Title: The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti
Author: Symonds, John Addington, 1840-1893
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti" ***


THE LIFE OF MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS


TO THE CAVALIERE GUIDO BIAGI, DOCTOR IN LETTERS, PREFECT OF THE
MEDICEO-LAURENTIAN LIBRARY, ETC., ETC.

I DEDICATE THIS WORK ON MICHELANGELO IN RESPECT FOR HIS SCHOLARSHIP
AND LEARNING ADMIRATION OF HIS TUSCAN STYLE AND GRATEFUL
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS GENEROUS ASSISTANCE



CONTENTS

CHAPTER

   I. BIRTH, BOYHOOD, YOUTH AT FLORENCE, DOWN TO LORENZO DE' MEDICI'S
      DEATH. 1475-1492.

  II. FIRST VISITS TO BOLOGNA AND ROME--THE MADONNA DELLA FEBBRE AND
      OTHER WORKS IN MARBLE. 1492-1501.

 III. RESIDENCE IN FLORENCE--THE DAVID. 1501-1505.

  IV. JULIUS II. CALLS MICHELANGELO TO ROME--PROJECT FOR THE POPE'S
      TOMB--THE REBUILDING OF S. PETER'S--FLIGHT FROM ROME--CARTOON
      FOR THE BATTLE OF PISA. 1505, 1506.

   V. SECOND VISIT TO BOLOGNA--THE BRONZE STATUE OF JULIUS
      II--PAINTING OF THE SISTINE VAULT. 1506-1512.

  VI. ON MICHELANGELO AS DRAUGHTSMAN, PAINTER, SCULPTOR.

 VII. LEO X. PLANS FOR THE CHURCH OF S. LORENZO AT
      FLORENCE--MICHELANGELO'S LIFE AT CARRARA. 1513-1521.

VIII. ADRIAN VI AND CLEMENT VII--THE SACRISTY AND LIBRARY OF S.
      LORENZO. 1521-1526.

  IX. SACK OF ROME AND SIEGE OF FLORENCE--MICHELANGELO'S FLIGHT TO
      VENICE--HIS RELATIONS TO THE MEDICI. 1527-1534.

   X. ON MICHELANGELO AS ARCHITECT.

  XI. FINAL SETTLEMENT IN ROME--PAUL III.--THE LAST JUDGMENT AND THE
      PAOLINE CHAPEL--THE TOMB OF JULIUS. 1535-1542.

 XII. VITTORIA COLONNA AND TOMMASO CAVALIERI--MICHELANGELO AS POET AND
      MAN OF FEELING.

XIII. MICHELANGELO APPOINTED ARCHITECT-IN-CHIEF AT THE
      VATICAN--HISTORY OF S. PETER'S. 1542-1557.

 XIV. LAST YEARS OF LIFE--MICHELANGELO'S PORTRAITS--ILLNESS OF OLD
      AGE. 1557-1564.

  XV. DEATH AT ROME--BURIAL AND OBSEQUIES AT
      FLORENCE--ANECDOTES--ESTIMATE OF MICHELANGELO AS MAN AND ARTIST.



THE LIFE OF MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI


CHAPTER I


I

The Buonarroti Simoni, to whom Michelangelo belonged, were a
Florentine family of ancient burgher nobility. Their arms appear to
have been originally "azure two bends or." To this coat was added "a
label of four points gules inclosing three fleur-de-lys or." That
augmentation, adopted from the shield of Charles of Anjou, occurs upon
the scutcheons of many Guelf houses and cities. In the case of the
Florentine Simoni, it may be ascribed to the period when Buonarrota di
Simone Simoni held office as a captain of the Guelf party (1392).
Such, then, was the paternal coat borne by the subject of this Memoir.
His brother Buonarroto received a further augmentation in 1515 from
Leo X., to wit: "upon a chief or, a pellet azure charged with
fleur-de-lys or, between the capital letters L. and X." At the same
time he was created Count Palatine. The old and simple bearing of the
two bends was then crowded down into the extreme base of the shield,
while the Angevine label found room beneath the chief.

According to a vague tradition, the Simoni drew their blood from the
high and puissant Counts of Canossa. Michelangelo himself believed in
this pedigree, for which there is, however, no foundation in fact, and
no heraldic corroboration. According to his friend and biographer
Condivi, the sculptor's first Florentine ancestor was a Messer Simone
dei Conti di Canossa, who came in 1250 as Podestà to Florence. "The
eminent qualities of this man gained for him admission into the
burghership of the city, and he was appointed captain of a Sestiere;
for Florence in those days was divided into Sestieri, instead of
Quartieri, as according to the present usage." Michelangelo's
contemporary, the Count Alessandro da Canossa, acknowledged this
relationship. Writing on the 9th of October 1520, he addresses the
then famous sculptor as "honoured kinsman," and gives the following
piece of information: "Turning over my old papers, I have discovered
that a Messere Simone da Canossa was Podestà of Florence, as I have
already mentioned to the above-named Giovanni da Reggio."
Nevertheless, it appears now certain that no Simone da Canossa held
the office of Podestà at Florence in the thirteenth century. The
family can be traced up to one Bernardo, who died before the year
1228. His grandson was called Buonarrota, and the fourth in descent
was Simone. These names recur frequently in the next generations.
Michelangelo always addressed his father as "Lodovico di Lionardo di
Buonarrota Simoni," or "Louis, the son of Leonard, son of Buonarrota
Simoni;" and he used the family surname of Simoni in writing to his
brothers and his nephew Lionardo. Yet he preferred to call himself
Michelangelo Buonarroti; and after his lifetime Buonarroti became
fixed for the posterity of his younger brother. "The reason," says
Condivi, "why the family in Florence changed its name from Canossa to
Buonarroti was this: Buonarroto continued for many generations to be
repeated in their house, down to the time of Michelangelo, who had a
brother of that name; and inasmuch as several of these Buonarroti held
rank in the supreme magistracy of the republic, especially the brother
I have just mentioned, who filled the office of Prior during Pope
Leo's visit to Florence, as may be read in the annals of that city,
this baptismal name, by force of frequent repetition, became the
cognomen of the whole family; the more easily, because it is the
custom at Florence, in elections and nominations of officers, to add
the Christian names of the father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and
sometimes even of remoter ancestors, to that of each citizen.
Consequently, through the many Buonarroti who followed one another,
and from the Simone who was the first founder of the house in
Florence, they gradually came to be called Buonarroti Simoni, which is
their present designation." Excluding the legend about Simone da
Canossa, this is a pretty accurate account of what really happened.
Italian patronymics were formed indeed upon the same rule as those of
many Norman families in Great Britain. When the use of Di and Fitz
expired, Simoni survived from Di Simone, as did my surname Symonds
from Fitz-Symond.

On the 6th of March 1475, according to our present computation,
Lodovico di Lionardo Buonarroti Simoni wrote as follows in his private
notebook: "I record that on this day, March 6, 1474, a male child was
born to me. I gave him the name of Michelangelo, and he was born on a
Monday morning four or five hours before daybreak, and he was born
while I was Podestà of Caprese, and he was born at Caprese; and the
godfathers were those I have named below. He was baptized on the
eighth of the same month in the Church of San Giovanni at Caprese.
These are the godfathers:--

  DON DANIELLO DI SER BUONAGUIDA of Florence,
Rector of San Giovanni at Caprese;
  DON ANDREA DI .... of Poppi, Rector of the Abbey
  of Diasiano (_i.e._, Dicciano);
  JACOPO DI FRANCESCO of Casurio (?);
  MARCO DI GIORGIO of Caprese;
  GIOVANNI DI BIAGIO of Caprese;
  ANDREA DI BIAGIO of Caprese;
  FRANCESCO DI JACOPO DEL ANDUINO (?) of Caprese;
  SER BARTOLOMMEO DI SANTI DEL LANSE (?), Notary."

Note that the date is March 6, 1474, according to Florentine usage _ab
incarnatione_, and according to the Roman usage, _a nativitate_, it is
1475.

Vasari tells us that the planets were propitious at the moment of
Michelangelo's nativity: "Mercury and Venus having entered with benign
aspect into the house of Jupiter, which indicated that marvellous and
extraordinary works, both of manual art and intellect, were to be
expected from him."


II

Caprese, from its beauty and remoteness, deserved to be the birthplace
of a great artist. It is not improbable that Lodovico Buonarroti and
his wife Francesca approached it from Pontassieve in Valdarno,
crossing the little pass of Consuma, descending on the famous
battle-field of Campaldino, and skirting the ancient castle of the
Conti Guidi at Poppi. Every step in the romantic journey leads over
ground hallowed by old historic memories. From Poppi the road descends
the Arno to a richly cultivated district, out of which emerges on its
hill the prosperous little town of Bibbiena. High up to eastward
springs the broken crest of La Vernia, a mass of hard millstone rock
(_macigno_) jutting from desolate beds of lime and shale at the height
of some 3500 feet above the sea. It was here, among the sombre groves
of beech and pine which wave along the ridge, that S. Francis came to
found his infant Order, composed the Hymn to the Sun, and received the
supreme honour of the stigmata. To this point Dante retired when the
death of Henry VII. extinguished his last hopes for Italy. At one
extremity of the wedge-like block which forms La Vernia, exactly on
the watershed between Arno and Tiber, stands the ruined castle of
Chiusi in Casentino. This was one of the two chief places of Lodovico
Buonarroti's podesteria. It may be said to crown the valley of the
Arno; for the waters gathered here flow downwards toward Arezzo, and
eventually wash the city walls of Florence. A few steps farther,
travelling south, we pass into the valley of the Tiber, and, after
traversing a barren upland region for a couple of hours, reach the
verge of the descent upon Caprese. Here the landscape assumes a softer
character. Far away stretch blue Apennines, ridge melting into ridge
above Perugia in the distance. Gigantic oaks begin to clothe the stony
hillsides, and little by little a fertile mountain district of
chestnut-woods and vineyards expands before our eyes, equal in charm
to those aërial hills and vales above Pontremoli. Caprese has no
central commune or head-village. It is an aggregate of scattered
hamlets and farmhouses, deeply embosomed in a sea of greenery. Where
the valley contracts and the infant Tiber breaks into a gorge, rises a
wooded rock crowned with the ruins of an ancient castle. It was here,
then, that Michelangelo first saw the light. When we discover that he
was a man of more than usually nervous temperament, very different in
quality from any of his relatives, we must not forget what a fatiguing
journey had been performed by his mother, who was then awaiting her
delivery. Even supposing that Lodovico Buonarroti travelled from
Florence by Arezzo to Caprese, many miles of rough mountain-roads must
have been traversed by her on horseback.


III

Ludovico, who, as we have seen, was Podestà of Caprese and of Chiusi
in the Casentino, had already one son by his first wife, Francesca,
the daughter of Neri di Miniato del Sera and Bonda Rucellai. This
elder brother, Lionardo, grew to manhood, and become a devoted
follower of Savonarola. Under the influence of the Ferrarese friar, he
determined to abjure the world, and entered the Dominican Order in
1491. We know very little about him, and he is only once mentioned in
Michelangelo's correspondence. Even this reference cannot be
considered certain. Writing to his father from Rome, July 1, 1497,
Michelangelo says: "I let you know that Fra Lionardo returned hither
to Rome. He says that he was forced to fly from Viterbo, and that his
frock had been taken from him, wherefore he wished to go there
(_i.e._, to Florence). So I gave him a golden ducat, which he asked
for; and I think you ought already to have learned this, for he should
be there by this time." When Lionardo died is uncertain. We only know
that he was in the convent of S. Mark at Florence in the year 1510.
Owing to this brother's adoption of the religious life, Michelangelo
became, early in his youth, the eldest son of Lodovico's family. It
will be seen that during the whole course of his long career he acted
as the mainstay of his father, and as father to his younger brothers.
The strength and the tenacity of his domestic affections are very
remarkable in a man who seems never to have thought of marrying.
"Art," he used to say, "is a sufficiently exacting mistress." Instead
of seeking to beget children for his own solace, he devoted himself to
the interests of his kinsmen.

The office of Podestà lasted only six months, and at the expiration of
this term Lodovico returned to Florence. He put the infant
Michelangelo out to nurse in the village of Settignano, where the
Buonarroti Simoni owned a farm. Most of the people of that district
gained their livelihood in the stone-quarries around Settignano and
Maiano on the hillside of Fiesole. Michelangelo's foster-mother was
the daughter and the wife of stone-cutters. "George," said he in
after-years to his friend Vasari, "if I possess anything of good in my
mental constitution, it comes from my having been born in your keen
climate of Arezzo; just as I drew the chisel and the mallet with which
I carve statues in together with my nurse's milk."

When Michelangelo was of age to go to school, his father put him under
a grammarian at Florence named Francesco da Urbino. It does not
appear, however, that he learned more than reading and writing in
Italian, for later on in life we find him complaining that he knew no
Latin. The boy's genius attracted him irresistibly to art. He spent
all his leisure time in drawing, and frequented the society of youths
who were apprenticed to masters in painting and sculpture. Among these
he contracted an intimate friendship with Francesco Granacci, at that
time in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandajo. Granacci used to lend
him drawings by Ghirlandajo, and inspired him with the resolution to
become a practical artist. Condivi says that "Francesco's influence,
combined with the continual craving of his nature, made him at last
abandon literary studies. This brought the boy into disfavour with his
father and uncles, who often used to beat him severely; for, being
insensible to the excellence and nobility of Art, they thought it
shameful to give her shelter in their house. Nevertheless, albeit
their opposition caused him the greatest sorrow, it was not sufficient
to deter him from his steady purpose. On the contrary, growing even
bolder he determined to work in colours." Condivi, whose narrative
preserves for us Michelangelo's own recollections of his youthful
years, refers to this period the painted copy made by the young
draughtsman from a copper-plate of Martin Schöngauer. We should
probably be right in supposing that the anecdote is slightly
antedated. I give it, however, as nearly as possible in the
biographer's own words. "Granacci happened to show him a print of S.
Antonio tormented by the devils. This was the work of Martino
d'Olanda, a good artist for the times in which he lived; and
Michelangelo transferred the composition to a panel. Assisted by the
same friend with colours and brushes, he treated his subject in so
masterly a way that it excited surprise in all who saw it, and even
envy, as some say, in Domenico, the greatest painter of his age. In
order to diminish the extraordinary impression produced by this
picture, Ghirlandajo went about saying that it came out of his own
workshop, as though he had some part in the performance. While engaged
on this piece, which, beside the figure of the saint, contained many
strange forms and diabolical monstrosities, Michelangelo coloured no
particular without going first to Nature and comparing her truth with
his fancies. Thus he used to frequent the fish-market, and study the
shape and hues of fishes' fins, the colour of their eyes, and so forth
in the case of every part belonging to them; all of which details he
reproduced with the utmost diligence in his painting." Whether this
transcript from Schöngauer was made as early as Condivi reports may,
as I have said, be reasonably doubted. The anecdote is interesting,
however, as showing in what a naturalistic spirit Michelangelo began
to work. The unlimited mastery which he acquired over form, and which
certainly seduced him at the close of his career into a stylistic
mannerism, was based in the first instance upon profound and patient
interrogation of reality.


IV

Lodovico perceived at length that it was useless to oppose his son's
natural bent. Accordingly, he sent him into Ghirlandajo's workshop. A
minute from Ghirlandajo's ledger, under the date 1488, gives
information regarding the terms of the apprenticeship. "I record this
first of April how I, Lodovico di Lionardo di Buonarrota, bind my son
Michelangelo to Domenico and Davit di Tommaso di Currado for the next
three ensuing years, under these conditions and contracts: to wit,
that the said Michelangelo shall stay with the above-named masters
during this time, to learn the art of painting, and to practise the
same, and to be at the orders of the above-named; and they, for their
part, shall give to him in the course of these three years twenty-four
florins (_fiorini di suggello_): to wit, six florins in the first
year, eight in the second, ten in the third; making in all the sum of
ninety-six pounds (_lire_)." A postscript, dated April 16th of the
same year, 1488, records that two florins were paid to Michelangelo
upon that day.

It seems that Michelangelo retained no very pleasant memory of his
sojourn with the Ghirlandajo brothers. Condivi, in the passage
translated above, hints that Domenico was jealous of him. He proceeds
as follows: "This jealousy betrayed itself still more when
Michelangelo once begged the loan of a certain sketch-book, wherein
Domenico had portrayed shepherds with their flocks and watchdogs,
landscapes, buildings, ruins, and such-like things. The master refused
to lend it; and indeed he had the fame of being somewhat envious; for
not only showed he thus scant courtesy toward Michelangelo, but he
also treated his brother likewise, sending him into France when he saw
that he was making progress and putting forth great promise; and doing
this not so much for any profit to David, as that he might himself
remain the first of Florentine painters. I have thought fit to mention
these things, because I have been told that Domenico's son is wont to
ascribe the genius and divinity of Michelangelo in great part to his
father's teaching, whereas the truth is that he received no assistance
from that master. I ought, however, to add that Michelangelo does not
complain: on the contrary, he praises Domenico both as artist and as
man."

This passage irritated Vasari beyond measure. He had written his first
Life of Michelangelo in 1550. Condivi published his own modest
biography in 1553, with the expressed intention of correcting errors
and supplying deficiencies made by "others," under which vague word he
pointed probably at Vasari. Michelangelo, who furnished Condivi with
materials, died in 1564; and Vasari, in 1568, issued a second enlarged
edition of the Life, into which he cynically incorporated what he
chose to steal from Condivi's sources. The supreme Florentine sculptor
being dead and buried, Vasari felt that he was safe in giving the lie
direct to this humble rival biographer. Accordingly, he spoke as
follows about Michelangelo's relations with Domenico Ghirlandajo: "He
was fourteen years of age when he entered that master's service, and
inasmuch as one (Condivi), who composed his biography after 1550, when
I had published these Lives for the first time, declares that certain
persons, from want of familiarity with Michelangelo, have recorded
things that did not happen, and have omitted others worthy of
relation; and in particular has touched upon the point at issue,
accusing Domenico of envy, and saying that he never rendered
Michelangelo assistance."--Here Vasari, out of breath with
indignation, appeals to the record of Lodovico's contract with the
Ghirlandajo brothers. "These minutes," he goes on to say, "I copied
from the ledger, in order to show that everything I formerly
published, or which will be published at the present time, is truth.
Nor am I acquainted with any one who had greater familiarity with
Michelangelo than I had, or who served him more faithfully in friendly
offices; nor do I believe that a single man could exhibit a larger
number of letters written with his own hand, or evincing greater
personal affection, than I can."

This contention between Condivi and Vasari, our two contemporary
authorities upon the facts of Michelangelo's life, may not seem to be
a matter of great moment for his biographer after the lapse of four
centuries. Yet the first steps in the art-career of so exceptional a
genius possess peculiar interest. It is not insignificant to
ascertain, so far as now is possible, what Michelangelo owed to his
teachers. In equity, we acknowledge that Lodovico's record on the
ledger of the Ghirlandajo brothers proves their willingness to take
him as a prentice, and their payment to him of two florins in advance;
but the same record does not disprove Condivi's statement, derived
from his old master's reminiscences, to the effect that Domenico
Ghirlandajo was in no way greatly serviceable to him as an instructor.
The fault, in all probability, did not lie with Ghirlandajo alone.
Michelangelo, as we shall have occasions in plenty to observe, was
difficult to live with; frank in speech to the point of rudeness,
ready with criticism, incapable of governing his temper, and at no
time apt to work harmoniously with fellow-craftsmen. His extraordinary
force and originality of genius made themselves felt, undoubtedly, at
the very outset of his career; and Ghirlandajo may be excused if,
without being positively jealous of the young eagle settled in his
homely nest, he failed to do the utmost for this gifted and
rough-natured child of promise. Beethoven's discontent with Haydn as a
teacher offers a parallel; and sympathetic students of psychology will
perceive that Ghirlandajo and Haydn were almost superfluous in the
training of phenomenal natures like Michelangelo and Beethoven.

Vasari, passing from controversy to the gossip of the studio, has
sketched a pleasant picture of the young Buonarroti in his master's
employ. "The artistic and personal qualities of Michelangelo developed
so rapidly that Domenico was astounded by signs of power in him beyond
the ordinary scope of youth. He perceived, in short, that he not only
surpassed the other students, of whom Ghirlandajo had a large number
under his tuition, but also that he often competed on an equality with
the master. One of the lads who worked there made a pen-drawing of
some women, clothed, from a design of Ghirlandajo. Michelangelo took
up the paper, and with a broader nib corrected the outline of a female
figure, so as to bring it into perfect truth to life. Wonderful it was
to see the difference of the two styles, and to note the judgment and
ability of a mere boy, so spirited and bold, who had the courage to
chastise his master's handiwork! This drawing I now preserve as a
precious relique, since it was given me by Granacci, that it might
take a place in my Book of Original Designs, together with others
presented to me by Michelangelo. In the year 1550, when I was in Rome,
I Giorgio showed it to Michelangelo, who recognised it immediately,
and was pleased to see it again, observing modestly that he knew more
about the art when he was a child than now in his old age.

"It happened then that Domenico was engaged upon the great Chapel of
S. Maria Novella; and being absent one day, Michelangelo set himself
to draw from nature the whole scaffolding, with some easels and all
the appurtenances of the art, and a few of the young men at work
there. When Domenico returned and saw the drawing, he exclaimed: 'This
fellow knows more about it than I do,' and remained quite stupefied by
the new style and the new method of imitation, which a boy of years so
tender had received as a gift from heaven."

Both Condivi and Vasari relate that, during his apprenticeship to
Ghirlandajo, Michelangelo demonstrated his technical ability by
producing perfect copies of ancient drawings, executing the facsimile
with consummate truth of line, and then dirtying the paper so as to
pass it off as the original of some old master. "His only object,"
adds Vasari, "was to keep the originals, by giving copies in exchange;
seeing that he admired them as specimens of art, and sought to surpass
them by his own handling; and in doing this he acquired great renown."
We may pause to doubt whether at the present time--in the case, for
instance, of Shelley letters or Rossetti drawings--clever forgeries
would be accepted as so virtuous and laudable. But it ought to be
remembered that a Florentine workshop at that period contained masses
of accumulated designs, all of which were more or less the common
property of the painting firm. No single specimen possessed a high
market value. It was, in fact, only when art began to expire in Italy,
when Vasari published his extensive necrology and formed his famous
collection of drawings, that property in a sketch became a topic for
moral casuistry.

Of Michelangelo's own work at this early period we possess probably
nothing except a rough scrawl on the plaster of a wall at Settignano.
Even this does not exist in its original state. The Satyr which is
still shown there may, according to Mr. Heath Wilson's suggestion, be
a _rifacimento_ from the master's hand at a subsequent period of his
career.


V

Condivi and Vasari differ considerably in their accounts of
Michelangelo's departure from Ghirlandajo's workshop. The former
writes as follows: "So then the boy, now drawing one thing and now
another, without fixed place or steady line of study, happened one day
to be taken by Granacci into the garden of the Medici at San Marco,
which garden the magnificent Lorenzo, father of Pope Leo, and a man of
the first intellectual distinction, had adorned with antique statues
and other reliques of plastic art. When Michelangelo saw these things
and felt their beauty, he no longer frequented Domenico's shop, nor
did he go elsewhere, but, judging the Medicean gardens to be the best
school, spent all his time and faculties in working there." Vasari
reports that it was Lorenzo's wish to raise the art of sculpture in
Florence to the same level as that of painting; and for this reason he
placed Bertoldo, a pupil and follower of Donatello, over his
collections, with a special commission to aid and instruct the young
men who used them. With the same intention of forming an academy or
school of art, Lorenzo went to Ghirlandajo, and begged him to select
from his pupils those whom he considered the most promising.
Ghirlandajo accordingly drafted off Francesco Granacci and
Michelangelo Buonarroti. Since Michelangelo had been formally articled
by his father to Ghirlandajo in 1488, he can hardly have left that
master in 1489 as unceremoniously as Condivi asserts. Therefore we
may, I think, assume that Vasari upon this point has preserved the
genuine tradition.

Having first studied the art of design and learned to work in colours
under the supervision of Ghirlandajo, Michelangelo now had his native
genius directed to sculpture. He began with the rudiments of
stone-hewing, blocking out marbles designed for the Library of San
Lorenzo, and acquiring that practical skill in the manipulation of the
chisel which he exercised all through his life. Condivi and Vasari
agree in relating that a copy he made for his own amusement from an
antique Faun first brought him into favourable notice with Lorenzo.
The boy had begged a piece of refuse marble, and carved a grinning
mask, which he was polishing when the Medici passed by. The great man
stopped to examine the work, and recognised its merit. At the same
time he observed with characteristic geniality: "Oh, you have made
this Faun quite old, and yet have left him all his teeth! Do you not
know that men of that great age are always wanting in one or two?"
Michelangelo took the hint, and knocked a tooth out from the upper
jaw. When Lorenzo saw how cleverly he had performed the task, he
resolved to provide for the boy's future and to take him into his own
household. So, having heard whose son he was, "Go," he said, "and tell
your father that I wish to speak with him."

A mask of a grinning Faun may still be seen in the sculpture-gallery
of the Bargello at Florence, and the marble is traditionally assigned
to Michelangelo. It does not exactly correspond to the account given
by Condivi and Vasari; for the mouth shows only two large tusk-like
teeth, with the tip of the tongue protruding between them. Still,
there is no reason to feel certain that we may not have here
Michelangelo's first extant work in marble.

"Michelangelo accordingly went home, and delivered the message of the
Magnificent. His father, guessing probably what he was wanted for,
could only be persuaded by the urgent prayers of Granacci and other
friends to obey the summons. Indeed, he complained loudly that Lorenzo
wanted to lead his son astray, abiding firmly by the principle that he
would never permit a son of his to be a stonecutter. Vainly did
Granacci explain the difference between a sculptor and a stone-cutter:
all his arguments seemed thrown away. Nevertheless, when Lodovico
appeared before the Magnificent, and was asked if he would consent to
give his son up to the great man's guardianship, he did not know how
to refuse. 'In faith,' he added, 'not Michelangelo alone, but all of
us, with our lives and all our abilities, are at the pleasure of your
Magnificence!' When Lorenzo asked what he desired as a favour to
himself, he answered: 'I have never practised any art or trade, but
have lived thus far upon my modest income, attending to the little
property in land which has come down from my ancestors; and it has
been my care not only to preserve these estates, but to increase them
so far as I was able by my industry.' The Magnificent then added:
'Well, look about, and see if there be anything in Florence which will
suit you. Make use of me, for I will do the utmost that I can for
you.' It so happened that a place in the Customs, which could only be
filled by a Florentine citizen, fell vacant shortly afterwards. Upon
this Lodovico returned to the Magnificent, and begged for it in these
words: 'Lorenzo, I am good for nothing but reading and writing. Now,
the mate of Marco Pucci in the Customs having died, I should like to
enter into this office, feeling myself able to fulfil its duties
decently.' The Magnificent laid his hand upon his shoulder, and said
with a smile: 'You will always be a poor man;' for he expected him to
ask for something far more valuable. Then he added: 'If you care to be
the mate of Marco, you can take the post, until such time as a better
becomes vacant.' It was worth eight crowns the month, a little more or
a little less." A document is extant which shows that Lodovico
continued to fill this office at the Customs till 1494, when the heirs
of Lorenzo were exiled; for in the year 1512, after the Medici
returned to Florence, he applied to Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, to be
reinstated in the same.

