“Grateful is sleep—and more, of stone to be;
So long as crime and shame here hold their state,
Who cannot see nor feel is fortunate—
Therefore speak low, and do not waken me.”
This would clearly seem to show that under these giant shapes he meant
to embody allegorically at once the sad condition of humanity and the
oppressed condition of his country. What lends itself still more to
this interpretation is the character and expression of both the statues
of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and particularly that of Lorenzo, who leans
forward with his hand raised to his chin in so profound and sad a
meditation that the world has given it the name of Il Pensiero—not even
calling it Il Pensieroso, the thinker, but Il Pensiero, thought itself;
while the attitude and expression of Giuliano is of one who helplessly
holds the sceptre and lets the world go, heedless of all its crime and
folly, and too weak to lend his hand to set it right.
But whatever the interpretation to be given to these statues, in power,
originality, and grandeur of character they have never been surpassed.
It is easy to carp at their defects. Let them all be granted. They
are contorted, uneasy, over-anatomical, untrue to nature. Viewed with
the keen and searching eye of the critic, they are full of faults,
_e pur si muove_. There is a lift of power, an energy of conception,
a grandeur and boldness of treatment which redeems all defects. They
are the work of a great mind, spurning the literal, daring almost the
impossible, and using human form as a means of thought and expression.
It may almost be said that in a certain sense they are great, not in
despite of their faults, but by very virtue of these faults. In them is
a spirit which was unknown to the Greeks and Romans. They sought the
simple, the dignified, the natural; beauty was their aim and object.
Their ideal was a quiet, passionless repose, with little action,
little insistence of parts. Their treatment was large and noble, their
attitude calm. No torments reach them, or if passion enter, it is
subdued to beauty:—
“Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains.”
Their gods looked down upon earth through the noblest forms of Phidias
with serenity, heedless of the violent struggles of humanity—like
grand and peaceful presences. Even in the Laocoön, which stepped to
the utmost permitted bounds of the antique sculpture, there is the
restraint of beauty, and suffering is modified to grace. But here in
these Titans of Michel Angelo there is a new spirit—better or worse,
it is new. It represents humanity caught in the terrible net of Fate,
storming the heavens, Prometheus-like, breaking forth from the bonds of
convention, and terrible as grand. But noble as these works are, they
afford no proper school for imitation, and his followers have, as has
been fitly said, only caught the contortions without the inspiration
of the sibyl. They lift the spirit, enlarge the mind, and energize the
will of those who feel them and are willing only to feel them; but they
are bad models for imitation. It is only such great and original minds
as Michel Angelo who can force the grand and powerful out of the wrong
and unnatural; and he himself only at rare intervals prevailed in doing
this violence to nature.
Every man has a right to be judged by his best. It is not the number
of his failures but the value of his successes which afford the just
gauge of every man’s genius. Here in these great statues Michel
Angelo succeeded, and they are the highest tide-mark of his power as
a sculptor. The Moses, despite its elements of strength and power, is
of a lower grade. The Pietà is the work of a young man who has not as
yet grown to his full strength, and who is shackled by his age and his
contemporaries. The David has high qualities of nobility, but it is
constrained to the necessities of the marble in which it is wrought.
The Christ in the Church of the Minerva is scarcely worthy of him. But
in these impersonations of Day, Night, Twilight, and Dawn, his genius
had full scope, and rose to its greatest height.
These statues were executed by Michel Angelo, with various and annoying
interruptions, when he was more than fifty-five years of age, and while
he was in ill-health and very much overworked. Indeed, such was his
condition of health at this time that it gave great anxiety to his
friends, and Giovanni Battista Mini, writing to his friend Bartolommeo
Valori on the 29th of September, 1531, says: “Michel Angelo has fallen
off in flesh, and the other day with Buggiardini and Antonio Mini we
had a private talk about him, and we came to the conclusion that he
will not live long unless things are remedied. He works very hard, eats
little and that little is bad, sleeps not at all, and for a month past
his sight has been weak, and he has pains in the head and vertigo, and,
in fine, his head is affected and so is his heart, but there is a cure
for each, for he is healthy.” He was so besieged on all sides with
commissions, and particularly by the Duke of Urbino, that the Pope at
last issued a brief, ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to do
no work except on these monuments,—and thus he was enabled to command
his time and to carry on these great works to the condition in which
they now are, though he never was able completely to finish them.
