_Michael Angelo_ (Florentine: 1475-1564).
Michelangelo (commonly anglicised as above) Buonarroti (which
surname, however, is commonly dropped) is the Titan of Italian
art. He was the rival of Raphael; and amongst the artists who
were present at the unveiling of his great statue of David were
Perugino, Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo da Vinci,
and Filippino Lippi. He lived through the fall of Rome and
Florence, and survived into the decadence of Italian art. In
the many-sidedness of his genius he may be compared to Leonardo
da Vinci. He was at once painter, sculptor, architect, and man
of action. The greatness of his work was reflected in that of
his character. He passed most of his life at Rome, amidst the
petty intrigues of a debased Court; but he never placed his
self-respect in jeopardy. Filial duty, too, was one of the
mainsprings of his life. He lived most sparingly, and sent
all the money he could save to support his father's family at
Florence. "Whence they must pray God," he says in one of his
letters, "that all his works may have good success." He was
proud, and would brook no insult; and when Pope Julius left
him with unpaid marbles and workmen on his hands, he mounted
his horse and rode off to Florence. There are many stories,
too, of the quiet sarcasm with which he would "reproach men for
sin." "What does the raised hand denote?" Julius asked of a
statue of himself. "You are advising the people of Bologna to
be wise," was Michelangelo's reply. With all this, however, he
was for the most part above the jealousy of other artists. When
commissioned to paint the Sixtine Chapel, he urged that Raphael
would be a more fit person to execute so great a work; and when
he was appointed architect of St. Peter's he refused to permit
any material alteration of Bramante's design, though Bramante
had perpetually intrigued against him. Michelangelo was a poet
also (his sonnets have been translated by J. A. Symonds), his
poetry being partly inspired by Vittoria Colonna, widow of the
Marquis of Pescara, to whom late in life he became attached,
and whose friendship, until her death in 1547, was the solace
of his lonely labours.
It is only in Florence and in Rome that the work of
Michelangelo can be studied. Our Gallery is fortunate, however,
in having two easel pictures, which, whether entirely from
his own hand or not, are eminently characteristic of his
style. The South Kensington Museum and the Royal Academy each
possess one example of his sculpture. His drawings are to be
seen in several English collections, especially in that of the
University of Oxford. A concise chronological summary may here
be useful to recall to the reader's recollection the chief
works of the master. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed
for three years to Domenico Ghirlandaio to whom our picture,
No. 809, was formerly ascribed. He made rapid advance in the
art of painting, and showed also aptitude for sculpture; so
that in 1489, before his apprenticeship was out, Domenico
recommended him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who had founded a school
of sculpture in the garden of his villa. Here, in the society
and service of Lorenzo, Michelangelo remained for four years.
Lorenzo's unworthy successor Piero employed the young artist
only on unworthy commissions, setting him on one occasion, it
is said, to make a statue of snow; a tradition which inspires a
noble passage in Ruskin's _Political Economy of Art_, as also
in Mrs. Browning's _Casa Guidi Windows_. In 1493 Michelangelo
removed to Bologna, returning in the next year to Florence,
where he produced a "Sleeping Cupid," which was sold in Rome
as a veritable antique. This induced him, in 1496, to try his
fortune in the Papal capital. To this period belong his statue
of "Cupid," now at South Kensington, the "Bacchus" in the
Bargello at Florence, and the noble "Pietà" in St. Peter's at
Rome. By these works he attained the position of the greatest
sculptor in Italy, and on his return to Florence in 1501 he
executed the colossal statue of "David," now in the Accademia.
Works of about the same time are the round marble relief in the
possession of the Royal Academy, and our picture No. 809. The
circular "Madonna and Child," now in the Uffizi, belongs to
1504. In the same year he received a commission to paint one
wall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The painting was never executed;
but Michelangelo's cartoon for it,--known as the "Cartoon
of Pisa"--excited great admiration for its treatment of the
human figure. In 1505 began Michelangelo's stormy relations
with the imperious Pope, Julius II. For two years he was
employed on a great bronze statue of the Pontiff, which was
afterwards cast as a cannon and used against the Pope by the
Bolognese. In 1508, being then thirty-three, Michelangelo was
commissioned by Julius to paint the ceiling of the Sixtine
Chapel. In this great work, which was finished on November 1,
1512, the artist set forth, in the vehicle of the human form,
his conception of the creation, and the early history of the
world, with reference to man's final redemption and salvation.