If it is true, as Vasari asserts, that Michelangelo quitted
Ghirlandajo in 1489, and if Condivi is right in saying that he only
lived in the Casa Medici for about two years before the death of
Lorenzo, April 1492, then he must have spent some twelve months
working in the gardens at San Marco before the Faun's mask called
attention to his talents. His whole connection with Lorenzo, from the
spring of 1489 to the spring of 1492, lasted three years; and, since
he was born in March 1475, the space of his life covered by this
patronage extended from the commencement of his fifteenth to the
commencement of his eighteenth year.

These three years were decisive for the development of his mental
faculties and special artistic genius. It is not necessary to enlarge
here upon Lorenzo de' Medici's merits and demerits, either as the
ruler of Florence or as the central figure in the history of the
Italian Renaissance. These have supplied stock topics for discussion
by all writers who have devoted their attention to that period of
culture. Still we must remember that Michelangelo enjoyed singular
privileges under the roof of one who was not only great as diplomatist
and politician, and princely in his patronage, but was also a man of
original genius in literature, of fine taste in criticism, and of
civil urbanity in manners. The palace of the Medici formed a museum,
at that period unique, considering the number and value of its art
treasures--bas-reliefs, vases, coins, engraved stones, paintings by
the best contemporary masters, statues in bronze and marble by
Verocchio and Donatello. Its library contained the costliest
manuscripts, collected from all quarters of Europe and the Levant. The
guests who assembled in its halls were leaders in that intellectual
movement which was destined to spread a new type of culture far and
wide over the globe. The young sculptor sat at the same board as
Marsilio Ficino, interpreter of Plato; Pico della Mirandola, the
phoenix of Oriental erudition; Angelo Poliziano, the unrivalled
humanist and melodious Italian poet; Luigi Pulci, the humorous
inventor of burlesque romance--with artists, scholars, students
innumerable, all in their own departments capable of satisfying a
youth's curiosity, by explaining to him the particular virtues of
books discussed, or of antique works of art inspected. During those
halcyon years, before the invasion of Charles VIII., it seemed as
though the peace of Italy might last unbroken. No one foresaw the
apocalyptic vials of wrath which were about to be poured forth upon
her plains and cities through the next half-century. Rarely, at any
period of the world's history, perhaps only in Athens between the
Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, has culture, in the highest and
best sense of that word, prospered more intelligently and pacifically
than it did in the Florence of Lorenzo, through the co-operation and
mutual zeal of men of eminence, inspired by common enthusiasms, and
labouring in diverse though cognate fields of study and production.

Michelangelo's position in the house was that of an honoured guest or
adopted son. Lorenzo not only allowed him five ducats a month by way
of pocket-money, together with clothes befitting his station, but he
also, says Condivi, "appointed him a good room in the palace, together
with all the conveniences he desired, treating him in every respect,
as also at his table, precisely like one of his own sons. It was the
custom of this household, where men of the noblest birth and highest
public rank assembled round the daily board, for the guests to take
their places next the master in the order of their arrival; those who
were present at the beginning of the meal sat, each according to his
degree, next the Magnificent, not moving afterwards for any one who
might appear. So it happened that Michelangelo found himself
frequently seated above Lorenzo's children and other persons of great
consequence, with whom that house continually flourished and abounded.
All these illustrious men paid him particular attention, and
encouraged him in the honourable art which he had chosen. But the
chief to do so was the Magnificent himself, who sent for him
oftentimes in a day, in order that he might show him jewels,
cornelians, medals, and such-like objects of great rarity, as knowing
him to be of excellent parts and judgment in these things." It does
not appear that Michelangelo had any duties to perform or services to
render. Probably his patron employed him upon some useful work of the
kind suggested by Condivi. But the main business of his life in the
Casa Medici was to make himself a valiant sculptor, who in after years
should confer lustre on the city of the lily and her Medicean masters.
What he produced during this period seems to have become his own
property, for two pieces of statuary, presently to be described,
remained in the possession of his family, and now form a part of the
collection in the Casa Buonarroti.


VI

Angelo Poliziano, who was certainly the chief scholar of his age in
the new learning, and no less certainly one of its truest poets in the
vulgar language, lived as tutor to Lorenzo's children in the palace of
the Medici at Florence. Benozzo Gozzoli introduced his portrait,
together with the portraits of his noble pupils, in a fresco of the
Pisan Campo Santo. This prince of humanists recommended Michelangelo
to treat in bas-relief an antique fable, involving the strife of young
heroes for some woman's person. Probably he was also able to point out
classical examples by which the boyish sculptor might be guided in the
undertaking. The subject made enormous demands upon his knowledge of
the nude. Adult and youthful figures, in attitudes of vehement attack
and resistance, had to be modelled; and the conditions of the myth
required that one at least of them should be brought into harmony with
equine forms. Michelangelo wrestled vigorously with these
difficulties. He produced a work which, though it is imperfect and
immature, brings to light the specific qualities of his inherent
art-capacity. The bas-relief, still preserved in the Casa Buonarroti
at Florence, is, so to speak, in fermentation with powerful
half-realised conceptions, audacities of foreshortening, attempts at
intricate grouping, violent dramatic action and expression. No
previous tradition, unless it was the genius of Greek or Greco-Roman
antiquity, supplied Michelangelo with the motive force for this
prentice-piece in sculpture. Donatello and other Florentines worked
under different sympathies for form, affecting angularity in their
treatment of the nude, adhering to literal transcripts from the model
or to conventional stylistic schemes. Michelangelo discarded these
limitations, and showed himself an ardent student of reality in the
service of some lofty intellectual ideal. Following and closely
observing Nature, he was also sensitive to the light and guidance of
the classic genius. Yet, at the same time, he violated the aesthetic
laws obeyed by that genius, displaying his Tuscan proclivities by
violent dramatic suggestions, and in loaded, overcomplicated
composition. Thus, in this highly interesting essay, the horoscope of
the mightiest Florentine artist was already cast. Nature leads him,
and he follows Nature as his own star bids. But that star is double,
blending classic influence with Tuscan instinct. The roof of the
Sistine was destined to exhibit to an awe-struck world what wealths of
originality lay in the artist thus gifted, and thus swayed by rival
forces. For the present, it may be enough to remark that, in the
geometrical proportions of this bas-relief, which is too high for its
length, Michelangelo revealed imperfect feeling for antique
principles; while, in the grouping of the figures, which is more
pictorial than sculpturesque, he already betrayed, what remained with
him a defect through life, a certain want of organic or symmetrical
design in compositions which are not rigidly subordinated to
architectural framework or limited to the sphere of an _intaglio_.

Vasari mentions another bas-relief in marble as belonging to this
period, which, from its style, we may, I think, believe to have been
designed earlier than the Centaurs. It is a seated Madonna with the
Infant Jesus, conceived in the manner of Donatello, but without that
master's force and power over the lines of drapery. Except for the
interest attaching to it as an early work of Michelangelo, this piece
would not attract much attention. Vasari praises it for grace and
composition above the scope of Donatello; and certainly we may trace
here the first germ of that sweet and winning majesty which Buonarroti
was destined to develop in his Pietà of S. Peter, the Madonna at
Bruges, and the even more glorious Madonna of S. Lorenzo. It is also
interesting for the realistic introduction of a Tuscan cottage
staircase into the background. This bas-relief was presented to Cosimo
de' Medici, first Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Michelangelo's nephew
Lionardo. It afterwards came back into the possession of the
Buonarroti family, and forms at present an ornament of their house at
Florence.


VII

We are accustomed to think of Michelangelo as a self-withdrawn and
solitary worker, living for his art, avoiding the conflict of society,
immersed in sublime imaginings. On the whole, this is a correct
conception of the man. Many passages of his biography will show how
little he actively shared the passions and contentions of the stirring
times through which he moved. Yet his temperament exposed him to
sudden outbursts of scorn and anger, which brought him now and then
into violent collision with his neighbours. An incident of this sort
happened while he was studying under the patronage of Lorenzo de'
Medici, and its consequences marked him physically for life. The young
artists whom the Magnificent gathered round him used to practise
drawing in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine. There Masaccio and his
followers bequeathed to us noble examples of the grand style upon the
frescoed panels of the chapel walls. It was the custom of industrious
lads to make transcripts from those broad designs, some of which
Raphael deigned in his latest years to repeat, with altered manner,
for the Stanze of the Vatican and the Cartoons. Michelangelo went one
day into the Carmine with Piero Torrigiano and other comrades. What
ensued may best be reported in the narration which Torrigiano at a
later time made to Benvenuto Cellini.

"This Buonarroti and I used, when we were boys, to go into the Church
of the Carmine to learn drawing from the chapel of Masaccio. It was
Buonarroti's habit to banter all who were drawing there; and one day,
when he was annoying me, I got more angry than usual, and, clenching
my fist, I gave him such a blow on the nose that I felt bone and
cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles; and this mark of
mine he will carry with him to the grave." The portraits of
Michelangelo prove that Torrigiano's boast was not a vain one. They
show a nose broken in the bridge. But Torrigiano, for this act of
violence, came to be regarded by the youth of Florence with aversion,
as one who had laid sacrilegious hands upon the sacred ark. Cellini
himself would have wiped out the insult with blood. Still Cellini knew
that personal violence was not in the line of Michelangelo's
character; for Michelangelo, according to his friend and best
biographer, Condivi, was by nature, "as is usual with men of sedentary
and contemplative habits, rather timorous than otherwise, except when
he is roused by righteous anger to resent unjust injuries or wrongs
done to himself or others, in which case he plucks up more spirit than
those who are esteemed brave; but, for the rest, he is most patient
and enduring." Cellini, then, knowing the quality of Michelangelo's
temper, and respecting him as a deity of art, adds to his report of
Torrigiano's conversation: "These words begat in me such hatred of the
man, since I was always gazing at the masterpieces of the divine
Michelangelo, that, although I felt a wish to go with him to England,
I now could never bear the sight of him."


VIII

The years Michelangelo spent in the Casa Medici were probably the
blithest and most joyous of his lifetime. The men of wit and learning
who surrounded the Magnificent were not remarkable for piety or moral
austerity. Lorenzo himself found it politically useful "to occupy the
Florentines with shows and festivals, in order that they might think
of their own pastimes and not of his designs, and, growing unused to
the conduct of the commonwealth, might leave the reins of government
in his hands." Accordingly he devised those Carnival triumphs and
processions which filled the sombre streets of Florence with
Bacchanalian revellers, and the ears of her grave citizens with
ill-disguised obscenity. Lorenzo took part in them himself, and
composed several choruses of high literary merit to be sung by the
masqueraders. One of these carries a refrain which might be chosen as
a motto for the spirit of that age upon the brink of ruin:--

  _Youths and maids, enjoy to-day:
  Naught ye know about to-morrow!_

He caused the triumphs to be carefully prepared by the best artists,
the dresses of the masquers to be accurately studied, and their
chariots to be adorned with illustrative paintings. Michelangelo's old
friend Granacci dedicated his talents to these shows, which also
employed the wayward fancy of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo's power as
a colourist. "It was their wont," says Il Lasca, "to go forth after
dinner; and often the processions paraded through the streets till
three or four hours into the night, with a multitude of masked men on
horseback following, richly dressed, exceeding sometimes three hundred
in number, and as many on foot with lighted torches. Thus they
traversed the city, singing to the accompaniment of music arranged for
four, eight, twelve, or even fifteen voices, and supported by various
instruments." Lorenzo represented the worst as well as the best
qualities of his age. If he knew how to enslave Florence, it was
because his own temperament inclined him to share the amusements of
the crowd, while his genius enabled him to invest corruption with
charm. His friend Poliziano entered with the zest of a poet and a
pleasure-seeker into these diversions. He helped Lorenzo to revive the
Tuscan Mayday games, and wrote exquisite lyrics to be sung by girls in
summer evenings on the public squares. This giant of learning, who
filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with Students of all nations, and
whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history
of scholarship, was by nature a versifier, and a versifier of the
people. He found nothing' easier than to throw aside his professor's
mantle and to improvise _ballate_ for women to chant as they danced
their rounds upon the Piazza di S. Trinità. The frontispiece to an old
edition of such lyrics represents Lorenzo surrounded with masquers in
quaint dresses, leading the revel beneath the walls of the Palazzo.
Another woodcut shows an angle of the Casa Medici in Via Larga, girls
dancing the _carola_ upon the street below, one with a wreath and
thyrsus kneeling, another presenting the Magnificent with a book of
loveditties. The burden of all this poetry was: "Gather ye roses while
ye may, cast prudence to the winds, obey your instincts." There is
little doubt that Michelangelo took part in these pastimes; for we
know that he was devoted to poetry, not always of the gravest kind. An
anecdote related by Cellini may here be introduced, since it
illustrates the Florentine customs I have been describing. "Luigi
Pulci was a young man who possessed extraordinary gifts for poetry,
together with sound Latin scholarship. He wrote well, was graceful in
manners, and of surpassing personal beauty. While he was yet a lad and
living in Florence, it was the habit of folk in certain places of the
city to meet together during the nights of summer on the open streets,
and he, ranking among the best of the improvisatori, sang there. His
recitations were so admirable that the divine Michelangelo, that
prince of sculptors and of painters, went, wherever he heard that he
would be, with the greatest eagerness and delight to listen to him.
There was a man called Piloto, a goldsmith, very able in his art, who,
together with myself, joined Buonarroti upon these occasions." In like
manner, the young Michelangelo probably attended those nocturnal
gatherings upon the steps of the Duomo which have been so graphically
described by Doni: "The Florentines seem to me to take more pleasure
in summer airings than any other folk; for they have, in the square of
S. Liberata, between the antique temple of Mars, now the Baptistery,
and that marvellous work of modern architecture, the Duomo: they have,
I say, certain steps of marble, rising to a broad flat space, upon
which the youth of the city come and lay themselves full length during
the season of extreme heat. The place is fitted for its purpose,
because a fresh breeze is always blowing, with the blandest of all
air, and the flags of white marble usually retain a certain coolness.
There then I seek my chiefest solace, when, taking my aërial flights,
I sail invisibly above them; see and hear their doings and discourses:
and forasmuch as they are endowed with keen and elevated
understanding, they always have a thousand charming things to relate;
as novels, intrigues, fables; they discuss duels, practical jokes, old
stories, tricks played off by men and women on each other: things,
each and all, rare, witty, noble, decent and in proper taste. I can
swear that during all the hours I spent in listening to their nightly
dialogues, I never heard a word that was not comely and of good
repute. Indeed, it seemed to me very remarkable, among such crowds of
young men, to overhear nothing but virtuous conversation."

At the same period, Michelangelo fell under very different influences;
and these left a far more lasting impression on his character than the
gay festivals and witty word-combats of the lords of Florence. In 1491
Savonarola, the terrible prophet of coming woes, the searcher of men's
hearts, and the remorseless denouncer of pleasant vices, began that
Florentine career which ended with his martyrdom in 1498. He had
preached in Florence eight years earlier, but on that occasion he
passed unnoticed through the crowd. Now he took the whole city by
storm. Obeying the magic of his eloquence and the magnetism of his
personality, her citizens accepted this Dominican friar as their
political leader and moral reformer, when events brought about the
expulsion of the Medici in 1494. Michelangelo was one of his constant
listeners at S. Marco and in the Duomo. He witnessed those stormy
scenes of religious revival and passionate fanaticism which
contemporaries have impressively described. The shorthand-writer to
whom we owe the text of Savonarola's sermons at times breaks off with
words like these: "Here I was so overcome with weeping that I could
not go on." Pico della Mirandola tells that the mere sound of the
monk's voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, thronged through
all its space with people, was like a clap of doom; a cold shiver ran
through the marrow of his bones the hairs of his head stood on end
while he listened. Another witness reports: "Those sermons caused such
terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears, that every one passed through the
streets without speaking, more dead than alive."

One of the earliest extant letters of Michelangelo, written from Rome
in 1497 to his brother Buonarroto, reveals a vivid interest in
Savonarola. He relates the evil rumours spread about the city
regarding his heretical opinions, and alludes to the hostility of Fra
Mariano da Genezzano; adding this ironical sentence: "Therefore he
ought by all means to come and prophesy a little in Rome, when
afterwards he will be canonised; and so let all his party be of good
cheer." In later years, it is said that the great sculptor read and
meditated Savonarola's writings together with the Bible. The
apocalyptic thunderings and voices of the Sistine Chapel owe much of
their soul-thrilling impressiveness to those studies. Michelet says,
not without justice, that the spirit of Savonarola lives again in the
frescoes of that vault.

On the 8th of April 1492, Michelangelo lost his friend and patron.
Lorenzo died in his villa at Careggi, aged little more than forty-four
years. Guicciardini implies that his health and strength had been
prematurely broken by sensual indulgences. About the circumstances of
his last hours there are some doubts and difficulties; but it seems
clear that he expired as a Christian, after a final interview with
Savonarola. His death cast a gloom over Italy. Princes and people were
growing uneasy with the presentiment of impending disaster; and now
the only man who by his diplomatical sagacity could maintain the
balance of power had been taken from them. To his friends and
dependants in Florence the loss appeared irreparable. Poliziano poured
forth his sorrow in a Latin threnody of touching and simple beauty.
Two years later both he and Pico della Mirandola followed their master
to the grave. Marsilio Ficino passed away in 1499; and a friend of his
asserted that the sage's ghost appeared to him. The atmosphere was
full of rumours, portents, strange premonitions of revolution and
doom. The true golden age of the Italian Renaissance may almost be
said to have ended with Lorenzo de' Medici's life.



CHAPTER II


I

After the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo returned to his
father's home, and began to work upon a statue of Hercules, which is
now lost. It used to stand in the Strozzi Palace until the siege of
Florence in 1530, when Giovanni Battista della Palla bought it from
the steward of Filippo Strozzi, and sent it into France as a present
to the king.

The Magnificent left seven children by his wife Clarice, of the
princely Roman house of the Orsini. The eldest, Piero, was married to
Alfonsina, of the same illustrious family. Giovanni, the second, had
already received a cardinal's hat from his kinsman, Innocent VIII.
Guiliano, the third, was destined to play a considerable part in
Florentine history under the title of Duke of Nemours. One daughter
was married to a Salviati, another to a Ridolfi, a third to the Pope's
son, Franceschetto Cybò. The fourth, Luisa, had been betrothed to her
distant cousin, Giovanni de' Medici; but the match was broken off, and
she remained unmarried.

Piero now occupied that position of eminence and semi-despotic
authority in Florence which his father and grandfather had held; but
he was made of different stuff, both mentally and physically. The
Orsini blood, which he inherited from his mother, mixed but ill in his
veins with that of Florentine citizens and bankers. Following the
proud and insolent traditions of his maternal ancestors, he began to
discard the mask of civil urbanity with which Cosimo and Lorenzo had
concealed their despotism. He treated the republic as though it were
his own property, and prepared for the coming disasters of his race by
the overbearing arrogance of his behaviour. Physically, he was
powerful, tall, and active; fond of field-sports, and one of the best
pallone-players of his time in Italy. Though he had been a pupil of
Poliziano, he displayed but little of his father's interest in
learning, art, and literature. Chance brought Michelangelo into
personal relations with this man. On the 20th of January 1494 there
was a heavy fall of snow in Florence, and Piero sent for the young
sculptor to model a colossal snow-man in the courtyard of his palace.
Critics have treated this as an insult to the great artist, and a sign
of Piero's want of taste; but nothing was more natural than that a
previous inmate of the Medicean household should use his talents for
the recreation of the family who lived there. Piero upon this occasion
begged Michelangelo to return and occupy the room he used to call his
own during Lorenzo's lifetime. "And so," writes Condivi, "he remained
for some months with the Medici, and was treated by Piero with great
kindness; for the latter used to extol two men of his household as
persons of rare ability, the one being Michelangelo, the other a
Spanish groom, who, in addition to his personal beauty, which was
something wonderful, had so good a wind and such agility that when
Piero was galloping on horseback he could not outstrip him by a
hand's-breadth."



II

At this period of his life Michelangelo devoted himself to anatomy. He
had a friend, the Prior of S. Spirito, for whom he carved a wooden
crucifix of nearly life-size. This liberal-minded churchman put a room
at his disposal, and allowed him to dissect dead bodies. Condivi tells
us that the practice of anatomy was a passion with his master. "His
prolonged habits of dissection injured his stomach to such an extent
that he lost the power of eating or drinking to any profit. It is
true, however, that he became so learned in this branch of knowledge
that he has often entertained the idea of composing a work for
sculptors and painters, which should treat exhaustively of all the
movements of the human body, the external aspect of the limbs, the
bones, and so forth, adding an ingenious discourse upon the truths
discovered by him through the investigations of many years. He would
have done this if he had not mistrusted his own power of treating such
a subject with the dignity and style of a practised rhetorician. I
know well that when he reads Albert Dürer's book, it seems to him of
no great value; his own conception being so far fuller and more
useful. Truth to tell, Dürer only treats of the measurements and
varied aspects of the human form, making his figures straight as
stakes; and, what is more important, he says nothing about the
attitudes and gestures of the body. Inasmuch as Michelangelo is now
advanced in years, and does not count on bringing his ideas to light
through composition, he has disclosed to me his theories in their
minutest details. He also began to discourse upon the same topic with
Messer Realdo Colombo, an anatomist and surgeon of the highest
eminence. For the furtherance of such studies this good friend of ours
sent him the corpse of a Moor, a young man of incomparable beauty, and
admirably adapted for our purpose. It was placed at S. Agata, where I
dwelt and still dwell, as being a quarter removed from public
observation.

"On this corpse Michelangelo demonstrated to me many rare and abstruse
things, which perhaps have never yet been fully understood, and all of
which I noted down, hoping one day, by the help of some learned man,
to give them to the public. Of Michelangelo's studies in anatomy we
have one grim but interesting record in a pen-drawing by his hand at
Oxford. A corpse is stretched upon a plank and trestles. Two men are
bending over it with knives in their hands; and, for light to guide
them in their labours, a candle is stuck into the belly of the
subject."

As it is not my intention to write the political history of
Michelangelo's period, I need not digress here upon the invasion of
Italy by Charles VIII., which caused the expulsion of the Medici from
Florence, and the establishment of a liberal government under the
leadership of Savonarola. Michelangelo appears to have anticipated the
catastrophe which was about to overwhelm his patron. He was by nature
timid, suspicious, and apt to foresee disaster. Possibly he may have
judged that the haughty citizens of Florence would not long put up
with Piero's aristocratical insolence. But Condivi tells a story on
the subject which is too curious to be omitted, and which he probably
set down from Michelangelo's own lips. "In the palace of Piero a man
called Cardiere was a frequent inmate. The Magnificent took much
pleasure in his society, because he improvised verses to the guitar
with marvellous dexterity, and the Medici also practised this art; so
that nearly every evening after supper there was music. This Cardiere,
being a friend of Michelangelo, confided to him a vision which pursued
him, to the following effect. Lorenzo de' Medici appeared to him
barely clad in one black tattered robe, and bade him relate to his son
Piero that he would soon be expelled and never more return to his
home. Now Piero was arrogant and overbearing to such an extent that
neither the good-nature of the Cardinal Giovanni, his brother, nor the
courtesy and urbanity of Giuliano, was so strong to maintain him in
Florence as his own faults to cause his expulsion. Michelangelo
encouraged the man to obey Lorenzo and report the matter to his son;
but Cardiere, fearing his new master's temper, kept it to himself. On
another morning, when Michelangelo was in the courtyard of the palace,
Cardiere came with terror and pain written on his countenance. Last
night Lorenzo had again appeared to him in the same garb of woe; and
while he was awake and gazing with his eyes, the spectre dealt him a
blow on the cheek, to punish him for omitting to report his vision to
Piero. Michelangelo immediately gave him such a thorough scolding that
Cardiere plucked up courage, and set forth on foot for Careggi, a
Medicean villa some three miles distant from the city. He had traveled
about halfway, when he met Piero, who was riding home; so he stopped
the cavalcade, and related all that he had seen and heard. Piero
laughed him to scorn, and, beckoning the running footmen, bade them
mock the poor fellow. His Chancellor, who was afterwards the Cardinal
of Bibbiena, cried out: 'You are a madman! Which do you think Lorenzo
loved best, his son or you? If his son, would he not rather have
appeared to him than to some one else?' Having thus jeered him, they
let him go; and he, when he returned home and complained to
Michelangelo, so convinced the latter of the truth of his vision that
Michelangelo after two days left Florence with a couple of comrades,
dreading that if what Cardiere had predicted should come true, he
would no longer be safe in Florence."

This ghost-story bears a remarkable resemblance to what Clarendon
relates concerning the apparition of Sir George Villiers. Wishing to
warn his son, the Duke of Buckingham, of his coming murder at the hand
of Lieutenant Felton, he did not appear to the Duke himself, but to an
old man-servant of the family; upon which behaviour of Sir George's
ghost the same criticism has been passed as on that of Lorenzo de'
Medici.

Michelangelo and his two friends travelled across the Apennines to
Bologna, and thence to Venice, where they stopped a few days. Want of
money, or perhaps of work there drove them back upon the road to
Florence. When they reached Bologna on the return journey, a curious
accident happened to the party. The master of the city, Giovanni
Bentivoglio, had recently decreed that every foreigner, on entering
the gates, should be marked with a seal of red wax upon his thumb. The
three Florentines omitted to obey this regulation, and were taken to
the office of the Customs, where they were fined fifty Bolognese
pounds. Michelangelo did not possess enough to pay this fine; but it
so happened that a Bolognese nobleman called Gianfrancesco Aldovrandi
was there, who, hearing that Buonarroti was a sculptor, caused the men
to be released. Upon his urgent invitation, Michelangelo went to this
gentleman's house, after taking leave of his two friends and giving
them all the money in his pocket. With Messer Aldovrandi he remained
more than a year, much honoured by his new patron, who took great
delight in his genius; "and every evening he made Michelangelo read
aloud to him out of Dante or Petrarch, and sometimes Boccaccio, until
he went to sleep." He also worked upon the tomb of San Domenico during
this first residence at Bologna. Originally designed and carried
forward by Niccolò Pisano, this elaborate specimen of mediaeval
sculpture remained in some points imperfect. There was a San Petronio
whose drapery, begun by Niccolò da Bari, was unfinished. To this
statue Michelangelo put the last touches; and he also carved a
kneeling angel with a candelabrum, the workmanship of which surpasses
in delicacy of execution all the other figures on the tomb.


