Chapter VI: The Genius of Michelangelo and His Influence on Italian Art (1)

"I have no friend of any kind," said Michelangelo in 1509, "and I do not want any."[127]

Forty years later, in 1548, Michelangelo wrote again, "I am always alone and I speak to no one."[128]

"From his youth," says Condivi, "Michelangelo had consecrated himself not only to sculpture and painting, but to all the other arts with such devouring energy that he had to separate himself almost entirely from the society of men. For that reason many people considered him proud, and others eccentric or mad. In reality it was his love of work alone, his labour without respite, which made him solitary, for he was so filled by the joy and rapture which his work gave him that the society of men did not offer him any pleasure, but rather bored him by distracting him from his own thoughts. Like the great Scipio, he was never less lonely than when he was alone."

That passionate solitude was the very soul of the genius and of the work of Michelangelo. He lived shut up in himself without any real connection with the art of his time. He despised Raphael because he said, "All his talent came from study and not from nature."[129] He himself declared that he derived all his inspiration from within, and if in his pride he underestimated what he was always studying with feverish and persistent ardour, yet it is true that he never sought in the study of the works of others a means of changing or of renewing his own personality, but only of still further emphasising it. In a way he sought from others not examples or lessons, but reasons for being still more himself. It is true that from the beginning to the end he fed on his own soul. Who knows the man, knows his work.

The most striking thing about this extraordinarily unified nature is that it was composed of hostile worlds; a brutal materialism and serene idealism, an infatuation with pagan strength and beauty and a Christian mysticism; a mixture of physical violence and intellectual abstraction; a platonic soul in an athlete's body. That indissoluble union of opposing forces which undoubtedly caused part of his suffering was also the cause of his unique greatness. We feel that the supreme balance of his art is the result of a fierce struggle, and it is the sense of that struggle which gives to the work its heroic character. All is passion even to the abstract idea, so that idealism, which with many artists is a cause of coldness and death, is here a hearth burning with love and hate.[130]

There is undoubtedly a danger in that mystic faith which loses itself in inward visions of such charm that they often leave a feeling of only disgust and contempt for reality.

Non vider gli occhi mei cosa mortale

* * *

E se creata a Dio non fusse eguale
Altro che 'l bel di fuor, ch'à gl'occhi piace,
Più non vorria; ma perch'è si fallace,
Tracende nella forma universale.[131]

Varchi was quite right in recognising in Michelangelo the Socratic spirit.[132] Whether he gained these ideas from the teaching of the great Platonists with whom he had talked as a youth in the gardens of San Marco or whether that teaching had merely revealed to him his true nature there is certainly a close relationship between the theories on art of the school of Socrates and those of Michelangelo.

Parrhasius believed in representing only "the perspective, the light and the shadow, the softness, hardness and surface of bodies." Socrates taught him that the object of painting is to represent the soul and the innermost being.[133] "The fields and trees can teach me nothing," he says in the "Phædo"; "I only find what is useful to me among men in the towns." These very men only interested him because there was something eternal in them. The fugitive and changing side of their physiognomy, which for us makes the delicate charm of life and the object of painting, seemed to him an empty and wearisome illusion. Art creates illusions. The objects which it represents are "the dreams of the human imagination offered to people who can see. It is an image which one shows in the distance to little children who can not reason, in order to create illusions for them. These illusions of the senses distract the soul from the only realities, eternal ideas."

Michelangelo reasoned thus in his disdain of all exact reproduction of nature. He had studied it with passion but, in order to discover its laws, he regarded it as an enemy which held the human spirit prisoner. He wanted to free himself from it, he wanted to make of it an instrument for his thought. That is why he sought for and discovered its machinery, and when he could guide it at will he outraged it; he made it produce unprecedented results. He constructed for himself out of his profound knowledge of anatomy a general idea of man, and thereafter, without having recourse to any observation of individuals, he recreated the whole of nature in the image of his ideas and in the likeness of God, source and originator of ideas.

Come dal foco 'l cald' 'esser' diviso
Nom puo 'l bel dall' eterno; e la mia stima
Esalta che ne scende, e chi 'l somiglia.

"As heat can not be separated from fire, so beauty can not be from eternity; and my thought extols what comes from it and what resembles it."

Detail from The Last Judgment (1536-1541). Sistine Chapel.]

He wanted to express in his work only what was eternal, and he did not believe he could do this with external objects. He tried, therefore, to give to everything he did a character of compelling force. His Platonic idealism was lined with Christian pessimism. Like Vittoria Colonna, he was filled with the sense of the beauty of all human things, and he was obsessed with the idea of death.

He lived in an exhausted epoch which no longer had any happy sense of reality. In God was the only help, in the eternal and immutable perfection. Michelangelo was filled with dislike for all realism. Like Plato, he despised painting in comparison with sculpture.

"Painting seems to me the better the more it resembles sculpture, and the sculpture worse the more it resembles painting. Sculpture is the torch of painting, and between the two there is the same difference as between the sun and the moon."[134]

If he was above all things a sculptor it was because he found in sculpture the most appropriate expression of his abstract and concentrated genius.

Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto,
Ch'un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio, et solo à quello arriva
La man, che ubbidisce all'intelleto.[135]

Moreover he reduced sculpture to its most simple form, the isolated statue. Michelangelo had little liking for bas-reliefs and groups, which he hardly ever made, and where he always shows some awkwardness. What we know, through Cellini and Vasari, of his manner of working would incline us to feel to-day that the basis of his sculpture and of all his art was drawing,[136] because that was most immaterial and closest to the form of his thought.

No one has ever drawn as Michelangelo did, and Charles Blanc is right in saying that "if he is unequal in his sculptures and his frescoes, never does his drawing, even when apparently most careless and most summary, betray any feebleness of hand or distraction or hesitancy of spirit." Not only do we penetrate, then, into the mystery of his creativeness, into the dreams and soliloquies of his lonely soul, but we discover there also his most intimate and perfect expression. There he is altogether himself, as Beethoven is in his quartets and in his short pieces for the piano.[137]

I compare these two purposely; for the genius of each of them was solitary, intellectual and passionate, only realising itself completely in the most simple and abstract forms in which the senses had the least part and the spirit the greatest. All the voluptuous charm of art was not only foreign to Michelangelo, but antagonistic to him. The more art was aimed at the senses the more he despised it.

