Chapter VI: The Genius of Michelangelo and His Influence on Italian Art (2)

V. In the four pendentives formed by the angles of the ceiling are David, Conqueror of Goliath; Judith and Holofernes; the Brazen Serpent, and the Hanging of Haman.

[28] Letter to his father, January 27, 1509.

[29] Michelangelo abandoned painting for almost twenty years and did not take it up again until 1529.

[30] "I did not want them to charge me with the 3,000 crowns which I had already received, for I showed that they owed me much more than that. But Aginensis said to me that I was a cheat." (Letter of Michelangelo, 1524.)

[31] Twenty-six feet three inches.

[32] Contratti, 635 ff.

[33] The two Slaves were given in 1544 by Michelangelo to Robert Strozzi, who was at that time banished from Florence and had taken refuge in France. They finally reached the Constable de Montmorency's Château of Ecouen, and Henri de Montmorency when he died in 1632 gave them to Cardinal de Richelieu. From the Château de Richelieu they were moved in the seventeenth century to the gardens of the Maréchal de Richelieu in Paris. It is thanks to Lenoir that they were preserved to France in 1793.

[34] Condivi wrote that according to Michelangelo the statues of the bound men which were to be placed against the pilasters of the lower part of the tomb "represented the liberal arts, painting, sculpture and architecture each with its characteristic attributes, in such a way that they could be easily recognised. At the same time they expressed the idea that all the virtues were prisoners of death with Pope Julius and that they would never find anyone to encourage them and to support them as he had done."

Some sketches at Oxford show a number of these prisoners struggling against their chains. The large statues of the upper story were to personify St. Paul, Moses, Adam, Life and Contemplation; Julius II was represented asleep on an open sarcophagus which was supported by two angels, "one smiling to express the joy of heaven, and the other weeping to represent the sorrow of earth."

A large pen-and-ink drawing in the Ufizzi partly shows the architecture of the monument--that Charles Garnier called the architecture of a goldsmith--and which is indeed a frame to group the sculptured figures together as well as possible. I would like to believe that this drawing refers not to the plan of 1513, but to the simplified plan of 1516.

[35] Cardinal Giulio Medici, future Clement VII.

[36] A brasse is 1.62 metres.

[37] Appeal of the Academicians of Florence to Leo X, signed by Michelangelo. (Gotti, Vol. II, p. 84.)

[38] Michelangelo ended his work in April, 1520. The Christ was sent to Rome in March, 1521. Pietro Urbano worked at it from June until the middle of August when he suddenly left Rome.

Sebastiano del Piombo writes to Michelangelo in September, 1521: "Pietro Urbano has mutilated everything. In particular he has shortened the right foot and you can see clearly that he has cut off the toes: he has even shortened the fingers, especially those of the right hand which held the cross. Frizzi says that they look as if they had been made by a 'baker.' That hand does not even look like marble; you would think it had been made by a pastry cook, so stiff are the fingers. You can see, too, that he has worked at the beard and you would think he had modelled it with a blunt knife. He has also mutilated one of the nostrils, and almost spoilt the nose."

Michelangelo had to commission the sculptor, Federigo Frizzi, to finish the work. With his customary honesty he offered to make an entirely new statue for Metello Varj, who had ordered the work from him, but Varj declined. Michelangelo was so ashamed of the Christ of the Minerva that when the statue was unveiled in December, 1521, Lionardo Sellajo, one of his friends in Rome, took great care that everyone should know that it was not by Michelangelo, but that he had simply retouched it.

[39] After the death of Leo X on December 1, 1521, and during all the pontificate of Adrian VI, who died on September 23, 1523, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici had put a "mute" on all his undertakings. It is probable that during that year's respite (1522-23) Michelangelo was able to take up again the tomb of Julius II, and that he worked at the admirable Victory of the Bargello and at the scarcely blocked-in figures of the Boboli Grotto.

[40] Fifty crowns. Michelangelo only asked for fifteen.

