“I have seen Michel Angelo, although sixty years of age, and
not one of the most robust of men, smite down more scales from
a very hard block of marble in a quarter of an hour, than three
young marble-cutters would in three or four times that space of
time. He flung himself upon the marble with such impetuosity
and fervor, as to induce me to believe that he would break the
work into fragments. With a single blow he brought down scales
of marble of three or four fingers in breadth, and with such
precision to the line marked on the marble, that if he had broken
away a very little more, he risked the ruin of the work.”
This is pitiable. This was not the work for a great genius like him,
but for a common stone-cutter. What waste of time and energy to no
purpose,—nay, to worse than no purpose,—to the danger, often the
irreparable injury, of the statue. A dull, plodding, patient workman
would have done it far better. It is as if an architect should be
employed in planing the beams or laying the bricks and stones of the
building he designed. In fact, Michel Angelo injured, and in some
cases nearly ruined, most of his statues by the very impatience of his
genius. Thus the back head of the Moses has been struck away by one of
these blows, and everywhere a careful eye detects the irreparable blow
beyond its true limit. This is not the Michel Angelo whom we are to
reverence and admire; this is an _abbozzatore_ roughing out the work.
There is no difficulty in striking off large cleavings of marble at one
stroke—any one can do that; and it is pitiable to find him so engaged.
Where we do find his technical excellence as a sculptor is when he
comes to the surface—when with the drill he draws the outline with such
force and wonderful precision—when his tooth-chisel models out, with
such pure sense of form and such accomplished knowledge, the subtle
anatomies of the body and the living curves of the palpitant flesh;
and no sculptor can examine the colossal figures of the Medici Chapel
without feeling the free and mighty touch of a great master of the
marble. Here the hand and the mind work together, and the stone is
plastic as clay to his power.
It was not until Michel Angelo was sixty years of age that, on the
death of Antonio San Gallo, he was appointed to succeed him as
architect, and to design and carry out the building of St. Peter’s,
then only rising from its foundations. To this appointment he
answered, as he had before objected when commissioned to paint the
Sistine Chapel, “Architecture is not my art.” But his objections were
overruled. The Pope insisted, and he was finally prevailed upon to
accept this commission, on the noble condition that his services should
be gratuitous, and dedicated to the glory of God and of His Apostle,
St. Peter; and to this he was actuated, not only by a grand sentiment,
but because he was aware that hitherto the work had been conducted
dishonestly, and with a sole view of greed and gain. Receiving nothing
himself, he could the more easily suppress all peculation on the part
of others.
He was, as he said, an old man in years, but in energy and power he
had gained rather than lost, and he set himself at once to work,
and designed that grand basilica which has been the admiration of
centuries, and to swing, as he said, in air the Pantheon. That mighty
dome is but the architectural brother of the great statues in the
Medicean Chapel, and the Titan frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Granted
all the defects of this splendid basilica, all the objections of all
the critics, well or ill founded, and all the deformities grafted on it
by his successors—there it is, one of the noblest and grandest of all
temples to the Deity, and one of the most beautiful. The dome itself,
within and without, is a marvel of beauty and grandeur, to which all
other domes, even that of Brunelleschi, must yield precedence. It is
the uplifted brow and forehead that holds the brain of papal Rome,
calm, and without a frown, silent, majestic, impressive. The church
within has its own atmosphere, which scarcely knows the seasons
without; and when the pageant and the pomp of the Catholic hierarchy
passes along its nave, and the sunlight builds its golden slanting
bridge of light from the lantern to the high altar, and the fumes of
incense rise from the clinking censer at High Mass, and the solemn
thrill of the silver trumpets sounds and swells and reverberates
through the dim mosaicked dome where the saints are pictured above,
cold must be his heart and dull his sense who is not touched to
reverence. Here is the type of the universal Church—free and beautiful,
large and loving; not grim and sombre and sad, like the northern
Gothic cathedrals. We grieve over all the bad taste of its interior
decoration, all the giant and awkward statues, all the lamentable
details, for which he is not responsible; but still, despite them all,
the impression is great. When at twilight the shadows obscure all
these trivialities, when the lofty cross above the altar rays forth
its single illumination and the tasteless details disappear, and the
towering arches rise unbroken with their solemn gulfs of darkness,
one can feel how great, how astonishing this church is, in its broad
architectural features.
