as men exist they will, as is the object of
art, attract minds toward the dim world of the ideal.
The year that followed the opening of the Sistine, and which preceded the
death of Julius, appears, as do the first two of Leo X's pontificate, to
have been the happiest and calmest of Michelangelo's life. The old Pope
loved him, "showing him," says Condivi, "attentions he showed no other
of those who approached him." He honored his probity, and even that
independence of character of which he himself had more than once had
experience; Michelangelo, on his side, forgave him his frequent outbursts
of impetuosity, that were ever atoned for by prompt and complete
acknowledgment.
Michelangelo's sight, greatly enfeebled by this persistent work of four
years, compelled him to take almost absolute repose. "The necessity he
was under," says Vasari, "during this period of work of keeping his eyes
turned upward, had so weakened his sight that for several months after he
could not look at a drawing nor read a letter without raising it above
his head." He enjoyed an uncontested glory in this interval of semirepose
which followed his great effort. It is probable that his thoughts were
now concentrated upon the sepulchral monument of his patron, the works
for which he had been forced to postpone. But Leo X had other views. He
was all-powerful in Florence, where, by the aid of Julius and the League
of Cambray, he had reinstated his family in 1512; he now wished to endow
his native city with monuments which, by recalling to the vanquished
citizens of this glorious republic the magnificence of their early
patrons, might help them to forget the institutions they had lost for
the second time. The Church of San Lorenzo, built by Brunelleschi, where
several members of his family were buried, had not been completed; he now
determined to have the façade constructed. Several artists, among others
San Gallo, the two Sanzovino, and Raphael, sent in plans for this
important work, but Michelangelo's was preferred, and in 1515 he went to
Carrara to order the necessary marbles.
Leo did not leave him there long in quiet. Being informed that at
Serrayezza, in the highest part of the mountains of Pietra Santa on
the Florentine territory, there was marble equal in quality to that of
Carrara, he ordered Michelangelo to go to Pietra Santa and work these
quarries. In vain the latter pointed out the enormous expense of opening
them, of cutting roads through the mountains, and making the marshes
passable, besides the inferior quality of the marble. Leo would not
listen. Michelangelo set out, made the roads, raised the marbles,
remained from 1516 to 1521 in this desert, and the four years he passed
there, in the full force of his age and genius, resulted in the transport
of five columns, four of which remained on the seashore, and the fifth of
which lies still useless and buried among the rubbish of the piazza of
San Lorenzo.
Without meaning to contest the debt which the arts owe Leo X, there are
certain reservations that we must make on this score. A man of letters,
of amiable manners, astute, somewhat of a mischief-maker, ever
fluctuating between France and the Emperor, ever on the watch to provide
for his family, and, to redeem these defects, having neither heroism nor
the undoubted though mistaken love that Julius II bore to Italy, his
political career cannot, I think, be defended. He had the merit of being
the patron of Raphael, whose facile, flexible character pleased him, and
who, thanks to his protection, marked every instant of his short life by
some _chef d'oeuvre._ It must not be forgotten that it was by the most
extravagant largesses, by making a traffic of everything, that he
encouraged the pleiad of artists who shed such glory upon his name. His
obstinacy in employing Michelangelo for so many years, in spite of his
reluctance and entreaties, on a work which his own fickleness and the war
in Lombardy ought to have made him abandon, has, there can be no doubt,
deprived us of some admirable works. But for it Michelangelo would have
finished the tomb of Julius II, and we should now possess a gigantic
monument that would, no doubt, have rivalled the grandest works of
ancient statuary.