[41] He was fifty years old. In 1517, when he was forty-two, in a letter to Domenico Buoninsegni he called himself "old." In 1523 in a letter to Cardinal Domenico Grimani, he emphasised the lessening of his strength through age. "If I work a day," he says, "I must rest for four."

[42] Thode pretends that Michelangelo did not take this seriously and that the letter which follows is "ironisch und humorvolle." Full of humor, yes, but I do not think it ironical. If there is any trace of irony it is rather on the side of the pope, who might have been making fun of Michelangelo's naiveté and of his well-known tendency to grow enthusiastic over any new undertaking, particularly the most fantastic ones. In fact after frequent exchanges of letters in October and November, 1525, Fattucci, a friend of Michelangelo, warned him secretly in December that "the Colossus was only a joke." Michelangelo had not suspected any malice in this scheme and had already pictured in his mind the bizarre Colossus to which he gave a frankly popular character, monstrous and comic, like one of Aristo's giants.

[43] The block of marble abandoned by Michelangelo was taken a little while afterward by his jealous rival, Bandinelli, who made from it a Hercules and Cacus which to-day still stands on the Piazza della Signoria.

[44] Until then Michelangelo had given his services gratuitously to his country.

[45] It was for him that Michelangelo some time after this made his painting of Leda, but he never sent it to him because of some discourtesy on the part of the Ferrarese ambassador.

[46] Michelangelo does not name him, undoubtedly so as not to compromise him.

[47] In entering the chapel of S. Lorenzo the tomb of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, (Action) is on the right; and on the left that of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino (the Thinker); and opposite the altar, the Virgin nursing the Child. Each of the two captains is placed in a rectangular niche flanked by two other niches which are empty. Below each of them on the fluted cover of a sarcophagus arc two allegorical figures half reclining (Day and Night--Dawn and Twilight) with their backs turned. The sarcophagi are designedly much too small; there is hardly room for the figures on them. No doubt Michelangelo wished to emphasise the impression of heroic and agonising effort produced by the sight of these athletic forms turned back upon themselves in involved and constrained portions. The two tombs were finished in 1531. We know the admirable verses which Michelangelo wrote on his figure of Night and which undoubtedly date from a dozen years later, March, 1544. See Frey CIX. pp, 16-17.

[48] At this same time by a savage and instinctive reaction of his nature against the Christian pessimism by which it was stifled, Michelangelo executed some works of daring paganism like the painting of Leda caressed by the Swan (1529-1530) which, originally made for the Duke of Ferrara, was given by Michelangelo to his pupil Antonio Mini, who carried it to France, where it is said to have been destroyed about 1643 by Sublet des Noyers because of its licentiousness. A little later Michelangelo painted for Bart. Bettini a cartoon of Venus caressed by Love from which Pontormo made a picture now in the Uffizi. Other drawings full of a grandiose and severe shamelessness are probably of the same period. To the first months of the siege belongs also the admirable unfinished statue of the Apollo of the Museo Nazionale which he made for Baccio Valori in the autumn of 1530.

[49] In the plan of construction (a square crowned by a dome with fluted pilasters and niches with pediments) Michelangelo was influenced by Brunelleschi and Vitruvius, whom he was studying at that time. There was very little ornamentation and the idea of the plan was clear, simple and abstract. With Michelangelo, architecture is always a frame for his statues. He even went so far as to write, in 1560, to Cardinal Carpi that the divisions of architecture were the same as those of the human frame, and no one who was not "un buon maestro di figure" and did not understand anatomy could be an architect.

[50] He sent a model in 1559. It is from this model that Vasari executed the much-criticised staircase of the Laurentian. In spite of faults it shows the rugged genius of Michelangelo, who seemed to enjoy making difficulties for himself. That breakneck staircase, conceived in such a dry, hard and complicated way, but strong and violent, and which ever seeks to accentuate the ascending lines, is certainly a product of the same spirit which created the Medici tombs. Besides it is well to note that the faults were emphasised by the manner in which Vasari carried it out. Michelangelo had recommended that the staircase be made of wood, but Cosmo held to the idea of building it in stone.

