Michael Angelo Buonaroti was born at the castle of Caprese in Tuscany,
on March 6, 1474–5. He was descended from a noble, though not a wealthy
family; and his father endeavoured to check the fondness for drawing
which he showed at an early age, lest he should disgrace his parentage
by following what was then deemed little better than a mechanical
employment. Fortunately for the arts, the bent of the son’s genius was
too decided to be foiled by the parent’s pride; and in April, 1488,
young Buonaroti was placed under the tuition of Ghirlandaio, then the
most eminent painter in Italy.
He soon distinguished himself above his fellow pupils, and was fortunate
in attracting the notice of Lorenzo de Medici; but the early death of
his patron, and the troubles which ensued in Florence, clouded the
brilliant prospects which seemed open to him. He first visited Rome when
about twenty-two years old, at the invitation of Cardinal St. Giorgio;
and resided in that city for a year, without being employed to execute
anything for his pretended patron. He obtained three commissions,
however, from other quarters; one for a Cupid, a second for a statue of
Bacchus, a third for a Virgin and dead Christ, which forms the
altar-piece of a chapel in St. Peter’s. The latter work was the most
important, and established his character as one of the first sculptors
of the day.
Returning to Florence soon after the appointment of Sodarini to be
perpetual Gonfaloniere, or standard-bearer, an office equivalent to that
of president of the republic, he found ampler room for the development
of his talents in the favour of the chief magistrate; for whom he
executed the celebrated statue of David, in marble, placed in front of
the Palazzo Vecchio; and another statue of David, and a group of David
and Goliath, both in bronze. To this period we are also to refer an oil
picture of a Holy Family, painted for Angelo Doni, and now in the
Florence gallery; the only oil painting which can be authenticated as
proceeding from his hand.
The accounts of Michael Angelo’s early life relate so exclusively to his
skill and practice as a sculptor, that some wonder may be felt as to the
means by which he acquired the technical science and dexterity necessary
to the painter. But it was in composition, and as a draughtsman that he
excelled, not as a colourist; and the same intimate knowledge of the
human figure, and freedom and boldness of hand, which guided his chisel,
often, it is said, without a model, will account for the anatomical
excellence and energy of his drawings. Nevertheless it is surprising to
find him at this early age rivalling, and indeed by general suffrage
excelling in his own art Leonardo da Vinci, not only the first painter
of his generation, but one of the most accomplished persons of his age.
The work to which we allude, the celebrated Cartoon of Pisa, painted as
a companion to a battle-piece of Leonardo, has long disappeared; and is
generally supposed to have been destroyed clandestinely by Baccio
Bandinelli, a rival artist, of whose envious and cowardly temper some
amusing anecdotes are related in Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography. It
represented a party of Florentine soldiers, disturbed, while bathing in
the Arno, by a sudden call to arms. Only one copy of it is said to
exist, which is preserved in Mr. Coke’s collection at Holkham.
When Julius II. ascended the papal chair, he invited Michael Angelo to
Rome, and commissioned him to erect a splendid tomb. The original
design, a sketch of which may be seen in Bottari’s edition of Vasari,
was for an insulated building, thirty-four feet six inches by
twenty-three feet, ornamented with forty statues, many of colossal size,
and a vast number of bronze and marble columns, basso-relievos, and
every species of architectural decoration of the richest sort. This
commission, upon the due execution of which Michael Angelo set his
heart, as a worthy opportunity of immortalizing his name, was destined
to involve him in a long train of vexations. During the life of Julius,
the attention which he wished to concentrate on this one great work was
distracted by a variety of other employments forced on him by his
patron. Upon his death, it was resolved to finish it on a smaller scale:
but its progress was then more seriously interrupted by the eagerness of
successive Popes to employ the great artist on works which should
immortalize their own names as liberal patrons of the arts. Ultimately,
after much dissatisfaction and dispute on the part of Pope Julius’s
heirs, the form of the monument was altered; and as it now stands in the
church of St. Pietro in Vinculis, it consists only of a façade,
ornamented by seven statues, three of which are from the hand of Michael
Angelo, the others are by inferior artists. The central figure is the
celebrated Moses, by many considered the finest modern work of
sculpture; and this is the only part of the original composition.
During the same pontificate, Michael Angelo painted the ceiling of the
Sistine chapel. The employment was not to his taste; but it was forced
upon him by Pope Julius. He had never tried his powers in fresco
painting; and that branch of the art, as is well known, involves many
difficulties, which, though merely mechanical, it requires some practice
and experience to surmount. Having first completed the design in a
series of cartoons, he sent to Florence to engage the ablest assistants
to be found: but their labours were unsatisfactory, and dismissing them,
he set to work himself, and executed the whole vault with his own hands,
in the short space of twenty months.
Julius II. died in 1513. The next nine years, comprehending the
pontificate of Leo X., are an entire blank in Michael Angelo’s life, so
far as regards the practice of his art. He was employed the whole time,
by the Pope’s express order, in superintending some new marble quarries
in the mountains of Tuscany.
During the pontificate of Adrian VI. he resided at Florence, where
Giuliano de Medici, afterwards Clement VII., employed him to build a new
library and sacristy to the church of St. Lorenzo, and a sepulchral
chapel, to serve as a mausoleum for the ducal family. He was also
employed to execute two monuments in honour of Giuliano, the brother,
and Lorenzo de Medici, the nephew, of Leo X. The princes are represented
seated, in the Roman military habit, above two sarcophagi. Below are two
recumbent figures to each monument, one pair representing Morning and
Evening; the other, Day and Night. The reason for this singular choice
of personages is not explained.