At nearly this time Michel Angelo designed the Palazzo Farnese,
the Church of Sta Maria degli Angeli in the ruins of the Baths of
Diocletian, the Laurentian Library and the palaces on the Capitol, and
various other buildings, all of which bear testimony to his power and
skill as an architect.
For St. Peter’s as it now stands Michel Angelo is not responsible. His
idea was to make all subordinate to the dome; but after his death, the
nave was prolonged by Carlo Maderno, the façade completely changed, and
the main theme of the building was thus almost obliterated from the
front. It is greatly to be regretted that his original design was not
carried out. Every change from it was an injury. The only point from
which one can get an idea of his intention is from behind or at the
side, and there its colossal character is shown.
We have thus far considered Michel Angelo as a sculptor, painter, and
architect. It remains to consider him as a poet. Nor in his poetry do
we find any difference of character from what he exhibited in his other
arts. He is rough, energetic, strong, full of high ideas, struggling
with fate, oppressed and weary with life. He has none of the sweet
numbers of Petrarca, or the lively spirit of Ariosto, or the chivalric
tones of Tasso. His verse is rude, craggy, almost disjointed at times,
and with little melody in it, but it is never feeble. It was not his
art, he might have said, with more propriety than when he thus spoke of
painting and architecture. Lofty thoughts have wrestled their way into
verse, and constrained a rhythmic form to obey them. But there is a
constant struggle for him in a form which is not plastic to his touch.
Still his poems are strong in their crabbedness, and stand like granite
rocks in the general sweet mush of Italian verse.
Such, then, was Michel Angelo,—sculptor, painter, architect, poet,
engineer, and able in all these arts. Nor would it have been possible
for him to be so great in any one of them had he not trained his mind
to all; for all the arts are but the various articulations of the
self-same power, as the fingers are of the hand, and each lends aid to
the other. Only by having all can the mind have its full grasp of art.
It is too often insisted in our days that a man to be great in one art
must devote himself exclusively to that; or if he be solicited by any
other, he must merely toy with it. Such was not the doctrine of the
artists of old, either in ancient days of Greece or at the epoch of the
Renaissance. Phidias was a painter and architect as well as a sculptor,
and so were nearly all the men of his time. Giotto, Leonardo, Ghiberti,
Michel Angelo, Verrocchio, Cellini, Raffaelle,—in a word, all the great
men of the glorious age in Italy were accomplished in many arts. They
more or less trained themselves in all. It might be said that not a
single great man was not versed in more than one art. Thence it was
that they derived their power. It does not suffice that the arm alone
is strong; the whole body strikes with every blow.
The frescoes in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and the statues in the
Medicean Chapel at Florence, are the greatest monuments of Michel
Angelo’s power as an artist. Whatever may be the defects of these great
works, they are of a Titanic brood, that have left no successors,
as they had no progenitors. They defy criticism, however just, and
stand by themselves outside the beaten track of art, to challenge
our admiration. So also, despite all his faults and defects, how
grand a figure Michel Angelo himself is in history, how high a
place he holds! His name itself is a power. He is one of the mighty
masters that the world cannot forget. Kings and emperors die and are
forgotten,—dynasties change and governments fall,—but he, the silent,
stern worker, reigns unmoved in the great realm of art.
Let us leave this great presence, and pass into the other splendid
chapel of the Medici which adjoins this, and mark the contrast, and see
what came of some of the titular monarchs of his time who fretted their
brief hour across the stage, and wore their purple, and issued their
edicts, and were fawned upon and flattered in their pride of ephemeral
power.
Passing across a corridor, you enter this domed chapel or mausoleum—and
a splendid mausoleum it is. Its shape is octagonal. It is 63 metres in
height, or about 200 feet, and is lined throughout with the richest
marbles—of jasper, coralline, persicata, chalcedony, mother-of-pearl,
agate, giallo and verde antico, porphyry, lapis-lazuli, onyx, oriental
alabaster, and beautiful petrified woods; and its cost was no less than
thirty-two millions of francs of to-day. Here were to lie the bodies
of the Medici family, in honor of whom it was raised. On each of the
eight sides is a vast arch, and inside six of these are six immense
sarcophagi, four of red Egyptian granite and two of gray, with the
arms of the family elaborately carved upon them, and surmounted with
coronets adorned with precious gems. In two of the arches are colossal
portrait statues,—one of Ferdinand III. in golden bronze, by Pietro
Tacca; and the other of Cosimo II. in brown bronze, by John of Bologna,
and both in the richest royal robes. The sarcophagi have the names of
Ferdinand II., Cosimo III., Francesco I., Cosimo I. All that wealth and
taste can do has been done to celebrate and perpetuate the memory of
these royal dukes that reigned over Florence in its prosperous days.