Voglia sfrenata el senso è, non amore,
Che l'alma uccide....[138]

Painting, therefore, seemed to him, as it did to Plato, less virile and less pure than sculpture, because of its seductive quality, its illusive magic which imitates the appearance of things and merely creates illusions. He disdained it inasmuch as it appealed through the attraction of colours at the expense of the idea. He could not endure painting in oils, which he said was only good for women.[139] He rejected landscape, and like Plato only saw in it a vague and deceiving illusion--a sport for children and ignorant people. He had a horror of portraits. They seemed to him a form of flattery for the gratification of vain curiosity and the imperfect illusion of the senses.[140] It is curious to contrast with these principles which were adopted by a part of the Italian school in the sixteenth century, the naïve confession of faith of Dürer at almost the same period. "The art of painting is used in the service of the Church to show the sufferings of Christ and of many other models of virtue, and it also preserves the faces of men after their death." (1513)

That pious and bourgeois realism of Germany and Flanders filled Michelangelo with the same sort of contempt that many artists of to-day feel for subject-painting. "It is," he says, "an anecdotal and sentimental art, which aims only at success and obtains it easily, not by its own value, but by the choice of its subjects. These are pious figures for which tears are always ready, or else rags, ruins, very green fields shaded by trees, rivers and bridges--what they call landscapes--with many figures here and there. That sort of thing is always popular; the least artistic spirit can find something there that appeals to it; it is enough to be inquisitive and to have good eyes." Again--"Flemish painting seems beautiful to women, especially to those who are either old or very young, and to monks and nuns and to a few people of quality who are deaf to true harmony. Although it makes a good effect in the eyes of some people, in truth there is neither reason nor art in it, no proportion, no symmetry, no selection, and no grandeur. In fact, such painting is without body or vigour. The only real paintings are those done in Italy. These are not, like the Flemish pictures, made for the pious.[141] They will never cause anyone to shed a tear."[142]

We can well understand that disdainful confession of faith. What artist is there who has not felt this same irritation at the success of mediocre work exploited by the sentimentality of an uncritical public and who will not understand Michelangelo's haughty refusal to share this too easy success? This pride, ennobling as it is to the character, is unfortunately perilous for art; it cuts it off from all simple souls, it isolates it in the arrogant feeling of inner perfection and of a secret ideal which very few can know or understand. As Michelangelo says:

"Good painting is noble and devout in itself, for among the wise nothing tends more to elevate the soul or to raise it toward devotion than the difficulty of that perfection which approaches God and becomes one with him. Good painting is but a copy of this perfection, a shadow of his pencil, a music, a melody, and only a very keen intelligence can feel the difficulty of it. That is why it is so rare and why so few people can attain to it or know how to produce it. Painting is the music of God, the inner reflection of his luminous perfection."[143]

Drawing (about 1540). Louvre.]

If instead of Michelangelo with his ardent faith and that warmth of enthusiasm which sweeps along his idealism and makes of the Divine Idea as he conceives it a living being to whom he passionately desires to unite himself we should take, I do not say a sceptic or an atheist, but a sincere believer after the manner of the Council of Trent, a Vasari or a Zucchero, then God will be to them not a source of love and ecstasy, but the principle of reason. The reason of the wise--behold the beginning and the end of art. A hundred years after Michelangelo, Poussin was to bind all art in obedience to this principle. He applied all its natural resources to the rendering of one idea. With him the attention is confined to the idea of the work--that is the principal thing. The abstract idea is more important than the form; thought alone is spontaneous; all the rest--life, expression, colour--is determined by the logic of reason. The subject regulates the composition and determines the centre of interest and the groupings of the picture; it indicates the character of the people, their moral aspect and, consequently, their exterior, for the two are bound together. It determines the character of the landscape, which must bear a logical relationship to the scene; it presides even over the execution of the work. The manner of painting is imposed by the subject to be treated; it will be Phrygian or Dorian or Lydian, according to whether the idea is gentle or serious or sad. In this way everything is logical and calculated. Michelangelo's mystical ardour toward divine perfection at least left him his impetuous liberty of feeling. Poussin no longer left anything to chance. His reason commanded and his hand obeyed. If I name him here it is because he was both the end and the climax of artistic intellectualism. At least Poussin left on his work the impress of his great intelligence. His system rests on this idea, and with him the idea was clear and powerful. But what would it be in the hands of men of mediocre talent? The number of artists who either think for themselves, or express with new force the ideas of others, is infinitesimal. Moreover, the ideal is ordinarily to them merely an emphatic rendering of a vague conception of perfection which they have been taught. Under pretext of an intellectual ideal they deform nature; they leave it little by little, turning their backs, their eyes proudly closed, looking only within themselves. "La bellezza," says Tomazzo, "e lontana dala materia" (Beauty is far from matter).[144] The symbol of the period which was to follow is that very Lomazzo,[145] painter, æsthetician--blind.

Blind, more or less, were all who lived around Michelangelo. Their too feeble eyes were dazzled by this sun which shone alone in that twilight of art, the night which was falling on Italy of the Renaissance. A long time after that sun had disappeared below the horizon the radiant glow still remained in the sky. Michelangelo enthralled Italian art.

There is no comparison between the influence which he exerted and that of the other masters of the sixteenth century, Corregio and Raphael. However superior they may have been to their century, Corregio and Raphael only reflected its thoughts with more charm and grandeur. Michelangelo is outside of his time, alone, apart and colossal. He is like a great mountain which inspires in those who dwell at the foot an invincible desire to reach the top; and what men have ever existed who were less capable of climbing those austere and sublime heights? All those effeminate artists of the decadence, intoxicated by his inspiration, attempted to express heroic ideas in their insipid works. They lost the sense of proportion which alone could have saved them. Instead of confining themselves to the little world of their own fancy which, though cold, could have been redeemed by sincerity, they attempted great subjects. A mass of forms, heroic figures and furious gestures that they had learned, were whirled about in their mind, uncontrolled either by greatness of intelligence or of heart.

We must remember that Michelangelo lived through more than fifty years of the Golden Age of Italian art and, as happened in our own day to Victor Hugo, admiration for his works increased in proportion as they deserved it less. Even the factions that had been longest hostile to him--the school of Raphael, for instance--recognised his triumph. Perino del Vaga admits that all the painters worshipped him as their master, their leader and the god of drawing.[146]

The independents, or those who boasted that they were, said as Cellini did in his sonnets:

"Just a leaf from thy crown, O divine Michelangelo, who alone art rich, who alone art immortal. That will suffice me and I shall have no desire for anything else, since for me that only is good and beautiful."

Florence, his own country, more even than the rest of Italy gave him blind admiration. The Academy of Drawing, founded by Vasari, was a college of disciples and apostles. Since Michelangelo's great paintings were at Rome the Florentines copied chiefly his statues, devoting themselves principally, as Lanzi says, to ostentatiously showing "magna ossa lacertosque."[147]

This was in accordance with the doctrine of the master, who declared that sculpture should be the school of the painter and the ideal of painting. Cellini, thinking to define the thought of Michelangelo, absurdly declares and demonstrates that sculpture is seven times greater than painting.

