Excursions in Art and Letters: Michelangelo

Figures

Sep 14

Written By Mandy Haga

BY

William Wetmore Story

An excerpt from

EXCURSIONS IN ART
AND LETTERS

1893

Introduction

"Excursions in Art and Letters" by William Wetmore Story is a remarkable collection of essays that takes readers on an enlightening journey through the world of art and literature. Among the many captivating pieces found within this anthology, one of the most noteworthy is Story's exploration of the life and works of the Renaissance master, Michelangelo Buonarroti. In this essay, Story delves deep into the life and genius of Michelangelo, offering readers a profound insight into the artist's unique contribution to the world of art. Through vivid descriptions, insightful analysis, and a deep appreciation for the subject matter, Story's essay on Michelangelo stands as a testament to the enduring power of art to inspire and transform the human spirit. As we embark on this literary excursion into the world of Michelangelo, we are invited to uncover the layers of creativity, passion, and ingenuity that defined this iconic figure in the history of art.

Excursions in Art and Letters: Michelangelo

The overthrow of the pagan religion was the deathblow of pagan Art. The temples shook to their foundations, the statues of the gods shuddered, a shadow darkened across the pictured and sculptured world, when through the ancient realm was heard the wail, “Pan, great Pan is dead.” The nymphs fled to their caves affrighted. Dryads, Oreads, and Naiads abandoned the groves, mountains, and streams that they for ages had haunted. Their voices were heard no more singing by shadowy brooks, their faces peered no longer through the sighing woods; and of all the mighty train of greater and lesser divinities and deified heroes to whom Greece and Rome had bent the knee and offered sacrifice, Orpheus alone lingered in the guise of the Good Shepherd.

Christianity struck the deathblow not only to pagan Art, but for a time to all Art. Sculpture and Painting were in its mind closely allied to idolatry. Under its influence the arts slowly wasted away as with a mortal disease. With ever-declining strength they struggled for centuries, gasping as it were for breath, and finally, almost in utter atrophy, half alive, half dead,—a ruined, maimed, deformed presence, shorn of all their glory and driven out by the world,—they found a beggarly refuge and sufferance in some Christian church or monastery.

The noble and majestic statues of the sculptured gods of ancient Greece were overthrown and buried in the ground, their glowing and pictured figures were swept from the walls of temples and dwellings, and in their stead only a crouching, timid race of bloodless saints were seen, not glad to be men, and fearful of God. Humanity dared no longer to stand erect, but groveled in superstitious fear, and lashed its flesh in penance, and was ashamed and afraid of all its natural instincts. How then was it possible for Art to live? Beauty, happiness, life, and joy were but a snare and a temptation, and Religion and Art, which can never be divorced, crouched together in fear.

The long black period of the Middle Ages came to shroud everything in ignorance. Literature, art, poetry, science, sank into a nightmare of sleep. Only arms survived. The world became a battlefield, simply for power and dominion, until religion, issuing from the Church, bore in its van the banner of chivalry.

But the seasons of history are like the seasons of the year. Nothing utterly dies. And after the long apparently dead winter of the Middle Ages the spring came again—the spring of the Renaissance—when liberty and humanity awoke, and art, literature, science, poesy, all suddenly felt a new influence come over them. The Church itself shook off its apathy, inspired by a new spirit. Liberty, long downtrodden and tyrannized over, roused itself, and struck for popular rights. The great contest of the Guelphs and Ghibellines began. There was a ferment throughout all society. The great republics of Italy arose. Commerce began to flourish; and despite all the wars, contests, and feuds of people and nobles, and the decimations from plague and disease, art, literature, science, and religion itself, burst forth into a new and vigorous life. One after another there arose those great men whose names shine like planets in history—Dante, with his wonderful “Divina Commedia,” written, as it were, with a pen of fire against a stormy background of night; Boccaccio, with his sunny sheaf of idyllic tales; Petrarca, the earnest lover of liberty, the devoted patriot, the archæologist and philosopher as well as poet, whose tender and noble spirit is marked through his exquisitely finished canzone and sonnets, and his various philosophical works; Villari, the historian; and all the illustrious company that surrounded the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent—Macchiavelli, Poliziano, Boiardo, the three Pulci, Leon Battista Alberti, Aretino, Pico della Mirandola, and Marsilio Ficino; and, a little later, Ariosto and Tasso, whose stanzas are still sung by the gondoliers of Venice; and Guarini and Bibbiena and Bembo,—and many another in the fields of poesy and literature. Music then also began to develop itself; and Guido di Arezzo arranged the scale and the new method of notation. Art also sent forth a sudden and glorious coruscation of genius, beginning with Cimabue and Giotto, to shake off the stiff cerements of Byzantine tradition in which it had so long been swathed, and to stretch its limbs to freer action, and spread its wings to higher flights of power, invention, and beauty. The marble gods, which had lain dethroned and buried in the earth for so many centuries, rose with renewed life from their graves, and reasserted over the world of Art the dominion they had lost in the realm of Religion. It is useless to rehearse the familiar names that then illumined the golden age of Italian art, where shine preëminent those of Leonardo, the widest and most universal genius that perhaps the world has ever seen; of Michel Angelo, the greatest power that ever expressed itself in stone or color; of Raffaelle, whose exquisite grace and facile design have never been surpassed; and of Titian, Giorgione, Veronese, and Tintoretto, with their Venetian splendors. Nor did science lag behind. Galileo ranged the heavens with his telescope, and, like a second Joshua, bade the sun stand still; and Columbus, ploughing the unknown deep, added another continent to the known world.