III

Michelangelo left Bologna hastily. It is said that a sculptor who had
expected to be employed upon the _arca_ of S. Domenic threatened to do
him some mischief if he stayed and took the bread out of the mouths of
native craftsmen. He returned to Florence some time in 1495. The city
was now quiet again, under the rule of Savonarola. Its burghers, in
obedience to the friar's preaching, began to assume that air of
pietistic sobriety which contrasted strangely with the gay
licentiousness encouraged by their former master. Though the reigning
branch of the Medici remained in exile, their distant cousins, who
were descended from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo, Pater Patriae,
kept their place in the republic. They thought it prudent, however, at
this time, to exchange the hated name of de' Medici for Popolano. With
a member of this section of the Medicean family, Lorenzo di
Pierfrancesco, Michelangelo soon found himself on terms of intimacy.
It was for him that he made a statue of the young S. John, which was
perhaps rediscovered at Pisa in 1874. For a long time this S.
Giovannino was attributed to Donatello; and it certainly bears decided
marks of resemblance to that master's manner, in the choice of
attitude, the close adherence to the model, and the treatment of the
hands and feet. Still it has notable affinities to the style of
Michelangelo, especially in the youthful beauty of the features, the
disposition of the hair, and the sinuous lines which govern the whole
composition. It may also be remarked that those peculiarities in the
hands and feet which I have mentioned as reminding us of Donatello--a
remarkable length in both extremities, owing to the elongation of the
metacarpal and metatarsal bones and of the spaces dividing these from
the forearm and tibia--are precisely the points which Michelangelo
retained through life from his early study of Donatello's work. We
notice them particularly in the Dying Slave of the Louvre, which is
certainly one of his most characteristic works. Good judges are
therefore perhaps justified in identifying this S. Giovannino, which
is now in the Berlin Museum, with the statue made for Lorenzo di
Pierfrancesco de' Medici.

The next piece which occupied Michelangelo's chisel was a Sleeping
Cupid. His patron thought this so extremely beautiful that he remarked
to the sculptor: "If you were to treat it artificially, so as to make
it look as though it had been dug up, I would send it to Rome; it
would be accepted as an antique, and you would be able to sell it at a
far higher price." Michelangelo took the hint. His Cupid went to Rome,
and was sold for thirty ducats to a dealer called Messer Baldassare
del Milanese, who resold it to Raffaello Riario, the Cardinal di S.
Giorgio, for the advanced sum of 200 ducats. It appears from this
transaction that Michelangelo did not attempt to impose upon the first
purchaser, but that this man passed it off upon the Cardinal as an
antique. When the Cardinal began to suspect that the Cupid was the
work of a modern Florentine, he sent one of his gentlemen to Florence
to inquire into the circumstances. The rest of the story shall be told
in Condivi's words.

"This gentleman, pretending to be on the lookout for a sculptor
capable of executing certain works in Rome, after visiting several,
was addressed to Michelangelo. When he saw the young artist, he begged
him to show some proof of his ability; whereupon Michelangelo took a
pen (for at that time the crayon [_lapis_] had not come into use), and
drew a hand with such grace that the gentleman was stupefied.
Afterwards, he asked if he had ever worked in marble, and when
Michelangelo said yes, and mentioned among other things a Cupid of
such height and in such an attitude, the man knew that he had found
the right person. So he related how the matter had gone, and promised
Michelangelo, if he would come with him to Rome, to get the difference
of price made up, and to introduce him to his patron, feeling sure
that the latter would receive him very kindly. Michelangelo, then,
partly in anger at having been cheated, and partly moved by the
gentleman's account of Rome as the widest field for an artist to
display his talents, went with him, and lodged in his house, near the
palace of the Cardinal." S. Giorgio compelled Messer Baldassare to
refund the 200 ducats, and to take the Cupid back. But Michelangelo
got nothing beyond his original price; and both Condivi and Vasari
blame the Cardinal for having been a dull and unsympathetic patron to
the young artist of genius he had brought from Florence. Still the
whole transaction was of vast importance, because it launched him for
the first time upon Rome, where he was destined to spend the larger
part of his long life, and to serve a succession of Pontiffs in their
most ambitious undertakings.

Before passing to the events of his sojourn at Rome, I will wind up
the story of the Cupid. It passed first into the hands of Cesare
Borgia, who presented it to Guidobaldo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.
On the 30th of June 1502, the Marchioness of Mantua wrote a letter to
the Cardinal of Este, saying that she should very much like to place
this piece, together with an antique statuette of Venus, both of which
had belonged to her brother-in-law, the Duke of Urbino, in her own
collection. Apparently they had just become the property of Cesare
Borgia, when he took and sacked the town of Urbino upon the 20th of
June in that year. Cesare Borgia seems to have complied immediately
with her wishes; for in a second letter, dated July 22, 1502, she
described the Cupid as "without a peer among the works of modern
times."


IV

Michelangelo arrived in Rome at the end of June 1496. This we know
from the first of his extant letters, which is dated July 2, and
addressed to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. The superscription,
however, bears the name of Sandro Botticelli, showing that some
caution had still to be observed in corresponding with the Medici,
even with those who latterly assumed the name of Popolani. The young
Buonarroti writes in excellent spirits: "I only write to inform you
that last Saturday we arrived safely, and went at once to visit the
Cardinal di San Giorgio; and I presented your letter to him. It
appeared to me that he was pleased to see me, and he expressed a wish
that I should go immediately to inspect his collection of statues. I
spent the whole day there, and for that reason was unable to deliver
all your letters. Afterwards, on Sunday, the Cardinal came into the
new house, and had me sent for. I went to him, and he asked what I
thought about the things which I had seen. I replied by stating my
opinion, and certainly I can say with sincerity that there are many
fine things in the collection. Then he asked me whether I had the
courage to make some beautiful work of art. I answered that I should
not be able to achieve anything so great, but that he should see what
I could do. We have bought a piece of marble for a life-size statue,
and on Monday I shall begin to work."

After describing his reception, Michelangelo proceeds to relate the
efforts he was making to regain his Sleeping Cupid from Messer
Baldassare: "Afterwards, I gave your letter to Baldassare, and asked
him for the child, saying I was ready to refund his money. He answered
very roughly, swearing he would rather break it in a hundred pieces;
he had bought the child, and it was his property; he possessed
writings which proved that he had satisfied the person who sent it to
him, and was under no apprehension that he should have to give it up.
Then he complained bitterly of you, saying that you had spoken ill of
him. Certain of our Florentines sought to accommodate matters, but
failed in their attempt. Now I look to coming to terms through the
Cardinal; for this is the advice of Baldassare Balducci. What ensues I
will report to you." It is clear that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, being
convinced of the broker's sharp practice, was trying to recover the
Sleeping Cupid (the child) at the price originally paid for it, either
for himself or for Buonarroti. The Cardinal is mentioned as being the
most likely person to secure the desired result.

Whether Condivi is right in saying that S. Giorgio neglected to employ
Michelangelo may be doubted. We have seen from this letter to Lorenzo
that the Cardinal bought a piece of marble and ordered a life-size
statue. But nothing more is heard about the work. Professor Milanesi,
however, has pointed out that when the sculptor was thinking of
leaving Rome in 1497 he wrote to his father on the 1st of July as
follows: "Most revered and beloved father, do not be surprised that I
am unable to return, for I have not yet settled my affairs with the
Cardinal, and I do not wish to leave until I am properly paid for my
labour; and with these great patrons one must go about quietly, since
they cannot be compelled. I hope, however, at any rate during the
course of next week, to have completed the transaction."

Michelangelo remained at Rome for more than two years after the date
of the letter just quoted. We may conjecture, then, that he settled
his accounts with the Cardinal, whatever these were, and we know that
he obtained other orders. In a second letter to his father, August 19,
1497, he writes thus: "Piero de' Medici gave me a commission for a
statue, and I bought the marble. But I did not begin to work upon it,
because he failed to perform what he promised. Wherefore I am acting
on my own account, and am making a statue for my own pleasure. I
bought the marble for five ducats, and it turned out bad. So I threw
my money away. Now I have bought another at the same price, and the
work I am doing is for my amusement. You will therefore understand
that I too have large expenses and many troubles."

During the first year of his residence in Rome (between July 2, 1496,
and August 19, 1497) Michelangelo must have made some money, else he
could not have bought marble and have worked upon his own account.
Vasari asserts that he remained nearly twelve months in the household
of the Cardinal, and that he only executed a drawing of S. Francis
receiving the stigmata, which was coloured by a barber in S. Giorgio's
service, and placed in the Church of S. Pietro a Montorio. Benedetto
Varchi describes this picture as having been painted by Buonarroti's
own hand. We know nothing more for certain about it. How he earned his
money is therefore, unexplained, except upon the supposition that S.
Giorgio, unintelligent as he may have been in his patronage of art,
paid him for work performed. I may here add that the Piero de' Medici
who gave the commission mentioned in the last quotation was the exiled
head of the ruling family. Nothing had to be expected from such a man.
He came to Rome in order to be near the Cardinal Giovanni, and to
share this brother's better fortunes; but his days and nights were
spent in debauchery among the companions and accomplices of shameful
riot.

Michelangelo, in short, like most young artists, was struggling into
fame and recognition. Both came to him by the help of a Roman
gentleman and banker, Messer Jacopo Gallo. It so happened that an
intimate Florentine friend of Buonarroti, the Baldassare Balducci
mentioned at the end of his letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, was
employed in Gallo's house of business. It is probable, therefore, that
this man formed the link of connection between the sculptor and his
new patron. At all events, Messer Gallo purchased a Bacchus, which now
adorns the sculpture-gallery of the Bargello, and a Cupid, which may
possibly be the statue at South Kensington.

Condivi says that this gentleman, "a man of fine intelligence,
employed him to execute in his own house a marble Bacchus, ten palms
in height, the form and aspect of which correspond in all parts to the
meaning of ancient authors. The face of the youth is jocund, the eyes
wandering and wanton, as is the wont with those who are too much
addicted to a taste for wine. In his right hand he holds a cup,
lifting it to drink, and gazing at it like one who takes delight in
that liquor, of which he was the first discoverer. For this reason,
too, the sculptor has wreathed his head with vine-tendrils. On his
left arm hangs a tiger-skin, the beast dedicated to Bacchus, as being
very partial to the grape. Here the artist chose rather to introduce
the skin than the animal itself, in order to hint that sensual
indulgence in the pleasure of the grape-juice leads at last to loss of
life. With the hand of this arm he holds a bunch of grapes, which a
little satyr, crouched below him, is eating on the sly with glad and
eager gestures. The child may seem to be seven years, the Bacchus
eighteen of age." This description is comparatively correct, except
that Condivi is obviously mistaken when he supposes that
Michelangelo's young Bacchus faithfully embodies the Greek spirit. The
Greeks never forgot, in all their representations of Dionysos, that he
was a mystic and enthusiastic deity. Joyous, voluptuous, androgynous,
he yet remains the god who brought strange gifts and orgiastic rites
to men. His followers, Silenus, Bacchantes, Fauns, exhibit, in their
self-abandonment to sensual joy, the operation of his genius. The
deity descends to join their revels from his clear Olympian ether, but
he is not troubled by the fumes of intoxication. Michelangelo has
altered this conception. Bacchus, with him, is a terrestrial young
man, upon the verge of toppling over into drunkenness. The value of
the work is its realism. The attitude could not be sustained in actual
life for a moment without either the goblet spilling its liquor or the
body reeling side-ways. Not only are the eyes wavering and wanton, but
the muscles of the mouth have relaxed into a tipsy smile; and, instead
of the tiger-skin being suspended from the left arm, it has slipped
down, and is only kept from falling by the loose grasp of the
trembling hand. Nothing, again, could be less godlike than the face of
Bacchus. It is the face of a not remarkably good-looking model, and
the head is too small both for the body and the heavy crown of leaves.
As a study of incipient intoxication, when the whole person is
disturbed by drink, but human dignity has not yet yielded to a bestial
impulse, this statue proves the energy of Michelangelo's imagination.
The physical beauty of his adolescent model in the limbs and body
redeems the grossness of the motive by the inalienable charm of health
and carnal comeliness. Finally, the technical merits of the work
cannot too strongly be insisted on. The modelling of the thorax, the
exquisite roundness and fleshiness of the thighs and arms and belly,
the smooth skin-surface expressed throughout in marble, will excite
admiration in all who are capable of appreciating this aspect of the
statuary's art. Michelangelo produced nothing more finished in
execution, if we except the Pietà at S. Peter's. His Bacchus alone is
sufficient to explode a theory favoured by some critics, that, left to
work unhindered, he would still have preferred a certain vagueness, a
certain want of polish in his marbles.

Nevertheless, the Bacchus leaves a disagreeable impression on the
mind--as disagreeable in its own way as that produced by the Christ of
the Minerva. That must be because it is wrong in spiritual
conception--brutally materialistic, where it ought to have been noble
or graceful. In my opinion, the frank, joyous naturalism of
Sansovino's Bacchus (also in the Bargello) possesses more of true
Greek inspiration than Michelangelo's. If Michelangelo meant to carve
a Bacchus, he failed; if he meant to imitate a physically desirable
young man in a state of drunkenness, he succeeded.

What Shelley wrote upon this statue may here be introduced, since it
combines both points of view in a criticism of much spontaneous
vigour.

"The countenance of this figure is the most revolting mistake of the
spirit and meaning of Bacchus. It looks drunken, brutal, and
narrow-minded, and has an expression of dissoluteness the most
revolting. The lower part of the figure is stiff, and the manner in
which the shoulders are united to the breast, and the neck to the
head, abundantly inharmonious. It is altogether without unity, as was
the idea of the deity of Bacchus in the conception of a Catholic. On
the other hand, considered merely as a piece of workmanship, it has
great merits. The arms are executed in the most perfect and manly
beauty; the body is conceived with great energy, and the lines which
describe the sides and thighs, and the manner in which they mingle
into one another, are of the highest order of boldness and beauty. It
wants, as a work of art, unity and simplicity; as a representation of
the Greek deity of Bacchus, it wants everything."

Jacopo Gallo is said to have also purchased a Cupid from Michelangelo.
It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that this Cupid was
the piece which Michelangelo began when Piero de' Medici's commission
fell through, and that it therefore preceded the Bacchus in date of
execution. It has also been suggested that the so-called Cupid at
South Kensington is the work in question. We have no authentic
information to guide us in the matter. But the South Kensington Cupid
is certainly a production of the master's early manhood. It was
discovered some forty years ago, hidden away in the cellars of the
Gualfonda (Rucellai) Gardens at Florence, by Professor Miliarini and
the famous Florentine sculptor Santarelli. On a cursory inspection
they both declared it to be a genuine Michelangelo. The left arm was
broken, the right hand damaged, and the hair had never received the
sculptor's final touches. Santarelli restored the arm, and the Cupid
passed by purchase into the possession of the English nation. This
fine piece of sculpture is executed in Michelangelo's proudest, most
dramatic manner. The muscular young man of eighteen, a model of superb
adolescence, kneels upon his right knee, while the right hand is
lowered to lift an arrow from the ground. The left hand is raised
above the head, and holds the bow, while the left leg is so placed,
with the foot firmly pressed upon the ground, as to indicate that in a
moment the youth will rise, fit the shaft to the string, and send it
whistling at his adversary. This choice of a momentary attitude is
eminently characteristic of Michelangelo's style; and, if we are
really to believe that he intended to portray the god of love, it
offers another instance of his independence of classical tradition. No
Greek would have thus represented Eros. The lyric poets, indeed,
Ibycus and Anacreon, imaged him as a fierce invasive deity, descending
like the whirlwind on an oak, or striking at his victim with an axe.
But these romantic ideas did not find expression, so far as I am
aware, in antique plastic art. Michelangelo's Cupid is therefore as
original as his Bacchus. Much as critics have written, and with
justice, upon the classical tendencies of the Italian Renaissance,
they have failed to point out that the Paganism of the Cinque Cento
rarely involved a servile imitation of the antique or a sympathetic
intelligence of its spirit. Least of all do we find either of these
qualities in Michelangelo. He drew inspiration from his own soul, and
he went straight to Nature for the means of expressing the conception
he had formed. Unlike the Greeks, he invariably preferred the
particular to the universal, the critical moment of an action to
suggestions of the possibilities of action. He carved an individual
being, not an abstraction or a generalisation of personality. The
Cupid supplies us with a splendid illustration of this criticism.
Being a product of his early energy, before he had formed a certain
manneristic way of seeing Nature and of reproducing what he saw, it
not only casts light upon the spontaneous working of his genius, but
it also shows how the young artist had already come to regard the
inmost passion of the soul. When quite an old man, rhyming those rough
platonic sonnets, he always spoke of love as masterful and awful. For
his austere and melancholy nature, Eros was no tender or light-winged
youngling, but a masculine tyrant, the tamer of male spirits.
Therefore this Cupid, adorable in the power and beauty of his vigorous
manhood, may well remain for us the myth or symbol of love as
Michelangelo imagined that emotion. In composition, the figure is from
all points of view admirable, presenting a series of nobly varied
line-harmonies. All we have to regret is that time, exposure to
weather, and vulgar outrage should have spoiled the surface of the
marble.


VI

It is natural to turn from the Cupid to another work belonging to the
English nation, which has recently been ascribed to Michelangelo. I
mean the Madonna, with Christ, S. John, and four attendant male
figures, once in the possession of Mr. H. Labouchere, and now in the
National Gallery. We have no authentic tradition regarding this
tempera painting, which in my judgment is the most beautiful of the
easel pictures attributed to Michelangelo. Internal evidence from
style renders its genuineness in the highest degree probable. No one
else upon the close of the fifteenth century was capable of producing
a composition at once so complicated, so harmonious, and so clear as
the group formed by Madonna, Christ leaning on her knee to point a
finger at the book she holds, and the young S. John turned round to
combine these figures with the exquisitely blended youths behind him.
Unfortunately the two angels or genii upon the left hand are
unfinished; but had the picture been completed, we should probably
have been able to point out another magnificent episode in the
composition, determined by the transverse line carried from the hand
upon the last youth's shoulder, through the open book and the upraised
arm of Christ, down to the feet of S. John and the last genius on the
right side. Florentine painters had been wont to place attendant
angels at both sides of their enthroned Madonnas. Fine examples might
be chosen from the work of Filippino Lippi and Botticelli. But their
angels were winged and clothed like acolytes; the Madonna was seated
on a rich throne or under a canopy, with altar-candles, wreaths of
roses, flowering lilies. It is characteristic of Michelangelo to adopt
a conventional motive, and to treat it with brusque originality. In
this picture there are no accessories to the figures, and the
attendant angels are Tuscan lads half draped in succinct tunics. The
style is rather that of a flat relief in stone than of a painting; and
though we may feel something of Ghirlandajo's influence, the spirit of
Donatello and Luca della Robbia are more apparent. That it was the
work of an inexperienced painter is shown by the failure to indicate
pictorial planes. In spite of the marvellous and intricate beauty of
the line-composition, it lacks that effect of graduated distances
which might perhaps have been secured by execution in bronze or
marble. The types have not been chosen with regard to ideal loveliness
or dignity, but accurately studied from living models. This is very
obvious in the heads of Christ and S. John. The two adolescent genii
on the right hand possess a high degree of natural grace. Yet even
here what strikes one most is the charm of their attitude, the lovely
interlacing of their arms and breasts, the lithe alertness of the one
lad contrasted with the thoughtful leaning languor of his comrade.
Only perhaps in some drawings of combined male figures made by Ingres
for his picture of the Golden Age have lines of equal dignity and
simple beauty been developed. I do not think that this Madonna,
supposing it to be a genuine piece by Michelangelo, belongs to the
period of his first residence in Rome. In spite of its immense
intellectual power, it has an air of immaturity. Probably Heath Wilson
was right in assigning it to the time spent at Florence after Lorenzo
de' Medici's death, when the artist was about twenty years of age.

I may take this occasion for dealing summarily with the Entombment in
the National Gallery. The picture, which is half finished, has no
pedigree. It was bought out of the collection of Cardinal Fesch, and
pronounced to be a Michelangelo by the Munich painter Cornelius. Good
judges have adopted this attribution, and to differ from them requires
some hardihood. Still it is painful to believe that at any period of
his life Michelangelo could have produced a composition so discordant,
so unsatisfactory in some anatomical details, so feelingless and ugly.
It bears indubitable traces of his influence; that is apparent in the
figure of the dead Christ. But this colossal nude, with the massive
chest and attenuated legs, reminds us of his manner in old age;
whereas the rest of the picture shows no trace of that manner. I am
inclined to think that the Entombment was the production of a
second-rate craftsman, working upon some design made by Michelangelo
at the advanced period when the Passion of our Lord occupied his
thoughts in Rome. Even so, the spirit of the drawing must have been
imperfectly assimilated; and, what is more puzzling, the composition
does not recall the style of Michelangelo's old age. The colouring, so
far as we can understand it, rather suggests Pontormo.


VII

Michelangelo's good friend, Jacopo Gallo, was again helpful to him in
the last and greatest work which he produced during this Roman
residence. The Cardinal Jean de la Groslaye de Villiers François,
Abbot of S. Denys, and commonly called by Italians the Cardinal di San
Dionigi, wished to have a specimen of the young sculptor's handiwork.
Accordingly articles were drawn up to the following effect on August
26, 1498: "Let it be known and manifest to whoso shall read the
ensuing document, that the most Rev. Cardinal of S. Dionigi has thus
agreed with the master Michelangelo, sculptor of Florence, to wit,
that the said master shall make a Pietà of marble at his own cost;
that is to say, a Virgin Mary clothed, with the dead Christ in her
arms, of the size of a proper man, for the price of 450 golden ducats
of the Papal mint, within the term of one year from the day of the
commencement of the work." Next follow clauses regarding the payment
of the money, whereby the Cardinal agrees to disburse sums in advance.
The contract concludes with a guarantee and surety given by Jacopo
Gallo. "And I, Jacopo Gallo, pledge my word to his most Rev. Lordship
that the said Michelangelo will finish the said work within one year,
and that it shall be the finest work in marble which Rome to-day can
show, and that no master of our days shall be able to produce a
better. And, in like manner, on the other side, I pledge my word to
the said Michelangelo that the most Rev. Card. will disburse the
payments according to the articles above engrossed. To witness which,
I, Jacopo Gallo, have made this present writing with my own hand,
according to the date of year, month, and day as above."

The Pietà raised Michelangelo at once to the highest place among the
artists of his time, and it still remains unrivalled for the union of
sublime aesthetic beauty with profound religious feeling. The mother
of the dead Christ is seated on a stone at the foot of the cross,
supporting the body of her son upon her knees, gazing sadly at his
wounded side, and gently lifting her left hand, as though to say,
"Behold and see!" She has the small head and heroic torso used by
Michelangelo to suggest immense physical force. We feel that such a
woman has no difficulty in holding a man's corpse upon her ample lap
and in her powerful arms. Her face, which differs from the female type
he afterwards preferred, resembles that of a young woman. For this he
was rebuked by critics who thought that her age should correspond more
naturally to that of her adult son. Condivi reports that Michelangelo
explained his meaning in the following words: "Do you not know that
chaste women maintain their freshness far longer than the unchaste?
How much more would this be the case with a virgin, into whose breast
there never crept the least lascivious desire which could affect the
body? Nay, I will go further, and hazard the belief that this
unsullied bloom of youth, besides being maintained in her by natural
causes, may have been miraculously wrought to convince the world of
the virginity and perpetual purity of the Mother. This was not
necessary for the Son. On the contrary, in order to prove that the Son
of God took upon himself, as in very truth he did take, a human body,
and became subject to all that an ordinary man is subject to, with the
exception of sin; the human nature of Christ, instead of being
superseded by the divine, was left to the operation of natural laws,
so that his person revealed the exact age to which he had attained.
You need not, therefore, marvel if, having regard to these
considerations, I made the most Holy Virgin, Mother of God, much
younger relatively to her Son than women of her years usually appear,
and left the Son such as his time of life demanded." "This reasoning,"
adds Condivi, "was worthy of some learned theologian, and would have
been little short of marvellous in most men, but not in him, whom God
and Nature fashioned, not merely to be peerless in his handiwork, but
also capable of the divinest concepts, as innumerable discourses and
writings which we have of his make clearly manifest."

The Christ is also somewhat youthful, and modelled with the utmost
delicacy; suggesting no lack of strength, but subordinating the idea
of physical power to that of a refined and spiritual nature. Nothing
can be more lovely than the hands, the feet, the arms, relaxed in
slumber. Death becomes immortally beautiful in that recumbent figure,
from which the insults of the scourge, the cross, the brutal lance
have been erased. Michelangelo did not seek to excite pity or to stir
devotion by having recourse to those mediaeval ideas which were so
passionately expressed in S. Bernard's hymn to the Crucified. The
aesthetic tone of his dead Christ is rather that of some sweet solemn
strain of cathedral music, some motive from a mass of Palestrina or a
Passion of Sebastian Bach. Almost involuntarily there rises to the
memory that line composed by Bion for the genius of earthly loveliness
bewailed by everlasting beauty--

  _E'en as a corpse he is fair, fair corpse as fallen aslumber._

It is said that certain Lombards passing by and admiring the Pietà
ascribed it to Christoforo Solari of Milan, surnamed Il Gobbo.
Michelangelo, having happened to overhear them, shut himself up in the
chapel, and engraved the belt upon the Madonna's breast with his own
name. This he never did with any other of his works.

This masterpiece of highest art combined with pure religious feeling
was placed in the old Basilica of S. Peter's, in a chapel dedicated to
Our Lady of the Fever, Madonna della Febbre. Here, on the night of
August 19, 1503, it witnessed one of those horrid spectacles which in
Italy at that period so often intervened to interrupt the rhythm of
romance and beauty and artistic melody. The dead body of Roderigo
Borgia, Alexander VI., lay in state from noon onwards in front of the
high altar; but since "it was the most repulsive, monstrous, and
deformed corpse which had ever yet been seen, without any form or
figure of humanity, shame compelled them to partly cover it." "Late in
the evening it was transferred to the chapel of Our Lady of the Fever,
and deposited in a corner by six hinds or porters and two carpenters,
who had made the coffin too narrow and too short. Joking and jeering,
they stripped the tiara and the robes of office from the body, wrapped
it up in an old carpet, and then with force of fists and feet rammed
it down into the box, without torches, without a ministering priest,
without a single person to attend and bear a consecrated candle." Of
such sort was the vigil kept by this solemn statue, so dignified in
grief and sweet in death, at the ignoble obsequies of him who,
occupying the loftiest throne of Christendom, incarnated the least
erected spirit of his age. The ivory-smooth white corpse of Christ in
marble, set over against that festering corpse of his Vicar on earth,
"black as a piece of cloth or the blackest mulberry," what a hideous
contrast!