Of the same race with them are the wonderful frescoes of the sibyls
and prophets and Biblical figures and Titans that live on the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel. And these are as amazing as, perhaps even more
amazing in their way than, the sculpture of the Medicean Chapel. He
was but thirty-four years of age when, at the instigation of Bramante,
he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II. to decorate the ceiling. It
is unpleasant to think that Bramante, in urging this step upon the
Pope, was animated with little good-will to Michel Angelo. From all
accounts it would seem he was jealous of his growing fame, and deemed
that in undertaking this colossal work failure would be inevitable.
Michel Angelo had indeed worked in his youth under Ghirlandajo, but
had soon abandoned his studio and devoted himself to sculpture; and
though he had painted some few labored pictures and produced the
famous designs for the great hall of the municipality at Florence,
in competition with his famous rival Leonardo da Vinci, yet these
cartoons had never been executed by him, and his fame was chiefly, if
not solely, as a sculptor. Michel Angelo himself, though strongly urged
to this undertaking by the Pope, was extremely averse to it, and at
first refused, declaring that “painting was not his profession.” The
Pope, however, was persistent, and Michel was forced at last to yield,
and to accept the commission. He then immediately began to prepare his
cartoons, and, ignorant and doubtful of his own powers, summoned to his
assistance several artists in Florence, to learn more properly from
them the method of painting in fresco. Not satisfied with their work on
the ceiling, he suddenly closed the doors upon them, sent them away,
and, shutting himself up alone in the chapel, erased what they had done
and began alone with his own hand. It was only about six weeks after
his arrival in Rome that he thus began, and in this short space of time
he had completed his designs, framed and erected the scaffolds, laid
on the rough casting preparatory to the finishing layer, and commenced
his frescoes. This alone is an immense labor, and shows a wonderful
mastery of all his powers. The design is entirely original, not only
in the composition and character of the figures themselves, but in the
architectural divisions and combinations in which they are placed.
There are no less than 343 figures, of great variety of movements,
grandiose proportions, and many of them of colossal size; and to the
sketches he first designed he seems to have absolutely adhered. Of
course, within such a time he could not have made the large cartoons
in which the figures were developed in their full proportions, but he
seems only to have enlarged them from his figures as first sketched.
With indomitable energy, and a persistence of labor which has scarcely
a parallel, alone and without encouragement he prosecuted his task,
despite the irritations and annoyances which he was forced to endure,
the constant delays of payment, the fretful complaints of the impatient
Pope, the accidents and disappointments incident to an art in which he
had previously had no practice, and the many and worrying troubles from
home by which he was constantly pursued. At last the Pope’s impatience
became imperious; and when the vault was only one half completed, he
forced Michel Angelo, under threats of his severe displeasure, to
throw down the scaffolding and exhibit it to the world. The chapel was
accordingly opened on All Saints’ Day in November, 1508. The public
flocked to see it, and a universal cry of admiration was raised. In
the crowd which then assembled was Raffaelle, and the impression he
received is plain from the fact that his style was at once so strongly
modified by it. Bramante, too, was there, expecting to see the failure
which he had anticipated, and to rejoice in the downfall of his great
rival. But he was destined to be disappointed, and, as is recounted,
but as one is unwilling to believe, he used his utmost efforts to
induce the Pope to discharge Michel Angelo and commission Raffaelle to
complete the ceiling. It is even added that Raffaelle himself joined
in this intrigue, but there is no proof of this, and let us disbelieve
it. Certain it is that in the presence of the Pope, when Michel Angelo
broke forth in fierce language against Bramante for this injurious
proposal, and denounced him for his ignorance and incapacity, he did
not involve Raffaelle in the same denunciation. Still there seems to
be little doubt that the party and friends of Raffaelle exerted their
utmost influence to induce the Pope to substitute him for Michel
Angelo. They did not, however, succeed. The Pope was steadfast, and
again the doors were closed, and he was ordered to complete the work.