The painter formed himself from this time on by the study of statues, and especially of those of Michelangelo. Colour was therefore regarded as a secondary consideration,[148] and the only aim pursued was drawing over-accentuated, full of unreasonable action, and of excessive virtuosity. If he seemed to Cellini the greatest painter of all time, it was only because all painting from Cellini's point of view was an imitation of sculpture, and the artist who came nearest to him in perfection is Bronzino.[149]

The danger of following a model is less if the model can be understood, but the ideas of Michelangelo absolutely escaped his admirers. How could it be otherwise when all his work is an act of revolt against his century. We can but smile with pity when we see his contemporaries expressing their enthusiasm for the formidable Night in precious and carefully chosen phrases.[150]

From the Original Model in Wood. Preserved in the Vatican (1558).]

What supreme irony! The world only sees and admires the outer form of those tremendous incarnations of contempt and weariness which are called Moses or the Day, Victory subduing the Prisoner, the Dawn or the Slaves. The world applauds the style of the imprecations launched against it! It even repeats them without knowing the meaning.

Two drawings by Federigo Zucchero, which are in the Louvre, show a number of artists installed in the chapel of S. Lorenzo zealously copying Michelangelo's statues. How many artists of the sixteenth century built their entire work on these notes without ever thinking that such forms are only justified by the passions which animate them, and that it is ridiculous to use them as aids to the learned virtuosity of a cold and forced talent!

Battista Franco of Venice, _il Semolei_ distinguished himself above all others by his zeal in copying Michelangelo. Vasari says that there was not a sketch, not the roughest note, or any sort of fragment of his which he had not devoutly drawn. He knew the whole Sistine by heart. In 1536 he came to Florence and drew once more all the statues of S. Lorenzo. In 1541 he hurried to Rome for the "première" of the Last Judgment, and he made a drawing of the whole thing "_con infinita maraviglia il designo tutto_." We can understand that he had no time to do any thinking for himself. For a long time he refrained from painting anything of his own. When he decided to begin it was to reproduce in his Battle of Montemurlo some fragments of the war against Pisa or of the Rape of Ganymede.[151]

The independent Cellini writes in his memoirs: "I devoted myself continually to trying to absorb thoroughly the beautiful style of Michelangelo, and since then I have never departed from it."

A hundred years later still Bernini copied the Last Judgment for two successive years before he began to draw from nature. Scivoli watched him doing it and said: "Sei un furbo; no fai quel che vedi: questa è di Michelangelo." ("You are a fool. You are not drawing what you see; this is nothing but Michelangelo").[152]

Bernini, who tells of this, does not see that it is a criticism, for he recommends this same system of education to young artists.

"It is necessary first for a young man to form an idea of the beautiful, for this is of use to him all his life; it ruins young men to begin by drawing from nature, which is almost always weak and mean, and which then fills their imagination, so that they can never produce anything beautiful or great, qualities which are never found in natural things. Those who make use of nature should be already skilful enough to recognise its faults and to correct them. A young man is not capable of this until he has gained full knowledge of beauty."[153]

The essential idea of this teaching was that nature is evil; just what Michelangelo thought. But we now see to what unexpected results his pessimistic idealism led. It produced not only separation from nature, but renunciation of personal feeling for formulas, "since it is not possible for one individual to have light on all subjects nor to grasp without assistance the difficulty of arts so profound and so little understood."

What would Michelangelo have thought of these servile disciples, he who said proudly that "whoever follows others will never go forward, and whoever does not know how to create by his own abilities can gain no profit from the works of other men."

But they had lost even the consciousness of their servility and took more pride in living on Michelangelo's crumbs than he had in creating the work which was to be the nourishment of two centuries. Some drew tranquilly on their memory and their notes, others mimicked the master's grandiose manner, and they were all entirely satisfied with themselves, not one of them realising what their master and model had suffered in giving birth to these works which were so easy for them to imitate.

Michelangelo's idealism had a powerful corrective in "the sense of the beauty of struggle, and the holiness of suffering." "Nothing approaches nearer to God," he wrote, "than the effort to produce a perfect work, because God is perfection."

No one ever struggled more fiercely than this man, who ceaselessly tormented himself and wept at "losing his time uselessly" while he was working at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, who wrought with his blood the beings whom he created and was dissatisfied with his sublime creations at the moment of finishing them and left them incomplete, who to his last day in agony and tears

Piangendo, amando, ardendo, e sospirando,--
Ch'affetto alcun mortal non mi è più nuovo,--[154]

"Weeping, loving, burning and sighing--for there was no human emotion which he had not felt."

He was vainly seeking the visioned ideal, and in dying he regretted not the joy of living, but his interrupted labours.[155]

Beside that virile modesty what can we think of the absurd vanity of all those little masters who declared that they derived from the great master and believed themselves to be Michelangelos?

Vasari dares to write:

"To-day art has been brought to such perfection that while our predecessors produced a picture in six years we produce six in one year. I can bear witness since I have seen this done and have done it myself, and nevertheless our works are much more finished and more perfect than those of the renowned painters who preceded us."[156]

Even the weakest ones had the same feeling. Perino del Vaga considered himself very much superior to Masaccio, and in Cellini vanity ended by touching madness. He felt that antiquity was only valuable as a background to his works, and for his Jupiter he used the bronze castings which Primataccio brought from Rome.[157]

When an artist is so sure of success he no longer takes any trouble to deserve it. "Che cartoni o non cartoni," cries Giorlamo da Treviso, "io, io, ho l'arte su la punta dell pennello" ("Have I need of studies, I who have art on the point of my brush!").

The scruples that Michelangelo had felt no longer checked the artists. They were not afraid to finish what they had begun. Pomeranci, Semino, Calvi, painted four square yards a day. Cambiaso painted, at the age of seventeen, the story of Niobe without studies or sketches. He produced as many works as a dozen painters together, and his wife lighted the fire with bundles of drawings which he tossed off every moment. His contemporaries compare him to Michelangelo, and add that the latter does not gain by the comparison. Santi di Tito made a portrait in less than half an hour. He set up a factory in his house and turned them out in enormous quantities. His pupil, Tempesti, did not succeed in finding sufficient occupation for his talents in the great frescoes at Rome and, as a relaxation from painting, made fifteen hundred engravings. In a month Vasari, Tribolo and Andrea del Cosimo built and decorated a palace. In a day Perino del Vaga painted the Passage of the Red Sea.

Duomo, Florence (1553-1555).]