VIII

It may not be inappropriate to discuss the question of the Bruges
Madonna here. This is a marble statue, well placed in a chapel of
Notre Dame, relieved against a black marble niche, with excellent
illumination from the side. The style is undoubtedly Michelangelesque,
the execution careful, the surface-finish exquisite, and the type of
the Madonna extremely similar to that of the Pietà at S. Peter's. She
is seated in an attitude of almost haughty dignity, with the left foot
raised upon a block of stone. The expression of her features is marked
by something of sternness, which seems inherent in the model. Between
her knees stands, half reclining, half as though wishing to step
downwards from the throne, her infant Son. One arm rests upon his
mother's knee; the right hand is thrown round to clasp her left. This
attitude gives grace of rhythm to the lines of his nude body. True to
the realism which controlled Michelangelo at the commencement of his
art career, the head of Christ, who is but a child, slightly overloads
his slender figure. Physically he resembles the Infant Christ of our
National Gallery picture, but has more of charm and sweetness. All
these indications point to a genuine product of Michelangelo's first
Roman manner; and the position of the statue in a chapel ornamented by
the Bruges family of Mouscron renders the attribution almost certain.
However, we have only two authentic records of the work among the
documents at our disposal. Condivi, describing the period of
Michelangelo's residence in Florence (1501-1504), says: "He also cast
in bronze a Madonna with the Infant Christ, which certain Flemish
merchants of the house of Mouscron, a most noble family in their own
land, bought for two hundred ducats, and sent to Flanders." A letter
addressed under date August 4, 1506, by Giovanni Balducci in Rome to
Michelangelo at Florence, proves that some statue which was destined
for Flanders remained among the sculptor's property at Florence.
Balducci uses the feminine gender in writing about this work, which
justifies us in thinking that it may have been a Madonna. He says that
he has found a trustworthy agent to convey it to Viareggio, and to
ship it thence to Bruges, where it will be delivered into the hands of
the heir of John and Alexander Mouscron and Co., "as being their
property." This statue, in all probability, is the "Madonna in marble"
about which Michelangelo wrote to his father from Rome on the 31st of
January 1507, and which he begged his father to keep hidden in their
dwelling. It is difficult to reconcile Condivi's statement with
Balducci's letter. The former says that the Madonna bought by the
Mouscron family was cast in bronze at Florence. The Madonna in the
Mouscron Chapel at Notre Dame is a marble. I think we may assume that
the Bruges Madonna is the piece which Michelangelo executed for the
Mouscron brothers, and that Condivi was wrong in believing it to have
been cast in bronze. That the statue was sent some time after the
order had been given, appears from the fact that Balducci consigned it
to the heir of John and Alexander, "as being their property;" but it
cannot be certain at what exact date it was begun and finished.


IX

While Michelangelo was acquiring immediate celebrity and immortal fame
by these three statues, so different in kind and hitherto unrivalled
in artistic excellence, his family lived somewhat wretchedly at
Florence. Lodovico had lost his small post at the Customs after the
expulsion of the Medici; and three sons, younger than the sculptor,
were now growing up. Buonarroto, born in 1477, had been put to the
cloth-trade, and was serving under the Strozzi in their warehouse at
the Porta Rossa. Giovan-Simone, two years younger (he was born in
1479), after leading a vagabond life for some while, joined Buonarroto
in a cloth-business provided for them by Michelangelo. He was a
worthless fellow, and gave his eldest brother much trouble.
Sigismondo, born in 1481, took to soldiering; but at the age of forty
he settled down upon the paternal farm at Settignano, and annoyed his
brother by sinking into the condition of a common peasant.

The constant affection felt for these not very worthy relatives by
Michelangelo is one of the finest traits in his character. They were
continually writing begging letters, grumbling and complaining. He
supplied them with funds, stinting himself in order to maintain them
decently and to satisfy their wishes. But the more he gave, the more
they demanded; and on one or two occasions, as we shall see in the
course of this biography, their rapacity and ingratitude roused his
bitterest indignation. Nevertheless, he did not swerve from the path
of filial and brotherly kindness which his generous nature and steady
will had traced. He remained the guardian of their interests, the
custodian of their honour, and the builder of their fortunes to the
end of his long life. The correspondence with his father and these
brothers and a nephew, Lionardo, was published in full for the first
time in 1875. It enables us to comprehend the true nature of the man
better than any biographical notice; and I mean to draw largely upon
this source, so as gradually, by successive stipplings, as it were, to
present a miniature portrait of one who was both admirable in private
life and incomparable as an artist.

This correspondence opens in the year 1497. From a letter addressed to
Lodovico under the date August 19, we learn that Buonarroto had just
arrived in Rome, and informed his brother of certain pecuniary
difficulties under which the family was labouring. Michelangelo gave
advice, and promised to send all the money he could bring together.
"Although, as I have told you, I am out of pocket myself, I will do my
best to get money, in order that you may not have to borrow from the
Monte, as Buonarroto says is possible. Do not wonder if I have
sometimes written irritable letters; for I often suffer great distress
of mind and temper, owing to matters which must happen to one who is
away from home.... In spite of all this, I will send you what you ask
for, even should I have to sell myself into slavery." Buonarroto must
have paid a second visit to Rome; for we possess a letter from
Lodovico to Michelangelo, under date December 19, 1500, which throws
important light upon the latter's habits and designs. The old man
begins by saying how happy he is to observe the love which
Michelangelo bears his brothers. Then he speaks about the
cloth-business which Michelangelo intends to purchase for them.
Afterwards, he proceeds as follows: "Buonarroto tells me that you live
at Rome with great economy, or rather penuriousness. Now economy is
good, but penuriousness is evil, seeing that it is a vice displeasing
to God and men, and moreover injurious both to soul and body. So long
as you are young, you will be able for a time to endure these
hardships; but when the vigour of youth fails, then diseases and
infirmities make their appearance; for these are caused by personal
discomforts, mean living, and penurious habits. As I said, economy is
good; but, above all things, shun stinginess. Live discreetly well,
and see you have what is needful. Whatever happens, do not expose
yourself to physical hardships; for in your profession, if you were
once to fall ill (which God forbid), you would be a ruined man. Above
all things, take care of your head, and keep it moderately warm, and
see that you never wash: have yourself rubbed down, but do not wash."
This sordid way of life became habitual with Michelangelo. When he was
dwelling at Bologna in 1506, he wrote home to his brother Buonarroto:
"With regard to Giovan-Simone's proposed visit, I do not advise him to
come yet awhile, for I am lodged here in one wretched room, and have
bought a single bed, in which we all four of us (_i.e_., himself and
his three workmen) sleep." And again: "I am impatient to get away from
this place, for my mode of life here is so wretched, that if you only
knew what it is, you would be miserable." The summer was intensely hot
at Bologna, and the plague broke out. In these circumstances it seems
miraculous that the four sculptors in one bed escaped contagion.
Michelangelo's parsimonious habits were not occasioned by poverty or
avarice. He accumulated large sums of money by his labour, spent it
freely on his family, and exercised bountiful charity for the welfare
of his soul. We ought rather to ascribe them to some constitutional
peculiarity, affecting his whole temperament, and tinging his
experience with despondency and gloom. An absolute insensibility to
merely decorative details, to the loveliness of jewels, stuffs, and
natural objects, to flowers and trees and pleasant landscapes, to
everything, in short, which delighted the Italians of that period, is
a main characteristic of his art. This abstraction and aridity, this
ascetic devotion of his genius to pure ideal form, this almost
mathematical conception of beauty, may be ascribed, I think, to the
same psychological qualities which determined the dreary conditions of
his home-life. He was no niggard either of money or of ideas; nay,
even profligate of both. But melancholy made him miserly in all that
concerned personal enjoyment; and he ought to have been born under
that leaden planet Saturn rather than Mercury and Venus in the house
of Jove. Condivi sums up his daily habits thus: "He has always been
extremely temperate in living, using food more because it was
necessary than for any pleasure he took in it; especially when he was
engaged upon some great work; for then he usually confined himself to
a piece of bread, which he ate in the middle of his labour. However,
for some time past, he has been living with more regard to health, his
advanced age putting this constraint upon his natural inclination.
Often have I heard him say: 'Ascanio, rich as I may have been, I have
always lived like a poor man.' And this abstemiousness in food he has
practised in sleep also; for sleep, according to his own account,
rarely suits his constitution, since he continually suffers from pains
in the head during slumber, and any excessive amount of sleep deranges
his stomach. While he was in full vigour, he generally went to bed
with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn,
because of a chronic tendency to cramp, as well as for other reasons.
At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of
time, that when he drew them off the skin came away together with the
leather, like that of a sloughing snake. He was never stingy of cash,
nor did he accumulate money, being content with just enough to keep
him decently; wherefore, though innumerable lords and rich folk have
made him splendid offers for some specimen of his craft, he rarely
complied, and then, for the most part, more out of kindness and
friendship than with any expectation of gain." In spite of all this,
or rather because of his temperance in food and sleep and sexual
pleasure, together with his manual industry, he preserved excellent
health into old age.

I have thought it worth while to introduce this general review of
Michelangelo's habits, without omitting some details which may seem
repulsive to the modern reader, at an early period of his biography,
because we ought to carry with us through the vicissitudes of his long
career and many labours an accurate conception of our hero's
personality. For this reason it may not be unprofitable to repeat what
Condivi says about his physical appearance in the last years of his
life. "Michelangelo is of a good complexion; more muscular and bony
than fat or fleshy in his person: healthy above all things, as well by
reason of his natural constitution as of the exercise he takes, and
habitual continence in food and sexual indulgence. Nevertheless, he
was a weakly child, and has suffered two illnesses in manhood. His
countenance always showed a good and wholesome colour. Of stature he
is as follows: height middling; broad in the shoulders; the rest of
the body somewhat slender in proportion. The shape of his face is
oval, the space above the ears being one sixth higher than a
semicircle. Consequently the temples project beyond the ears, and the
ears beyond the cheeks, and these beyond the rest; so that the skull,
in relation to the whole head, must be called large. The forehead,
seen in front, is square; the nose, a little flattened--not by nature,
but because, when he was a young boy, Torrigiano de' Torrigiani, a
brutal and insolent fellow, smashed in the cartilage with his fist.
Michelangelo was carried home half dead on this occasion; and
Torrigiano, having been exiled from Florence for his violence, came to
a bad end. The nose, however, being what it is, bears a proper
proportion to the forehead and the rest of the face. The lips are
thin, but the lower is slightly thicker than the upper; so that, seen
in profile, it projects a little. The chin is well in harmony with the
features I have described. The forehead, in a side-view, almost hangs
over the nose; and this looks hardly less than broken, were it not for
a trifling proturberance in the middle. The eyebrows are not thick
with hair; the eyes may even be called small, of a colour like horn,
but speckled and stained with spots of bluish yellow. The ears in good
proportion; hair of the head black, as also the beard, except that
both are now grizzled by old age; the beard double-forked, about five
inches long, and not very bushy, as may partly be observed in his
portrait."

We have no contemporary account of Michelangelo in early manhood; but
the tenor of his life was so even, and, unlike Cellini, he moved so
constantly upon the same lines and within the same sphere of patient
self-reserve, that it is not difficult to reconstruct the young and
vigorous sculptor out of this detailed description by his loving
friend and servant in old age. Few men, notably few artists, have
preserved that continuity of moral, intellectual, and physical
development in one unbroken course which is the specific
characterisation of Michelangelo. As years advanced, his pulses beat
less quickly and his body shrank. But the man did not alter. With the
same lapse of years, his style grew drier and more abstract, but it
did not alter in quality or depart from its ideal. He seems to me in
these respects to be like Milton: wholly unlike the plastic and
assimilative genius of a Raphael.



CHAPTER III


I

Michelangelo returned to Florence in the spring of 1501. Condivi says
that domestic affairs compelled him to leave Rome, and the
correspondence with his father makes this not improbable. He brought a
heightened reputation back to his native city. The Bacchus and the
Madonna della Febbre had placed him in advance of any sculptor of his
time. Indeed, in these first years of the sixteenth century he may be
said to have been the only Tuscan sculptor of commanding eminence.
Ghiberti, Della Quercia, Brunelleschi, Donatello, all had joined the
majority before his birth. The second group of distinguished
craftsmen--Verocchio, Luca della Robbia, Rossellino, Da Maiano,
Civitali, Desiderio da Settignano--expired at the commencement of the
century. It seemed as though a gap in the ranks of plastic artists had
purposely been made for the entrance of a predominant and tyrannous
personality. Jacopo Tatti, called Sansovino, was the only man who
might have disputed the place of preeminence with Michelangelo, and
Sansovino chose Venice for the theatre of his life-labours. In these
circumstances, it is not singular that commissions speedily began to
overtax the busy sculptor's power of execution. I do not mean to
assert that the Italians, in the year 1501, were conscious of
Michelangelo's unrivalled qualities, or sensitive to the corresponding
limitations which rendered these qualities eventually baneful to the
evolution of the arts; but they could not help feeling that in this
young man of twenty-six they possessed a first-rate craftsman, and one
who had no peer among contemporaries.

The first order of this year came from the Cardinal Francesco
Piccolomini, who was afterwards elected Pope in 1503, and who died
after reigning three weeks with the title of Pius III. He wished to
decorate the Piccolomini Chapel in the Duomo of Siena with fifteen
statues of male saints. A contract was signed on June 5, by which
Michelangelo agreed to complete these figures within the space of
three years. One of them, a S. Francis, had been already begun by
Piero Torrigiano; and this, we have some reason to believe, was
finished by the master's hand. Accounts differ about his share in the
remaining fourteen statues; but the matter is of no great moment,
seeing that the style of the work is conventional, and the scale of
the figures disagreeably squat and dumpy. It seems almost impossible
that these ecclesiastical and tame pieces should have been produced at
the same time as the David by the same hand. Neither Vasari nor
Condivi speaks about them, although it is certain that Michelangelo
was held bound to his contract during several years. Upon the death of
Pius III., he renewed it with the Pope's heirs, Jacopo and Andrea
Piccolomini, by a deed dated September 15, 1504; and in 1537 Anton
Maria Piccolomini, to whom the inheritance succeeded, considered
himself Michelangelo's creditor for the sum of a hundred crowns, which
had been paid beforehand for work not finished by the sculptor.

A far more important commission was intrusted to Michelangelo in
August of the same year, 1501. Condivi, after mentioning his return to
Florence, tells the history of the colossal David in these words:
"Here he stayed some time, and made the statue which stands in front
of the great door of the Palace of the Signory, and is called the
Giant by all people. It came about in this way. The Board of Works at
S. Maria del Fiore owned a piece of marble nine cubits in height,
which had been brought from Carrara some hundred years before by a
sculptor insufficiently acquainted with his art. This was evident,
inasmuch as, wishing to convey it more conveniently and with less
labour, he had it blocked out in the quarry, but in such a manner that
neither he nor any one else was capable of extracting a statue from
the block, either of the same size, or even on a much smaller scale.
The marble being, then, useless for any good purpose, Andrea del Monte
San Savino thought that he might get possession of it from the Board,
and begged them to make him a present of it, promising that he would
add certain pieces of stone and carve a statue from it. Before they
made up their minds to give it, they sent for Michelangelo; then,
after explaining the wishes and the views of Andrea, and considering
his own opinion that it would be possible to extract a good thing from
the block, they finally offered it to him. Michelangelo accepted,
added no pieces, and got the statue out so exactly, that, as any one
may see, in the top of the head and at the base some vestiges of the
rough surface of the marble still remain. He did the same in other
works, as, for instance, in the Contemplative Life upon the tomb of
Julius; indeed, it is a sign left by masters on their work, proving
them to be absolute in their art. But in the David it was much more
remarkable, for this reason, that the difficulty of the task was not
overcome by adding pieces; and also he had to contend with an
ill-shaped marble. As he used to say himself, it is impossible, or at
least extraordinarily difficult in statuary to set right the faults of
the blocking out. He received for this work 400 ducats, and carried it
out in eighteen months."

The sculptor who had spoiled this block of marble is called "Maestro
Simone" by Vasari; but the abundant documents in our possession, by
aid of which we are enabled to trace the whole history of
Michelangelo's David with minuteness, show that Vasari was
misinformed. The real culprit was Agostino di Antonio di Duccio, or
Guccio, who had succeeded with another colossal statue for the Duomo.
He is honourably known in the history of Tuscan sculpture by his
reliefs upon the façade of the Duomo at Modena, describing episodes in
the life of S. Gemignano, by the romantically charming reliefs in
marble, with terracotta settings, on the Oratory of S. Bernardino at
Perugia, and by a large amount of excellent surface-work in stone upon
the chapels of S. Francesco at Rimini. We gather from one of the
contracts with Agostino that the marble was originally blocked out for
some prophet. But Michelangelo resolved to make a David; and two wax
models, now preserved in the Museo Buonarroti, neither of which
corresponds exactly with the statue as it exists, show that he felt
able to extract a colossal figure in various attitudes from the
damaged block. In the first contract signed between the Consuls of the
Arte della Lana, the Operai del Duomo, and the sculptor, dated August
16, 1501, the terms are thus settled: "That the worthy master
Michelangelo, son of Lodovico Buonarroti, citizen of Florence, has
been chosen to fashion, complete, and finish to perfection that male
statue called the Giant, of nine cubits in height, now existing in the
workshop of the cathedral, blocked out aforetime by Master Agostino of
Florence, and badly blocked; and that the work shall be completed
within the term of the next ensuing two years, dating from September,
at a salary of six golden florins per month; and that what is needful
for the accomplishment of this task, as workmen, timbers, &c., which
he may require, shall be supplied him by the Operai; and when the
statue is finished, the Consuls and Operai who shall be in office
shall estimate whether he deserve a larger recompense, and this shall
be left to their consciences."


II

Michelangelo began to work on Monday morning, September 13, in a
wooden shed erected for the purpose, not far from the cathedral. On
the 28th of February 1502, the statue, which is now called for the
first time "the Giant, or David," was brought so far forward that the
judges declared it to be half finished, and decided that the sculptor
should be paid in all 400 golden florins, including the stipulated
salary. He seems to have laboured assiduously during the next two
years, for by a minute of the 25th of January 1504 the David is said
to be almost entirely finished. On this date a solemn council of the
most important artists resident in Florence was convened at the Opera
del Duomo to consider where it should be placed.

We possess full minutes of this meeting, and they are so curious that
I shall not hesitate to give a somewhat detailed account of the
proceedings. Messer Francesco Filarete, the chief herald of the
Signory, and himself an architect of some pretensions, opened the
discussion in a short speech to this effect: "I have turned over in my
mind those suggestions which my judgment could afford me. You have two
places where the statue may be set up: the first, that where the
Judith stands; the second, in the middle of the courtyard where the
David is. The first might be selected, because the Judith is an omen
of evil, and no fit object where it stands, we having the cross and
lily for our ensign; besides, it is not proper that the woman should
kill the male; and, above all, this statue was erected under an evil
constellation, since you have gone continually from bad to worse since
then. Pisa has been lost too. The David of the courtyard is imperfect
in the right leg; and so I should counsel you to put the Giant in one
of these places, but I give the preference myself to that of the
Judith." The herald, it will be perceived, took for granted that
Michelangelo's David would be erected in the immediate neighbourhood
of the Palazzo Vecchio. The next speaker, Francesco Monciatto, a
wood-carver, advanced the view that it ought to be placed in front of
the Duomo, where the Colossus was originally meant to be put up. He
was immediately followed, and his resolution was seconded, by no less
personages than the painters Cosimo Rosselli and Sandro Botticelli.
Then Giuliano da San Gallo, the illustrious architect, submitted a
third opinion to the meeting. He began his speech by observing that he
agreed with those who wished to choose the steps of the Duomo, but due
consideration caused him to alter his mind. "The imperfection of the
marble, which is softened by exposure to the air, rendered the
durability of the statue doubtful. He therefore voted for the middle
of the Loggia dei Lanzi, where the David would be under cover." Messer
Angelo di Lorenzo Manfidi, second herald of the Signory, rose to state
a professional objection. "The David, if erected under the middle arch
of the Loggia, would break the order of the ceremonies practised there
by the Signory and other magistrates. He therefore proposed that the
arch facing the Palazzo (where Donatello's Judith is now) should be
chosen." The three succeeding speakers, people of no great importance,
gave their votes in favour of the chief herald's resolution. Others
followed San Gallo, among whom was the illustrious Lionardo da Vinci.
He thought the statue could be placed under the middle arch of the
Loggia without hindrance to ceremonies of state. Salvestro, a
jeweller, and Filippino Lippi, the painter, were of opinion that the
neighbourhood of the Palazzo should be adopted, but that the precise
spot should be left to the sculptor's choice. Gallieno, an
embroiderer, and David Ghirlandajo, the painter, suggested a new
place--namely, where the lion or Marzocco stood on the Piazza. Antonio
da San Gallo, the architect, and Michelangelo, the goldsmith, father
of Baccio Bandinelli, supported Giuliano da San Gallo's motion. Then
Giovanni Piffero--that is, the father of Benvenuto Cellini--brought
the discussion back to the courtyard of the palace. He thought that in
the Loggia the statue would be only partly seen, and that it would run
risks of injury from scoundrels. Giovanni delle Corniole, the
incomparable gem-cutter, who has left us the best portrait of
Savonarola, voted with the two San Galli, "because he hears the stone
is soft." Piero di Cosimo, the painter, and teacher of Andrea del
Sarto, wound up the speeches with a strong recommendation that the
choice of the exact spot should be left to Michelangelo Buonarroti.
This was eventually decided on, and he elected to have his David set
up in the place preferred by the chief herald--that is to say, upon
the steps of the Palazzo Vecchio, on the right side of the entrance.

The next thing was to get the mighty mass of sculptured marble safely
moved from the Duomo to the Palazzo. On the 1st of April, Simone del
Pollajuolo, called Il Cronaca, was commissioned to make the necessary
preparations; but later on, upon the 30th, we find Antonio da San
Gallo, Baccio d'Agnolo, Bernardo della Ciecha, and Michelangelo
associated with him in the work of transportation. An enclosure of
stout beams and planks was made and placed on movable rollers. In the
middle of this the statue hung suspended, with a certain liberty of
swaying to the shocks and lurches of the vehicle. More than forty men
were employed upon the windlasses which drew it slowly forward. In a
contemporary record we possess a full account of the transit: "On the
14th of May 1504, the marble Giant was taken from the Opera. It came
out at 24 o'clock, and they broke the wall above the gateway enough to
let it pass. That night some stones were thrown at the Colossus with
intent to harm it. Watch had to be kept at night; and it made way very
slowly, bound as it was upright, suspended in the air with enormous
beams and intricate machinery of ropes. It took four days to reach the
Piazza, arriving on the 18th at the hour of 12. More than forty men
were employed to make it go; and there were fourteen rollers joined
beneath it, which were changed from hand to hand. Afterwards, they
worked until the 8th of June 1504 to place it on the platform
_(ringhiero)_ where the Judith used to stand. The Judith was removed
and set upon the ground within the palace. The said Giant was the work
of Michelangelo Buonarroti."

Where the masters of Florence placed it, under the direction of its
maker, Michelangelo's great white David stood for more than three
centuries uncovered, open to all injuries of frost and rain, and to
the violence of citizens, until, for the better preservation of this
masterpiece of modern art, it was removed in 1873 to a hall of the
Accademia delle Belle Arti. On the whole, it has suffered very little.
Weather has slightly worn away the extremities of the left foot; and
in 1527, during a popular tumult, the left arm was broken by a huge
stone cast by the assailants of the palace. Giorgio Vasari tells us
how, together with his friend Cecchino Salviati, he collected the
scattered pieces, and brought them to the house of Michelangelo
Salviati, the father of Cecchino. They were subsequently put together
by the care of the Grand Duke Cosimo, and restored to the statue in
the year 1543.


III

In the David Michelangelo first displayed that quality of
_terribilità_, of spirit-quailing, awe-inspiring force, for which he
afterwards became so famous. The statue imposes, not merely by its
size and majesty and might, but by something vehement in the
conception. He was, however, far from having yet adopted those
systematic proportions for the human body which later on gave an air
of monotonous impressiveness to all his figures. On the contrary, this
young giant strongly recalls the model; still more strongly indeed
than the Bacchus did. Wishing perhaps to adhere strictly to the
Biblical story, Michelangelo studied a lad whose frame was not
developed. The David, to state the matter frankly, is a colossal
hobbledehoy. His body, in breadth of the thorax, depth of the abdomen,
and general stoutness, has not grown up to the scale of the enormous
hands and feet and heavy head. We feel that he wants at least two
years to become a fully developed man, passing from adolescence to the
maturity of strength and beauty. This close observance of the
imperfections of the model at a certain stage of physical growth is
very remarkable, and not altogether pleasing in a statue more than
nine feet high. Both Donatello and Verocchio had treated their Davids
in the same realistic manner, but they were working on a small scale
and in bronze. I insist upon this point, because students of
Michelangelo have been apt to overlook his extreme sincerity and
naturalism in the first stages of his career.

Having acknowledged that the head of David is too massive and the
extremities too largely formed for ideal beauty, hypercriticism can
hardly find fault with the modelling and execution of each part. The
attitude selected is one of great dignity and vigour. The heroic boy,
quite certain of victory, is excited by the coming contest. His brows
are violently contracted, the nostrils tense and quivering, the eyes
fixed keenly on the distant Philistine. His larynx rises visibly, and
the sinews of his left thigh tighten, as though the whole spirit of
the man were braced for a supreme endeavour. In his right hand, kept
at a just middle point between the hip and knee, he holds the piece of
wood on which his sling is hung. The sling runs round his back, and
the centre of it, where the stone bulges, is held with the left hand,
poised upon the left shoulder, ready to be loosed. We feel that the
next movement will involve the right hand straining to its full extent
the sling, dragging the stone away, and whirling it into the air;
when, after it has sped to strike Goliath in the forehead, the whole
lithe body of the lad will have described a curve, and recovered its
perpendicular position on the two firm legs. Michelangelo invariably
chose some decisive moment; in the action he had to represent; and
though he was working here under difficulties, owing to the
limitations of the damaged block at his disposal, he contrived to
suggest the imminence of swift and sudden energy which shall disturb
the equilibrium of his young giant's pose. Critics of this statue,
deceived by its superficial resemblance to some Greek athletes at
rest, have neglected the candid realism of the momentary act
foreshadowed. They do not understand the meaning of the sling. Even
Heath Wilson, for instance, writes: "The massive shoulders are thrown
back, the right arm is pendent, and _the right hand grasps resolutely
the stone_ with which the adversary is to be slain." This entirely
falsifies the sculptor's motive, misses the meaning of the sling,
renders the broad strap behind the back superfluous, and changes into
mere plastic symbolism what Michelangelo intended to be a moment
caught from palpitating life.

It has often been remarked that David's head is modelled upon the type
of Donatello's S. George at Orsanmichele. The observation is just; and
it suggests a comment on the habit Michelangelo early formed of
treating the face idealistically, however much he took from study of
his models. Vasari, for example, says that he avoided portraiture, and
composed his faces by combining several individuals. We shall see a
new ideal type of the male head emerge in a group of statues, among
which the most distinguished is Giuliano de' Medici at San Lorenzo. We
have already seen a female type created in the Madonnas of S. Peter's
and Notre Dame at Bruges. But this is not the place to discuss
Michelangelo's theory of form in general. That must be reserved until
we enter the Sistine Chapel, in order to survey the central and the
crowning product of his genius in its prime.