A few words of Condivi's show the grief and discouragement which the
capriciousness of Leo, and the inutility of the work the master was
employed on, caused Michelangelo. "On his return to Florence he found
Leo's ardor entirely cooled. He continued a long time weighed down by
grief, unable to do anything, having hitherto, to his great displeasure,
been driven from one project to another." It was, however, about this
period (1520) that Leo ordered the tombs of his brother Giuliano and his
nephew Lorenzo, for the sacristy of the Church of San Lorenzo, which were
not executed till ten years later; also plans for the library for the
reception of the valuable manuscripts collected from Cosmo and Lorenzo
the Magnificent, and which had been dispersed during the troubles of
1494. He was at Florence when the Academy of Santa Maria Novella, of
which he was a member, proposed to have transported from Ravenna to
Florence the ashes of Dante, and addressed the noble supplication to the
Pope which has been preserved by Gore, signed by the most illustrious
names of the time, and among others that of Michelangelo, with this
addition: "I, Michelangelo, sculptor, also beseech your holiness, and
offer myself to execute a suitable monument for the divine poet in some
fitting part of the city." Leo did not receive this project favorably,
and it was abandoned.
The statue "The Christ on the Cross," that had been ordered by Antonio
Matelli, and which is now in the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva,
was, it is probable, executed during Michelangelo's rare visits to Rome
under Leo's pontificate. His discouragement had become such that he had
it finished and put up, at the end of 1521, by a Florentine sculptor of
the name of Federigo Frizzi. The statue of "Christ," one of the most
finished, and displaying most knowledge, that issued from the hands of
Michelangelo, is far, to my mind, from equalling other works of the
great sculptor. Yet it was the rapidly acquired celebrity of the
work terminated by Federigo Frizzi that decided Francis I on sending
Primaticio to Italy, commissioning him to make a cast of the "Christ" of
the Minerva, and to ask Michelangelo to execute a statue for him; also to
deliver to him the flattering letter preserved in the valuable collection
at Lille.
Leo X died on December 1, 1521, a year after Raphael. His successor, the
humble and austere Adrian VI, knew nothing about pictures, except those
of Van Eyck and Albert Dürer. His simple manners formed a striking
contrast to the ostentatious habits of Leo. During his pontificate, all
the great works were stopped at Rome and slackened at Florence. While
Michelangelo was obscurely working at the library of San Lorenzo, the
great age of art was drawing to its close; Raphael and Leonardo were
dead, and their pupils were already hurrying on to a rapid decadence.
Characters were beginning to decline at the same time that talent did,
and Michelangelo, who, as it were, opened this grand era, was destined to
survive alone, like those lofty summits that first receive the morning
light, and which are still lit up while all around has grown obscure and
night is already profound.
BALBOA DISCOVERS THE PACIFIC
A.D. 1513
MANUEL JOSÉ QUINTANA
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the Spanish soldier and discoverer of the Pacific
Ocean, was born in 1475, and died near Darien, the scene of his principal
achievement, probably in 1517. Unfairly charged with conspiracy, after
rendering great services to his country, he was beheaded just as he was
completing preparations to explore the "South Sea," as he named the ocean
which he had discovered.
He first went to Darien from Española (Haiti) in 1510, promoted a
settlement, and was made its alcalde. In 1512 Pasamonte, king's treasurer
at Santo Domingo, commissioned him as governor. Balboa undertook many
explorations, and was usually on friendly terms with the Indians, who
told him of a great sea lying to the south, and of a country (Peru) rich
in gold, far down the coast. He set out from Darien September 1, 1513,
to discover the great sea and the country of which he thus heard. He had
conquered the Indian king Careta, whose friendship he gained and whose
daughter he married. He went by sea to his father-in-law's territory, and
taking with him some of the King's Indians he moved into the territory of
the cacique Ponca, an enemy of Careta.
Quintana, whose account follows, is the favorite historian of this
expedition. His _Lives of Celebrated Spaniards_ is regarded as one of the
classics of Spanish prose literature.
Ponca, not daring to await the coming of the allies, took refuge in the
mountains, abandoning his land to the ravage and ruin prepared for it by
the Indians and Spaniards. Balboa, however, did not pursue his success
further at present; leaving to the future the conquest, or, as he termed
it, the "pacification" of the interior, he returned to the coast, where
it was more for the advantage, security, and subsistence of the colony to
have his friends or his vassals stationed.