[51] See in the edition of Michelangelo's poems by Carl Frey, "Die Dichtungen des Michelangelo Buonarroti," Berlin, 1897, the sonnets, CIX, LXXVI, XLV, etc.

Vasari tells us that Michelangelo made a life-size drawing of Cavalieri, the only portrait which he ever made, for he had a horror of copying a living person unless they were of incomparable beauty.

He adds that he made him beautiful presents, "many astonishing drawings, a Ganymede carried to Heaven by the eagle of Zeus, a Tityos with the vulture feeding on his heart, the fall of Phaeton and the chariot of the Sun into the Po, and a Bacchanale of children--all works of the rarest beauty and of such perfection that their like has never been seen."

[52] From the monastery at Viterbo, July 20, 1542 or 1543. The letter bears this address: "Al mio più che magnifico et più che carissimo M. Michel Agnolo Buonarroti." (Carteggio de Vittoria Colonna. Published by Ermanno Ferrero and Giuseppe Müller, Turin, 1892, pp. 268, 269.)

[53] Donate Giannotti, "De' giorni che Dante consumo nel cercare l'Inferno e 'l Purgatorio. Dialoghi."

[54]

Were I but he, born for like lingering pains
Against his exile coupled with his good,
I'd gladly change the world's best heritage.
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[55] Capitolo di Francesco Berni a fra Sebastiano del Piombo. (Rime. Ed. Frey, p. 263.)

[56] Canzone in lode di Michelagnolo Bonarroto. (See Frey, p. 7.)

[57] A Frenchman who saw him at that time.

[58] Letters of Michelangelo to Fattucci, March 7, 1551.

[59] Rime. Ed. Frey, LXXXVIII, p. 93.

[60] _Ibid._, C and CL, pp. 105, 106.

[61] The work on the fortifications of Rome directed by Antonio da San Gallo dates from his reign and also the construction of the Capitol, the raising of the statue of Marcus Aurelius, the completion of the Farnese Palace, the construction of the Via Paola, of the Sala Regia and the Pauline Chapel at the Vatican, the Caffarelli and Spada palaces, the Villa Medici, etc.

[62] As a matter of fact Michelangelo did not actually receive any income from this source until 1538, and after many difficulties he lost it in 1547.

[63] Later on the subject was treated after the sketches of Michelangelo in the Chapel of S. Gregorio at Santa Trinità. (See Vasari.)

[64] Perugino had painted the Assumption with a portrait of Sextius IV kneeling, Moses saved from the waters, and the Birth of Christ.

[65] Léon Dorez has found recently in the records of the private accounts of Paul III the exact dates of the work, April-May, 1536, to November 18, 1541.

[66] Thus Vittoria Colonna had herself described the Last Judgment to Michelangelo: "Christ comes twice, the first time he is all gentleness; he only shows his great kindness, his clemency and his pity; he comes for the sinners and the sick, to give peace, light and forgiveness, all glowing with charity, clothed in humanity.... The second time he comes armed and shows his justice, his majesty, his grandeur and his almighty power, and there is no longer any time for pity or room for pardon." (Letter of Vittoria between 1535-1546, probably to Bernadino Ochino,--Carteggio de Vittoria Colonna, p. 242.)

[67] We know that Michelangelo, to revenge himself, portrayed Biagio from memory in the Hell of his Last Judgment under the form of Minos with a huge serpent wound about his legs in the midst of a mountain of devils. (Vasari.)

[68] We must not, however, imagine that Michelangelo any more than his contemporaries had the courage to show openly to Aretino the contempt which he must have felt for him. If he declined the offer of collaboration in the Last Judgment which Aretino had baldly made him and for which he had outlined a detailed program, it was only with many compliments and much flattery. (Letter of September, 1537.) Even though Aretino did not obtain from him the gift for which he asked, we find, nevertheless, that he had received in September, 1535, through Vasari, a head in wax and a sketch for a St. Catherine. But he did not consider himself satisfied.