We have every reason to believe that Michelangelo carved his David
with no guidance but drawings and a small wax model about eighteen
inches in height. The inconvenience of this method, which left the
sculptor to wreak his fury on the marble with mallet and chisel, can
be readily conceived. In a famous passage, disinterred by M. Mariette
from a French scholar of the sixteenth century, we have this account
of the fiery master's system: "I am able to affirm that I have seen
Michelangelo, at the age of more than sixty years, and not the
strongest for his time of life, knock off more chips from an extremely
hard marble in one quarter of an hour than three young stone-cutters
could have done in three or four--a thing quite incredible to one who
has not seen it. He put such impetuosity and fury into his work that I
thought the whole must fly to pieces; hurling to the ground at one
blow great fragments three or four inches thick, shaving the line so
closely that if he had overpassed it by a hair's-breadth he ran the
risk of losing all, since one cannot mend a marble afterwards or
repair mistakes, as one does with figures of clay and stucco." It is
said that, owing to this violent way of attacking his marble,
Michelangelo sometimes bit too deep into the stone, and had to abandon
a promising piece of sculpture. This is one of the ways of accounting
for his numerous unfinished statues. Accordingly a myth has sprung up
representing the great master as working in solitude upon huge blocks,
with nothing but a sketch in wax before him. Fact is always more
interesting than fiction; and, while I am upon the topic of his
method, I will introduce what Cellini has left written on this
subject. In his treatise on the Art of Sculpture, Cellini lays down
the rule that sculptors in stone ought first to make a little model
two palms high, and after this to form another as large as the statue
will have to be. He illustrates this by a critique of his illustrious
predecessors. "Albeit many able artists rush boldly on the stone with
the fierce force of mallet and chisel, relying on the little model and
a good design, yet the result is never found by them to be so
satisfactory as when they fashion the model on a large scale. This is
proved by our Donatello, who was a Titan in the art, and afterwards by
the stupendous Michelangelo, who worked in both ways. Discovering
latterly that the small models fell far short of what his excellent
genius demanded, he adopted the habit of making most careful models
exactly of the same size as the marble statue was to be. This we have
seen with our own eyes in the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo. Next, when a man
is satisfied with his full-sized model, he must take charcoal, and
sketch out the main view of his figure on the marble in such wise that
it shall be distinctly traced; for he who has not previously settled
his design may sometimes find himself deceived by the chiselling
irons. Michelangelo's method in this matter was the best. He used
first to sketch in the principal aspect; and then to begin work by
removing the surface stone upon that side, just as if he intended to
fashion a figure in half-relief; and thus he went on gradually
uncovering the rounded form."

Vasari, speaking of four rough-hewn Captives, possibly the figures now
in a grotto of the Boboli Gardens, says: They are well adapted for
teaching a beginner how to extract statues from the marble without
injury to the stone. The safe method which they illustrate may be
described as follows. You first take a model in wax or some other hard
material, and place it lying in a vessel full of water. The water, by
its nature, presents a level surface; so that, if you gradually lift
the model, the higher parts are first exposed, while the lower parts
remain submerged; and, proceeding thus, the whole round shape at
length appears above the water. Precisely in the same way ought
statues to be hewn out from the marble with the chisel; first
uncovering the highest surfaces, and proceeding to disclose the
lowest. This method was followed by Michelangelo while blocking out
the Captives, and therefore his Excellency the Duke was fain to have
them used as models by the students in his Academy. It need hardly be
remarked that the ingenious process of "pointing the marble" by means
of the "pointing machine" and "scale-stones," which is at present
universally in use among sculptors, had not been invented in the
sixteenth century.


IV

I cannot omit a rather childish story which Vasari tells about the
David. After it had been placed upon its pedestal before the palace,
and while the scaffolding was still there, Piero Soderini, who loved
and admired Michelangelo, told him that he thought the nose too large.
The sculptor immediately ran up the ladder till he reached a point
upon the level of the giant's shoulder. He then took his hammer and
chisel, and, having concealed some dust of marble in the hollow of his
hand, pretended to work off a portion from the surface of the nose. In
reality he left it as he found it; but Soderini, seeing the marble
dust fall scattering through the air, thought that his hint had been
taken. When, therefore, Michelangelo called down to him, "Look at it
now!" Soderini shouted up in reply, "I am far more pleased with it;
you have given life to the statue."

At this time Piero Soderini, a man of excellent parts and sterling
character, though not gifted with that mixture of audacity and cunning
which impressed the Renaissance imagination, was Gonfalonier of the
Republic. He had been elected to the supreme magistracy for life, and
was practically Doge of Florence. His friendship proved on more than
one occasion of some service to Michelangelo; and while the gigantic
David was in progress he gave the sculptor a new commission, the
history of which must now engage us. The Florentine envoys to France
had already written in June 1501 from Lyons, saying that Pierre de
Rohan, Maréchal de Gié, who stood high in favour at the court of Louis
XII., greatly desired a copy of the bronze David by Donatello in the
courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio. He appeared willing to pay for it,
but the envoys thought that he expected to have it as a present. The
French alliance was a matter of the highest importance to Florence,
and at this time the Republic was heavily indebted to the French
crown. Soderini, therefore, decided to comply with the Marshal's
request, and on the 12th of August 1502 Michelangelo undertook to
model a David of two cubits and a quarter within six months. In the
bronze-casting he was assisted by a special master, Benedetto da
Rovezzano. During the next two years a brisk correspondence was kept
up between the envoys and the Signory about the statue, showing the
Marshal's impatience. Meanwhile De Rohan became Duke of Nemours in
1503 by his marriage with a sister of Louis d'Armagnac, and shortly
afterwards he fell into disgrace. Nothing more was to be expected from
him at the court of Blois. But the statue was in progress, and the
question arose to whom it should be given. The choice of the Signory
fell on Florimond Robertet, secretary of finance, whose favour would
be useful to the Florentines in their pecuniary transactions with the
King. A long letter from the envoy, Francesco Pandolfini, in September
1505, shows that Robertet's mind had been sounded on the subject; and
we gather from a minute of the Signory, dated November 6, 1508, that
at last the bronze David, weighing about 800 pounds, had been "packed
in the name of God" and sent to Signa on its way to Leghorn. Robertet
received it in due course, and placed it in the courtyard of his
château of Bury, near Blois. Here it remained for more than a century,
when it was removed to the château of Villeroy. There it disappeared.
We possess, however, a fine pen-and-ink drawing by the hand of
Michelangelo, which may well have been a design for this second David.
The muscular and naked youth, not a mere lad like the colossal statue,
stands firmly posed upon his left leg with the trunk thrown boldly
back. His right foot rests on the gigantic head of Goliath, and his
left hand, twisted back upon the buttock, holds what seems meant for
the sling. We see here what Michelangelo's conception of an ideal
David would have been when working under conditions more favourable
than the damaged block afforded. On the margin of the page the
following words may be clearly traced: "Davicte cholla fromba e io
chollarcho Michelagniolo,"--David with the sling, and I with the bow.

Meanwhile Michelangelo received a still more important commission on
the 24th of April 1503. The Consuls of the Arte della Lana and the
Operai of the Duomo ordered twelve Apostles, each 4-1/4 cubits high,
to be carved out of Carrara marble and placed inside the church. The
sculptor undertook to furnish one each year, the Board of Works
defraying all expenses, supplying the costs of Michelangelo's living
and his assistants, and paying him two golden florins a month. Besides
this, they had a house built for him in the Borgo Pinti after Il
Cronaca's design. He occupied this house free of charges while he was
in Florence, until it became manifest that the contract of 1503 would
never be carried out. Later on, in March 1508, the tenement was let on
lease to him and his heirs. But he only held it a few months; for on
the 15th of June the lease was cancelled, and the house transferred to
Sigismondo Martelli.

The only trace surviving of these twelve Apostles is the huge
blocked-out S. Matteo, now in the courtyard of the Accademia. Vasari
writes of it as follows: "He also began a statue in marble of S.
Matteo, which, though it is but roughly hewn, shows perfection of
design, and teaches sculptors how to extract figures from the stone
without exposing them to injury, always gaining ground by removing the
superfluous material, and being able to withdraw or change in case of
need." This stupendous sketch or shadow of a mighty form is indeed
instructive for those who would understand Michelangelo's method. It
fully illustrates the passages quoted above from Cellini and Vasari,
showing how a design of the chief view of the statue must have been
chalked upon the marble, and how the unfinished figure gradually
emerged into relief. Were we to place it in a horizontal position on
the ground, that portion of a rounded form which has been disengaged
from the block would emerge just in the same way as a model from a
bath of water not quite deep enough to cover it. At the same time we
learn to appreciate the observations of Vigenere while we study the
titanic chisel-marks, grooved deeply in the body of the stone, and
carried to the length of three or four inches. The direction of these
strokes proves that Michelangelo worked equally with both hands, and
the way in which they are hatched and crossed upon the marble reminds
one of the pen-drawing of a bold draughtsman. The mere
surface-handling of the stone has remarkable affinity in linear effect
to a pair of the master's pen-designs for a naked man, now in the
Louvre. On paper he seems to hew with the pen, on marble to sketch
with the chisel. The saint appears literally to be growing out of his
stone prison, as though he were alive and enclosed there waiting to be
liberated. This recalls Michelangelo's fixed opinion regarding
sculpture, which he defined as the art "that works by force of taking
away." In his writings we often find the idea expressed that a statue,
instead of being a human thought invested with external reality by
stone, is more truly to be regarded as something which the sculptor
seeks and finds inside his marble--a kind of marvellous discovery.
Thus he says in one of his poems: "Lady, in hard and craggy stone the
mere removal of the surface gives being to a figure, which ever grows
the more the stone is hewn away." And again--

  _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._

S. Matthew seems to palpitate with life while we scrutinise the
amorphous block; and yet there is little there more tangible than some
such form as fancy loves to image in the clouds.

To conclude what I have said in this section about Michelangelo's
method of working on the marble, I must confirm what I have stated
about his using both left and right hand while chiselling. Raffaello
da Montelupo, who was well acquainted with him personally, informs us
of the fact: "Here I may mention that I am in the habit of drawing
with my left hand, and that once, at Rome, while I was sketching the
Arch of Trajan from the Colosseum, Michelangelo and Sebastiano del
Piombo, both of whom were naturally left-handed (although they did not
work with the left hand excepting when they wished to use great
strength), stopped to see me, and expressed great wonder, no sculptor
or painter ever having done so before me, as far as I know."


V

If Vasari can be trusted, it was during this residence at Florence,
when his hands were so fully occupied, that Michelangelo found time to
carve the two _tondi_, Madonnas in relief enclosed in circular spaces,
which we still possess. One of them, made for Taddeo Taddei, is now at
Burlington House, having been acquired by the Royal Academy through
the medium of Sir George Beaumont. This ranks among the best things
belonging to that Corporation. The other, made for Bartolommeo Pitti,
will be found in the Palazzo del Bargello at Florence. Of the two,
that of our Royal Academy is the more ambitious in design, combining
singular grace and dignity in the Madonna with action playfully
suggested in the infant Christ and little S. John. That of the
Bargello is simpler, more tranquil, and more stately. The one recalls
the motive of the Bruges Madonna, the other almost anticipates the
Delphic Sibyl. We might fancifully call them a pair of native pearls
or uncut gems, lovely by reason even of their sketchiness. Whether by
intention, as some critics have supposed, or for want of time to
finish, as I am inclined to believe, these two reliefs are left in a
state of incompleteness which is highly suggestive. Taking the Royal
Academy group first, the absolute roughness of the groundwork supplies
an admirable background to the figures, which seem to emerge from it
as though the whole of them were there, ready to be disentangled. The
most important portions of the composition--Madonna's head and throat,
the drapery of her powerful breast, on which the child Christ
reclines, and the naked body of the boy--are wrought to a point which
only demands finish. Yet parts of these two figures remain
undetermined. Christ's feet are still imprisoned in the clinging
marble; His left arm and hand are only indicated, and His right hand
is resting on a mass of broken stone, which hides a portion of His
mother's drapery, but leaves the position of her hand uncertain. The
infant S. John, upright upon his feet, balancing the chief group, is
hazily subordinate. The whole of his form looms blurred through the
veil of stone, and what his two hands and arms are doing with the
hidden right arm and hand of the Virgin may hardly be conjectured. It
is clear that on this side of the composition the marble was to have
been more deeply cut, and that we have the highest surfaces of the
relief brought into prominence at those points where, as I have said,
little is wanting but the finish of the graver and the file. The
Bargello group is simpler and more intelligible. Its composition by
masses being quite apparent, we can easily construct the incomplete
figure of S. John in the background. What results from the study of
these two circular sketches in marble is that, although Michelangelo
believed all sculpture to be imperfect in so far as it approached the
style of painting, yet he did not disdain to labour in stone with
various planes of relief which should produce the effect of
chiaroscuro. Furthermore, they illustrate what Cellini and Vasari have
already taught us about his method. He refused to work by piecemeal,
but began by disengaging the first, the second, then the third
surfaces, following a model and a drawing which controlled the
cutting. Whether he preferred to leave off when his idea was
sufficiently indicated, or whether his numerous engagements prevented
him from excavating the lowest surfaces, and lastly polishing the
whole, is a question which must for ever remain undecided. Considering
the exquisite elaboration given to the Pietà of the Vatican, the
Madonna at Bruges, the Bacchus and the David, the Moses and parts of
the Medicean monuments, I incline to think that, with time enough at
his disposal, he would have carried out these rounds in all their
details. A criticism he made on Donatello, recorded for us by Condivi,
to the effect that this great master's works lost their proper effect
on close inspection through a want of finish, confirms my opinion.
Still there is no doubt that he must have been pleased, as all true
lovers of art are with the picturesque effect--an effect as of things
half seen in dreams or emergent from primeval substances--which the
imperfection of the craftsman's labour leaves upon the memory.

At this time Michelangelo's mind seems to have been much occupied with
circular compositions. He painted a large Holy Family of this shape
for his friend Angelo Doni, which may, I think, be reckoned the only
easel-picture attributable with absolute certainty to his hand.
Condivi simply says that he received seventy ducats for this fine
work. Vasari adds one of his prattling stories to the effect that Doni
thought forty sufficient; whereupon Michelangelo took the picture
back, and said he would not let it go for less than a hundred: Doni
then offered the original sum of seventy, but Michelangelo replied
that if he was bent on bargaining he should not pay less than 140. Be
this as it may, one of the most characteristic products of the
master's genius came now into existence. The Madonna is seated in a
kneeling position on the ground; she throws herself vigorously
backward, lifting the little Christ upon her right arm, and presenting
him to a bald-headed old man, S. Joseph, who seems about to take him
in his arms. This group, which forms a tall pyramid, is balanced on
both sides by naked figures of young men reclining against a wall at
some distance, while a remarkably ugly little S. John can be discerned
in one corner. There is something very powerful and original in the
composition of this sacred picture, which, as in the case of all
Michelangelo's early work, develops the previous traditions of Tuscan
art on lines which no one but himself could have discovered. The
central figure of the Madonna, too, has always seemed to me a thing of
marvellous beauty, and of stupendous power in the strained attitude
and nobly modelled arms. It has often been asked what the male nudes
have got to do with the subject. Probably Michelangelo intended in
this episode to surpass a Madonna by Luca Signorelli, with whose
genius he obviously was in sympathy, and who felt, like him, the
supreme beauty of the naked adolescent form. Signorelli had painted a
circular Madonna with two nudes in the landscape distance for Lorenzo
de' Medici. The picture is hung now in the gallery of the Uffizi. It
is enough perhaps to remark that Michelangelo needed these figures for
his scheme, and for filling the space at his disposal. He was either
unable or unwilling to compose a background of trees, meadows, and
pastoral folk in the manner of his predecessors. Nothing but the
infinite variety of human forms upon a barren stage of stone or arid
earth would suit his haughty sense of beauty. The nine persons who
make up the picture are all carefully studied from the life, and bear
a strong Tuscan stamp. S. John is literally ignoble, and Christ is a
commonplace child. The Virgin Mother is a magnificent _contadina_ in
the plenitude of adult womanhood. Those, however, who follow Mr.
Ruskin in blaming Michelangelo for carelessness about the human face
and head, should not fail to notice what sublime dignity and grace he
has communicated to his model here. In technical execution the Doni
Madonna is faithful to old Florentine usage, but lifeless and
unsympathetic. We are disagreeably reminded by every portion of the
surface that Lionardo's subtle play of tones and modulated shades,
those _sfumature_, as Italians call them, which transfer the mystic
charm of nature to the canvas, were as yet unknown to the great
draughtsman. There is more of atmosphere, of colour suggestion, and of
chiaroscuro in the marble _tondi_ described above. Moreover, in spite
of very careful modelling, Michelangelo has failed to make us feel the
successive planes of his composition. The whole seems flat, and each
distance, instead of being graduated, starts forward to the eye. He
required, at this period of his career, the relief of sculpture in
order to express the roundness of the human form and the relative
depth of objects placed in a receding order. If anything were needed
to make us believe the story of his saying to Pope Julius II. that
sculpture and not painting was his trade, this superb design, so
deficient in the essential qualities of painting proper, would
suffice. Men infinitely inferior to himself in genius and sense of
form, a Perugino, a Francia, a Fra Bartolommeo, an Albertinelli,
possessed more of the magic which evokes pictorial beauty.
Nevertheless, with all its aridity, rigidity, and almost repulsive
hardness of colour, the Doni Madonna ranks among the great pictures of
the world. Once seen it will never be forgotten: it tyrannises and
dominates the imagination by its titanic power of drawing. No one,
except perhaps Lionardo, could draw like that, and Lionardo would not
have allowed his linear scheme to impose itself so remorselessly upon
the mind.


VI

Just at this point of his development, Michelangelo was brought into
competition with Lionardo da Vinci, the only living rival worthy of
his genius. During the year 1503 Piero Soderini determined to adorn
the hall of the Great Council in the Palazzo Vecchio with huge mural
frescoes, which should represent scenes in Florentine history.
Documents regarding the commencement of these works and the contracts
made with the respective artists are unfortunately wanting. But it
appears that Da Vinci received a commission for one of the long walls
in the autumn of that year. We have items of expenditure on record
which show that the Municipality of Florence assigned him the Sala del
Papa at S. Maria Novella before February 1504, and were preparing the
necessary furniture for the construction of his Cartoon. It seems that
he was hard at work upon the 1st of April, receiving fifteen golden
florins a month for his labour. The subject which he chose to treat
was the battle of Anghiari in 1440, when the Florentine mercenaries
entirely routed the troops of Filippo Maria Visconti, led by Niccolò
Piccinino, one of the greatest generals of his age. In August 1504
Soderini commissioned Michelangelo to prepare Cartoons for the
opposite wall of the great Sala, and assigned to him a workshop in the
Hospital of the Dyers at S. Onofrio. A minute of expenditure, under
date October 31, 1504, shows that the paper for the Cartoon had been
already provided; and Michelangelo continued to work upon it until his
call to Rome at the beginning of 1505. Lionardo's battle-piece
consisted of two groups on horseback engaged in a fierce struggle for
a standard. Michelangelo determined to select a subject which should
enable him to display all his power as the supreme draughtsman of the
nude. He chose an episode from the war with Pisa, when, on the 28th of
July 1364, a band of 400 Florentine soldiers were surprised bathing by
Sir John Hawkwood and his English riders. It goes by the name of the
Battle of Pisa, though the event really took place at Cascina on the
Arno, some six miles above that city.

We have every reason to regard the composition of this Cartoon as the
central point in Michelangelo's life as an artist. It was the
watershed, so to speak, which divided his earlier from his later
manner; and if we attach any value to the critical judgment of his
enthusiastic admirer, Cellini, even the roof of the Sistine fell short
of its perfection. Important, however, as it certainly is in the
history of his development, I must defer speaking of it in detail
until the end of the next chapter. For some reason or other, unknown
to us, he left his work unfinished early in 1505, and went, at the
Pope's invitation, to Rome. When he returned, in the ensuing year, to
Florence, he resumed and completed the design. Some notion of its size
may be derived from what we know about the material supplied for
Lionardo's Cartoon. This, say Crowe and Cavalcaselle, "was made up of
one ream and twenty-nine quires, or about 288 square feet of royal
folio paper, the mere pasting of which necessitated a consumption of
eighty-eight pounds of flour, the mere lining of which required three
pieces of Florentine linen."

Condivi, summing up his notes of this period spent by Michelangelo at
Florence, says: "He stayed there some time without working to much
purpose in his craft, having taken to the study of poets and
rhetoricians in the vulgar tongue, and to the composition of sonnets
for his pleasure." It is difficult to imagine how Michelangelo, with
all his engagements, found the leisure to pursue these literary
amusements. But Condivi's biography is the sole authentic source which
we possess for the great master's own recollections of his past life.
It is, therefore, not improbable that in the sentence I have quoted we
may find some explanation of the want of finish observable in his
productions at this point. Michelangelo was, to a large extent, a
dreamer; and this single phrase throws light upon the expanse of time,
the barren spaces, in his long laborious life. The poems we now
possess by his pen are clearly the wreck of a vast multitude; and most
of those accessible in manuscript and print belong to a later stage of
his development. Still the fact remains that in early manhood he
formed the habit of conversing with writers of Italian and of
fashioning his own thoughts into rhyme. His was a nature capable
indeed of vehement and fiery activity, but by constitution somewhat
saturnine and sluggish, only energetic when powerfully stimulated; a
meditative man, glad enough to be inert when not spurred forward on
the path of strenuous achievement. And so, it seems, the literary bent
took hold upon him as a relief from labour, as an excuse for temporary
inaction. In his own art, the art of design, whether this assumed the
form of sculpture or of painting or of architecture, he did nothing
except at the highest pressure. All his accomplished work shows signs
of the intensest cerebration. But he tried at times to slumber, sunk
in a wise passiveness. Then he communed with the poets, the prophets,
and the prose-writers of his country. We can well imagine, therefore,
that, tired with the labours of the chisel or the brush, he gladly
gave himself to composition, leaving half finished on his easel things
which had for him their adequate accomplishment.

I think it necessary to make these suggestions, because, in my
opinion, Michelangelo's inner life and his literary proclivities have
been hitherto too much neglected in the scheme of his psychology.
Dazzled by the splendour of his work, critics are content to skip
spaces of months and years, during which the creative genius of the
man smouldered. It is, as I shall try to show, in those intervals,
dimly revealed to us by what remains of his poems and his
correspondence, that the secret of this man, at once so tardy and so
energetic; has to be discovered.

A great master of a different temperament, less solitary, less
saturnine, less sluggish, would have formed a school, as Raffaello
did. Michelangelo formed no school, and was incapable of confiding the
execution of his designs to any subordinates. This is also a point of
the highest importance to insist upon. Had he been other than he
was--a gregarious man, contented with the _à peu près_ in art--he
might have sent out all those twelve Apostles for the Duomo from his
workshop. Raffaello would have done so; indeed, the work which bears
his name in Rome could not have existed except under these conditions.
Now nothing is left to us of the twelve Apostles except a rough-hewn
sketch of S. Matthew. Michelangelo was unwilling or unable to organise
a band of craftsmen fairly interpretative of his manner. When his own
hand failed, or when he lost the passion for his labour, he left the
thing unfinished. And much of this incompleteness in his life-work
seems to me due to his being what I called a dreamer. He lacked the
merely business faculty, the power of utilising hands and brains. He
could not bring his genius into open market, and stamp inferior
productions with his countersign. Willingly he retired into the
solitude of his own self, to commune with great poets and to meditate
upon high thoughts, while he indulged the emotions arising from forms
of strength and beauty presented to his gaze upon the pathway of
experience.



CHAPTER IV

I

Among the many nephews whom Sixtus IV. had raised to eminence, the
most distinguished was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of S. Pietro in
Vincoli, and Bishop of Ostia. This man possessed a fiery temper,
indomitable energy, and the combative instinct which takes delight in
fighting for its own sake. Nature intended him for a warrior; and,
though circumstances made him chief of the Church, he discharged his
duties as a Pontiff in the spirit of a general and a conqueror. When
Julius II. was elected in November 1503, it became at once apparent
that he intended to complete what his hated predecessors, the Borgias,
had begun, by reducing to his sway all the provinces over which the
See of Rome had any claims, and creating a central power in Italy.
Unlike the Borgias, however, he entertained no plan of raising his own
family to sovereignty at the expense of the Papal power. The Della
Roveres were to be contented with their Duchy of Urbino, which came to
them by inheritance from the Montefeltri. Julius dreamed of Italy for
the Italians, united under the hegemony of the Supreme Pontiff, who
from Rome extended his spiritual authority and political influence
over the whole of Western Europe. It does not enter into the scheme of
this book to relate the series of wars and alliances in which this
belligerent Pope involved his country, and the final failure of his
policy, so far as the liberation of Italy from the barbarians was
concerned. Suffice it to say, that at the close of his stormy reign he
had reduced the States of the Church to more or less complete
obedience, bequeathing to his successors an ecclesiastical kingdom
which the enfeebled condition of the peninsula at large enabled them
to keep intact.

There was nothing petty or mean in Julius II.; his very faults bore a
grandiose and heroic aspect. Turbulent, impatient, inordinate in his
ambition, reckless in his choice of means, prolific of immense
projects, for which a lifetime would have been too short, he filled
the ten years of his pontificate with a din of incoherent deeds and
vast schemes half accomplished. Such was the man who called
Michelangelo to Rome at the commencement of 1505. Why the sculptor was
willing to leave his Cartoon unfinished, and to break his engagement
with the Operai del Duomo, remains a mystery. It is said that the
illustrious architect, Giuliano da San Gallo, who had worked for
Julius while he was cardinal, and was now his principal adviser upon
matters of art, suggested to the Pope that Buonarroti could serve him
admirably in his ambitious enterprises for the embellishment of the
Eternal City. We do not know for certain whether Julius, when he
summoned Michelangelo from Florence, had formed the design of engaging
him upon a definite piece of work. The first weeks of his residence in
Rome are said to have been spent in inactivity, until at last Julius
proposed to erect a huge monument of marble for his own tomb.

