My only disagreement with you would be in the estimate of his
comparative excellence in sculpture and painting. He called himself
sculptor, but we seldom gauge rightly our own strength and weakness. The
paintings in the Sistine Chapel are to my mind entirely beyond criticism
or praise, not merely with reference to design and execution, but also
for colour, right noble and perfect in their place. I was never more
surprised than by this quality, to which I do not think justice has ever
been done; nothing in his sculpture comes near to the perfection of his
Adam or the majesty of the Dividing the Light from Darkness; his
sculpture lacks the serene strength that is found in the Adam and many
other figures in the great frescoes. Dominated by the fierce spirit of
Dante, he was less influenced by the grave dignity of the Greek
philosophy and art than might have been expected from the contemporary
and possible pupil of Poliziano. In my estimate of him as a Sculptor in
comparison with him as Painter, I am likely to be in a minority of one!
but _I_ think that when he is thought of as a painter his earlier
pictures are thought of, and these certainly are unworthy of him, but
the Prophets and Sibyls are the greatest things ever painted. As a rule
he certainly insists too much upon the anatomy; some one said admirably,
"Learn anatomy, and forget it"; Michael Angelo did the first and not the
second, and the fault of almost all his work is, that it is too much an
anatomical essay. The David is an example of this, besides being very
faulty in proportion, with hands and feet that are monstrous. It is, I
think, altogether bad. The hesitating pose is good, and goes with the
sullen expression of the face, but is not that of the ardent heroic boy!
This seems presumptuous criticism; and you might, considering my
aspirations and efforts, say to me: "Do better!" but I am not Michael
Angelo, but I am a pupil of the greatest sculptor of all, Pheidias (a
master the great Florentine knew nothing of), and, so far, feel a right
to set up judgment on the technique only.
_Watts._