This was the Renaissance or new birth in Italy; after the long drear night of ignorance and darkness, again the morning came and the glory returned. As Italy above all other lands is the land of the Renaissance, so Florence above all cities is the city of the Renaissance. Its streets are haunted by historic associations; at every corner, and in every byplace or piazza, you meet the spirits of the past. The ghosts of the great men who have given such a charm and perfume to history meet you at every turn. Here they walked and worked centuries ago; here to the imagination they still walk, and they scarcely seem gone. Here is the stone upon which Dante sat and meditated,—was it an hour ago or six centuries? Here Brunelleschi watched the growing of his mighty dome, and here Michel Angelo stood and gazed at it while dreaming of that other mighty dome of St. Peter’s which he was afterwards to raise, and said, “Like it I will not, and better I cannot.” As one walks through the piazza of Sta Maria Novella, and looks up at the façade that Michel Angelo called his “sposa,” it is not difficult again to people it with the glad procession that bore Cimabue’s famous picture, with shouts and pomp and rejoicing, to its altar within the church. In the Piazza della Signoria one may in imagination easily gather a crowd of famous men to listen to the piercing tones and powerful eloquence of Savonarola. Here gazing up, one may see towering against the sky, and falling as it were against the trooping clouds, the massive fortress-like structure of the Palazzo Publico, with its tall machicolated tower, whence the bell so often called the turbulent populace together; or dropping one’s eyes, behold under the lofty arches of the Loggia of Orcagna the marble representations of the ancient and modern world assembled together,—peacefully: the antique Ajax, the Renaissance Perseus of Cellini, the Rape of the Sabines, by John of Bologna, and the late group of Polyxines, by Fedi, holding solemn and silent conclave. In the Piazza del Duomo at the side of Brunelleschi’s noble dome, the exquisite campanile of Giotto, slender, graceful, and joyous, stands like a bride and whispers ever the name of its master and designer. And turning round, one may see the Baptistery celebrated by Dante, and those massive bronze doors storied by Ghiberti, which Michel Angelo said were worthy to be the doors of Paradise. History and romance meets us everywhere. The old families still give their names to the streets, and palaces, and loggie. Every now and then a marble slab upon some house records the birth or death within of some famous citizen, artist, writer, or patriot, or perpetuates the memory of some great event. There is scarcely a street or a square which has not something memorable to say and to recall, and one walks through the streets guided by memory, looking behind more than before, and seeing with the eyes of the imagination. Here is the Bargello, by turns the court of the Podestà and the prison of Florence, whence so many edicts were issued, and where the groans of so many prisoners were echoed. Here is the Church of the Carmine, where Masaccio and Lippi painted those frescoes which are still living on its walls, though the hands that painted and the brains that dreamed them into life are gone forever. Here are the loggie which were granted only to the fifteen highest citizens, from which fair ladies, who are now but dust, looked and laughed so many a year ago. Here are the piazze within whose tapestried stockades gallant knights jousted in armor, and fair eyes, gazing from above, “rained influence and adjudged the prize.” Here are the fortifications at which Michel Angelo worked as an engineer and as a combatant; and here among the many churches, each one of which bears on its walls or over its altars the painted or sculptured work of some of the great artists of the flowering prime of Florence, is that of the Santa Croce, the sacred and solemn mausoleum of many of its mighty dead. As we wander through its echoing nave at twilight, when the shadows of evening are deepening, we may hold communion with these great spirits of the past. The Peruzzi and Baldi Chapels are illustrated by the frescoes of Giotto. The foot treads upon many a slab under which lie the remains of soldier, and knight, and noble, and merchant prince, who, centuries ago, their labors and battles and commerce done, were here laid to rest. The nave on either side is lined with monumental statues of the illustrious dead. Ungrateful Florence, who drove her greatest poet from her gates to find a grave in Ravenna, patriis extorris ab urbe, here tardily and in penitence raised to him a monument after vainly striving to reclaim his bones. Here, too, among others, are the statues and monuments of Michel Angelo, Macchiavelli, Galileo, Lanzi, Aretino, Guicciardini, Alfieri, Leon Battista Alberti, and Raffaelle Morghen.