When again he began to paint there is no record. Winter is unfavorable
to fresco-painting, and when a frost sets in, it cannot be carried
on. In the autumn of 1510 we know that he applied to the Pope for
permission to visit his friends in Florence, and for an advance of
money; that the Pope replied by demanding when his work would be
completed, and that the artist replied, “As soon as I shall be able;”
on which the Pope, repeating his words, struck him with his cane.
Michel Angelo was not a man to brook this, and he instantly abandoned
his work and went to Florence. The Pope, however, sent his page
Accursio after him with pacific words, praying him to return, and with
a purse of fifty crowns to pay his expenses; and after some delay he
did return.
Vasari and Condivi both assert that the vault of the Sistine Chapel was
painted by Michel Angelo “alone and unaided, even by any one to grind
his colors, in twenty months.” But this cannot be true. He certainly
had assistance not only for all the laying of the plaster and the
merely mechanical work, but also in the painting of the architecture,
and even of portions of the figures; and it now seems to be pretty
clear that the chapel was not completed until 1512. But this in itself,
considering all the breaks and intervals when the work was necessarily
interrupted, is stupendous.
The extraordinary rapidity with which he worked is clearly proved by
the close examination which the erection of scaffolding has recently
enabled Mr. Charles Heath Wilson and others to make. Fresco-painting
can only be done while the plaster is fresh (hence its name); and as
the plaster laid on one day will not serve for the next, it must be
removed unless the painting on it is completed. The junction of the
new plaster leaves a slight line of division when closely examined, and
thus it is easy to detect how much has been accomplished each day. It
scarcely seems credible, though there can be no doubt of the fact, that
many of the nude figures above life-size were painted in two days. The
noble reclining figure of Adam occupied him only three days; and the
colossal figures of the sibyls and prophets, which, if standing, would
be eighteen feet in height, occupied him only from three to four days
each. When one considers the size of these figures, the difficulty of
painting anything overhead where the artist is constrained to work in
a reclining position and often lying flat on his back, and the beauty,
tenderness, and careful finish which has been given to all parts,
and especially to the heads, this rapidity of execution seems almost
marvelous.
Seen from below, these figures are solemn and striking; but seen
near by, their grandeur of character is vastly more impressive, and
their beauty and refinement, which are less apparent when seen from a
distance, are quite as remarkable as their power and energy. Great as
Michel Angelo was as a sculptor, he seems even greater as a painter.
Not only is the design broader and larger, but there is a freedom of
attitude, a strength and loftiness of conception, and a beauty of
treatment, which are beyond what he reached, or perhaps strove for, in
his statues. The figure of Adam, for instance, is not more wonderful
for its novelty and power of design than for its truth to nature.
The figure of the Deity, encompassed by angelic forms, is whirling
down upon him like a tempest. His mighty arm is outstretched, and from
his extended fingers an electric flash of life seems to strike into
the uplifted hand of Adam, whose reclining figure, issuing from the
constraint of death, and quivering with this new thrill of animated
being, stirs into action, and rises half to meet his Creator. Nothing
could be more grand than this conception, more certain than its
expression, or more simple than its treatment. Nothing, too, has ever
been accomplished in art more powerful, varied, and original than the
colossal figures of the sibyls and the prophets. The Ezekiel, listening
to the voice of inspiration; the Jeremiah, surcharged with meditative
thought, and weighed down with it as a lowering cloud with rain;
the youthful Daniel, writing on his book, which an angel supports;
Esaias, in the fullness of his manhood, leaning his elbow on his book
and holding his hand suspended while turning he listens to the angel
whose tidings he is to record; and the aged Zacharias, with his long
beard, swathed in heavy draperies, and intently reading,—these are the
prophets; and alternating with them on the span of the arch are the
sibyls,—the noble Erythrean, seated almost in profile, with crossed
legs, and turning the leaves of her book with one hand while the other
drops at her side, grand in the still serenity of her beauty; the aged
Persian sibyl, turning sideway to peruse the book which she holds
close to her eyes, while above her recline two beautiful naked youths,
and below her sleeps a madonna with the child Christ; the Libyan,
holding high behind her with extended arms her open scroll, and looking
down over her shoulder; the Cumæan, old, weird, Dantesque in her
profile, with a napkin folded on her head, reading in self-absorption,
while two angels gaze at her; and last, the Delphic, sweet, calm,
and beautiful in the perfectness of womanhood, who looks serenely
down over her shoulder to charm us with a peaceful prophecy. All the
faces and heads o£ these figures are evidently drawn from noble and
characteristic models,—if, indeed, any models at all are used; and some
of them, especially those of the Delphic and Erythrean, are full of
beauty as well as power. All are painted with great care and feeling,
and a lofty inspiration has guided a loving hand. There is nothing
vague, feeble, or flimsy in them. They are ideal in the true sense—the
strong embodiment of great ideas.