The Venetians, thanks to their distance from Rome and Florence and to their ardent communion with nature, which to the horror of Vasari they dared to copy honestly,[158] were saved for a time, but in the end caught the infection. The Florentine spirit won this last refuge of art, and Tintoretto infused the spirit of Michelangelo into Venetian realism.[159]

The brain of Italy was a prey to fever.[160] Michelangelo had destroyed the balance of mind of a period dried out by intellectualism and weakened by the taste for pleasure. The shock of his dazzling light on their eyes, too feeble to bear it, blinded them and inspired a delirium of imagination without poetry, without thought and without life.

The Carracci were needed at the end of the century, if not to snatch Italian art from inevitable death, at least to lend it, emerging from its follies and delusions, an air of dignity and a cold distinction in which it could veil itself to die.

The greatness of Michelangelo was thus fatal to Italian art. So it is with everything that rises too far above its own time. Decadence can only be averted or retarded by intelligent and moderate talents like the Carracci, who, hardly separated from the average of their times, are easily understood by it. They are the geniuses of common sense, and they are, therefore, useful to the common man. The heroes of art are also its tyrants; their glory kills, and the greater they are the more they are to be feared, for they impose on all men the laws of a personality which can exist but once. They are a devouring force; they illumine, but they burn; they have the right to be unique in their being and in their work. They seem to realise in themselves the whole aim of nature, and there is nothing left for those who follow but to be absorbed and disappear.

It would be absurd to offer Michelangelo as a model to young artists. Should great men ever be taken as models in art? Is not that one of the errors of classical training? They are examples of energy, sources of force and beauty. It is well to look for a moment on their radiance, then tear ourselves from their contemplation and work.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

DATE IMPORTANT EVENTS PRINCIPAL WORKS

1475 March 6. Birth of Michelangelo
at Caprese.

1488 April 1. He enters the school of
Domenico and David Ghirlandajo.

1489 He enters the school of Bertoldo
and becomes the protégé of Lorenzo
de' Medici.

1490-1492 _Mask of a Faun._
_Madonna of the Stairs._
_Combat of the Centaurs._

1492 April 8. Death of Lorenzo de'
Medici.

1492-1494 In the service of Piero de' Wooden crucifix.
Medici. Statue of _Hercules_.

1494 October. Flight to Venice Angel for the Arca of
and Bologna. He worked at S. Domenico in Bologna.
S. Petronio in Bologna.

1495 Return to Florence. _Giovannino._
_Sleeping Love._

1496 June 25. Arrival in Rome. _Bacchus._
_Cupid._

1498 May 23. Savonarola is burned
in Florence.

1498-1500 Pietà of St. Peter's.

1501 Return to Florence. Statues for the Piccolomini
altar in the cathedral
of Sienna.

1501-1505 _David._
Cartoon for the battle
of Cascina.
_Holy Family of Agnolo_
_Doni._
_Virgin of Bruges._
Bas-reliefs of the Madonna
for Taddeo
Taddei and Bartolommeo
Pitti.

1505 March. He is summoned to Rome First plan for the tomb
by Julius II. of Julius II

1506 The Laocöon was discovered at
Rome.

1506 April 17. Flight to Florence.

1506 End of November. Reconciliation
with Julius at Bologna.

1506-1508 Bronze statue of Julius
II at Bologna.

1508 Return to Rome.

1508 May 10 to 1512, October. Paintings on the ceiling
of the Sistine.

1513 February 21. Death of Julius II.

1513 March 11. Election of Leo X.

1513 May 6. Second contract for the
tomb of Julius II.

1513-1516 Michelangelo at Florence. _The Slaves._
_Moses._

1516 July. Third contract for the
tomb of Julius II.

1517 September. Serious illness of
Michelangelo.

1518 January 19. Contract in regard
to the façade of S. Lorenzo in
Florence.

1518-1520 Michelangelo at the quarries
of Carrara, Seravezza.

1520 March 10. Michelangelo is released _The Christ_ of the Minerva.
from the contract for the
façade of S. Lorenzo by an
order from Leo X.

1520 April 6. Death of Raphael.

1521 Beginning of the work on the chapel _The Madonna_ of the
of the Medici at S. Lorenzo. chapel of the Medici.

1521 At the end of the year serious illness
of Michelangelo. _The Victory._

1522 November 19. Election of Clement VII.

1524-1526 Work on the tomb of
the Medici and the
Laurentian library.

1527 May 6. Capture of Rome by the
Imperialists.

1529 April 6. Michelangelo is named _Leda._
Governatore Generale and Procuratore
of the fortifications of
Florence. Mission to inspect
the fortifications at Pisa, Livorno
and Ferrara.

1529 September 21. Flight to Venice.
Siege of Florence.

1529 November 20. Return to Florence.
Defense of San Miniato.

1530 August 12. Capitulation of Florence. _Apollo._
Proscriptions.

1531 June. Serious illness of Michelangelo. Work on the Medici
tombs.

1532 April 29. Fourth contract for the
monument of Julius II.

1533 Beginning of the friendship with First plan for the _Last_
Tommaso dei Cavalieri in _Judgment._
Rome.

1534 Death in Florence of Lodovico, the
father of Michelangelo.

1534 September 23. Michelangelo returns
to Rome, where he remains until his
death.

1534 September 25. Death of Clement VII.

1534 October 13. Election of Paul III.

1535 September 1. Michelangelo is named
by order of Paul III
architect-in-chief, sculptor and
painter of the Apostolic Palace.

1536 Beginning of the friendship with
Vittoria Colonna at Rome.

1536 April to November, 1541 _Last Judgment_ in the
Sistine.

1538 The statue of Marcus Aurelius is _Brutus._ Drawings of
raised on the Capitoline Christ for Vittoria
Colonna.

1542-1544 Frescoes of the Pauline
Chapel.

1542 August 20. Last agreement for the
monument of Julius II.

1544 June. Serious illness of
Michelangelo, who was cared for in
the palace of the Strozzi.

1545 February Completion of the monument
of Julius II in S. Pietro
in Vinculi.

1545-1546 Titian in Rome.

1546 January. Serious illness of Work on the cornice of the
Michelangelo. He gives the Slaves Farnese palace.
to the Strozzi.

1547 January 1. Michelangelo named by
Paul III architect of St. Peter's.

1547 February 25. Death of Vittoria Work on the Capitol.
Colonna.

1549 November 10. Death of Paul III.

1550 February 8. Election of Julius III. Work on the Vigna del Papa
Giulio and the
reconstruction of the
Belvedere stairway.