[69] The "Hypocrite," dedicated to Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino. (See Pierre Gaultier, "L'Aretin," 1895.)

[70] Gherardo Perini and Tommaso dei Cavalieri--thus Aretino in passing adds to the accusation of impiety an allusion to the evil reports about the habits of Michelangelo. Two lines lower down he will accuse him of theft.

[71] _In postscript:_ Now that I have a little discharged my anger against the cruelty with which you have repaid my devotion, and have made you see, I believe, that if you are "divino" I am not "d'acqua," tear up this letter as I do, and reflect. For I am a man to whom even Kings and Emperors answer.

[72] Gaye Carteggio, Vol. II, p. 500.

[73] A. Baschet "P. Veronese devant le Saint Office," 1880.

[74] "Missirini: Memorie per servire alla storia della romana Accademia di S. Luca." (Cited by E. Müntz, "Histoire de l'Art pendant la Renaissance," Vol. III, p. 126.)

[75] In 1762 Stefano Pozzi was polishing it under Clement VIII. Abbé Richard, in his "Voyage d'Italie," says that he saw "some very mediocre artists occupied in covering with draperies the most beautiful nude figures of the painting and of the ceiling."

[76] The only document which makes it possible for us to give an account of the original work is a copy by Marcello Venusti in the Museum of Naples, from which a painter of Orléans, Robert Le Noyer, seems to have made in 1750 a reduced copy which is now in the Museum of Montpellier. (See G. Lafenestre et E. Richtenberger, "La Peinture en Europe." Rome.)

[77] The British Museum and the University of Oxford have drawings which are related to these frescoes. The Cartoon is in the Museum at Naples.

[78] March 6, 1542. (Gaye, Vol. II, p. 289.)

[79] July 20, 1542 (Petition of Michelangelo to Paul III), Michelangelo added that the two figures were already so far advanced that they could be easily completed by other artists. (Gaye, Vol. II, p. 297.)

[80] The fourteen hundred crowns had been deposited at the bank of Silvestro da Montanto & Co. They were to be divided as follows: eight hundred for the work of Urbino; five hundred and thirty for the statues of Raffaello da Montelupo, whose Madonna was already finished; and fifty for the transportation and placing of the statues by Urbino.

[81] October, 1542. Letter to an unknown person whom he calls Monsignore.

[82] 18 November, 1542. Letter of Michelangelo to Luigi del Riccio.

[83]

Giovane e bella in sogno mi parea
Donna vedere andar per una landa
Cogliendo fiori; e cantando dicea:

Sappia, qualunque il mio nome domanda
Ch'io mi son Lia, e vo movendo intorno
Le belle mani a farmi una ghirlanda.

Per piacermi allo specchio qui m'adorno;
Ma mia suora Rachel mai non si smaga
Dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto giorno.

Ell' è de' suoi begli occhi veder vaga,
Com'io dell'adornami con la mani;
Lei lo vedere, e mi l'oprare appaga.
--(Purgatorio, XXVII.)
(Translation of C. E. Norton.)

[84] A Prophet and a Sibyl are by Raffaello da Montelupo, and the absurd statue of the Pope by Maso Boscoli da Fiesole.

[85]

Now know I well how that fond phantasy
Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
Of Earthly Art, is vain.
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[86] July, 1557. Letter of Michelangelo to Lionardo Buonarroti.

[87] See Vasari. In October, 1546, Michelangelo with Jacopo Meleghino was commissioned to direct the fortification of the Borgo. He was undoubtedly subordinate to the orders of Pier Luigi Farnese, who was replaced after his death in 1547 by Jacopo Pusto Castriotto d'Urbino. Toward the end of 1547 they were at work on the bastion of the Belvedere. (See Gotti.)