We cannot enter upon the maze of Italian politics, which led to the
siege of Florence by the imperial troops in 1529–30. Michael Angelo’s
well-known and varied talent led to his being appointed chief engineer
and master of the ordnance to the city; in which capacity he gained new
honour by his skill, resolution, and patriotism. During this turbulent
time he began a picture of Leda, which was sent to France, and fell into
the possession of Francis I. It has long been lost; the original cartoon
is in the collection of the Royal Academy.
Michael Angelo’s second work in fresco, the Last Judgment, occupying the
east end of the Sistine chapel, seems to have been begun in 1533 or
1534. It was not finished till 1541. His last and only other works of
this kind were two large pictures in the Pauline chapel, representing
the Martyrdom of St. Peter, and the Conversion of St. Paul. These were
not completed till he had reached the advanced age of seventy-five.
In 1546 died Antonio da San Gallo, the third architect employed in the
rebuilding of St. Peter’s. The project of renewing the metropolitan
church of Rome was first suggested to the ambitious mind of Pope Julius
II. by the impossibility of finding any place in the then existing
cathedral, worthy of the splendid monument which he had ordered Michael
Angelo to execute. Bramante, Raphael, and San Gallo, were successively
appointed to conduct the mighty undertaking, and removed by death. San
Gallo had deviated materially from the design of Bramante. Michael
Angelo disapproved of his alterations; but was deterred from returning
to the original plan by its vast extent, and the necessity of
contracting the extent of the work so as to meet the impoverished state
of the Papal treasury, produced by the spreading of the Reformation in
Germany and England. He accordingly gave in the design from which the
present building was erected, which, gigantic as it is, falls short of
the dimensions of that which Julius proposed to raise. Having now
reached the advanced age of seventy-one, it was with reluctance that he
undertook so heavy a charge. It was, indeed, only by the absolute
command of the Pope that he was induced to do so; and on the unusual
condition that he should receive no salary, as he accepted the office
purely from devotional feelings. He also made it a condition that he
should be absolutely empowered to discharge any persons employed in the
works, and to supply their places at his pleasure.
To the independent and upright feelings which led him to insist on this
latter clause, the factious opposition, which harassed the remainder of
his life, is partly to be ascribed. Disinterested himself, he suffered
no peculation under his administration; and he was repaid by the hatred
of a powerful party connected with those whose vanity his appointment
wounded, or whose interests his honesty crossed. Repeated attempts were
made to procure his removal, to which he would willingly have yielded,
but for a due sense of the greatness of the work which he had
undertaken, and reluctance to quit it, until too far advanced to be
altered and spoiled by some inferior hand. This praiseworthy solicitude
was not disappointed. During the life of Paul, and through four
succeeding pontificates, he held the situation of chief architect; and
before his death, in February, 1563–4, the cupola was raised, and the
principal features of the building unalterably determined.
His earlier architectural works are to be seen at Florence. They consist
of the façade and sacristy of the church of St. Lorenzo, left unfinished
by Brunelleschi, the mausoleum of the Medici family, and the Laurentian
library. During the latter part of his life he amused his leisure hours
by working on a group representing a dead Christ, supported by the
Virgin and Nicodemus, which he intended for an altar-piece to the chapel
in which he should himself be interred. It was never finished, however,
and is now in the cathedral of Florence. But, from the time of his
assuming the charge of St. Peter’s, his attention was almost entirely
devoted to architecture. His chief works were the completion of the
Farnese palace, begun by San Gallo; the palace of the Senator of Rome,
the picture galleries, and flight of steps leading up to the convent of
Araceli, all situated on the Capitoline hill; and the conversion of the
baths of Diocletian into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli.
Michael Angelo, though he painted few pictures himself, frequently gave
designs to be executed by his favourite pupils, especially Sebastiano
del Piombo. Such was the origin of the magnificent Raising of Lazarus,
in the National Gallery. Like many artists of that age, he aspired to be
a poet. His works consist chiefly of sonnets, modelled on the style of
Petrarch. Religion and Love are the prevailing subjects.
The Life of Michael Angelo, by Mr. Duppa, will gratify the curiosity of
the English reader, who wishes to pursue the subject beyond this mere
list of the artist’s principal works. To the Italian reader we may
recommend the lives of Condivi and Vasari, as containing the original
information from which subsequent writers have drawn their accounts. To
do justice to the versatile, yet profound genius of this great man, is a
task which we must leave to such writers as Reynolds and Fuseli, in
whose lectures the reader will find ample evidence of the profound
admiration with which they regarded him. Nor can we conclude better than
with the short but energetic character given by the latter, of his
favourite artist’s style of genius, and of his principal works:—
“Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are
the elements of Michael Angelo’s style. By these principles he selected
or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as
architect, he attempted, and above any other man, succeeded, to unite
magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the
utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand: character
and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient
to grandeur. To give the appearance of perfect ease to the most
perplexing difficulty, was the exclusive power of Michael Angelo. He is
the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine
chapel which exhibits the origin, the progress, and the final
dispensations of theocracy. He has personified motion in the groups of
the Cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the monuments of S. Lorenzo;
unravelled the features of meditation in the Prophets and Sibyls of the
Sistine chapel; and in the Last Judgment, with every attitude that
varies the human body, traced the master-trait of every passion that
sways the human heart. Though, as sculptor, he expressed the character
of flesh more perfectly than all who came before or went after him, yet
he never submitted to copy an individual, Julius II. only excepted; and
in him he represented the reigning passion rather than the man. In
painting he has contented himself with a negative colour, and as the
painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. The fabric of
St. Peter’s, scattered into infinity of jarring parts by Bramante and
his successors, he concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most
complex gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him for
all in all, was M. Angelo, the salt of art: sometimes he no doubt had
his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the
grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy: both met
with armies of copyists; and it has been his fate to be censured for
their folly.”—(Lecture II.)
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