Thus began the second and longest period of Michelangelo's
art-industry. Henceforth he was destined to labour for a series of
Popes, following their whims with distracted energies and a lamentable
waste of time. The incompleteness which marks so much of his
performance was due to the rapid succession of these imperious
masters, each in turn careless about the schemes of his predecessor,
and bent on using the artist's genius for his own profit. It is true
that nowhere but in Rome could Michelangelo have received commissions
on so vast a scale. Nevertheless we cannot but regret the fate which
drove him to consume years of hampered industry upon what Condivi
calls "the tragedy of Julius's tomb," upon quarrying and road-making
for Leo X., upon the abortive plans at S. Lorenzo, and upon
architectural and engineering works, which were not strictly within
his province. At first it seemed as though fortune was about to smile
on him. In Julius he found a patron who could understand and
appreciate his powers. Between the two men there existed a strong bond
of sympathy due to community of temperament. Both aimed at colossal
achievements in their respective fields of action. The imagination of
both was fired by large and simple rather than luxurious and subtle
thoughts. Both were _uomini terribili_, to use a phrase denoting
vigour of character and energy of genius, made formidable by an
abrupt, uncompromising spirit. Both worked with what the Italians call
fury, with the impetuosity of daemonic natures; and both left the
impress of their individuality stamped indelibly upon their age.
Julius, in all things grandiose, resolved to signalise his reign by
great buildings, great sculpture, great pictorial schemes. There was
nothing of the dilettante and collector about him. He wanted creation
at a rapid rate and in enormous quantities. To indulge this craving,
he gathered round him a band of demigods and Titans, led by Bramante,
Raffaello, Michelangelo, and enjoyed the spectacle of a new world of
art arising at his bidding through their industry of brain and hand.


II

What followed upon Michelangelo's arrival in Rome may be told in
Condivi's words: "Having reached Rome, many months elapsed before
Julius decided on what great work he would employ him. At last it
occurred to him to use his genius in the construction of his own tomb.
The design furnished by Michelangelo pleased the Pope so much that he
sent him off immediately to Carrara, with commission to quarry as much
marble as was needful for that undertaking. Two thousand ducats were
put to his credit with Alamanni Salviati at Florence for expenses. He
remained more than eight months among those mountains, with two
servants and a horse, but without any salary except his keep. One day,
while inspecting the locality, the fancy took him to convert a hill
which commands the sea-shore into a Colossus, visible by mariners
afar. The shape of the huge rock, which lent itself admirably to such
a purpose, attracted him; and he was further moved to emulate the
ancients, who, sojourning in the place peradventure with the same
object as himself, in order to while away the time, or for some other
motive, have left certain unfinished and rough-hewn monuments, which
give a good specimen of their craft. And assuredly he would have
carried out this scheme, if time enough had been at his disposal, or
if the special purpose of his visit to Carrara had permitted. I one
day heard him lament bitterly that he had not done so. Well, then,
after quarrying and selecting the blocks which he deemed sufficient,
he had them brought to the sea, and left a man of his to ship them
off. He returned to Rome, and having stopped some days in Florence on
the way, when he arrived there, he found that part of the marble had
already reached the Ripa. There he had them disembarked, and carried
to the Piazza of S. Peter's behind S. Caterina, where he kept his
lodging, close to the corridor connecting the Palace with the Castle
of S. Angelo. The quantity of stone was enormous, so that, when it was
all spread out upon the square, it stirred amazement in the minds of
most folk, but joy in the Pope's. Julius indeed began to heap favours
upon Michelangelo; for when he had begun to work, the Pope used
frequently to betake himself to his house, conversing there with him
about the tomb, and about other works which he proposed to carry out
in concert with one of his brothers. In order to arrive more
conveniently at Michelangelo's lodgings, he had a drawbridge thrown
across from the corridor, by which he might gain privy access."

The date of Michelangelo's return to Rome is fixed approximately by a
contract signed at Carrara between him and two shipowners of Lavagna.
This deed is dated November 12, 1505. It shows that thirty-four
cartloads of marble were then ready for shipment, together with two
figures weighing fifteen cartloads more. We have a right to assume
that Michelangelo left Carrara soon after completing this transaction.
Allowing, then, for the journey and the halt at Florence, he probably
reached Rome in the last week of that month.


III

The first act in the tragedy of the sepulchre had now begun, and
Michelangelo was embarked upon one of the mightiest undertakings which
a sovereign of the stamp of Julius ever intrusted to a sculptor of his
titanic energy. In order to form a conception of the magnitude of the
enterprise, I am forced to enter into a discussion regarding the real
nature of the monument. This offers innumerable difficulties, for we
only possess imperfect notices regarding the original design, and two
doubtful drawings belonging to an uncertain period. Still it is
impossible to understand those changes in the Basilica of S. Peter's
which were occasioned by the project of Julius, or to comprehend the
immense annoyances to which the tomb exposed Michelangelo, without
grappling with its details. Condivi's text must serve for guide. This,
in fact, is the sole source of any positive value. He describes the
tomb, as he believed it to have been first planned, in the following
paragraph:--

"To give some notion of the monument, I will say that it was intended
to have four faces: two of eighteen cubits, serving for the sides, and
two of twelve for the ends, so that the whole formed one great square
and a half. Surrounding it externally were niches to be filled with
statues, and between each pair of niches stood terminal figures, to
the front of which were attached on certain consoles projecting from
the wall another set of statues bound like prisoners. These
represented the Liberal Arts, and likewise Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, each with characteristic emblems, rendering their
identification easy. The intention was to show that all the talents
had been taken captive by death, together with Pope Julius, since
never would they find another patron to cherish and encourage them as
he had done. Above these figures ran a cornice, giving unity to the
whole work. Upon the flat surface formed by this cornice were to be
four large statues, one of which, that is, the Moses, now exists at S.
Pietro ad Vincula. And so, arriving at the summit, the tomb ended in a
level space, whereon were two angels who supported a sarcophagus. One
of them appeared to smile, rejoicing that the soul of the Pope had
been received among the blessed spirits; the other seemed to weep, as
sorrowing that the world had been robbed of such a man. From one of
the ends, that is, by the one which was at the head of the monument,
access was given to a little chamber like a chapel, enclosed within
the monument, in the midst of which was a marble chest, wherein the
corpse of the Pope was meant to be deposited. The whole would have
been executed with stupendous finish. In short, the sepulchre included
more than forty statues, not counting the histories in half-reliefs,
made of bronze, all of them pertinent to the general scheme and
representative of the mighty Pontiff's actions."

Vasari's account differs in some minor details from Condivi's, but it
is of no authoritative value. Not having appeared in the edition of
1550, we may regard it as a _réchauffée_ of Condivi, with the usual
sauce provided by the Aretine's imagination. The only addition I can
discover which throws light upon Condivi's narrative is that the
statues in the niches were meant to represent provinces conquered by
Julius. This is important, because it leads us to conjecture that
Vasari knew a drawing now preserved in the Uffizi, and sought, by its
means, to add something to his predecessor's description. The drawing
will occupy our attention shortly; but it may here be remarked that in
1505, the date of the first project, Julius was only entering upon his
conquests. It would have been a gross act of flattery on the part of
the sculptor, a flying in the face of Nemesis on the part of his
patron, to design a sepulchre anticipating length of life and luck
sufficient for these triumphs.

What then Condivi tells us about the first scheme is, that it was
intended to stand isolated in the tribune of S. Peter's; that it
formed a rectangle of a square and half a square; that the podium was
adorned with statues in niches flanked by projecting dadoes supporting
captive arts, ten in number; that at each corner of the platform above
the podium a seated statue was placed, one of which we may safely
identify with the Moses; and that above this, surmounting the whole
monument by tiers, arose a second mass, culminating in a sarcophagus
supported by two angels. He further adds that the tomb was entered at
its extreme end by a door, which led to a little chamber where lay the
body of the Pope, and that bronze bas-reliefs formed a prominent
feature of the total scheme. He reckons that more than forty statues
would have been required to complete the whole design, although he has
only mentioned twenty-two of the most prominent.

More than this we do not know about the first project. We have no
contracts and no sketches that can be referred to the date 1505. Much
confusion has been introduced into the matter under consideration by
the attempt to reconcile Condivi's description with the drawing I have
just alluded to. Heath Wilson even used that drawing to impugn
Condivi's accuracy with regard to the number of the captives, and the
seated figures on the platform. The drawing in question, as we shall
presently see, is of great importance for the subsequent history of
the monument; and I believe that it to some extent preserves the
general aspect which the tomb, as first designed, was intended to
present. Two points about it, however, prevent our taking it as a true
guide to Michelangelo's original conception. One is that it is clearly
only part of a larger scheme of composition. The other is that it
shows a sarcophagus, not supported by angels, but posed upon the
platform. Moreover, it corresponds to the declaration appended in 1513
by Michelangelo to the first extant document we possess about the
tomb.

Julius died in February 1513, leaving, it is said, to his executors
directions that his sepulchre should not be carried out upon the first
colossal plan. If he did so, they seem at the beginning of their trust
to have disregarded his intentions. Michelangelo expressly states in
one of his letters that the Cardinal of Agen wished to proceed with
the tomb, but on a larger scale. A deed dated May 6, 1513, was signed,
at the end of which Michelangelo specified the details of the new
design. It differed from the former in many important respects, but
most of all in the fact that now the structure was to be attached to
the wall of the church. I cannot do better than translate
Michelangelo's specifications. They run as follows: "Let it be known
to all men that I, Michelangelo, sculptor of Florence, undertake to
execute the sepulchre of Pope Julius in marble, on the commission of
the Cardinal of Agens and the Datary (Pucci), who, after his death,
have been appointed to complete this work, for the sum of 16,500
golden ducats of the Camera; and the composition of the said sepulchre
is to be in the form ensuing: A rectangle visible from three of its
sides, the fourth of which is attached to the wall and cannot be seen.
The front face, that is, the head of this rectangle, shall be twenty
palms in breadth and fourteen in height, the other two, running up
against the wall, shall be thirty-five palms long and likewise
fourteen palms in height. Each of these three sides shall contain two
tabernacles, resting on a basement which shall run round the said
space, and shall be adorned with pilasters, architrave, frieze, and
cornice, as appears in the little wooden model. In each of the said
six tabernacles will be placed two figures about one palm taller than
life (_i.e._, 6-3/4 feet), twelve in all; and in front of each
pilaster which flanks a tabernacle shall stand a figure of similar
size, twelve in all. On the platform above the said rectangular
structure stands a sarcophagus with four feet, as may be seen in the
model, upon which will be Pope Julius sustained by two angels at his
head, with two at his feet; making five figures on the sarcophagus,
all larger than life, that is, about twice the size. Round about the
said sarcophagus will be placed six dadoes or pedestals, on which six
figures of the same dimensions will sit. Furthermore, from the
platform, where it joins the wall, springs a little chapel about
thirty-five palms high (26 feet 3 inches), which shall contain five
figures larger than all the rest, as being farther from the eye.
Moreover, there shall be three histories, either of bronze or of
marble, as may please the said executors, introduced on each face of
the tomb between one tabernacle and another." All this Michelangelo
undertook to execute in seven years for the stipulated sum.

The new project involved thirty-eight colossal statues; and,
fortunately for our understanding of it, we may be said with almost
absolute certainty to possess a drawing intended to represent it. Part
of this is a pen-and-ink sketch at the Uffizi, which has frequently
been published, and part is a sketch in the Berlin Collection. These
have been put together by Professor Middleton of Cambridge, who has
also made out a key-plan of the tomb. With regard to its proportions
and dimensions as compared with Michelangelo's specification, there
remain some difficulties, with which I cannot see that Professor
Middleton has grappled. It is perhaps not improbable, as Heath Wilson
suggested, that the drawing had been thrown off as a picturesque
forecast of the monument without attention to scale. Anyhow, there is
no doubt that in this sketch, so happily restored by Professor
Middleton's sagacity and tact, we are brought close to Michelangelo's
conception of the colossal work he never was allowed to execute. It
not only answers to the description translated above from the
sculptor's own appendix to the contract, but it also throws light upon
the original plan of the tomb designed for the tribune of S. Peter's.
The basement of the podium has been preserved, we may assume, in its
more salient features. There are the niches spoken of by Condivi, with
Vasari's conquered provinces prostrate at the feet of winged
Victories. These are flanked by the terminal figures, against which,
upon projecting consoles, stand the bound captives. At the right hand
facing us, upon the upper platform, is seated Moses, with a different
action of the hands, it is true, from that which Michelangelo finally
adopted. Near him is a female figure, and the two figures grouped upon
the left angle seem to be both female. To some extent these statues
bear out Vasari's tradition that the platform in the first design was
meant to sustain figures of the contemplative and active life of the
soul--Dante's Leah and Rachel.

This great scheme was never carried out. The fragments which may be
safely assigned to it are the Moses at S. Pietro in Vincoli and the
two bound captives of the Louvre; the Madonna and Child, Leah and
Rachel, and two seated statues also at S. Pietro in Vincoli, belong to
the plan, though these have undergone considerable alterations. Some
other scattered fragments of the sculptor's work may possibly be
connected with its execution. Four male figures roughly hewn, which
are now wrought into the rock-work of a grotto in the Boboli Gardens,
together with the young athlete trampling on a prostrate old man
(called the Victory) and the Adonis of the Museo Nazionale at
Florence, have all been ascribed to the sepulchre of Julius in one or
other of its stages. But these attributes are doubtful, and will be
criticised in their proper place and time. Suffice it now to say that
Vasari reports, beside the Moses, Victory, and two Captives at the
Louvre, eight figures for the tomb blocked out by Michelangelo at
Rome, and five blocked out at Florence.

Continuing the history of this tragic undertaking, we come to the year
1516. On the 8th of July in that year, Michelangelo signed a new
contract, whereby the previous deed of 1513 was annulled. Both of the
executors were alive and parties to this second agreement. "A model
was made, the width of which is stated at twenty-one feet, after the
monument had been already sculptured of a width of almost twenty-three
feet. The architectural design was adhered to with the same pedestals
and niches and the same crowning cornice of the first story. There
were to be six statues in front, but the conquered provinces were now
dispensed with. There was also to be one niche only on each flank, so
that the projection of the monument from the wall was reduced more
than half, and there were to be only twelve statues beneath the
cornice and one relief, instead of twenty-four statues and three
reliefs. On the summit of this basement a shrine was to be erected,
within which was placed the effigy of the Pontiff on his sarcophagus,
with two heavenly guardians. The whole of the statues described in
this third contract amount to nineteen." Heath Wilson observes, with
much propriety, that the most singular fact about these successive
contracts is the departure from certain fixed proportions both of the
architectural parts and the statues, involving a serious loss of
outlay and of work. Thus the two Captives of the Louvre became
useless, and, as we know, they were given away to Ruberto Strozzi in a
moment of generosity by the sculptor. The sitting figures detailed in
the deed of 1516 are shorter than the Moses by one foot. The standing
figures, now at S. Pietro in Vincoli, correspond to the
specifications. What makes the matter still more singular is, that
after signing the contract under date July 8, 1516, Michelangelo in
November of the same year ordered blocks of marble from Carrara, with
measurements corresponding to the specifications of the deed of 1513.

The miserable tragedy of the sepulchre dragged on for another sixteen
years. During this period the executors of Julius passed away, and the
Duke Francesco Maria della Rovere replaced them. He complained that
Michelangelo neglected the tomb, which was true, although the fault
lay not with the sculptor, but with the Popes, his taskmasters. Legal
proceedings were instituted to recover a large sum of money, which, it
was alleged, had been disbursed without due work delivered by the
master. Michelangelo had recourse to Clement VII., who, being anxious
to monopolise his labour, undertook to arrange matters with the Duke.
On the 29th of April 1532 a third and solemn contract was signed at
Rome in presence of the Pope, witnessed by a number of illustrious
personages. This third contract involved a fourth design for the tomb,
which Michelangelo undertook to furnish, and at the same time to
execute six statues with his own hand. On this occasion the notion of
erecting it in S. Peter's was finally abandoned. The choice lay
between two other Roman churches, that of S. Maria del Popolo, where
monuments to several members of the Della Rovere family existed, and
that of S. Pietro in Vincoli, from which Julius II. had taken his
cardinal's title. Michelangelo decided for the latter, on account of
its better lighting. The six statues promised by Michelangelo are
stated in the contract to be "begun and not completed, extant at the
present date in Rome or in Florence." Which of the several statues
blocked out for the monument were to be chosen is not stated; and as
there are no specifications in the document, we cannot identify them
with exactness. At any rate, the Moses must have been one; and it is
possible that the Leah and Rachel, Madonna, and two seated statues,
now at S. Pietro, were the other five.

It might have been thought that at last the tragedy had dragged on to
its conclusion. But no; there was a fifth act, a fourth contract, a
fifth design. Paul III. succeeded to Clement VII., and, having seen
the Moses in Michelangelo's workshop, declared that this one statue
was enough for the deceased Pope's tomb. The Duke Francesco Maria
della Rovere died in 1538, and was succeeded by his son, Guidobaldo
II. The new Duke's wife was a granddaughter of Paul III., and this may
have made him amenable to the Pope's influence. At all events, upon
the 20th of August 1542 a final contract was signed, stating that
Michelangelo had been prevented "by just and legitimate impediments
from carrying out" his engagement under date April 29, 1532, releasing
him from the terms of the third deed, and establishing new conditions.
The Moses, finished by the hand of Michelangelo, takes the central
place in this new monument. Five other statues are specified: "to wit,
a Madonna with the child in her arms, which is already finished; a
Sibyl, a Prophet, an Active Life and a Contemplative Life, blocked out
and nearly completed by the said Michelangelo." These four were given
to Raffaello da Montelupo to finish. The reclining portrait-statue of
Julius, which was carved by Maso del Bosco, is not even mentioned in
this contract. But a deed between the Duke's representative and the
craftsmen Montelupo and Urbino exists, in which the latter undertakes
to see that Michelangelo shall retouch the Pope's face.

Thus ended the tragedy of the tomb of Pope Julius II. It is supposed
to have been finally completed in 1545, and was set up where it still
remains uninjured at S. Pietro in Vincoli.


IV

I judged it needful to anticipate the course of events by giving this
brief history of a work begun in 1505, and carried on with so many
hindrances and alterations through forty years of Michelangelo's life.
We shall often have to return to it, since the matter cannot be
lightly dismissed. The tomb of Julius empoisoned Michelangelo's
manhood, hampered his energy, and brought but small if any profit to
his purse. In one way or another it is always cropping up, and may be
said to vex his biographers and the students of his life as much as it
annoyed himself. We may now return to those early days in Rome, when
the project had still a fascination both for the sculptor and his
patron.

The old Basilica of S. Peter on the Vatican is said to have been built
during the reign of Constantine, and to have been consecrated in 324
A.D. It was one of the largest of those Roman buildings, measuring 435
feet in length from the great door to the end of the tribune. A
spacious open square or atrium, surrounded by a cloister-portico, gave
access to the church. This, in the Middle Ages, gained the name of the
Paradiso. A kind of tabernacle, in the centre of the square, protected
the great bronze fir-cone, which was formerly supposed to have crowned
the summit of Hadrian's Mausoleum, the Castle of S. Angelo. Dante, who
saw it in the courtyard of S. Peter's, used it as a standard for his
giant Nimrod. He says--

  _La faccia sua ml parea lunga e grossa,
  Come la pina di San Pietro a Roma.
                                      --(Inf._ xxxi. 58.)

This mother-church of Western Christendom was adorned inside and out
with mosaics in the style of those which may still be seen at Ravenna.
Above the lofty row of columns which flanked the central aisle ran
processions of saints and sacred histories. They led the eye onward to
what was called the Arch of Triumph, separating this portion of the
building from the transept and the tribune. The concave roof of the
tribune itself was decorated with a colossal Christ, enthroned between
S. Peter and S. Paul, surveying the vast spaces of his house: the lord
and master, before whom pilgrims from all parts of Europe came to pay
tribute and to perform acts of homage. The columns were of precious
marbles, stripped from Pagan palaces and temples; and the roof was
tiled with plates of gilded bronze, torn in the age of Heraclius from
the shrine of Venus and of Roma on the Sacred Way.

During the eleven centuries which elapsed between its consecration and
the decree for its destruction, S. Peter's had been gradually enriched
with a series of monuments, inscriptions, statues, frescoes, upon
which were written the annals of successive ages of the Church. Giotto
worked there under Benedict II. in 1340. Pope after Pope was buried
there. In the early period of Renaissance sculpture, Mino da Fiesole,
Pollaiuolo, and Filarete added works in bronze and marble, which blent
the grace of Florentine religious tradition with quaint neo-pagan
mythologies. These treasures, priceless for the historian, the
antiquary, and the artist, were now going to be ruthlessly swept away
at a pontiff's bidding, in order to make room for his haughty and
self-laudatory monument. Whatever may have been the artistic merits of
Michelangelo's original conception for the tomb, the spirit was in no
sense Christian. Those rows of captive Arts and Sciences, those
Victories exulting over prostrate cities, those allegorical colossi
symbolising the mundane virtues of a mighty ruler's character, crowned
by the portrait of the Pope, over whom Heaven rejoiced while Cybele
deplored his loss--all this pomp of power and parade of ingenuity
harmonised but little with the humility of a contrite soul returning
to its Maker and its Judge. The new temple, destined to supersede the
old basilica, embodied an aspect of Latin Christianity which had very
little indeed in common with the piety of the primitive Church. S.
Peter's, as we see it now, represents the majesty of Papal Rome, the
spirit of a secular monarchy in the hands of priests; it is the
visible symbol of that schism between the Teutonic and the Latin
portions of the Western Church which broke out soon after its
foundation, and became irreconcilable before the cross was placed upon
its cupola. It seemed as though in sweeping away the venerable
traditions of eleven hundred years, and replacing Rome's time-honoured
Mother-Church with an edifice bearing the brand-new stamp of hybrid
neo-pagan architecture, the Popes had wished to signalise that rupture
with the past and that atrophy of real religious life which marked the
counter-reformation.

Julius II. has been severely blamed for planning the entire
reconstruction of his cathedral. It must, however, be urged in his
defence that the structure had already, in 1447, been pronounced
insecure. Nicholas V. ordered his architects, Bernardo Rossellini and
Leo Battista Alberti, to prepare plans for its restoration. It is, of
course, impossible for us to say for certain whether the ancient
fabric could have been preserved, or whether its dilapidation had gone
so far as to involve destruction. Bearing in mind the recklessness of
the Renaissance and the passion which the Popes had for engaging in
colossal undertakings, one is inclined to suspect that the unsound
state of the building was made a pretext for beginning a work which
flattered the architectural tastes of Nicholas, but was not absolutely
necessary. However this may have been, foundations for a new tribune
were laid outside the old apse, and the wall rose some feet above the
ground before the Pope's death. Paul II. carried on the building; but
during the pontificates of Sixtus, Innocent, and Alexander it seems to
have been neglected. Meanwhile nothing had been done to injure the
original basilica; and when Julius announced his intention of
levelling it to the ground, his cardinals and bishops entreated him to
refrain from an act so sacrilegious. The Pope was not a man to take
advice or make concessions. Accordingly, turning a deaf ear to these
entreaties, he had plans prepared by Giuliano da San Gallo and
Bramante. Those eventually chosen were furnished by Bramante; and San
Gallo, who had hitherto enjoyed the fullest confidence of Julius, is
said to have left Rome in disgust. For reasons which will afterwards
appear, he could not have done so before the summer months of 1506.

It is not yet the proper time to discuss the building of S. Peter's.
Still, with regard to Bramante's plan, this much may here be said. It
was designed in the form of a Greek cross, surmounted with a huge
circular dome and flanked by two towers. Bramante used to boast that
he meant to raise the Pantheon in the air; and the plan, as preserved
for us by Serlio, shows that the cupola would have been constructed
after that type. Competent judges, however, declare that insuperable
difficulties must have arisen in carrying out this design, while the
piers constructed by Bramante were found in effect to be wholly
insufficient for their purpose. For the aesthetic beauty and the
commodiousness of his building we have the strongest evidence in a
letter written by Michelangelo, who was by no means a partial witness.
"It cannot be denied," he says, "that Bramante's talent as an
architect was equal to that of any one from the times of the ancients
until now. He laid the first plan of S. Peter's, not confused, but
clear and simple, full of light and detached from surrounding
buildings, so that it interfered with no part of the palace. It was
considered a very fine design, and indeed any one can see with his own
eyes now that it is so. All the architects who departed from
Bramante's scheme, as did Antonio da San Gallo, have departed from the
truth." Though Michelangelo gave this unstinted praise to Bramante's
genius as a builder, he blamed him severely both for his want of
honesty as a man, and also for his vandalism in dealing with the
venerable church he had to replace. "Bramante," says Condivi, "was
addicted, as everybody knows, to every kind of pleasure. He spent
enormously, and, though the pension granted him by the Pope was large,
he found it insufficient for his needs. Accordingly he made profit out
of the works committed to his charge, erecting the walls of poor
material, and without regard for the substantial and enduring
qualities which fabrics on so huge a scale demanded. This is apparent
in the buildings at S. Peter's, the Corridore of the Belvedere, the
Convent of San Pietro ad Vincula, and other of his edifices, which
have had to be strengthened and propped up with buttresses and similar
supports in order to prevent them tumbling down." Bramante, during his
residence in Lombardy, developed a method of erecting piers with
rubble enclosed by hewn stone or plaster-covered brickwork. This
enabled an unconscientious builder to furnish bulky architectural
masses, which presented a specious aspect of solidity and looked more
costly than they really were. It had the additional merit of being
easy and rapid in execution. Bramante was thus able to gratify the
whims and caprices of his impatient patron, who desired to see the
works of art he ordered rise like the fabric of Aladdin's lamp before
his very eyes. Michelangelo is said to have exposed the architect's
trickeries to the Pope; what is more, he complained with just and
bitter indignation of the wanton ruthlessness with which Bramante set
about his work of destruction. I will again quote Condivi here, for
the passage seems to have been inspired by the great sculptor's verbal
reminiscences: "The worst was, that while he was pulling down the old
S. Peter's, he dashed those marvellous antique columns to the ground,
without paying the least attention, or caring at all when they were
broken into fragments, although he might have lowered them gently and
preserved their shafts intact. Michelangelo pointed out that it was an
easy thing enough to erect piers by placing brick on brick, but that
to fashion a column like one of these taxed all the resources of art."

On the 18th of April 1506, Julius performed the ceremony of laying the
foundation-stone of the new S. Peter's. The place chosen was the great
sustaining pier of the dome, near which the altar of S. Veronica now
stands. A deep pit had been excavated, into which the aged Pope
descended fearlessly, only shouting to the crowd above that they
should stand back and not endanger the falling in of the earth above
him. Coins and medals were duly deposited in a vase, over which a
ponderous block of marble was lowered, while Julius, bareheaded,
sprinkled the stone with holy water and gave the pontifical
benediction. On the same day he wrote a letter to Henry VII. of
England, informing the King that "by the guidance of our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ he had undertaken to restore the old basilica
which was perishing through age."