Of all the great men who shed a lustre over Florence, no one so domineers over it and pervades it with his memory and his presence as Michel Angelo. The impression he left upon his own age and upon all subsequent ages is deeper, perhaps, than that left by any other save Dante. Everything in Florence recalls him. The dome of Brunelleschi, impressive and beautiful as it is, and prior in time to that of St. Peter’s, cannot rid itself of its mighty brother in Rome. With Ghiberti’s doors are ever associated his words. In Santa Croce we all pause longer before the tomb where his body is laid than before any other—even that of Dante. The empty place before the Palazzo Vecchio, where his David stood, still holds its ghost. All places which knew him in life are still haunted by his memory. The house where he lived, thought, and worked is known to every pilgrim of art. The least fragment which his hand touched is there preserved as precious, simply because it was his; and it is with a feeling of reverence that we enter the little closet where his mighty works were designed. There still stands his folding desk, lit by a little slip of a window; and there are the shelves and pigeon-holes where he kept his pencils, colors, tools, and books. The room is so narrow that one can scarcely turn about in it; and the contrast between this narrow, restricted space and the vastness of the thoughts which there were born, and the extent of his fame which fills the world, is strangely impressive and affecting. Here, barring the door behind him to exclude the world, he sat and studied and wrote and drew, little dreaming that hundreds of thousands of pilgrims would in after-centuries come to visit it in reverence from a continent then but just discovered, and peopled only with savages.

But more than all other places, the Church of San Lorenzo is identified with him; and the Medicean Chapel, which he designed, is more a monument to him than to those in honor of whom it was built.

Here, therefore, under the shadow of these noble shapes, and in the silent influence of this solemn place, let us cast a hurried glance over the career and character of Michel Angelo as exhibited in his life and his greatest works. To do more than this would be impossible within the brief limits we can here command. We may then give a glance into the adjoining and magnificent Hall, which is the real mausoleum of the Medici, and is singularly in contrast with it.

Michel Angelo was born at Caprese, in the Casentino, near Florence, on March 6, 1474 or 1475, according as we reckon from the nativity or the incarnation of Christ. He died at Rome on Friday, February 23, 1564, at the ripe age of eighty-nine or ninety. He claimed to be of the noble family of the Counts of Canossa. He certainly was of the family of the Berlinghi. His father was one of the twelve Buonomini, and was Podestà of Caprese when Michel Angelo was born. From his early youth he showed a strong inclination to art, and vainly his father sought to turn him aside from this vocation. His early studies were under Ghirlandajo. But he soon left his master to devote himself to sculpture; and he was wont to say that he “had imbibed this disposition with his nurse’s milk”—she being the wife of a stone-carver. Lorenzo the Magnificent favored him and received him into his household; and there under his patronage he prosecuted his studies, associating familiarly with some of the most remarkable men of the period, enriching his mind with their conversation, and giving himself earnestly to the study not only of art, but of science and literature. The celebrated Angelo Poliziano, then tutor to the sons of Lorenzo, was strongly attracted to him, and seems to have adopted him also as a pupil. His early efforts as a sculptor were not remarkable; and though many stories are told of his great promise and efficiency, but little weight is to be given to them. He soon, however, began to distinguish himself among his contemporaries; and his Cupid and Bacchus, though wanting in all the spirit and characteristics of antique work, were, for the time and age of the sculptor, important and remarkable. After this followed the Pietà, now in St. Peter’s at Rome, in which a different spirit began to exhibit itself; but it was not till later on that the great individuality and originality of his mind was shown, when from an inform block of rejected marble he hewed the colossal figure of David. He had at last found the great path of his genius. From this time forward he went on with ever-increasing power—working in many various arts, and stamping on each the powerful character of his mind. His grandest and most characteristic works in sculpture and painting were executed in his middle age. The Sistine Chapel he completed when he was thirty-eight years old, the stern figure of the Moses when he was forty, the great sculptures of the Medici Chapel when he was from fifty to fifty-five; and in his sixty-sixth year he finished the Last Judgment. Thenceforth his thoughts were chiefly given to architecture, with excursions into poetry—though during this latter period he painted the frescoes in the Pauline Chapel; and after being by turns sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet, he spent the last years of his life in designing and superintending the erection of St. Peter’s at Rome.