1551 First edition of the "Vite" of
Vasari.

1553 First edition of the life of Work on St. Peter's.
Michelangelo by Ascanio Condivi.

1555 March 23. Death of Julius III.

1555 May 23. Election of Paul IV.

1555 December 3. Death of Urbino, The group of the _Pietà_,
Michelangelo's servant. broken by Michelangelo, is
continued and completed by
Tiberio Calcagni.

1558 He works at the model of
the dome of St. Peter's.

1559-1560 Daniele da Volterra, at the
command of Paul IV, paints drapery
on the figures of the Last
Judgment.

1560 Catherine de' Medici requested Work on the transformation
Michelangelo to make the statue of of the Baths of Diocletian
Henri II. into the church of S.
Maria degli Angeli.

1561 August 29. Michelangelo was taken Work on the Porta Pia.
ill.

1563 January 31. Michelangelo made
President of the Academy of
Florence.

1564 February. _The Rondanini Pietà._

1564 February 18. Death of Michelangelo.

1564 July 14. Funeral at S. Lorenzo in
Florence.

CATALOGUE OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF MICHELANGELO IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

I.--PAINTINGS

ITALY

FLORENCE. UFFIZI.

_Holy Family_, painted for Agnolo Doni (between 1501 and 1505).

ROME. VATICAN.

Paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine (1508-1512).
_The Last Judgment_ (1536-1541).
The frescoes of the Pauline chapel (1542-1549).

ENGLAND

LONDON. NATIONAL GALLERY.

_The Entombment_ (about 1495).
_The Virgin of Manchester_ (about 1495).

II.--SCULPTURE

ITALY

FLORENCE. MUSEO NAZIONALE.

_Mask of a Faun_ (between 1490 and 1492).
_Bacchus_ (1497).
_The Dying Adonis_ (1497).
_Virgin and Child_, a circular bas-relief made for
Taddeo Taddei (between 1501 and 1505).
_Victory_ (1522-1523).
_Apollino_ (1530).
_Brutus_ (1538).

GALLERIA ANTICA E MODERNA E TRIBUNA DEL DAVID.

_David_ (between 1501 and 1504).

CASA BUONARROTI.

_The Centaurs and Lapiths_, bas-relief in marble (between 1490 and 1492).
_Virgin and Child_, bas-relief in bronze (between 1490 and 1492).

SAN LORENZO.

The Medici tombs (1524-1527 and 1530-1534).

SANTA MARIA DEI FIORE.

_The descent from the cross_ (1553-1555).

ROME. SAINT PETER'S.

_Pietà_ (1498-1500).

SAN PIETRO IN VINCULI.

Tomb of Julius II: (_Moses_, 1513-1516).
_Rachel_ and _Leah_ (1542-1545).

FRANCE

PARIS. THE LOUVRE.

_The Slaves_ (1513-1516).

ENGLAND

LONDON. SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.

_Kneeling Cupid_ (1497).

ROYAL ACADEMY.

_Holy Family_, circular bas-relief made for Bart. Pitti
(between 1501 and 1505).

BELGIUM

BRUGES. THE CATHEDRAL.

_Madonna_ (between 1501 and 1505).

GERMANY

BERLIN. KOENIGLICHE MUSEUM.

_Giovannino_ (1495).

NOTE ON THE DRAWINGS

The great European Museums--especially the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, Oxford University and Windsor--contain very rich collections of Michelangelo's drawings. The most beautiful of those in the Louvre came from the Jabach and Mariette collections.

"You could not ask for anything more finished or showing a greater knowledge of drawing," says Mariette; ... "they are almost too much finished.... I do not know any other master who finished his studies more completely. When he is looking for a certain pose he dashes off impetuously on the paper what comes from his imagination. He draws with large strokes.... But if he wants to study nature so that he may reproduce it later on in sculpture or in painting he follows an entirely different method.... His drawing is no longer a sketch, but a finished fragment in which no detail is left out, it is the flesh itself; and Michelangelo needed nothing more than this for his modelling. I have a number of drawings where you can see the marks which Michelangelo made on them, and which indicate that these designs were used by him as guides in his modelling...."

Some of the drawings in the Louvre were for the tombs of the Medici and for the bronze David for Florimond Robertet.

Another curious thing about these drawings is that we often find upon them verses by Michelangelo, fragments of poems. Both verses and drawings are often the repetitions or variations of certain ideas which were in his mind for years and occupied his attention with the tenacity of fixed ideas.

Michelangelo used indifferently red chalk, pen and ink, and charcoal or pencil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I.--WRITINGS OF MICHELANGELO

_Le Lettere di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_, publicate, coi _Ricordi ed i Contratti artistici_, per cura di Gaetano MILANESI. Florence, 1875, in-fol., IX, 721 pages. Lemonnier (495 letters, from 1497 to 1563).

_Rime di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_, raccolte da Michelagnolo suo nipote. Florence, 1623, Giunti (first complete edition, but full of errors).

_Rime di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_, cavate dagli autografi e publicate da Cesare GUASTI. Florence, 1863 (first really accurate edition).

_Die Dichtungen des Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_, herausgegeben und mit kritischem Apparat versehen von Carl FREY. Berlin, 1897 (the finest and most complete edition of the poems of Michelangelo which has been made up to the present time).

II.--WORKS ON MICHELANGELO

I. WRITINGS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Giorgio VASARI.--_Vite degli architetti, pittori e scultori_ (first edition). Florence, 1550, in 4to;--(second edition). Florence, 1568, in 4to.--edition of MILANESI. Florence, 1856, Lemonnier.

Ascanio CONDIVI.--_Vita di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_. Rome, 1553, Antonio BLADO;--(second edition). Florence, 1746, with notes by Mariette.

Paolo GIOVIO.--_Michaelis Angeli Vita_, published by TIRABOSCHI in his _Storia della letteratura italiana_, Vol. IX, Modena, 1781.

_Sammlung ausgewaehlter Biographien Vasaris_, herausg. von Carl FREY (in the second volume are gathered _le Vite de Michel-Angelo Buonnaroti_, critical edition of all the biographies written by his contemporaries).

Vittoria COLONNA.--_Rime_ (first edition). Parma, 1538;--(second edition), 1539;--(third edition), 1544;--edition SALTINI. Florence, 1860, Barbera.--_Carteggio_, published by Ermanno FERRERO and Giuseppe MÜLLER. Turin, 1892, Loescher(Letters and documents).--_Lettere inedite_, published by SALZA. Florence, 1898.--Codice delle _Rime di Vittoria Colonna_, appartenente a Margherita, regina di Navarra scoperto ed illustrato. Pistoia, 1900, ed. Tordi.

François DE HOLLANDE.--_Quatre Entretiens sur la Peinture_, held in Rome 1538 to 1539, written in 1548, published by Joachim DE VASCONCELLOS;--French translation in _Les Arts en Portugal_, by Count RACZYNSKI. Paris, 1846, Renouard.