V

The terms of cordial intimacy which subsisted between Julius and
Michelangelo at the close of 1505 were destined to be disturbed. The
Pope intermitted his visits to the sculptor's workshop, and began to
take but little interest in the monument. Condivi directly ascribes
this coldness to the intrigues of Bramante, who whispered into the
Pontiff's ear that it was ill-omened for a man to construct his own
tomb in his lifetime. It is not at all improbable that he said
something of the sort, and Bramante was certainly no good friend to
Michelangelo. A manoeuvring and managing individual, entirely
unscrupulous in his choice of means, condescending to flattery and
lies, he strove to stand as patron between the Pope and subordinate
craftsmen. Michelangelo had come to Rome under San Gallo's influence,
and Bramante had just succeeded in winning the commission to rebuild
S. Peter's over his rival's head. It was important for him to break up
San Gallo's party, among whom the sincere and uncompromising
Michelangelo threatened to be very formidable. The jealousy which he
felt for the man was envenomed by a fear lest he should speak the
truth about his own dishonesty. To discredit Michelangelo with the
Pope, and, if possible, to drive him out of Rome, was therefore
Bramante's interest: more particularly as his own nephew, Raffaello da
Urbino, had now made up his mind to join him there. We shall see that
he succeeded in expelling both San Gallo and Buonarroti during the
course of 1506, and that in their absence he reigned, together with
Raffaello, almost alone in the art-circles of the Eternal City.

I see no reason, therefore, to discredit the story told by Condivi and
Vasari regarding the Pope's growing want of interest in his tomb.
Michelangelo himself, writing from Rome in 1542, thirty-six years
after these events, says that "all the dissensions between Pope Julius
and me arose from the envy of Bramante and Raffaello da Urbino, and
this was the cause of my not finishing the tomb in his lifetime. They
wanted to ruin me. Raffaello indeed had good reason; for all he had of
art he owed to me." But, while we are justified in attributing much to
Bramante's intrigues, it must be remembered that the Pope at this time
was absorbed in his plans for conquering Bologna. Overwhelmed with
business and anxious about money, he could not have had much leisure
to converse with sculptors.

Michelangelo was still in Rome at the end of January. On the 31st of
that month he wrote to his father, complaining that the marbles did
not arrive quickly enough, and that he had to keep Julius in good
humour with promises. At the same time he begged Lodovico to pack up
all his drawings, and to send them, well secured against bad weather,
by the hand of a carrier. It is obvious that he had no thoughts of
leaving Rome, and that the Pope was still eager about the monument.
Early in the spring he assisted at the discovery of the Laocoon.
Francesco, the son of Giuliano da San Gallo, describes how
Michelangelo was almost always at his father's house; and coming there
one day, he went, at the architect's invitation, down to the ruins of
the Palace of Titus. "We set off, all three together; I on my father's
shoulders. When we descended into the place where the statue lay, my
father exclaimed at once, 'That is the Laocoon, of which Pliny
speaks.' The opening was enlarged, so that it could be taken out; and
after we had sufficiently admired it, we went home to breakfast."
Julius bought the marble for 500 crowns, and had it placed in the
Belvedere of the Vatican. Scholars praised it in Latin lines of
greater or lesser merit, Sadoleto writing even a fine poem; and
Michelangelo is said, but without trustworthy authority, to have
assisted in its restoration.

This is the last glimpse we have of Michelangelo before his flight
from Rome. Under what circumstances he suddenly departed may be
related in the words of a letter addressed by him to Giuliano da San
Gallo in Rome upon the 2nd of May 1506, after his return to Florence.

"Giuliano,--Your letter informs me that the Pope was angry at my
departure, as also that his Holiness is inclined to proceed with the
works agreed upon between us, and that I may return and not be anxious
about anything.

"About my leaving Rome, it is a fact that on Holy Saturday I heard the
Pope, in conversation with a jeweller at table and with the Master of
Ceremonies, say that he did not mean to spend a farthing more on
stones, small or great. This caused me no little astonishment.
However, before I left his presence, I asked for part of the money
needed to carry on the work. His Holiness told me to return on Monday.
I did so, and on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday, as the
Pope saw. At last, on Friday morning, I was sent away, or plainly
turned out of doors. The man who did this said he knew me, but that
such were his orders. I, who had heard the Pope's words on Saturday,
and now perceived their result in deeds, was utterly cast down. This
was not, however, quite the only reason of my departure; there was
something else, which I do not wish to communicate; enough that it
made me think that, if I stayed in Rome, that city would be my tomb
before it was the Pope's. And this was the cause of my sudden
departure.

"Now you write to me at the Pope's instance. So I beg you to read him
this letter, and inform his Holiness that I am even more than ever
disposed to carry out the work."

Further details may be added from subsequent letters of Michelangelo.
Writing in January 1524 to his friend Giovanni Francesco Fattucci, he
says: "When I had finished paying for the transport of these marbles,
and all the money was spent, I furnished the house I had upon the
Piazza di S. Pietro with beds and utensils at my own expense, trusting
to the commission of the tomb, and sent for workmen from Florence, who
are still alive, and paid them in advance out of my own purse.
Meanwhile Pope Julius changed his mind about the tomb, and would not
have it made. Not knowing this, I applied to him for money, and was
expelled from the chamber. Enraged at such an insult, I left Rome on
the moment. The things with which my house was stocked went to the
dogs. The marbles I had brought to Rome lay till the date of Leo's
creation on the Piazza, and both lots were injured and pillaged."

Again, a letter of October 1542, addressed to some prelate, contains
further particulars. We learn he was so short of money that he had to
borrow about 200 ducats from his friend Baldassare Balducci at the
bank of Jacopo Gallo. The episode at the Vatican and the flight to
Poggibonsi are related thus:--

"To continue my history of the tomb of Julius: I say that when he
changed his mind about building it in his lifetime, some ship-loads of
marble came to the Ripa, which I had ordered a short while before from
Carrara; and as I could not get money from the Pope to pay the
freightage, I had to borrow 150 or 200 ducats from Baldassare
Balducci, that is, from the bank of Jacopo Gallo. At the same time
workmen came from Florence, some of whom are still alive; and I
furnished the house which Julius gave me behind S. Caterina with beds
and other furniture for the men, and what was wanted for the work of
the tomb. All this being done without money, I was greatly
embarrassed. Accordingly, I urged the Pope with all my power to go
forward with the business, and he had me turned away by a groom one
morning when I came to speak upon the matter. A Lucchese bishop,
seeing this, said to the groom: 'Do you not know who that man is?' The
groom replied to me: 'Excuse me, gentleman; I have orders to do this.'
I went home, and wrote as follows to the Pope: 'Most blessed Father, I
have been turned out of the palace to-day by your orders; wherefore I
give you notice that from this time forward, if you want me, you must
look for me elsewhere than at Rome.' I sent this letter to Messer
Agostino, the steward, to give it to the Pope. Then I sent for Cosimo,
a carpenter, who lived with me and looked after household matters, and
a stone-heaver, who is still alive, and said to them: 'Go for a Jew,
and sell everything in the house, and come to Florence.' I went, took
the post, and travelled towards Florence. The Pope, when he had read
my letter, sent five horsemen after me, who reached me at Poggibonsi
about three hours after nightfall, and gave me a letter from the Pope
to this effect: 'When you have seen these present, come back at once
to Rome, under penalty of our displeasure.' The horsemen were anxious
I should answer, in order to prove that they had overtaken me. I
replied then to the Pope, that if he would perform the conditions he
was under with regard to me, I would return; but otherwise he must not
expect to have me again. Later on, while I was at Florence, Julius
sent three briefs to the Signory. At last the latter sent for me and
said: 'We do not want to go to war with Pope Julius because of you.
You must return; and if you do so, we will write you letters of such
authority that, should he do you harm, he will be doing it to this
Signory.' Accordingly I took the letters, and went back to the Pope,
and what followed would be long to tell."

These passages from Michelangelo's correspondence confirm Condivi's
narrative of the flight from Rome, showing that he had gathered his
information from the sculptor's lips. Condivi differs only in making
Michelangelo send a verbal message, and not a written letter, to the
Pope. "Enraged by this repulse, he exclaimed to the groom: 'Tell the
Pope that if henceforth he wants me, he must look for me elsewhere.'"

It is worth observing that only the first of these letters, written
shortly after the event, and intended for the Pope's ear, contains a
hint of Michelangelo's dread of personal violence if he remained in
Rome. His words seem to point at poison or the dagger. Cellini's
autobiography yields sufficient proof that such fears were not
unjustified by practical experience; and Bramante, though he preferred
to work by treachery of tongue, may have commanded the services of
assassins, _uomini arditi e facinorosi_, as they were somewhat
euphemistically called. At any rate, it is clear that Michelangelo's
precipitate departure and vehement refusal to return were occasioned
by more pungent motives than the Pope's frigidity. This has to be
noticed, because we learn from several incidents of the same kind in
the master's life that he was constitutionally subject to sudden
fancies and fears of imminent danger to his person from an enemy. He
had already quitted Bologna in haste from dread of assassination or
maltreatment at the hands of native sculptors.


VI

The negotiations which passed between the Pope and the Signory of
Florence about what may be called the extradition of Michelangelo form
a curious episode in his biography, throwing into powerful relief the
importance he had already acquired among the princes of Italy. I
propose to leave these for the commencement of my next chapter, and to
conclude the present with an account of his occupations during the
summer months at Florence.

Signor Gotti says that he passed three months away from Julius in his
native city. Considering that he arrived before the end of April, and
reached Bologna at the end of November 1506, we have the right to
estimate this residence at about seven months. A letter written to him
from Rome on the 4th of August shows that he had not then left
Florence upon any intermediate journey of importance. Therefore there
is every reason to suppose that he enjoyed a period of half a year of
leisure, which he devoted to finishing his Cartoon for the Battle of
Pisa.

It had been commenced, as we have seen, in a workshop at the Spedale
dei Tintori. When he went to Bologna in the autumn, it was left,
exposed presumably to public view, in the Sala del Papa at S. Maria
Novella. It had therefore been completed; but it does not appear that
Michelangelo had commenced his fresco in the Sala del Gran Consiglio.

Lionardo began to paint his Battle of the Standard in March 1505. The
work advanced rapidly; but the method he adopted, which consisted in
applying oil colours to a fat composition laid thickly on the wall,
caused the ruin of his picture. He is said to have wished to reproduce
the encaustic process of the ancients, and lighted fires to harden the
surface of the fresco. This melted the wax in the lower portions of
the paste, and made the colours run. At any rate, no traces of the
painting now remain in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, the walls of which
are covered by the mechanical and frigid brush-work of Vasari. It has
even been suggested that Vasari knew more about the disappearance of
his predecessor's masterpiece than he has chosen to relate. Lionardo's
Cartoon has also disappeared, and we know the Battle of Anghiari only
by Edelinck's engraving from a drawing of Rubens, and by some doubtful
sketches.

The same fate was in store for Michelangelo's Cartoon. All that
remains to us of that great work is the chiaroscuro transcript at
Holkham, a sketch for the whole composition in the Albertina Gallery
at Vienna, which differs in some important details from the Holkham
group, several interesting pen-and-chalk drawings by Michelangelo's
own hand, also in the Albertina Collection, and a line-engraving by
Marcantonio Raimondi, commonly known as "Les Grimpeurs."

We do not know at what exact time Michelangelo finished his Cartoon in
1506. He left it, says Condivi, in the Sala del Papa. Afterwards it
must have been transferred to the Sala del Gran Consiglio; for
Albertini, in his _Memoriale_, or Guide-Book to Florence, printed in
1510, speaks of both "the works of Lionardo da Vinci and the designs
of Michelangelo" as then existing in that hall. Vasari asserts that it
was taken to the house of the Medici, and placed in the great upper
hall, but gives no date. This may have taken place on the return of
the princely family in 1512. Cellini confirms this view, since he
declares that when he was copying the Cartoon, which could hardly have
happened before 1513, the Battle of Pisa was at the Palace of the
Medici, and the Battle of Anghiari at the Sala del Papa. The way in
which it finally disappeared is involved in some obscurity, owing to
Vasari's spite and mendacity. In the first, or 1550, edition of the
"Lives of the Painters," he wrote as follows: "Having become a regular
object of study to artists, the Cartoon was carried to the house of
the Medici, into the great upper hall; and this was the reason that it
came with too little safeguard into the hands of those said artists:
inasmuch as, during the illness of the Duke Giuliano, when no one
attended to such matters, it was torn in pieces by them and scattered
abroad, so that fragments may be found in many places, as is proved by
those existing now in the house of Uberto Strozzi, a gentleman of
Mantua, who holds them in great respect." When Vasari published his
second edition, in 1568, he repeated this story of the destruction of
the Cartoon, but with a very significant alteration. Instead of saying
"it was torn in pieces _by them_" he now printed "it was torn in
pieces, _as hath been told elsewhere_." Now Bandinelli, Vasari's
mortal enemy, and the scapegoat for all the sins of his generation
among artists, died in 1559, and Vasari felt that he might safely
defame his memory. Accordingly he introduced a Life of Bandinelli into
the second edition of his work, containing the following passage:
"Baccio was in the habit of frequenting the place where the Cartoon
stood more than any other artists, and had in his possession a false
key; what follows happened at the time when Piero Soderini was deposed
in 1512, and the Medici returned. Well, then, while the palace was in
tumult and confusion through this revolution, Baccio went alone, and
tore the Cartoon into a thousand fragments. Why he did so was not
known; but some surmised that he wanted to keep certain pieces of it
by him for his own use; some, that he wished to deprive young men of
its advantages in study; some, that he was moved by affection for
Lionardo da Vinci, who suffered much in reputation by this design;
some, perhaps with sharper intuition, believed that the hatred he bore
to Michelangelo inspired him to commit the act. The loss of the
Cartoon to the city was no slight one, and Baccio deserved the blame
he got, for everybody called him envious and spiteful." This second
version stands in glaring contradiction to the first, both as regards
the date and the place where the Cartoon was destroyed. It does not, I
think, deserve credence, for Cellini, who was a boy of twelve in 1512,
could hardly have drawn from it before that date; and if Bandinelli
was so notorious for his malignant vandalism as Vasari asserts, it is
most improbable that Cellini, while speaking of the Cartoon in
connection with Torrigiano, should not have taken the opportunity to
cast a stone at the man whom he detested more than any one in
Florence. Moreover, if Bandinelli had wanted to destroy the Cartoon
for any of the reasons above assigned to him, he would not have
dispersed fragments to be treasured up with reverence. At the close of
this tedious summary I ought to add that Condivi expressly states: "I
do not know by what ill-fortune it subsequently came to ruin." He
adds, however, that many of the pieces were found about in various
places, and that all of them were preserved like sacred objects. We
have, then, every reason to believe that the story told in Vasari's
first edition is the literal truth. Copyists and engravers used their
opportunity, when the palace of the Medici was thrown into disorder by
the severe illness of the Duke of Nemours, to take away portions of
Michelangelo's Cartoon for their own use in 1516.

Of the Cartoon and its great reputation, Cellini gives us this
account: "Michelangelo portrayed a number of foot-soldiers, who, the
season being summer, had gone to bathe in the Arno. He drew them at
the very moment the alarm is sounded, and the men all naked run to
arms; so splendid is their action, that nothing survives of ancient or
of modern art, which touches the same lofty point of excellence; and,
as I have already said, the design of the great Lionardo was itself
most admirably beautiful. These two Cartoons stood, one in the palace
of the Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope. So long as they
remained intact, they were the school of the world. Though the divine
Michelangelo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope Julius
(the Sistine), he never rose halfway to the same pitch of power; his
genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies."
Allowing for some exaggeration due to enthusiasm for things enjoyed in
early youth, this is a very remarkable statement. Cellini knew the
frescoes of the Sistine well, yet he maintains that they were inferior
in power and beauty to the Battle of Pisa. It seems hardly credible;
but, if we believe it, the legend of Michelangelo's being unable to
execute his own designs for the vault of that chapel falls to the
ground.


VII

The great Cartoon has become less even than a memory, and so, perhaps,
we ought to leave it in the limbo of things inchoate and
unaccomplished. But this it was not, most emphatically. Decidedly it
had its day, lived and sowed seeds for good or evil through its period
of brief existence: so many painters of the grand style took their
note from it; it did so much to introduce the last phase of Italian
art, the phase of efflorescence, the phase deplored by critics steeped
in mediaeval feeling. To recapture something of its potency from the
description of contemporaries is therefore our plain duty, and for
this we must have recourse to Vasari's text. He says: "Michelangelo
filled his canvas with nude men, who, bathing at the time of summer
heat in Arno, were suddenly called to arms, the enemy assailing them.
The soldiers swarmed up from the river to resume their clothes; and
here you could behold depicted by the master's godlike hands one
hurrying to clasp his limbs in steel and give assistance to his
comrades, another buckling on the cuirass, and many seizing this or
that weapon, with cavalry in squadrons giving the attack. Among the
multitude of figures, there was an old man, who wore upon his head an
ivy wreath for shade. Seated on the ground, in act to draw his hose
up, he was hampered by the wetness of his legs; and while he heard the
clamour of the soldiers, the cries, the rumbling of the drums, he
pulled with all his might; all the muscles and sinews of his body were
seen in strain; and what was more, the contortion of his mouth showed
what agony of haste he suffered, and how his whole frame laboured to
the toe-tips. Then there were drummers and men with flying garments,
who ran stark naked toward the fray. Strange postures too: this fellow
upright, that man kneeling, or bent down, or on the point of rising;
all in the air foreshortened with full conquest over every difficulty.
In addition, you discovered groups of figures sketched in various
methods, some outlined with charcoal, some etched with strokes, some
shadowed with the stump, some relieved in white-lead; the master
having sought to prove his empire over all materials of
draughtsmanship. The craftsmen of design remained therewith astonished
and dumbfounded, recognising the furthest reaches of their art
revealed to them by this unrivalled masterpiece. Those who examined
the forms I have described, painters who inspected and compared them
with works hardly less divine, affirm that never in the history of
human achievement was any product of a man's brain seen like to them
in mere supremacy. And certainly we have the right to believe this;
for when the Cartoon was finished, and carried to the Hall of the
Pope, amid the acclamation of all artists, and to the exceeding fame
of Michelangelo, the students who made drawings from it, as happened
with foreigners and natives through many years in Florence, became men
of mark in several branches. This is obvious, for Aristotele da San
Gallo worked there, as did Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, Raffaello Sanzio da
Urbino, Francesco Granaccio, Baccio Bandinelli, and Alonso Berughetta,
the Spaniard; they were followed by Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio,
Jacopo Sansovino, Rosso, Maturino, Lorenzetto, Tribolo, then a boy,
Jacopo da Pontormo, and Pierin del Vaga: all of them first-rate
masters of the Florentine school."

It does not appear from this that Vasari pretended to have seen the
great Cartoon. Born in 1512, he could not indeed have done so; but
there breathes through his description a gust of enthusiasm, an
afflatus of concurrent witnesses to its surpassing grandeur. Some of
the details raise a suspicion that Vasari had before his eyes the
transcript _en grisaille_ which he says was made by Aristotele da San
Gallo, and also the engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi. The prominence
given to the ivy-crowned old soldier troubled by his hose confirms the
accuracy of the Holkham picture and the Albertina drawing. But none of
these partial transcripts left to us convey that sense of multitude,
space, and varied action which Vasari's words impress on the
imagination. The fullest, that at Holkham, contains nineteen figures,
and these are schematically arranged in three planes, with outlying
subjects in foreground and background. Reduced in scale, and treated
with the arid touch of a feeble craftsman, the linear composition
suggests no large aesthetic charm. It is simply a bas-relief of
carefully selected attitudes and vigorously studied movements
--nineteen men, more or less unclothed, put together with the
scientific view of illustrating possibilities and conquering
difficulties in postures of the adult male body. The extraordinary
effect, as of something superhuman, produced by the Cartoon upon
contemporaries, and preserved for us in Cellini's and Vasari's
narratives, must then have been due to unexampled qualities of
strength in conception, draughtsmanship, and execution. It stung to
the quick an age of artists who had abandoned the representation of
religious sentiment and poetical feeling for technical triumphs and
masterly solutions of mechanical problems in the treatment of the nude
figure. We all know how much more than this Michelangelo had in him to
give, and how unjust it would be to judge a masterpiece from his hand
by the miserable relics now at our disposal. Still I cannot refrain
from thinking that the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa, taken up by him
as a field for the display of his ability, must, by its very
brilliancy, have accelerated the ruin of Italian art. Cellini, we saw,
placed it above the frescoes of the Sistine. In force, veracity, and
realism it may possibly have been superior to those sublime
productions. Everything we know about the growth of Michelangelo's
genius leads us to suppose that he departed gradually but surely from
the path of Nature. He came, however, to use what he had learned from
Nature as means for the expression of soul-stimulating thoughts. This,
the finest feature of his genius, no artist of the age was capable of
adequately comprehending. Accordingly, they agreed in extolling a
cartoon which displayed his faculty of dealing with _un bel corpo
ignudo_ as the climax of his powers.

As might be expected, there was no landscape in the Cartoon.
Michelangelo handled his subject wholly from the point of view of
sculpture. A broken bank and a retreating platform, a few rocks in the
distance and a few waved lines in the foreground, showed that the
naked men were by a river. Michelangelo's unrelenting contempt for the
many-formed and many-coloured stage on which we live and move--his
steady determination to treat men and women as nudities posed in the
void, with just enough of solid substance beneath their feet to make
their attitudes intelligible--is a point which must over and over
again be insisted on. In the psychology of the master, regarded from
any side one likes to take, this constitutes his leading
characteristic. It gives the key, not only to his talent as an artist,
but also to his temperament as a man.

Marcantonio seems to have felt and resented the aridity of
composition, the isolation of plastic form, the tyranny of anatomical
science, which even the most sympathetic of us feel in Michelangelo.
This master's engraving of three lovely nudes, the most charming
memento preserved to us from the Cartoon, introduces a landscape of
grove and farm, field and distant hill, lending suavity to the
muscular male body and restoring it to its proper place among the
sinuous lines and broken curves of Nature. That the landscape was
adapted from a copper-plate of Lucas van Leyden signifies nothing. It
serves the soothing purpose which sensitive nerves, irritated by
Michelangelo's aloofness from all else but thought and naked flesh and
posture, gratefully acknowledge.

While Michelangelo was finishing his Cartoon, Lionardo da Vinci was
painting his fresco. Circumstances may have brought the two chiefs of
Italian art frequently together in the streets of Florence. There
exists an anecdote of one encounter, which, though it rests upon the
credit of an anonymous writer, and does not reflect a pleasing light
upon the hero of this biography, cannot be neglected. "Lionardo,"
writes our authority, "was a man of fair presence, well-proportioned,
gracefully endowed, and of fine aspect. He wore a tunic of
rose-colour, falling to his knees; for at that time it was the fashion
to carry garments of some length; and down to the middle of his breast
there flowed a beard beautifully curled and well arranged. Walking
with a friend near S. Trinità, where a company of honest folk were
gathered, and talk was going on about some passage from Dante, they
called to Lionardo, and begged him to explain its meaning. It so
happened that just at this moment Michelangelo went by, and, being
hailed by one of them, Lionardo answered: 'There goes Michelangelo; he
will interpret the verses you require.' Whereupon Michelangelo, who
thought he spoke in this way to make fun of him, replied in anger:
'Explain them yourself, you who made the model of a horse to cast in
bronze, and could not cast it, and to your shame left it in the
lurch.' With these words, he turned his back to the group, and went
his way. Lionardo remained standing there, red in the face for the
reproach cast at him; and Michelangelo, not satisfied, but wanting to
sting him to the quick, added: 'And those Milanese capons believed in
your ability to do it!'"

We can only take anecdotes for what they are worth, and that may
perhaps be considered slight when they are anonymous. This anecdote,
however, in the original Florentine diction, although it betrays a
partiality for Lionardo, bears the aspect of truth to fact. Moreover,
even Michelangelo's admirers are bound to acknowledge that he had a
rasping tongue, and was not incapable of showing his bad temper by
rudeness. From the period of his boyhood, when Torrigiano smashed his
nose, down to the last years of his life in Rome, when he abused his
nephew Lionardo and hurt the feelings of his best and oldest friends,
he discovered signs of a highly nervous and fretful temperament. It
must be admitted that the dominant qualities of nobility and
generosity in his nature were alloyed by suspicion bordering on
littleness, and by petulant yieldings to the irritation of the moment
which are incompatible with the calm of an Olympian genius.



CHAPTER V


I

While Michelangelo was living and working at Florence, Bramante had
full opportunity to poison the Pope's mind in Rome. It is commonly
believed, on the faith of a sentence in Condivi, that Bramante, when
he dissuaded Julius from building the tomb in his own lifetime,
suggested the painting of the Sistine Chapel. We are told that he
proposed Michelangelo for this work, hoping his genius would be
hampered by a task for which he was not fitted. There are many
improbabilities in this story; not the least being our certainty that
the fame of the Cartoon must have reached Bramante before
Michelangelo's arrival in the first months of 1505. But the Cartoon
did not prove that Buonarroti was a practical wall-painter or
colourist; and we have reason to believe that Julius had himself
conceived the notion of intrusting the Sistine to his sculptor. A good
friend of Michelangelo, Pietro Rosselli, wrote this letter on the
subject, May 6, 1506: "Last Saturday evening, when the Pope was at
supper, I showed him some designs which Bramante and I had to test;
so, after supper, when I had displayed them, he called for Bramante,
and said: 'San Gallo is going to Florence to-morrow, and will bring
Michelangelo back with him.' Bramante answered: 'Holy Father, he will
not be able to do anything of the kind. I have conversed much with
Michelangelo, and he has often told me that he would not undertake the
chapel, which you wanted to put upon him; and that, you
notwithstanding, he meant only to apply himself to sculpture, and
would have nothing to do with painting.' To this he added: 'Holy
Father, I do not think he has the courage to attempt the work, because
he has small experience in painting figures, and these will be raised
high above the line of vision, and in foreshortening (i.e., because of
the vault). That is something different from painting on the ground.'
The Pope replied: 'If he does not come, he will do me wrong; and so I
think that he is sure to return.' Upon this I up and gave the man a
sound rating in the Pope's presence, and spoke as I believe you would
have spoken for me; and for the time he was struck dumb, as though he
felt that he had made a mistake in talking as he did. I proceeded as
follows: 'Holy Father, that man never exchanged a word with
Michelangelo, and if what he has just said is the truth, I beg you to
cut my head off, for he never spoke to Michelangelo; also I feel sure
that he is certain to return, if your Holiness requires it.'"

This altercation throws doubt on the statement that Bramante
originally suggested Michelangelo as painter of the Sistine. He could
hardly have turned round against his own recommendation; and,
moreover, it is likely that he would have wished to keep so great a
work in the hands of his own set, Raffaello, Peruzzi, Sodoma, and
others.

Meanwhile, Michelangelo's friends in Rome wrote, encouraging him to
come back. They clearly thought that he was hazarding both profit and
honour if he stayed away. But Michelangelo, whether the constitutional
timidity of which I have spoken, or other reasons damped his courage,
felt that he could not trust to the Pope's mercies. What effect San
Gallo may have had upon him, supposing this architect arrived in
Florence at the middle of May, can only be conjectured. The fact
remains that he continued stubborn for a time. In the lengthy
autobiographical letter written to some prelate in 1542, Michelangelo
relates what followed: "Later on, while I was at Florence, Julius sent
three briefs to the Signory. At last the latter sent for me and said:
'We do not want to go to war with Pope Julius because of you. You must
return; and if you do so, we will write you letters of such authority
that, should he do you harm, he will be doing it to this Signory.'
Accordingly I took the letters, and went back to the Pope."