And where are the bodies of these royal dukes? Here comes the saddest
of stories. When the early bodies were first buried I know not; but in
1791 Ferdinand III. gathered together all the coffins in which they
were laid, and had them piled together pell-mell in the subterranean
vaults of this chapel, scarcely taking heed to distinguish them one
from another; and here they remained, neglected and uncared for, and
only protected from plunder by two wooden doors with common keys,
until 1857. Then shame came over those who had the custody of the
place, and it was determined to put them in order. In 1818 there had
been a rumor that these Medicean coffins had been violated and robbed
of all the articles of value which they contained. But little heed was
paid to this rumor, and it was not until thirty-nine years after that
an examination into the real facts was made. It was then discovered
that the rumor was well founded. The forty-nine coffins containing the
remains of the family were taken down one by one, and a sad state of
things was exposed. Some of them had been broken into and plundered,
some were the hiding-places of vermin, and such was the nauseous odor
they gave forth, that at least one of the persons employed in taking
them down lost his life by inhaling it. Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned
to clay, had become hideous and noisome. Of many of the ducal family
nothing remained but fragments of bones and a handful of dust. But
where the hand of the robber had not been, the splendid dresses covered
with jewels, the silks and satins wrought over with gold embroidery,
the richly chased helmets and swords crusted with gems and gold, still
survived, though those who had worn them in their splendid pageants
were but dust and crumbling bones within them.
“Here were sands, ignoble things,
Dropped from the ruined sides of kings.”
In many cases, where all else that bore the impress of life had
vanished, the hair still remained almost as fresh as ever. Some bodies
which had been carefully embalmed were in fair preservation, but
some were fearfully altered. Ghastly and grinning skulls were there,
adorned with crowns of gold. Dark and parchment-like faces were seen
with their golden locks rich as ever, and twisted with gems and pearls
and costly nets. The Cardinal Princes still wore their mitres and
red cloaks, their purple pianete and glittering rings, their crosses
of white enamel, their jacinths and amethysts and sapphires—all had
survived their priestly selves. The dried bones of Vittoria della
Rovere Montefeltro (whose very name is poetic) were draped in a robe
of black silk of exquisite texture, trimmed with black and white lace,
while on her breast lay a great golden medal, and on one side were her
emblems and on the other her portrait as she was in life, as if to
say, “Look on this picture and on this.” Alas, poor humanity! Beside
her lay, almost a mere skeleton, Anna Luisa, the Electress Palatine
of the Rhine, and daughter of Cosimo III., with the electoral crown
surmounting her ghastly brow and face of black parchment, a crucifix of
silver on her breast, and at her side a medal with her effigy and name;
while near her lay her uncle, Francesco Maria, a mere mass of dust and
robes and rags. Many had been stripped by profane hands of all their
jewels and insignia, and among these were Cosimo I. and II., Eleonora
de Toledo, Maria Christina, and others, to the number of twenty. The
two bodies which were found in the best preservation were those of the
Grand Duchess Giovanna d’Austria, the wife of Francesco I., and their
daughter Anna. Corruption had scarcely touched them, and there they lay
fresh in color as if they had just died—the mother in her red satin,
trimmed with lace, her red silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, the
ear-rings hanging from her ears, and her blond hair fresh as ever. And
so, after centuries had passed, the truth became evident of the rumor
that ran through Florence at the time of their death, that they had
died of poison. The arsenic which had taken from them their life had
preserved their bodies in death. Giovanni delle Bande Nere was also
here, his battles all over, his bones scattered and loose within his
iron armor, and his rusted helmet with its visor down. And this was
all that was left of the great Medici. Is there any lesson sadder than
this? These royal persons, once so gay and proud and powerful, some
of whom patronized Michel Angelo, and extended to him their gracious
favor, and honored him perhaps with a smile, now so utterly dethroned
by death, their names scarcely known, or, if known, not reverenced,
while the poor stern artist they looked down upon sits like a monarch
on the throne of fame, and, though dead, rules with his spirit and by
his works in the august realm of art. Who has not heard his name? Who
has not felt his influence? And ages shall come, and generations shall
pass, and he will keep his kingdom.