Donato GIANNOTTI.--_De' giorni che Dante consumo nel cercare l'Inferno e'l Purgatorio. Dialoghi_. Florence, 1859.

Benvenuto CELLINI.--_Vita_ (1559 to 1562), first edition. Naples, 1728.--_I Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura_. Florence, 1893, edition C. Milanesi.

Benedetto VARCHI.--_Due lezioni di Benedetto Varchi_. Florence, 1549.--_Orazione funerale recitata nelle esequie di Michel-Angela Buonarroti_. Florence, 1564, Giunti.

Francesco BERNI.--_Opere burlesche_. Florence, 1548. Giunti.

_Michelangelo's correspondents_: I. _Sebastiano del Piombo_, Ed. Milanesi, French translation by A. LE PRIEUR. Paris, 1890, Librairie de l'Art.

Blaise DE VIGENÈRE.--_Les Images de Philostrate_. Paris, 1629.

II.--MODERN WORKS

Richard DUPPA.--_The Life and Literary Works of Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_. London, 1806, 1816 (translations in verse of the poetry of Michel-Angelo by Southey and Wordsworth).

Quatremere DE QUINCY.--_Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Michel-Ange Buonarroti_. Paris, 1835.

Giovanni GAYE.--_Carteggio inedito d'artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI_. Florence, 1839, three volumes.

Fr. AL RIO.--_Michel-Ange et Raphael_ (first edition). Hanover, 1860 (since then there have been seven editions; the last appeared in 1900 with illustrations).

Aurelio GOTTI.--_Vita di Michel-Angelo_. Florence, 1875, two volumes.

C. Heath WILSON.--_Life and Works of Michel-Angelo_. London, 1876. _L'OEuvre et la Vie de Michel-Ange_, by Charles BLANC, Eug. GUILLAUME, Paul MANTZ, Charles GARNIER, A. MEZIÈRES. Anatole de MONTAIGLON, Georges DUPLESSIS and Louis GONSE. Paris, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1876.

Anton SPRINGER.--_Raffael und Michelangelo_, 1878.

John Addington SYMONDS.--_The Life of Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_. London, 1893.

Corrado RICCI.--_Michelangelo_. Florence, 1901.

Henry THODE.--_Michel-Angelo und das Ende der Renaissance_, 1e vol. Berlin, 1902.--2e vol. Berlin, 1903.

Alfred VON REUMONT.--_Vittoria Colonna_. Fribourg, 1881.

Albert HAUCK.--_Vittoria Colonna_. Heidelberg, 1882.

GIOTTI.--_Catalogo delle opere d'arti e dei disegni di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti_, 1875.

F. REISET.--_Notice des dessins du musée du Louvre_. Paris, 1866.

Baron H. GEYMULLER.--_Michelangelo als Architekt_.

Dr Ernst STEINMANN.--_Die Sixtinische Kapelle_.

Carl FREY.--_Studien zu Michelagnolo (Jahrb. der K. preuss. Kunstssamml._) 1895-1896.

Luigi PASSERINI.--_La bibliografia di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti e gli incisori delle sue opere_. Florence, 1875.

INDEX

A

Academy of painters, Florence, 139.

Aldovrandi, 10.

Altoviti (Bindo), 122, 134.

Amadio d'Alberto, 66.

Ammanati (Bart.), 110, 139.

Annunciation, 136.

Apollo, 74.

Apollo and Marsyas, 11.

Arca of S. Domenico of Bologna, 10.

Archadelt, 86.

Aretino, 95-98.

Ariosto, 82.

B

Bacchus, 10.

Baccio d'Agnolo, 50, 52.

Baglioni (Malatesta), 68, 71.

Baïf (Lazare de), 69.

Bandinelli, 22, 66.

Bandini, 116, 123, 134.

Bartolommeo (Fra), 24.

Beethoven, 13, 127, 149.

Bembo, 82.

Berni (Francesco), 87, 128.

Bernin, 160.

Bertoldo, 6, 7.

Bettini (Bart.), 134.

Biagio da Cesena, 95.

Boboli (Figures in the grotto), 59.

Boccaccio, 10.

Borghini (Vincenzo), 139, 141.

Borgo (Fortifications of), 110.

Botticelli, 12, 16.

Bramante, 28-31, 35-37, 109, 119.

Bronzino, 22, 128, 139.

Brunelleschi, 77, 119.

Bugiardini (Giuliano), 7, 37, 128.

Buonarroti (Lodovico), 1, 76.

Buonarroti (Lionardo, son of Lodovico), 1, 12.

Buonarroti (Buonarroto), 1, 49, 76.

Buonarroti (Giovan Simone), 1, 130.

Buonarroti (Sigismondo), 1, 130.

Buonarroti (Lionardo, son of Buonarroto), 115, 130, 132, 135, 138, 140.

Buonarroti (Francesca), 130.

Buoninsegni (Domenico), 52, 61.

C

Calcagni (Tiberio), 124, 126.

Capitol, 120-121.

Capponi (Niccolo), 66, 67.

Carducci (Francesco), 67, 68.

Carnesecchi (Pietro), 83.

Carpi (Cardinal), 116.

Carracci, 166.

Carrara, 26, 27, 30, 51, 54, 55.

Caryatid in the Hermitage, 48.

Castiglione (Bald.), 82.

Cavalcanti, 87.

Cavalieri (Tommaso dei), 80, 81, 97, 134, 137, 138.

Cecchino dei Bracci, 128.

Cellini (Benvenuto), 22, 128, 139, 148, 158, 160, 163.

Christ of the Minerva, 49, 58.

Christ, incompleted.

Cino da Pistoia, 87.

Civitale, 107.

Clement VII, 54, 56, 59. 60, 61, 74-76, 128.

Clement VIII, 100.

Colonna (Vittoria), 82-86, 89, 93, 147.

Colossus of Florence, 62-64.

Combat of Centaurs and Lapiths, 8.

Condivi, 129.

Consilium, 86.

Contarini (Cardinal), 83.

Corregio, 155.

Credi (Lorenzo di), 7.

Cronaca, 16.

Crucifix in wood of the convent of S. Spirito, 10.

Crucifixion, 85.

Cupid sleeping, 11.

D

Dante, 10, 57, 87, 106-107.

David, colossal, 16-18, 97.

David in bronze, 17.

Descent from the cross (Duomo, Florence), 126, 127.

Descent from the cross, drawing, 85.

Dolce (Lodovico), 82.

Donatello, 6, 7, 10.

Doni (Agnolo), 24.