[88] Michelangelo wrote to the committee: "You know that I told Balduccio not to send his lime unless it was good. He has sent bad lime and won't admit that he can be forced to take it back, which proves that he has an understanding with the person who accepted it. Such things encourage the effrontery of those whom I have dismissed for similar frauds. Whoever accepts bad materials or bribes corrupts justice. I beg of you, in the name of the authority which I have received from the pope, never more to accept anything which can not be used, even if it came from Heaven. I do not want anyone to believe that I shut my eyes to these irregularities."

[89] Vasari.

[90] Letter of Michelangelo to his nephew Lionardo, May 11, 1555.

[91] Particularly Cardinal Carpi, Tommaso dei Cavalieri, Donato Giannotti, Francesco Bandini and Gio. Francesco Lottini.

[92] Letter of September 13, 1560.

[93] Vasari. See in the excellent work of Henry Thode, "Michelangelo und das Ende der Renaissance," Vol. I, the detailed account of these struggles of Michelangelo with the faction of San Gallo and Nanni di Baccio Bigio.

[94] See Anatole de Montaiglon, "La Vie de Michel-Ange." ("L'OEuvre et la Vie de Michel-Ange," p. 288.)

[95] H. de Geymueller, "Ursprüngliche Entwürfe zu S. Peter."

[96] The cupola of St. Peter's, like that of Florence, has two concentric domes. It was to have had three according to Michelangelo's model, but Guglielmo della Porta, who carried out the plans after his death, left out the lower one.

[97] Michelangelo had also the rather unfortunate idea of flanking the main cupola by four little domes (of which only two were made) instead of the four towers which were to frame it in Bramante's plan. Michelangelo did not have the happiness of seeing his work completed for at his death the cupola was only finished as far as the drum. Guglielmo della Porta finished the dome in a year.

[98] See "Michaelis, Zeitschrift für bildende kunst." 1891, Vol. III, p. 184 _et seq._; E. Müntz, "Histoire de l'art pendant la Renaissance," Vol. III, pp. 338-340. The palace of the Senate was built in 1546 to 1568, the two staircases in 1555. The façade of the Palazzo dei Conservatori dates from after the death of Michelangelo; the campanile is the work of Martino Lunghi, and dates from 1579. The groups of the Dioscuri were installed in 1583. From 1592 to 1598 the façade of the palace of the Senate was rebuilt and changed. The Capitoline Museum dates from the seventeenth century under the pontificate of Innocent X.

We must be very careful not to blame Michelangelo for the faults of his successors as Charles Garnier has done in a too severe article published in "L'OEuvre et la Vie de Michel-Ange," in which he nevertheless acknowledges that he was thinking of the Capitol when he built the Loggia of the Opera House at Paris. He adds it is true that he had "studied the proportions with great care and skill, and I can say without blushing, with more talent."

[99] Michelangelo also made drawings for the other gates of Rome. (Vasari.)

[100] Letters of Michelangelo to Vasari, August 1-October 13, 1550.

[101] Letter of Michelangelo to Cosmo, November, 1559.

[102] Letter of Michelangelo to Cosmo, November 1, 1559. The same, November 1, 1559, and March 5, 1560.

[103] Michelangelo in the last period of his life, when he seemed entirely devoted to architecture and poetry, had many other ambitious plans, like that of continuing the arcade of the Loggia dei Lanzi around the palace of the Signory at Florence, of connecting the Farnese palace and the Farnesina by a bridge, of raising in the court of the Belvedere a Moses striking water from the rock, etc. It was that taste for the colossal, and what we might even dare to call the uselessly colossal, which was handed down through his school as far as Bernini.

[104] In 1553. See Condivi. This is the famous Pietà of the cathedral of Florence. Blaise de Vigenère in "Les Images de Philostrate," Paris, 1629, speaks of a Pietà on which Michelangelo was working in 1550 for his own tomb.

[105] All his life he suffered from insomnia brought on by overwork, a fever which continually consumed him and his ascetic sobriety.