The frescoes have in our time been admirably photographed, and
the figures of the Prophets and Sibyls, who sit enthroned in
niches round the vault, are very widely known. The paintings
caused Michelangelo to suspend his labour on the mausoleum
of Julius--a work which gave him an infinity of labour and
vexation, and which was never finished. The great figure of
"Moses," now in S. Pietro in Vincoli, and the "Captives," in
the Louvre, were designed for this monument. During the nine
years' pontificate of Leo X. (1513-22), Michelangelo was mostly
employed in the unworthy occupation of procuring marble from
the quarries of Pietra Santa for the façade of the church
of San Lorenzo at Florence. The short reign of Adrian VI.
succeeded, and Michelangelo went on working for a time at the
monument to Julius. He was also employed on the works of the
Medici Chapel at Florence. In 1523 when Clement VII. succeeded,
the artist was put to various architectural works. Stormy years
followed, and Michelangelo quitted the Medici statues to defend
his native city. He was appointed director of fortifications,
and was entrusted also with diplomatic missions. When in 1530
Florence was treacherously yielded to the Medici, Michelangelo
lay for some time in concealment. Clement, however, gave him
his pardon, and ordered him to resume work on the Medici
chapel in San Lorenzo. He worked, as he says, with "morbid
haste" but saddened heart, and thus were completed his most
impressive productions in sculpture--the four great recumbent
figures for the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici. In
1534 Clement died. Michelangelo flung down his mallet, and
set foot in Florence no more. But "a new Eurystheus arose for
our Hercules." The artist hoped to complete the mausoleum of
Julius. But the new Pope, Paul III., set him to work upon
the fresco of the Last Judgment, on the altar wall of the
Sixtine Chapel. In this mighty work, containing 314 figures,
which occupied him from 1534 to 1542, the painter "devoted
his terrible genius to a subject worthy of the times in which
he lived." Since he had first listened, while a youth, to the
prophecies of Savonarola, the woes announced in that apocalypse
had all come true. To Michelangelo, Christ came as an avenger,
vindictive and implacable, and the lost souls fall before his
wrath in every contortion of nudity. After the painting of
the "Last Judgment," one more great labour was reserved for
Michelangelo. He was called upon to succeed Antonio da San
Gallo as architect of St. Peter's, a post which he continued to
hold under succeeding Popes until his death. "The dome of St.
Peter's, as seen from Tivoli or the Alban hills, like a cloud
upon the Campagna, is his; but he has no share in the façade
which screens it from the Piazza." His last poem declared the
vanity of the art which was his glory, and his dying words to
his household were these; "In your passage through this life
remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ." His body was taken,
as he had desired, to Florence, and he lies in Santa Croce.
To the artistic genius of Michelangelo, a few out of
innumerable tributes may here be mentioned. Raphael "thanked
God that he was born in the days of Michelangelo," and Sir
Joshua Reynolds says, in his _Discourses_, that "to kiss the
hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections,
would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man."
His knowledge of the human body and his power of representing
it were supreme. "If a combination of the most exquisite
finish in drawing and modelling which allows the work to
bear the closest inspection in its details, with the utmost
simplicity, breadth, and clearness of effect in a distant
view, constitute, as I believe they do, the elements of perfect
work, I must assert positively," says Sir Edward Poynter,
"that Michelangelo is the most perfect of workmen." This
workmanship was employed with consummate dramatic effect.