Duccio (Agostino di), 16.

Dürer (Albrecht), 25, 150.

Dying Adonis, 11.

E

Entombment, 11.

F

Farnese (Palace), 111.

Fattucci, 62, 63.

Febo di Poggio, 80.

Ferrara (Renée de), 83.

Festa (Constanzo), 86.

Francesca (Piero della), 23.

Franco (Battista), 159.

Francis I, 69.

Frizzi (Federigo), 58.

G

Gaeta (Pier Luigi), 117, 137.

Ghiberti, 4.

Ghirlandajo (Domenico), 2-6.

Ghirlandajo (Ridolfo), 23.

Giannotti (Donato), 65, 87, 115, 128.

Giberti, 83.

Giotto, 4.

Granacci (Francesco), 2, 7, 22, 37.

H

Hercules and Cacus, 66.

Hercules, colossal, 11.

Holland, Francis of, 13, 83.

Holy Family (Agnolo Doni), 24.

Holy Family (Bart. Pitti), 24.

Holy Family (Taddeo Taddei), 24.

I

Indaco, 37.

J

Jacopo di Sandro, 37.

Jove (Paul), 82.

Julius II, 26-36, 43-44.

Julius II (Tomb of), 26-36, 45-47, 48-50, 72, 89-96, 102, 103.

Julius II (Bronze statue of), 33-34.

Julius III, 109.

L

Last Judgment, 91-102.

Leah, 105-107.

Leda, 67, 74.

Le Noyer (Robert), 100.

Leo X, 50-54, 57, 59.

Leone Leoni, 128.

Lippi (Filipino), 23.

Lomazzo, 153, 155.

M

Madonna of Bruges, 25.

Madonna and child (bas-relief in bronze), 9.

Majano (Benedetto da), 4.

Mantegna, 14.

Marcellus II, 114.

Masaccio, 4.

Medici (Lorenzo de'), 6, 7, 13.

Medici (Alessandro de'), 65, 76.

Medici (Duke Cosmo de'), 78, 115-117, 129, 130, 138.

Medici (Don Francesco de'), 129, 134.

Medici (Tombs of the), 59-62, 71-74.

Michi (Giovanni), 38.

Minni (Antonio), 69, 75, 131, 134.

Mino da Fiesole, 4.

Mirandole (Pico della), 7, 10.

Montelupo (Raffaello da), 77, 103, 107.

Montmorency (Constable de), 47, 69.

Montorsoli (Giovanni da), 77.

Moses, 47, 104-106.

Moses (small), 138.

N

Nanni di Baccio Bigio, 112-118.

Navarre (Marguerite de), 83.

Noli me tangere, 134.

O

Ochino (Bernadino), 83.

P

Palla (Battista de la), 68.

Paul III, 89-112, 109, 114.

Paul IV, 99, 114, 118.

Pauline Chapel, Frescoes of, 102.

Perini (Gherado), 80, 97, 134.

Perino del Vaga, 22, 111, 156, 163.

Perugino, 22, 91.

Peruzzi (Baldi), 109.

Petrarch, 10, 87.

Petreo (Antonio), 65.

Pierfrancesco d'Urbino, 66.

Piero di Cosimo, 23.

Pietà of St. Peter's, 14, 15.

Pietà Rondanini, 137.

Pietà, drawing, 137.

Pietà, 13.

Pinturicchio, 23.

Pius IV, 122.

Poems of Michelangelo, 86-89.

Pole (Cardinal), 83.

Poliziano (Angelo), 7, 8, 10, 128.

Pollajuolo, 3.

Pontormo, 22, 134.

Porta (Guglielmo della), 111.

Porta Pia, 120-122.

Poussin, 153, 154.

Pulci, 7.

Q

Quercia (Jacopo della), 4, 10.

R

Rachel, 105-107.

Raffaellino del Garbo, 23.

Raphael, 3, 22, 28, 36, 50, 109, 143, 155, 156.

Resurrection of Christ, 85.

Riccio (Luigi del), 65, 86, 128, 135.

Rossellino (Antonio), 4, 107.

Rosso, 22.

Rustici, 7.

S

Sadolet, 83.

St. Peter's (construction of), 27.

St. Peter (statue), 137.

St. Matthew, 18.

Salviati, 22.

Samaritan woman at the well, 85.

San Gallo (Antonio da), 16, 50, 109-111, 122.

San Gallo (Aristotele da), 22.

San Gallo (Francesco da), 66, 139.

San Gallo (Giuliano da), 31, 43, 50.

San Lorenzo (façade of), 50-57.

San Lorenzo (sacristy of), 59.

San Lorenzo (library of), 60, 78.

San Lorenzo (chapel of the Medici), 76-78.

Santa Maria degli Angeli, 120, 122.

San Miniato (defense of), 66-67, 70.

Sansovino (Jacopo), 22, 50, 112.

Sansovino (Andrea del Monte), 7, 50.

Sarto (Andrea del), 22.

Satyr (laughing), 8.

Savonarola, 8-14.

Schongauer (Martin), 4, 5.

Sebastiano del Piombo, 58, 70, 87, 111, 128, 134, 150.

Serlio (Sebastiano), 66.

Signorelli, 14, 23.

Sistine chapel (ceiling of), 36-42.

Slaves, 47, 49.

Soderini, 16, 19.

Sodoma, 23.

Strozzi (Roberto), 47, 134.

T

Tasso (Bernardo), 82.

Temptation of St. Anthony, 4.

Tintoretto, 151, 165.

Torrigiani, 7.

Tribolo, 78, 165.

Tromboncino, 86.

U

Urbano (Pietro), 58, 131.

Urbino, 103, 132, 133.

V

Valori (Baccio), 71, 75.

Varchi, 68, 86, 128.

Varj (Metello), 49, 58.

Vasari, 20, 78, 101, 111, 128, 139, 140, 153.

Venusti (Marcello), 100.

Veronese, 99.

Verrocchio, 3.

Victory, 138, 140.

Vignole, 128.

Vinci (Lionardo da), 18-22, 24.

Virgin of Manchester, 11.

Vitruvius, 77.

Volterra (Daniele da), 100, 128, 136, 140, 158.

W

War with Pisa (Cartoon), 18-23.

Z

Zucchero, 153, 159.

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Condivi

[2] Drawings in the Louvre from the frescoes of Santa Croce.

[3] Munich. Drawings from the frescoes of the Carmine.

[4] In the collection of the Medici a St. Jerome by Van Eyck was valued at forty ducats, the Giottos and Fra Angelicos at only ten ducats. The Flemings were no less appreciated at Urbino where Justus of Ghent had painted, whose frescoes were copied by Raphael when he was a child, and at Rome where Jan Ruysch, twenty years later, was to work on the Stanze, and throughout the kingdom of Naples--not to mention the great collection of Flemish pictures in the north of Italy, like those of Cardinal Grimani at Venice, and of Cardinal Bembo at Padua.