Even to enumerate the other figures would require more time and space
than can now be given. But we cannot pass over in silence the wonderful
series illustrative of Biblical history which form the centre of the
ceiling, beginning with Chaos struggling into form, and ending with
Lot and his children. Here in succession are the division of light
from darkness—the Spirit of God moving over the face of the waters
(an extraordinary conception, which Raffaelle strove in vain to
reproduce in another form in the Loggie of the Vatican); the wonderful
creation of Adam; the temptation of the serpent, and the expulsion from
Paradise, so beautiful in composition and feeling; the sacrifice to
God; and finally the Flood.
Besides these are the grand nude figures of the decoration, which have
never been equaled; and many Biblical stories, which, in the richness
and multitude of greater things, are lost, but which in themselves
would suffice to make any artist famous: as, for instance, the group
called Rehoboam, a female figure bending forward and resting her
hand upon her face, with the child leaning against her knee—a lovely
sculptural group, admirably composed, and full of pathos; and the
stern, despairing figure entitled Jesse, looking straight out into the
distance before him—like Fate.
Here is no attempt at scenic effect, no effort for the picturesque,
no literal desire for realism, no pictorial graces. A sombre, noble
tone of color pervades them,—harmonizing with their grand design, but
seeking nothing for itself, and sternly subjected and restrained to
these powerful conceptions. Nature silently withdraws and looks on,
awed by these mighty presences.
Only a tremendous energy and will could have enabled Michel Angelo to
conceive and execute these works. The spirit in which he worked is
heroic: oppressed as he was by trouble and want, he never lost courage
or faith. Here is a fragment of a letter he wrote to his brother while
employed on this work, which will show the temper and character of the
man. It is truly in the spirit of the Stoics of old:—
“Make no friendship nor intimacies with any one but the Almighty
alone. Speak neither good nor evil of any one, because the end
of these things cannot yet be known. Attend only to your own
affairs. I must tell you I have no money.” (He says this in
answer to constant applications from his unworthy brother for
pecuniary assistance.) “I am, I may say, shoeless and naked. I
cannot receive the balance of my pay till I have finished this
work, and I suffer much from discomfort and fatigue. Therefore,
when you also have trouble to endure, do not make useless
complaints, but try to help yourself.”
The names of Raffaelle and Michel Angelo are so associated, that that
of one always rises in the mind when the other is mentioned. Their
geniuses are as absolutely opposite as are their characters. Each is
the antithesis of the other. In the ancient days we have the same
kind of difference between Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero,
Æschylus and Euripides; in later days, Molière and Racine, Rousseau
and Voltaire, Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney, Beethoven and Mozart,
Dante and Ariosto, Victor Hugo and Lamartine; or to take our own age,
Delacroix and Ary Scheffer, Browning and Tennyson. To the one belongs
the sphere of power, to the other that of charm. One fights his way to
immortality, the other woos it.
Raffaelle was of the latter class—sweet of nature, gentle of
disposition, gifted with a rare sense of grace, a facile talent of
design, and a refinement of feeling which, if it sometimes degenerated
into weakness, never utterly lost its enchantment. He was exceedingly
impressionable, reflected by turns the spirit of his masters,—was first
Perugino, and afterwards modified his style to that of Fra Bartolommeo,
and again, under the influence of Michel Angelo, strove to tread in his
footsteps. He was not of a deep nature nor of a powerful character.