[106] Two other unfinished Pietàs have been preserved. One is in the court of the Rondanini palace in Rome, the other has just been found in Palestrina.

[107] The figures are not on the same scale, especially the figure of the Magdalen, which is too small. She is colder than the rest of the group and more finished, and we may suspect that it was upon her figure that Calcagni worked.

[108] Among these artists he knew particularly well Francesco Granacci, Giuliano Bugiardini, Jacopo Sansovino, Aristotele da San Gallo, Rosso, Pontormo, Guglielmo della Porta, Vignole, and the musician Archadelt.

[109] Correspondence between Sebastiano del Piombo and Michelangelo has been published by Gaetano Milanesi with a French translation by A. LePileur and an introduction by E. Müntz in the Bibl. Internationale de l'Art (Librairie de l'Art, 1890).

[110] Donato Giannotti has, as we have said, preserved the memory of these relations in his "Dialoghi," 1545. Michelangelo was particularly intimate with Luigi del Riccio through their mutual friendship with the beautiful Cecchino dei Bracci, whose premature death in 1544 inspired Michelangelo with a cycle of verses.

[111] "La Vita di Michelangelo," by Ascanio Condivi, appeared in July, 1553, in Rome, published by Antonio Blado and dedicated to Julius III. The first edition of Vasari's "Vite" had already appeared in 1551 and Vasari had sent it to Michelangelo, who had thanked him in the sonnet "Se con lo stile."

[112] See Benvenuto Cellini.

[113] Letter of Vasari to Cosmo de' Medici, April 8, 1560. See also the affectionate letter of Michelangelo to Sebastiano del Piombo in May, 1555.

[114] Francesca married, in 1538, Michele de Niccolo Guicciardini. Lionardo married, in 1553, Cassandra, the daughter of Donato Ridolfi.

[115] A few days before Michelangelo had lost his last brother, Gismondo. See also his admirable letter to Vasari, February 23, 1556.

[116] Letter of Michelangelo to Cornelia, March 28, 1557. He quarrelled with Cornelia in 1559, when she married again, and wanted to take the charge of the children from her, but their friendship was re-established in 1561.

[117] He justified these accusations by his almost sordid manner of living and constant complaints of poverty, although he was really rich. A Denunzia de' beni, in 1534, before he had received anything from Paul III, showed that he owned a house and three estates in Settignano, a property at St. Stephano de Pozzolatico, two farms and a house at Stradello, a farm at Rovezzano, three houses in the Via Ghibellina, one house in the Via Mozza, etc. The inventory made after his death in Rome showed seven or eight hundred gold crowns (worth about four to five thousand francs) and Vasari tells us that he had twice given his nephew Lionardo seven thousand crowns, beside two thousand to Urbino and sums invested at Florence.

[118]

Now hath my life across a stormy sea
Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all
Are bidden....
(J. A. Symonds' translation.)

[119] The Pietà Rondanini.

[120] Gotti, Vol. II, p. 358.

[121] Besides these there were in the atelier in Florence in the Via Mozza a number of blocks of marble and the beautiful statue of Victory intended for the tomb of Julius II, and which in 1565 was taken to the Palazzo Vecchio. Also Antonio del Franzese, Michelangelo's servant, who was with him at the time of his death, gave to the Duke of Urbino in 1570 a statuette of Moses which his master had given to him.

[122] Gaye, "Carteggio inedito d'artisti," 1839, Vol. III, p. 131.

[123] The Florentine Academy of Painters had just been founded in 1563, and Michelangelo had been unanimously chosen as a president together with Cosmo de' Medici, January 31, 1563.

[124] The Duke was not there, Cellini was ill and could not come and Francesco da San Gallo did not appear.

[125] Daniele da Volterra had offered to make a sketch for the tomb with his assistant, Jacopo del Duca, but Vasari's jealousy prevented it. Daniele died April 4, 1566, after having made rough models for three busts of Michelangelo which Jacopo del Duca or Michele Alberti finished after him.