One of his last works, if not the last, was the model of the famous cupola of St. Peter’s, which he never saw completed. In some respects this was departed from in its execution by his successors; but in every change it lost, and had it been carried out strictly as he designed it, it would have been even nobler and more beautiful than it is.

Here was a long life of ceaseless study, of untiring industry, of never-flagging devotion to art. Though surrounded by discouragements of every kind, harassed by his family, forced to obey the arbitrary will of a succession of Popes, and, in accordance with their orders, to abandon the execution of his high artistic conceptions and waste months and years on mere mechanic labor in superintending mines and quarries—driven against his will, now to be a painter when he desired to be a sculptor, now to be an architect when he had learned to be a painter, now as an engineer to be employed on fortifications when he was longing for his art; through all the exigencies of his life, and all the worrying claims of patrons, family, and country, he kept steadily on, never losing courage even to the end—a man of noble life, high faith, pure instincts, great intellect, powerful will, and inexhaustible energy; proud and scornful, but never vain; violent of character, but generous and true,—never guilty through all his long life of a single mean or unworthy act: a silent, serious, unsocial, self-involved man, oppressed with the weight of great thoughts, and burdened by many cares and sorrows. With but a grim humor, and none of the lighter graces of life, he went his solitary way, ploughing a deeper furrow in his age than any of his contemporaries, remarkable as they were,—an earnest and unwearied student and seeker, even to the last.

It was in his old age that he made a drawing of himself in a child’s go-cart with the motto “Ancora imparo”—I am still learning. And one winter day toward the end of his life, the Cardinal Gonsalvi met him walking down towards the Colosseum during a snowstorm. Stopping his carriage, the Cardinal asked where he was going in such stormy weather. “To school,” he answered “to try to learn something.”

Slowly, as years advanced, his health declined, but his mind retained to the last all its energy and clearness; and many a craggy sonnet and madrigal he wrote towards the end of his life, full of high thought and feeling—struggling for expression, and almost rebelliously submitting to the limits of poetic form; and at last, peacefully, after eighty-nine long years of earnest labor and never-failing faith, he passed away, and the great light went out. No! it did not go out; it still burns as brightly as ever across these long centuries to illumine the world.

Fitly to estimate the power of Michel Angelo as a sculptor, we must study the great works in the Medicean Chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo, which show the culmination of his genius in this branch of art.