There was nothing torrential in his genius, bursting its way through
obstacles and sweeping all before it. It was rather that of the calm
river, flowing at its own sweet will, and reflecting peacefully the
passing figures of life. He painted as the bird sings. He was an artist
because nature made him one—not because he had vowed himself to art,
and was willing to struggle and fight for its smile. He was gentle and
friendly—a pleasant companion—a superficial lover—handsome of person
and pleasing of address—who always went surrounded by a corona of
followers, who disliked work and left the execution of his designs in
great measure to his pupils, while he toyed with the Fornarina. I do
not mean to undervalue him in what he did. His works are charming—his
invention was lively. He had the happy art of telling his story in
outline, better, perhaps, than any one else of his age. His highest
reach was the Madonna di S. Sisto, and this certainly is full of
that large sweetness and spiritual sensibility which entitles him to
the common epithet of “Divino.” But when he died at the early age of
thirty-seven, he had come to his full development, and there is no
reason to suppose that he would ever have attained a greater height.
Indeed, during his latter years he was tired of his art, neglected
his work, became more and more academic, and preferred to bask in the
sunshine of his fame on its broad levels, to girding up his loins to
struggle up precipitous ascents to loftier peaks. The world already
began to blame him for this neglect, and to say that he had forgotten
how to paint himself, and gave his designs only to his students to
execute. Moved by these rumors, he determined alone to execute a work
in fresco, and this work was the famous Galatea of the Palazzo Farnese.
He was far advanced in it, when, during his absence one morning, a
dark, short, stern-looking man called to see him. In the absence of
Raffaelle, this man gazed attentively at the Galatea for a long time,
and then taking a piece of charcoal, he ascended a ladder which stood
in the corner of the vast room, and drew offhand on the wall a colossal
male head. Then he came down and went away, saying to the attendant,
“If Signore Raffaelle wishes to know who came to see him, show him my
card there on the wall.” When Raffaelle returned, the assistant told
him of his visitor, and showed him the head. “That is Michel Angelo,”
he said, “or the devil.”
And Michel Angelo it was. Raffaelle well knew what that powerful and
colossal head meant, and he felt the terrible truth of its silent
criticism on his own work. It meant, Your fresco is too small for the
room—your style is too pleasing and trivial. Make something grand and
colossal. Brace your mind to higher purpose, train your hand to nobler
design. I say that Raffaelle felt this stern criticism, because he
worked no more there, and only carried out this one design. Raffaelle’s
disposition was sweet and attractive, and he was beloved by all his
friends. Vasari says of him, that he was as much distinguished by his
_amorevolezza ed umanità_, his affectionate and sympathetic nature,
as by his excellence as an artist; and another contemporary speaks of
him as of _summæ bonitatis_, perfect sweetness of character. All this
one sees in his face, which, turning, gazes dreamily at us over his
shoulder, with dark, soft eyes, long hair, and smooth, unsuffering
cheeks where Time has ploughed no furrows—easy, charming, graceful,
refined, and somewhat feminine of character.
Michel Angelo was made of sterner stuff than this. His temper was
violent, his bearing haughty, his character impetuous. He had none
of the personal graces of his great rival. His face was, as it were,
hammered sternly out by fate; his brow corrugated by care, his cheeks
worn by thought, his hair and beard stiffly curled and bull-like; his
expression sad and intense, with a weary longing in his deep-set eyes.
Doubtless, at times, they flamed with indignation and passion—for he
was very irascible, and suffered no liberties to be taken with him.
He could not “sport with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles
of Neæra’s hair.” Art was his mistress, and a stern mistress she was,
urging him ever onward to greater heights. He loved her with a passion
of the intellect; there was nothing he would not sacrifice for her. He
was willing to be poor, almost to starve, to labor with incessant zeal,
grudging even the time that sleep demanded, only to win her favor. He
could not have been a pleasant companion, and he was never a lover of
woman. His friendship with Vittoria Colonna was worlds away from the
senses,—worlds away from such a connection as that of Raffaelle with
the Fornarina. They walked together in the higher fields of thought and
feeling, in the region of ideas and aspirations. Their conversation was
of art, and poesy, and religion, and the mysteries of life. They read
to each other their poems, and discoursed on high themes of religion,
and fate, and foreknowledge. The sonnets he addressed to her were in no
trivial vein of human passion or sentiment.
“Rapt above earth” (he writes) “by power of one fair face,
Hers, in whose sway alone my heart delights,
I mingle with the Blest on those pure heights
Where man, yet mortal, rarely finds a place—
With Him who made the Work that Work accords
So well that, by its help and through His grace,
I raise my thoughts, inform my deeds and words,
Clasping her beauty in my soul’s embrace.”