[126] See the detailed account of the obsequies; "Esequie del divino Michelangelo," Florence, Giunti, 1564. Varchi wrote the "Orazione funerale."

[127] Letter of October, 1509.

[128] Letter of March, 1548, to Lionardo Buonarroto.

[129] Condivi.

[130] See the _Lezione_ of Benedetto Varchi on the sonnet of Michelangelo, "Non ha l'ottimo Artista...."

[131]

I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes
When perfect peace in thy fair eyes I found;
But far within, where all is holy ground,
My soul felt love, her comrade of the skies;
For she was born with God in Paradise;
Else should we still to transient love be bound;
But, finding these so false, we pass beyond,
Unto the Love of loves that never dies.
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[132] "_Tutti i componimenti di lui pieni d'amore Socratico, e di concetti Platonici._"

[133] Xenophon, Memor, Vol. III, p. 10.

[134] He adds: "He who wrote that painting was nobler than sculpture, if that idea is a sample of his intelligence, then my servant knows more than he does."

This seems to be directed at Lionardo. See the first chapter of "Trattato della Pittura."

[135]

The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include; to break the marble spell
Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[136] If it is true that Michelangelo attacked the marble with the greatest fury, it was only after he had prepared his drawings and his models with the most minute care. Cellini in his "Trattati dell' oreficeria" (Florence, 1557) says that for the statues in the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo he saw him first make models of the same height as the statue was to be and then draw with charcoal on the marble the general appearance of his figure. Vasari says almost the same thing in regard to the four statues of Captives sketched in the block and not yet cut from it.

[137] The science of design or drawing, said Michelangelo, according to the Dialogues of Francis of Holland, is the source and the essence of painting, of sculpture, of architecture and of all kinds of representation as well as the soul of all the sciences (Third Part of the "Dialogues sur la Peinture dans la Ville de Rome"). "Sculpture," says Francis of Holland, "is clearly bound to drawing; it comes out of it and at bottom is nothing more than the drawing itself. The great draughtsman, Michelangelo, said to me many times that he regarded it as a greater thing to make a masterly stroke with the pen than with the chisel." (_Ibid._, Second Part.)

[138]

Sense is not love, but lawlessness accursed;
This kills the soul....
(Translation of J. A. Symonds.)

[139] "Or for sluggards like Sebastiano del Piombo." He had a quarrel because of this remark with Sebastiano, who tried to persuade him to paint the Last Judgment in oils.

[140] "Aborriva il fare somigliare al vivo" (Vasari).--"Michelangelo never would paint a portrait."--(Journal de Bernin, Gazette des Beaux Arts, Vol. XVII, p. 358.) "His rule," says Vasari, "was never to make any likeness of a living person unless he was of transcendent beauty."

[141] "Flemish painting generally is more pleasing to the devout than Italian painting."

[142] Francis of Holland, "Quatre Entretiens sur la Peinture," held in Rome in 1538-1539, written in 1548, published by Joachim de Vasconcellos (translation into French in "Les Arts en Portugal," by Comte Raczynski, Paris, Renouard, 1844). To prove the theory of Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, who presided over this talk, undertook the defense of the religious and consolatory art of the North.

[143] We find the same ideas, more exuberant and more confused, in the writings of Lomazzo, "Idea del Tempio della Pittura" (1590).

[144] Idea del Tempio, etc.

[145] Lomazzo became blind when he was twenty-three, but that did not prevent him from judging of painters and their works until his death when over sixty.

[146] Perino del Vaga made this declaration when he refused to undertake the drawings for the jewel-box of Cosmo de Medici, when he found that they had addressed themselves first to Michelangelo. (Jay, "Receuil de Lettres sur la Peinture." Claude Tolomei à Apoll. Philarète.)

[147] Luigi Lanzi; "Storia Pittorica d'Italia, Bassano, 1795-96," Vol. I, p. 167.

[148] Tintoretto himself, under the influence of Michelangelo, says: "The most beautiful colours are black and white because they give relief to figures by light and shade," and at the end of his life, abandoning the principles of the Venetian School, he gives the preference to drawing, "Draw, draw now and always."