"He considered figures the highest means of telling a story;
he concentrated his powers on the single important point of
expression, so that he had no need of accessories to help him
out with his story" (_Lectures on Art_). But above all the
work of Michelangelo was the expression of "a vast imaginative
gift, the stormy poetry of his mind." His works, says Ruskin,
"have borne and in themselves retain and exercise the same
inexplicable power--inexplicable because proceeding from an
imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes whither
we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked
the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows
out of the invisible, and holds on his God home" (_Modern
Painters_, vol. ii. "Of Imagination Penetrative"). "About the
qualities of his genius," says Symonds, "opinions may and will,
and ought to differ. It is so pronounced, so peculiar, so
repulsive to one man, so attractive to another, that, like his
own dread statue of Lorenzo de' Medici, 'it fascinates and is
intolerable.' There are few, I take it, who can feel at home
with him in all the length and breadth and dark depths of the
regions that he traversed. The world of thought and forms in
which he lived habitually is too arid, like an extinct planet,
tenanted by mighty elemental beings with little human left to
them, but visionary Titan-shapes, too vast and void for common
minds to dwell in pleasurably. The sweetness that emerges
from his strength, the beauty which blooms rarely, strangely,
in unhomely wise, upon the awful crowd of his conceptions,
are only to be apprehended by some innate sympathy or by
long incubation of the brooding intellect. It is probable,
therefore, that the deathless artist through long centuries of
glory will abide as solitary as the simple old man did in his
poor house at Rome" (_Life of Michelangelo_, ii. 373). On his
successors the influence of Michelangelo was not happy. They
could imitate his mannerisms, but not his manner. They had not
his imagination, but they could copy the violent attitudes in
which he clothed his Titanic thoughts. The anatomical studies
which with him were the groundwork for his imagination to build
upon became in their hands the final object of their art.
(Among those who have been alternately fascinated and repelled
by Michelangelo was Ruskin. His case against Michelangelo
is contained in the pamphlet entitled _The Relation between
Michael Angelo and Tintoret_. But some of Ruskin's critics
forget that the pamphlet was meant to be read in conjunction
with his own earlier praise in _Modern Painters_, and with
Mr. Tyrwhitt's appreciation in _Christian Art and Symbolism_.
"These lectures," said Ruskin, in his preface to that book,
"show throughout the most beautiful and just reverence for
Michael Angelo, and are of especial value in their account
of him; while the last lecture on sculpture, which I gave at
Oxford, is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which
his genius itself failed, and perverted that of other men. But
Michael Angelo is great enough to make praise and blame alike
necessary, and alike inadequate").
One of the many unfinished works, which, as Vasari tells us,
Michelangelo left behind him in painting as in sculpture. Its history
is interesting. It was formerly in the gallery of Cardinal Fesch,
which was sold and dispersed after his death. From its unfinished
state and neglected condition it attracted little attention, and was
bought literally "dirt cheap" by Mr. Macpherson, an English gentleman
established as a photographer in Rome. After the dirt upon its face had
been removed, it was submitted to competent judges, who unhesitatingly
pronounced it to be the work of Michelangelo. The discovery caused
a great sensation. A law-suit was instituted against Mr. Macpherson
for the recovery of the picture, which was sequestrated pending the
decision of the Roman courts. After some years he obtained a judgment
in his favour, removed the picture to England, and sold it to the
National Gallery for £2000. Peter von Cornelius, the eminent German
painter, in evidence in the law-suit declared it to be "una cosa
preziosa--un vero originale di Michelangelo."[183]
However this may be, the picture is entirely characteristic of the
school of Michelangelo. What we notice in it most is not the features
of the Maries, but the rendering of the corpse, in all its flaccid
limbs and muscles:--
"Take the heads from a painting of Angelico,--very little but
drapery will be left;--drapery made redundant in quantity and
rigid in fold, that it may conceal the forms, and give a proud
or ascetic reserve to the actions of the bodily frame. Bellini
and his school, indeed, rejected at once the false theory
and the easy mannerism of such religious design, and painted
the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination,
honourable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are
by them always first thought of, and no action is given to
it merely to show its beauty. Whereas the great culminating
masters, and chiefly of these, Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael
Angelo, delight in the body for its own sake, and cast it into
every conceivable attitude, often in violation of all natural
probability, that they may exhibit the action of its skeleton
and the contours of its flesh. Correggio and Tintoret learn the
body from the living body, and delight in its breath, colour,
and motion. Michael Angelo learned it essentially from the
corpse, and had great pride in showing that he knew all its
mechanism. The simplicity of the old religious art was rejected
not because it was false, but because it was easy; and the dead
Christ was thought of only as an available subject for the
display of anatomy" (_Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch.
iv.; _Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim_).
The ideal of the painter has in fact changed. The picture is in its
essence not a devotional work: it is a study in the dead nude.