MICHAEL ANGELO (1475–1564)
“The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind
That I may have the power to sing of Thee,
And sound Thy praises everlastingly.”
WORDSWORTH (_From the Italian of Michael Angelo_).
“The Entombment of our Lord” (790). We come now to an artist who was the
crown and glory of his age, and of his school, as he was the crown and
glory of the art of all time. You have all heard of Michael Angelo.
Ruskin says that his imaginative perception was almost superhuman. If
you go to Rome you will visit the Sixtine Chapel, the ceiling of which
he painted. Saints, sibyls, prophets are there. The story of the
creation of man, of his fall and of his redemption, is the theme
presented there. Over the altar he painted that greatest of all visions
seen by the inner eye of man—the Last Judgment.
It would be impossible for me to sketch here Michael Angelo’s life, or
to give you an idea of his greatness. He was the son of Lodovico di
Leonardo Buonarotti Simoni, a descendant, it is said, of the Counts of
Canossa. His father had a small estate close to Florence, and that
estate was rich in quarries of hard stone. “The nurse of Michael
Angelo,” says Vasari, “was a stone-cutter’s wife, and she would
sometimes put into the baby hands of her little charge a chisel and
hammer.” Michael Angelo used to say to Vasari, “Giorgio, if I have
anything of genius it came to me from being in the subtle air of your
country of Arezzo, while from my nurse I got the chisel and hammer with
which to fashion my figures.”
His father wished to place him in the woollen and silk trade, but the
hand of the spirit was upon the boy, and he would spend his time in
drawing secretly. There was no resisting the claims of inborn genius,
and when Michael Angelo was fourteen his father had ceased to throw
obstacles in his way. He placed the boy with Ghirlandajo, who was
considered the best teacher in Italy. The master recognised the genius
of his pupil.
Lorenzo de’ Medici was one of the great nobles of Venice; he had a
splendid garden on the Piazza San Marco, the alleys of which were filled
with antique sculpture. Lorenzo wished to transform that garden into a
school of sculpture. He wrote to Ghirlandajo inviting him if he had a
pupil of genius to send the youth to this open-air academy. Michael
Angelo was sent, and we must think of him in the fragrant avenues of the
beautiful garden handling the marble and the chisel. He was greatly
envied by some of his fellow-students, and, in a quarrel with one, he
received a heavy blow which fractured his nose. This gave a peculiar
look to his rugged countenance—the look of an antique bust that has been
mutilated. Michael Angelo won the love of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and stayed
in his house four years, when the death occurred of that great patron of
art.
He then left Venice for Florence and went on to Rome, executing on his
way a triumphant series of works. I could not enumerate to you all that
he did in sculpture and in painting, but here are a few masterpieces—the
statues of “David” and “Moses,” the wonderful statue of Duke Lorenzo
brooding in the shadow of the grave, the four symbolic figures of
“Night” and “Day,” of “Dawn” and “Twilight” that are so beautiful,
Vasari tells us, that “if art were lost they are sufficient to restore
it to light.” Pope Julius II. had ordered the mausoleum for himself, and
he resolved to rebuild the church of St. Peter in order to give Michael
Angelo’s work a fair setting. Thus he became the architect of the great
cathedral of St. Peter’s at Rome.
Michael Angelo was a solitary man, a patriot and a poet in marble, in
painting and in words. Raphael, of the “sweet Madonnas,” used to say
that he thanked God to have been born in the days of Michael Angelo. In
his old age the incomparable artist loved the beautiful Vittoria
Colonna, the widow of the Marquis of Pescara. He wrote sonnets to her
and she wrote some to him. Religious sympathy united them. In his youth
Michael Angelo had heard Savonarola preach, and he and Vittoria were the
monk’s disciples, for both believed in the internal reform of the Church
such as Savonarola preached. She died, and the old man watched by her
bedside; and, when the last sigh had left her lips, he kissed the dead
hands, afterwards bitterly regretting that he had not kissed her
forehead and cheek. Beautiful and sacred friendship worthy of two such
peerless souls! He died many years after, but he preserved to the last
the memory of what she had been. Our poet Wordsworth has translated some
of Michael Angelo’s sonnets. In one addressed to Vittoria he says—
“Better plea,
Love cannot have, than that in loving thee
Glory to that eternal Peace is paid,
Who such divinity to thee imparts
As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.”
This picture of “The Entombment” is quite unfinished. Perhaps it was
painted in early youth and laid aside. There is grandeur in the
conception, but it fails to hold us by the subtle charm of presentation.
There are the three Marys. The kneeling Virgin is vaguely outlined; just
in front of her is Mary, the wife of Cleophas, a figure that has in it a
touch of woeful grace. The other Mary, a tall, slight woman, helps to
hold the twisted sheet in which Christ is being carried. Salome is also
there, seated on the ground examining something in her hand which has
not been rendered by the artist. Joseph and another in the background
support the Saviour, whose figure is painful to look at in its
emaciation. The picture in its unfinished state is valuable to students,
for it reveals Michael Angelo’s method of work.
“The Madonna and Infant Christ: St. John the Baptist and Angels” (809).
This picture is unfinished also, but the charm and majesty of the work
are manifest. There is in it a haunting mystery. The Madonna, a
beautiful figure, holds an open book out of reach of the Child, who is
trying to grasp it. That book contains the scroll on which the sorrows
He has to meet are recorded. St. John the Baptist, hiding his sad little
countenance, stands near her. Behind are two wingless angels reading
from another scroll. On the other side of the Virgin and behind her are
two unfinished angels with shrouded heads. Mark the beauty of the
Virgin’s expression, the simple treatment of the folds of her dress, the
nobility of her attitude. From these two pictures you must try to guess
the greatness of Michael Angelo’s genius—a genius expressive of that of
Florence, of its intellect, its unresting quality, its religion. You
must always remember that to understand a picture you must try to feel
it through the artist’s temperament; you must try to understand the
ideals of the age in which it was painted; above all, you must
understand its religion. It is Michael Angelo’s spiritual power that
still lives on for us in these works, however unfinished they may be,
and gives to them an arresting quality.
[Illustration:
“THE MADONNA AND INFANT CHRIST, ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, AND ANGELS”
(809)
BY MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI
page 40
]