[149] Daniele da Volterra was also more a sculptor than a painter, and ended by giving himself up to sculpture. He made casts of the statues of the Medici and also some statues of his own. Some of his pictures, like the David and Goliath in the Louvre, which is painted on both sides, are only two faces of one of his statues. Rosso and Salviati were also sculptors.

[150] The verses of Giovanni Strozzi (1545) are well known:

La Notte, che tu vedi in si dolci atti
Dormir, fu da un Angelo scolpita
In questo sasso, e perche dorme, ha vita.
Destala, se nol credi, e parleratti.

The night which you see sleeping so peacefully was carved by an angel in this rock. Since she sleeps, she lives. If you do not believe it awake her and she will speak to you.

[151] The same thing is true of Girolamo Muziano of Brescia. Even the School of Milan was affected. Lomazzo makes of Michelangelo the ruler of all painting. The imitation of Michelangelo spread especially in sculpture, and there the decadence was dizzying.

[152] "Journal du Voyage du Cavalier Bernin en France," par M. de Chantelou. ("Gazette des Beaux Arts," Vol. XXIX, p. 453.)

[153] _Ibid._, Vol. XXI, p. 383.

[154] Ed. Frey, XLIX.

Michelangelo said one day to Ammanati, "Nelle mie opere caco sangue."

Varchi said to him one day, "Signor Buonarroti, avete il cervello di Giove." Michelangelo answered, "Si vuole il martello di Vulcano per farne uscire qualche cosa." (Quoted by E. Delacroix in his Journal, Vol. II, p. 429.)

[155] Michelangelo said to Cardinal Salviati, who was ministering to him on his death-bed, that he only regretted two things: not to have done all he should have for his salvation, and to be dying just as he was learning the alphabet of his profession. (Journal de Bernin, Vol. XXI, p. 388.)

[156] Vasari, "Vite," Preamble to the Third Part.

Lionardo spent six years in painting some hair, but Corregio only an hour, and with four strokes of his brush gained just the same effect. (Journal de Bernin, Vol. XX, p. 453.)

[157] He went so far as to canonise himself while he was still alive, after a vision in which he saw a miraculous aureole around his own head.

Nothing shows more surely the gulf which separated Michelangelo from his disciples than the comparison of his sombre poetry with the proudly exultant sonnet which serves as preamble to the memoirs of Cellini.

[158] See what Vasari writes of the revolution of Giorgione in 1507 when Giorgione began to "pose before him living and natural things, to represent them as nearly as he could by painting directly with colour without making any drawing." He adds that Giorgione did not perceive that it is necessary, if you wish to arrange and balance a composition, to put it first on paper. "In fact the mind can not very well see or perfectly imagine its own creations, if it does not reveal and explain its thought to the eyes of the body which will aid it in judging--we must add that in drawing on paper one succeeds in filling the mind with beautiful conceptions and learns to make natural objects from memory without being obliged to have them always before you." (Vasari, Ed. 1811, Vol. III, pp. 427-428.) The whole point of view of Florentine art of the sixteenth century is in this naïve avowal.

[159] Tintoretto had long studied Michelangelo. He had brought to him at great expense casts of his statues which Ridolfo says he lighted by a lamp and drew in bold relief. (Ridolfo; "Delle maraviglie dell' arte in Venetia," 1648.)

[160] This fever attacked the art of other countries which were filled with caricatures of Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck, "the Dutch Michelangelo," Frans Floris, "the Flemish Michelangelo," and their innumerable followers, not to mention the French and Spanish imitators, the Fréminets and the Cespedès.

The following have been corrected (note of ebook transcriber):

insteading=>instead

Pollojuolo=>Pollajuolo

Muller=>Müller

Raffaelle, Raffaelli=>Raffaello da Montelupo

Baif=>Baïf

Rafaellino=>Raffaellino

cecrare=>cercare