The original church of San Lorenzo was founded in 930, and is one of the most ancient in Italy. It was burned down in 1423, and reërected in 1425 by the Medici from Brunelleschi’s designs. Later, in 1523, by the order of Leo X., Michel Angelo designed and began to execute the new sacristy, which was intended to serve as a mausoleum to Giuliano dei Medici, Duke of Nemours, brother of Leo X., and younger son of Lorenzo the Magnificent; and to Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and grandson of the great Lorenzo. Within this mausoleum, which is now called the Medici Chapel, were placed the statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo. They are both seated on lofty pedestals, and face each other on opposite sides of the chapel. At the base of one, reclining on a huge sarcophagus, are the colossal figures of Day and Night, and at the base of the other the figures of Aurora and Crepuscule. This chapel is quite separated from the church itself. You enter from below by a dark and solemn crypt, beneath which are the bodies of thirty-four of the family, with large slabs at intervals on the pavement, on which their names are recorded. You ascend a staircase, and go through a corridor into this chapel. It is solemn, cold, bare, white, and lighted from above by a lantern open to the sky. There is no color, the lower part being carved of white marble, and the upper part and railings wrought in stucco. A chill comes over you as you enter it; and the whole place is awed into silence by these majestic and solemn figures. You at once feel yourself to be in the presence of an influence, serious, grand, impressive, and powerful, and of a character totally different from anything that sculpture has hitherto produced, either in the ancient or modern world. Whatever may be the defects of these great works, and they are many and evident, one feels that here a lofty intellect and power has struggled, and fought its way, so to speak, into the marble, and brought forth from the insensate stone a giant brood of almost supernatural shapes. It is not nature that he has striven to render, but rather to embody thoughts, and to clothe in form conceptions which surpass the limits of ordinary nature. It is idle to apply here the rigid rules of realism. The attitudes are distorted, and almost impossible. No figure could ever retain the position of the Night at best for more than a moment, and to sleep in such an attitude would be scarcely possible. And yet a mighty burden of sleep weighs down this figure, and the solemnity of night itself broods over it. So also the Day is more like a primeval titanic form than the representation of a human being. The action of the head, for instance, is beyond nature. The head itself is merely blocked out, and scarcely indicated in its features. But this very fact is in itself a stroke of genius; for the suggestion of mystery in this vague and unfinished face is far more impressive than any elaborated head could have been. It is supposed he left it thus, because he found the action too strained. So be it; but here is Day still involved in clouds, but now arousing from its slumbers, throwing off the mists of darkness, and rising with a tremendous energy of awakening life. The same character also pervades the Aurora and Crepuscule. They are not man and woman, they are types of ideas. One lifts its head, for the morning is coming; one holds its head abased, for the gloom of evening is drawing on. There is no joy in any of these figures. A terrible sadness and seriousness oppresses them. Aurora does not smile at the coming of the light, is not glad, has little hope, but looks upon it with a terrible weariness, almost with despair—for it sees little promise, and doubts far more than it hopes. Twilight, again, almost disdainfully sinks to repose. The day has accomplished almost nothing: oppressed and hopeless, it sees the darkness close about it.

What Michel Angelo meant to embody in these statues can only be guessed—but certainly no trivial thought. Their names convey nothing. It was not beauty, or grace, or simple truth to nature, that he sought to express. In making them, the weight of this unexplained mystery of life hung over him; the struggle of humanity against superior forces oppressed him. The doubts, the despair, the power, the indomitable will of his own nature are in them. They are not the expressions of the natural day of the world, of the glory of the sunrise, the tenderness of the twilight, the broad gladness of day, or the calm repose of night; but they are seasons and epochs of the spirit of man—its doubts and fears, its sorrows and longings and unrealized hopes. The sad condition of his country oppressed him. Its shame overwhelmed him. His heart was with Savonarola, to whose excited preaching he had listened, and his mind was inflamed by the hope of a spiritual regeneration of Italy and the world. The gloom of Dante enshrouded him, and the terrible shapes of the “Inferno” had made deeper impression on his nature than all the sublimed glories of the “Paradiso.” His colossal spirit stood fronting the agitated storms of passions which then shook his country, like a rugged cliff that braves the tempest-whipped sea—disdainfully casting from its violent and raging waves, and longing almost with a vain hope for the time when peace, honor, liberty, and religion should rule the world.

This at least would seem to be implied in the lines he wrote under his statue of Night, in response to the quatrain written there by Giovan’ Battista Strozzi. These are the lines of Strozzi:—

“La notte che tu vedi in si dolci attiDormire, fu da an angelo scolpitaIn questo sasso; e, perchè dorme, ha vitaDestala, se no ’l credi, e parleratti.”

Which may be thus rendered in English:—

“Night, which in peaceful attitude you seeHere sleeping, from this stone an angel wrought.Sleeping, it lives. If you believe it not,Awaken it, and it will speak to thee.”

And this was Michel Angelo’s response:—

“Grato mi è il sonno, e piu l’ esser de sassoMentre che il danno e la vergogna duraNon veder non sentir m’ è gran venturaPerò, non mi destar; deh! parla basso.”

Which may be rendered:—

“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 heightsWhere man, yet mortal, rarely finds a place—With Him who made the Work that Work accordsSo 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.

Vigenero thus describes him:—

“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.