[5] Michelangelo was to receive six florins the first year, eight the second and ten the third.

[6] "On the 10th of May, 1508," as he wrote at a later time, "I Michelangelo, _sculptor_, began to work on the paintings of the Sistine Chapel."

[7] He had for his companions at Bertoldo's, Granacci, the sculptors Rustici, Baccio di Monte Lupo and Andrea del Monte-Sansovino, the painters Niccolo Soggi, Lorenzo di Credi, Giuliano Bugiardini and the brutal Torrigiano dei Torrigiani, whose blow left its mark on Michelangelo's face for life.

[8] At first in the Strozzi Palace, then bought in 1529 by Francis I and placed at Fontainebleau, it disappeared in the seventeenth century.

[9] I find it impossible to recognise, as Thode does, an allusion to the death of Savonarola in a letter of 1508, when Michelangelo, hearing that his father had been slandered by his brother, writes, "I have not received worse news in ten years." Nothing justifies us in believing that Michelangelo is not merely alluding to other family difficulties.

[10] Sermons on Amos and Zachariah.

[11] See the "Dialogues de la Peinture" of Francis of Holland, who relates the conversations between Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna in Rome in 1538-39.

[12] Beethoven wrote in the same way to Bettina Brentano in 1810: "most men are moved by beauty, but that is not the nature of artists. Artists are fashioned of fire--they do not weep."

[13] Francis of Holland _ibid._

[14] _Ibid._ The passage applies to Flemish painting in general.

[15] "Do you know," said Michelangelo to Condivi, "that chaste women remain much more fresh than those who are not chaste. How much more, therefore, must this be true of the Virgin who never entertained the least immodest thought which might have troubled her body. I would put this even more strongly. I believe that this freshness and flower of youth which she received in a natural manner was preserved for her in a supernatural one, so that the virginity and the eternal purity of the Mother of God could be demonstrated to the world. Such a miracle was not necessary for the Son. Quite the contrary, for if it had to be shown that the Son of God was made incarnate in man and that he had suffered all that men suffer except sin, it was not necessary to make the human disappear behind the divine, but it was better rather to let the human follow its nature in such a way that he should appear to have the age that he really had. Do not be surprised, therefore, if for these reasons I have represented the Very Holy Virgin, the Mother of God, much younger than her years would require and if I have given the Son his real age."

[16] Contract of August 26, 1498, with the French Cardinal, Jean de Groslaye de Villiers, Abbot of S. Denis, Ambassador of Charles VIII, who had ordered it for the chapel of the kings of France (Chapel of S. Petronille) at St. Peter's.

[17] This David was placed in the centre of the court of the Château de Bury and moved in the sixteenth century to the Château de Villeroy near Mennecy from where it afterward disappeared. The figure was life-size, with the head of Goliath at its feet; a pen-and-ink sketch in the Louvre is all that is left of it.

[18] Carducho saw some fragments in 1633 in the possession of the Viceroy of Naples. Marc-Antonio engraved in 1510 the celebrated episode of the bathers, using for a background a landscape of Lucas van Leyden. Agostino Veneziano made another engraving of it in 1523-24. Aristotele da San Gallo made a drawing of the whole composition and in 1542 made from the drawing an oil-painting (Holkham Castle, England). There exist many fragmentary studies of the work in the Albertina Collection at Vienna, the Accademia at Venice, the Louvre and Oxford University. They can be put together by following a drawing of Daniele da Volterra in the Uffizi. The battle included, besides the episode of the bathers, a cavalry combat. "Si vedono infiniti combattendo di cavallo cominciare la zuffa," says Vasari. The moment chosen was the one when a trumpet call gave the alarm to the Florentines, surprised while bathing by the Pisans.

[19] Especially from the notes where Lionardo described a battle in his "Thatteto della Pittura," II, 145, a combination of photographic exactness and academic rationalism.

[20] Never had so many nudes been seen in one composition except in the Last Judgment at Orvieto. Michelangelo pushed so far his contempt not only for any psychological analysis, but for all dramatic probability, that he introduced into the midst of the composition a naked man lying down and turning over lazily without seeming to take any notice of the tumult around him. It was a classic bas-relief radiant with heroic beauty and regardless alike of subject and feeling.

[21] Frescoes of Pinturicchio in the library of the Cathedral at Sienna, finished in 1507.

[22] Frescoes of Signorelli in the chapel of the Cathedral of Orvieto, finished in December, 1504. It is well known with what brutality Michelangelo showed on many occasions his contempt for Signorelli and for Perugino.

[23] At the end of a memorial in which he went over the whole history of the monument of Julius II in order to clear himself from blame. (Lettere di M. A.B., Ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1875, cdxxxv, p. 494.)

[24] Thode confirms this opinion, which was also held by Serlio in the sixteenth century, in regard to the construction of St. Peter's.

[25] In 1519 we find traces of new correspondence between Michelangelo and Turkey. A certain Tommaso di Tolfo of Adrianople begs him to come to Turkey and to paint some pictures for the "Seigneur of Adrianople, who is a connoisseur in art and has bought an antique."

[26] The statue was seven brasses (11.34 metres) high and the Pope was represented as seated.

[27] The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is rectangular in form, measuring forty metres in length by thirteen in width.

I. On the level part of the vault are nine scenes from Genesis; the Eternal dividing light from darkness, the Eternal creating the sun and moon, the Eternal dividing the waters, the Creation of man, the Creation of woman, the Temptation, Cain and Abel, the Deluge, and the Drunkenness of Noah.

II. In every angle of the imaginary frame surrounding these nine scenes is a naked figure seated on a pedestal, twenty in all. Vasari calls these the "Ignudi." Between them, and below each one of the five scenes from Genesis, is a small medallion the colour of bronze.

III. At the springing of the arches of the vault, in the twelve pendentives, twelve prophets and sibyls are seated between pilasters crowned by naked children who act as caryatids and are each accompanied by two little geniuses. The figures are Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zachariah, Isaiah, Daniel, Jonah, the Persian, Erythræan, Cumæan, Delphian, and Libyan Sibyls.

IV. Between the prophets and sibyls, in the space above the twelve arched windows, are the precursors and ancestors of Christ, groups of two or three persons divided into two sections by an archivolt in the midst of which are written on tablets the names of the precursors. Above these triangles, on the ribs, are naked youths. Between the triangles and under the thrones of the prophets and sibyls, whose names they carry on tablets, are children's figures.