In his _soul’s_ embrace, not in his arms. When he stood beside her
dead body, he silently gazed at her, not daring to imprint a kiss on
that serene brow even when life had departed. If he admired Petrarca,
it was as a philosopher and a patriot,—for his canzone to Liberty,
not for his sonnets to Laura. Dante, whom he called _Stella di alto
valor_, the star of high power, was his favorite poet; Savonarola his
single friend. The “Divina Commedia,” or rather the “Inferno” alone,
he thought worthy of illustration by his pencil; the doctrines of the
latter he warmly espoused. “True beauty,” says that great reformer,
“comes only from the soul, from nobleness of spirit and purity of
conduct.” And so, in one of his madrigals, says Michel Angelo. “They
are but gross spirits who seek in sensual nature the beauty that
uplifts and moves every healthy intelligence even to heaven.”
For the most part he walked alone and avoided society, wrapped up in
his own thoughts; and once, when meeting Raffaelle, he reproached him
for being surrounded by a _cortège_ of flatterers; to which Raffaelle
bitterly retorted, “And you go alone, like the headsman”—_andate solo
come un boia_.
He was essentially original, and, unlike his great rival, followed
in no one’s footsteps. “Chi va dietro agli altri non li passa mai
dinanzi,” he said,—who follows behind others can never pass before
them.
Yet, with all his ruggedness and imperiousness of character, he had
a deep tenderness of nature, and was ready to meet any sacrifice for
those whom he loved. Personal privations he cared little for, and sent
to his family all his earnings, save what was absolutely necessary to
support life. He had no greed for wealth, no love of display, no desire
for luxuries: a better son never lived, and his unworthy brother he
forgave over and over again, never weary of endeavoring to set him on
his right path.
But at times he broke forth with a tremendous energy when pushed too
far, as witness this letter to his brother. After saying, “If thou
triest to do well, and to honor and revere thy father, I will aid thee
like the others, and will provide for thee in good time a place of
business,” he thus breaks out in his postscript:—
“I have not wandered about all Italy, and borne every
mortification, suffered hardship, lacerated my body with hard
labor, and placed my life in a thousand dangers, except to aid
my family; and now that I have begun to raise it somewhat, thou
alone art the one to embroil and ruin in an hour that which I
have labored so long to accomplish. By the body of Christ, but it
shall be found true that I shall confound ten thousand such as
thou art if it be needful,—so be wise, and tempt not one who has
already too much to bear.”
He was generous and large in his charities. He supported out of his
purse many poor persons, married and endowed secretly a number of
young girls, and gave freely to all who surrounded him. “When I die,”
asked he of his old and faithful servant Urbino, “what will become
of you?” “I shall seek for another master in order to live,” was the
answer. “Ah, poor man!” cried Michel Angelo, and gave him at once
10,000 golden crowns. When this poor servant fell ill, he tended him
with the utmost care, as if he were a brother, and on his death broke
out into loud lamentations, and would not be comforted.
His fiery and impetuous temper, however, led him often into violence.
He was no respecter of persons, and he well knew how to stand up for
the rights of man. There was nothing of the courtier in him; and he
faced the Pope with an audacious firmness of purpose and expression
unparalleled at that time; and yet he was singularly patient and
enduring, and gave way to the variable Pontiff’s whims and caprices
whenever they did not touch his dignity as a man. Long periods of time
he allowed himself to be employed in superintending the quarrying of
marble at Carrara, though his brain was teeming with great conceptions.
He was oppressed, agitated, irritated on every side by home troubles,
by papal caprices, and by the intestine tumult of his country, and much
of his life was wasted in merely mechanical work which any inferior
man could as well have done. He was forced not only to quarry, but to
do almost all the rude blocking out of his statues in marble, which
should have been intrusted to others, and which would have been better
done by mere mechanical workmen. His very impetuosity, his very genius,
unfitted him for such work: while he should have been creating and
designing, he was doing the rough work of a stone-cutter. So ardent was
his nature, so burning his enthusiasm, that he could not fitly do this
work. He was too impatient to get to the form within to take heed of
the blows he struck at the shapeless mass that encumbered it, and thus
it happened that he often ruined his statue by striking away what could
never be replaced.