Condivi gives a graphic account of the transaction which ensued.
"During the months he stayed in Florence three papal briefs were sent
to the Signory, full of threats, commanding that he should be sent
back by fair means or by force. Piero Soderini, who was Gonfalonier
for life at that time, had sent him against his own inclination to
Rome when Julius first asked for him. Accordingly, when the first of
these briefs arrived, he did not compel Michelangelo to go, trusting
that the Pope's anger would calm down. But when the second and the
third were sent, he called Michelangelo and said: 'You have tried a
bout with the Pope on which the King of France would not have
ventured; therefore you must not go on letting yourself be prayed for.
We do not wish to go to war on your account with him, and put our
state in peril. Make your mind up to return.' Michelangelo, seeing
himself brought to this pass, and still fearing the anger of the Pope,
bethought him of taking refuge in the East. The Sultan indeed besought
him with most liberal promises, through the means of certain
Franciscan friars, to come and construct a bridge from Constantinople
to Pera, and to execute other great works. When the Gonfalonier got
wind of this intention he sent for Michelangelo and used these
arguments to dissuade him: 'It were better to choose death with the
Pope than to keep in life by going to the Turk. Nevertheless, there is
no fear of such an ending; for the Pope is well disposed, and sends
for you because he loves you, not to do you harm. If you are afraid,
the Signory will send you with the title of ambassador; forasmuch as
public personages are never treated with violence, since this would be
done to those who send them.'"

We only possess one brief from Julius to the Signory of Florence. It
is dated Rome, July 8, 1506, and contains this passage: "Michelangelo
the sculptor, who left us without reason, and in mere caprice, is
afraid, as we are informed, of returning, though we for our part are
not angry with him, knowing the humours of such men of genius. In
order, then, that he may lay aside all anxiety, we rely on your
loyalty to convince him in our name, that if he returns to us, he
shall be uninjured and unhurt, retaining our apostolic favour in the
same measure as he formerly enjoyed it." The date, July 8, is
important in this episode of Michelangelo's life. Soderini sent back
an answer to the Pope's brief within a few days, affirming that
"Michelangelo the sculptor is so terrified that, notwithstanding the
promise of his Holiness, it will be necessary for the Cardinal of
Pavia to write a letter signed by his own hand to us, guaranteeing his
safety and immunity. We have done, and are doing, all we can to make
him go back; assuring your Lordship that, unless he is gently handled,
he will quit Florence, as he has already twice wanted to do." This
letter is followed by another addressed to the Cardinal of Volterra
under date July 28. Soderini repeats that Michelangelo will not budge,
because he has as yet received no definite safe-conduct. It appears
that in the course of August the negotiations had advanced to a point
at which Michelangelo was willing to return. On the last day of the
month the Signory drafted a letter to the Cardinal of Pavia in which
they say that "Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, citizen of Florence,
and greatly loved by us, will exhibit these letters present, having at
last been persuaded to repose confidence in his Holiness." They add
that he is coming in good spirits and with good-will. Something may
have happened to renew his terror, for this despatch was not
delivered, and nothing more is heard of the transaction till toward
the close of November. It is probable, however, that Soderini suddenly
discovered how little Michelangelo was likely to be wanted; Julius, on
the 27th of August, having started on what appeared to be his mad
campaign against Perugia and Bologna. On the 21st of November
following the Cardinal of Pavia sent an autograph letter from Bologna
to the Signory, urgently requesting that they would despatch
Michelangelo immediately to that town, inasmuch as the Pope was
impatient for his arrival, and wanted to employ him on important
works. Six days later, November 27, Soderini writes two letters, one
to the Cardinal of Pavia and one to the Cardinal of Volterra, which
finally conclude the whole business. The epistle to Volterra begins
thus: "The bearer of these present will be Michelangelo, the sculptor,
whom we send to please and satisfy his Holiness. We certify that he is
an excellent young man, and in his own art without peer in Italy,
perhaps also in the universe. We cannot recommend him more
emphatically. His nature is such, that with good words and kindness,
if these are given him, he will do everything; one has to show him
love and treat him kindly, and he will perform things which will make
the whole world wonder." The letter to Pavia is written more
familiarly, reading like a private introduction. In both of them
Soderini enhances the service he is rendering the Pope by alluding to
the magnificent design for the Battle of Pisa which Michelangelo must
leave unfinished.

Before describing his reception at Bologna, it may be well to quote
two sonnets here which throw an interesting light upon Michelangelo's
personal feeling for Julius and his sense of the corruption of the
Roman Curia. The first may well have been written during this
residence at Florence; and the autograph of the second has these
curious words added at the foot of the page: "_Vostro Michelagniolo_,
in Turchia." Rome itself, the Sacred City, has become a land of
infidels, and Michelangelo, whose thoughts are turned to the Levant,
implies that he would find himself no worse off with the Sultan than
the Pope.

  _My Lord! If ever ancient saw spake sooth,
    Hear this which saith: Who can doth never will.
    Lo, thou hast lent thine ear to fables still.
    Rewarding those who hate the name of truth.
  I am thy drudge, and have been from my youth--
    Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill;
    Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no ill:
    The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth.
  Once 'twas my hope to raise me by thy height;
    But 'tis the balance and the powerful sword
    Of Justice, not false Echo, that we need.
  Heaven, as it seems, plants virtue in despite
    Here on the earth, if this be our reward--
    To seek for fruit on trees too dry to breed.

  Here helms and swords are made of chalices:
    The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart:
    His cross and thorns are spears and shields; and short
    Must be the time ere even His patience cease._
  _Nay, let Him come no more to raise the fees.
    Of this foul sacrilege beyond, report:
    For Rome still flays and sells Him at the court,
    Where paths are closed, to virtue's fair increase,
  Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure,
    Seeing that work and gain are gone; while he
    Who wears the robe, is my Medusa still.
  God welcomes poverty perchance with pleasure:
    But of that better life what hope have we,
    When the blessed banner leads to nought but ill?_

While Michelangelo was planning frescoes and venting his bile in
sonnets, the fiery Pope had started on his perilous career of
conquest. He called the Cardinals together, and informed them that he
meant to free the cities of Perugia and Bologna from their tyrants.
God, he said, would protect His Church; he could rely on the support
of France and Florence. Other Popes had stirred up wars and used the
services of generals; he meant to take the field in person. Louis XII.
is reported to have jeered among his courtiers at the notion of a
high-priest riding to the wars. A few days afterwards, on the 27th of
August, the Pope left Rome attended by twenty-four cardinals and 500
men-at-arms. He had previously secured the neutrality of Venice and a
promise of troops from the French court. When Julius reached Orvieto,
he was met by Gianpaolo Baglioni, the bloody and licentious despot of
Perugia. Notwithstanding Baglioni knew that Julius was coming to
assert his supremacy, and notwithstanding the Pope knew that this
might drive to desperation a man so violent and stained with crime as
Baglioni, they rode together to Perugia, where Gianpaolo paid homage
and supplied his haughty guest with soldiers. The rashness of this act
of Julius sent a thrill of admiration throughout Italy, stirring that
sense of _terribilità_ which fascinated the imagination of the
Renaissance. Machiavelli, commenting upon the action of the Baglioni,
remarks that the event proved how difficult it is for a man to be
perfectly and scientifically wicked. Gianpaolo, he says, murdered his
relations, oppressed his subjects, and boasted of being a father by
his sister; yet, when he got his worst enemy into his clutches, he had
not the spirit to be magnificently criminal, and murder or imprison
Julius. From Perugia the Pope crossed the Apennines, and found himself
at Imola upon the 20th of October. There he received news that the
French governor of Milan, at the order of his king, was about to send
him a reinforcement of 600 lances and 3000 foot-soldiers. This
announcement, while it cheered the heart of Julius, struck terror into
the Bentivogli, masters of Bologna. They left their city and took
refuge in Milan, while the people of Bologna sent envoys to the Pope's
camp, surrendering their town and themselves to his apostolic
clemency. On the 11th of November, S. Martin's day, Giuliano della
Rovere made his triumphal entry into Bologna, having restored two
wealthy provinces to the states of the Church by a stroke of sheer
audacity, unparalleled in the history of any previous pontiff. Ten
days afterwards we find him again renewing negotiations with the
Signory for the extradition of Michelangelo.


II

"Arriving then one morning at Bologna, and going to hear Mass at S.
Petronio, there met him the Pope's grooms of the stable, who
immediately recognised him, and brought him into the presence of his
Holiness, then at table in the Palace of the Sixteen. When the Pope
beheld him, his face clouded with anger, and he cried: 'It was your
duty to come to seek us, and you have waited till we came to seek you;
meaning thereby that his Holiness having travelled to Bologna, which
is much nearer to Florence than Rome, he had come to find him out.
Michelangelo knelt, and prayed for pardon in a loud voice, pleading in
his excuse that he had not erred through forwardness, but through
great distress of mind, having been unable to endure the expulsion he
received. The Pope remained holding his head low and answering
nothing, evidently much agitated; when a certain prelate, sent by
Cardinal Soderini to put in a good word for Michelangelo, came forward
and said: 'Your Holiness might overlook his fault; he did wrong
through ignorance: these painters, outside their art, are all like
this.' Thereupon the Pope answered in a fury: 'It is you, not I, who
are insulting him. It is you, not he, who are the ignoramus and the
rascal. Get hence out of my sight, and bad luck to you!' When the
fellow did not move, he was cast forth by the servants, as
Michelangelo used to relate, with good round kicks and thumpings. So
the Pope, having spent the surplus of his bile upon the bishop, took
Michelangelo apart and pardoned him. Not long afterwards he sent for
him and said: 'I wish you to make my statue on a large scale in
bronze. I mean to place it on the façade of San Petronio.' When he
went to Rome in course of time, he left 1000 ducats at the bank of
Messer Antonmaria da Lignano for this purpose. But before he did so
Michelangelo had made the clay model. Being in some doubt how to
manage the left hand, after making the Pope give the benediction with
the right, he asked Julius, who had come to see the statue, if he
would like it to hold a book. 'What book?' replied he: 'a sword! I
know nothing about letters, not I.' Jesting then about the right hand,
which was vehement in action, he said with a smile to Michelangelo:
'That statue of yours, is it blessing or cursing?' To which the
sculptor replied: 'Holy Father, it is threatening this people of
Bologna if they are not prudent.'"

Michelangelo's letter to Fattucci confirms Condivi's narrative. "When
Pope Julius went to Bologna the first time, I was forced to go there
with a rope round my neck to beg his pardon. He ordered me to make his
portrait in bronze, sitting, about seven cubits (14 feet) in height.
When he asked what it would cost, I answered that I thought I could
cast it for 1000 ducats; but that this was not my trade, and that I
did not wish to undertake it. He answered: 'Go to work; you shall cast
it over and over again till it succeeds; and I will give you enough to
satisfy your wishes.' To put it briefly, I cast the statue twice; and
at the end of two years, at Bologna, I found that I had four and a
half ducats left. I never received anything more for this job; and all
the moneys I paid out during the said two years were the 1000 ducats
with which I promised to cast it. These were disbursed to me in
instalments by Messer Antonio Maria da Legnano, a Bolognese."

The statue must have been more than thrice life-size, if it rose
fourteen feet in a sitting posture. Michelangelo worked at the model
in a hall called the Stanza del Pavaglione behind the Cathedral. Three
experienced workmen were sent, at his request, from Florence, and he
began at once upon the arduous labour. His domestic correspondence,
which at this period becomes more copious and interesting, contains a
good deal of information concerning his residence at Bologna. His mode
of life, as usual, was miserable and penurious in the extreme. This
man, about whom popes and cardinals and gonfaloniers had been
corresponding, now hired a single room with one bed in it, where, as
we have seen, he slept together with his three assistants. There can
be no doubt that such eccentric habits prevented Michelangelo from
inspiring his subordinates with due respect. The want of control over
servants and workmen, which is a noticeable feature of his private
life, may in part be attributed to this cause. And now, at Bologna, he
soon got into trouble with the three craftsmen he had engaged to help
him. They were Lapo d'Antonio di Lapo, a sculptor at the Opera del
Duomo; Lodovico del Buono, surnamed Lotti, a metal-caster and founder
of cannon; and Pietro Urbano, a craftsman who continued long in his
service. Lapo boasted that he was executing the statue in partnership
with Michelangelo and upon equal terms, which did not seem incredible
considering their association in a single bedroom. Beside this, he
intrigued and cheated in money matters. The master felt that he must
get rid of him, and send the fellow back to Florence. Lapo, not
choosing to go alone, lest the truth of the affair should be apparent,
persuaded Lodovico to join him; and when they reached home, both began
to calumniate their master. Michelangelo, knowing that they were
likely to do so, wrote to his brother Buonarroto on the 1st of
February 1507: "I inform you further how on Friday morning I sent away
Lapo and Lodovico, who were in my service. Lapo, because he is good
for nothing and a rogue, and could not serve me. Lodovico is better,
and I should have been willing to keep him another two months, but
Lapo, in order to prevent blame falling on himself alone, worked upon
the other so that both went away together. I write you this, not that
I regard them, for they are not worth three farthings, the pair of
them, but because if they come to talk to Lodovico (Buonarroti) he
must not be surprised at what they say. Tell him by no means to lend
them his ears; and if you want to be informed about them, go to Messer
Angelo, the herald of the Signory; for I have written the whole story
to him, and he will, out of his kindly feeling, tell you just what
happened."

In spite of these precautions, Lapo seems to have gained the ear of
Michelangelo's father, who wrote a scolding letter in his usual
puzzle-headed way. Michelangelo replied in a tone of real and ironical
humility, which is exceedingly characteristic: "Most revered father, I
have received a letter from you to-day, from which I learn that you
have been informed by Lapo and Lodovico. I am glad that you should
rebuke me, because I deserve to be rebuked as a ne'er-do-well and
sinner as much as any one, or perhaps more. But you must know that I
have not been guilty in the affair for which you take me to task now,
neither as regards them nor any one else, except it be in doing more
than was my duty." After this exordium he proceeds to give an
elaborate explanation of his dealings with Lapo, and the man's
roguery.

The correspondence with Buonarroto turns to a considerable extent upon
a sword-hilt which Michelangelo designed for the Florentine, Pietro
Aldobrandini. It was the custom then for gentlemen to carry swords and
daggers with hilt and scabbard wonderfully wrought by first-rate
artists. Some of these, still extant, are among the most exquisite
specimens of sixteenth-century craft. This little affair gave
Michelangelo considerable trouble. First of all, the man who had to
make the blade was long about it. From the day when the Pope came to
Bologna, he had more custom than all the smiths in the city were used
in ordinary times to deal with. Then, when the weapon reached
Florence, it turned out to be too short. Michelangelo affirmed that he
had ordered it exactly to the measure sent, adding that Aldobrandini
was "probably not born to wear a dagger at his belt." He bade his
brother present it to Filippo Strozzi, as a compliment from the
Buonarroti family; but the matter was bungled. Probably Buonarroto
tried to get some valuable equivalent; for Michelangelo writes to say
that he is sorry "he behaved so scurvily toward Filippo in so trifling
an affair."

Nothing at all transpires in these letters regarding the company kept
by Michelangelo at Bologna. The few stories related by tradition which
refer to this period are not much to the sculptor's credit for
courtesy. The painter Francia, for instance, came to see the statue,
and made the commonplace remark that he thought it very well cast and
of excellent bronze. Michelangelo took this as an insult to his
design, and replied: "I owe the same thanks to Pope Julius who
supplied the metal, as you do to the colourmen who sell you paints."
Then, turning to some gentlemen present there, he added that Francia
was "a blockhead." Francia had a son remarkable for youthful beauty.
When Michelangelo first saw him he asked whose son he was, and, on
being informed, uttered this caustic compliment: "Your father makes
handsomer living figures than he paints them." On some other occasion,
a stupid Bolognese gentleman asked whether he thought his statue or a
pair of oxen were the bigger. Michelangelo replied: "That is according
to the oxen. If Bolognese, oh! then with a doubt ours of Florence are
smaller." Possibly Albrecht Dürer may have met him in the artistic
circles of Bologna, since he came from Venice on a visit during these
years; but nothing is known about their intercourse.


III

Julius left Bologna on the 22nd of February 1507. Michelangelo
remained working diligently at his model. In less than three months it
was nearly ready to be cast. Accordingly, the sculptor, who had no
practical knowledge of bronze-founding, sent to Florence for a man
distinguished in that craft, Maestro dal Ponte of Milan. During the
last three years he had been engaged as Master of the Ordnance under
the Republic. His leave of absence was signed upon the 15th of May
1507.

Meanwhile the people of Bologna were already planning revolution. The
Bentivogli retained a firm hereditary hold on their affections, and
the government of priests is never popular, especially among the
nobles of a state. Michelangelo writes to his brother Giovan Simone
(May 2) describing the bands of exiles who hovered round the city and
kept its burghers in alarm: "The folk are stifling in their coats of
mail; for during four days past the whole county is under arms, in
great confusion and peril, especially the party of the Church." The
Papal Legate, Francesco Alidosi, Cardinal of Pavia, took such prompt
measures that the attacking troops were driven back. He also executed
some of the citizens who had intrigued with the exiled family. The
summer was exceptionally hot, and plague hung about; all articles of
food were dear and bad. Michelangelo felt miserable, and fretted to be
free; but the statue kept him hard at work.

When the time drew nigh for the great operation, he wrote in touching
terms to Buonarroto: "Tell Lodovico (their father) that in the middle
of next month I hope to cast my figure without fail. Therefore, if he
wishes to offer prayers or aught else for its good success, let him do
so betimes, and say that I beg this of him." Nearly the whole of June
elapsed, and the business still dragged on. At last, upon the 1st of
July, he advised his brother thus: "We have cast my figure, and it has
come out so badly that I verily believe I shall have to do it all over
again. I reserve details, for I have other things to think of. Enough
that it has gone wrong. Still I thank God, because I take everything
for the best." From the next letter we learn that only the lower half
of the statue, up to the girdle, was properly cast. The metal for the
rest remained in the furnace, probably in the state of what Cellini
called a cake. The furnace had to be pulled down and rebuilt, so as to
cast the upper half. Michelangelo adds that he does not know whether
Master Bernardino mismanaged the matter from ignorance or bad luck. "I
had such faith in him that I thought he could have cast the statue
without fire. Nevertheless, there is no denying that he is an able
craftsman, and that he worked with good-will. Well, he has failed, to
my loss and also to his own, seeing he gets so much blame that he
dares not lift his head up in Bologna." The second casting must have
taken place about the 8th of July; for on the 10th Michelangelo writes
that it is done, but the clay is too hot for the result to be
reported, and Bernardino left yesterday. When the statue was
uncovered, he was able to reassure his brother: "My affair might have
turned out much better, and also much worse. At all events, the whole
is there, so far as I can see; for it is not yet quite disengaged. I
shall want, I think, some months to work it up with file and hammer,
because it has come out rough. Well, well, there is much to thank God
for; as I said, it might have been worse." On making further
discoveries, he finds that the cast is far less bad than he expected;
but the labour of cleaning it with polishing tools proved longer and
more irksome than he expected: "I am exceedingly anxious to get away
home, for here I pass my life in huge discomfort and with extreme
fatigue. I work night and day, do nothing else; and the labour I am
forced to undergo is such, that if I had to begin the whole thing over
again, I do not think I could survive it. Indeed, the undertaking has
been one of enormous difficulty; and if it had been in the hand of
another man, we should have fared but ill with it. However, I believe
that the prayers of some one have sustained and kept me in health,
because all Bologna thought I should never bring it to a proper end."
We can see that Michelangelo was not unpleased with the result; and
the statue must have been finished soon after the New Year. However,
he could not leave Bologna. On the 18th of February 1508 he writes to
Buonarroto that he is kicking his heels, having received orders from
the Pope to stay until the bronze was placed. Three days later--that
is, upon the 21st of February--the Pope's portrait was hoisted to its
pedestal above the great central door of S. Petronio.

It remained there rather less than three years. When the Papal Legate
fled from Bologna in 1511, and the party of the Bentivogli gained the
upper hand, they threw the mighty mass of sculptured bronze, which had
cost its maker so much trouble, to the ground. That happened on the
30th of December. The Bentivogli sent it to the Duke Alfonso d'Este of
Ferrara, who was a famous engineer and gunsmith. He kept the head
intact, but cast a huge cannon out of part of the material, which took
the name of La Giulia. What became of the head is unknown. It is said
to have weighed 600 pounds.

So perished another of Michelangelo's masterpieces; and all we know
for certain about the statue is that Julius was seated, in full
pontificals, with the triple tiara on his head, raising the right hand
to bless, and holding the keys of S. Peter in the left.

Michelangelo reached Florence early in March. On the 18th of that
month he began again to occupy his house at Borgo Pinti, taking it
this time on hire from the Operai del Duomo. We may suppose,
therefore, that he intended to recommence work on the Twelve Apostles.
A new project seems also to have been started by his friend
Soderini--that of making him erect a colossal statue of Hercules
subduing Cacus opposite the David. The Gonfalonier was in
correspondence with the Marquis of Carrara on the 10th of May about a
block of marble for this giant; but Michelangelo at that time had
returned to Rome, and of the Cacus we shall hear more hereafter.


IV

When Julius received news that his statue had been duly cast and set
up in its place above the great door of S. Petronio, he began to be
anxious to have Michelangelo once more near his person. The date at
which the sculptor left Florence again for Rome is fixed approximately
by the fact that Lodovico Buonarroti emancipated his son from parental
control upon the 13th of March 1508. According to Florentine law,
Michelangelo was not of age, nor master over his property and person,
until this deed had been executed.

In the often-quoted letter to Fattucci he says: "The Pope was still
unwilling that I should complete the tomb, and ordered me to paint the
vault of the Sistine. We agreed for 3000 ducats. The first design I
made for this work had twelve apostles in the lunettes, the remainder
being a certain space filled in with ornamental details, according to
the usual manner. After I had begun, it seemed to me that this would
turn out rather meanly; and I told the Pope that the Apostles alone
would yield a poor effect, in my opinion. He asked me why. I answered,
'Because they too were poor.' Then he gave me commission to do what I
liked best, and promised to satisfy my claims for the work, and told
me to paint down the pictured histories upon the lower row."

There is little doubt that Michelangelo disliked beginning this new
work, and that he would have greatly preferred to continue the
sepulchral monument, for which he had made such vast and costly
preparations. He did not feel certain how he should succeed in fresco
on a large scale, not having had any practice in that style of
painting since he was a prentice under Ghirlandajo. It is true that
the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa had been a splendid success; still
this, as we have seen, was not coloured, but executed in various
methods of outline and chiaroscuro. Later on, while seriously engaged
upon the Sistine, he complains to his father: "I am still in great
distress of mind, because it is now a year since I had a farthing from
the Pope; and I do not ask, because my work is not going forward in a
way that seems to me to deserve it. That comes from its difficulty,
and also _from this not being my trade._ And so I waste my time
without results. God help me."

We may therefore believe Condivi when he asserts that "Michelangelo,
who had not yet practised colouring, and knew that the painting of a
vault is very difficult, endeavoured by all means to get himself
excused, putting Raffaello forward as the proper man, and pleading
that this was not his trade, and that he should not succeed." Condivi
states in the same chapter that Julius had been prompted to intrust
him with the Sistine by Bramante, who was jealous of his great
abilities, and hoped he might fail conspicuously when he left the
field of sculpture. I have given my reasons above for doubting the
accuracy of this tradition; and what we have just read of
Michelangelo's own hesitation confirms the statement made by Bramante
in the Pope's presence, as recorded by Rosselli. In fact, although we
may assume the truth of Bramante's hostility, it is difficult to form
an exact conception of the intrigues he carried on against Buonarroti.

Julius would not listen to any arguments. Accordingly, Michelangelo
made up his mind to obey the patron whom he nicknamed his Medusa.
Bramante was commissioned to erect the scaffolding, which he did so
clumsily, with beams suspended from the vault by huge cables, that
Michelangelo asked how the holes in the roof would be stopped up when
his painting was finished. The Pope allowed him to take down
Bramante's machinery, and to raise a scaffold after his own design.
The rope alone which had been used, and now was wasted, enabled a poor
carpenter to dower his daughter. Michelangelo built his own scaffold
free from the walls, inventing a method which was afterwards adopted
by all architects for vault-building. Perhaps he remembered the
elaborate drawing he once made of Ghirlandajo's assistants at work
upon the ladders and wooden platforms at S. Maria Novella.

Knowing that he should need helpers in so great an undertaking, and
also mistrusting his own ability to work in fresco, he now engaged
several excellent Florentine painters. Among these, says Vasari, were
his friends Francesco Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini, Bastiano da
San Gallo surnamed Aristotele, Angelo di Donnino, Jacopo di Sandro,
and Jacopo surnamed l'Indaco. Vasari is probably accurate in his
statement here; for we shall see that Michelangelo, in his _Ricordi_,
makes mention of five assistants, two of whom are proved by other
documents to have been Granacci and Indaco. We also possess two
letters from Granacci which show that Bugiardini, San Gallo, Angelo di
Donnino, and Jacopo l'Indaco were engaged in July. The second of
Granacci's letters refers to certain disputes and hagglings with the
artists. This may have brought Michelangelo to Florence, for he was
there upon the 11th of August 1508, as appears from the following deed
of renunciation: "In the year of our Lord 1508, on the 11th day of
August, Michelangelo, son of Lodovico di Lionardo di Buonarrota,
repudiated the inheritance of his uncle Francesco by an instrument
drawn up by the hand of Ser Giovanni di Guasparre da Montevarchi,
notary of Florence, on the 27th of July 1508." When the assistants
arrived at Rome is not certain. It must, however, have been after the
end of July. The extracts from Michelangelo's notebooks show that he
had already sketched an agreement as to wages several weeks before. "I
record how on this day, the 10th of May 1508, I, Michelangelo,
sculptor, have received from the Holiness of our Lord Pope Julius II.
500 ducats of the Camera, the which were paid me by Messer Carlino,
chamberlain, and Messer Carlo degli Albizzi, on account of the
painting of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, on which I begin to work
to-day, under the conditions and contracts set forth in a document
written by his Most Reverend Lordship of Pavia, and signed by my hand.

"For the painter-assistants who are to come from Florence, who will be
five in number, twenty gold ducats of the Camera apiece, on this
condition; that is to say, that when they are here and are working in
harmony with me, the twenty ducats shall be reckoned to each man's
salary; the said salary to begin upon the day they leave Florence. And
if they do not agree with me, half of the said money shall be paid
them for their travelling expenses, and for their time."

On the strength of this _Ricordo_, it has been assumed that
Michelangelo actually began to paint the Sistine on the 10th of May
1508. That would have been physically and literally impossible. He was
still at Florence, agreeing to rent his house in Borgo Pinti, upon the
18th of March. Therefore he had no idea of going to Rome at that time.
When he arrived there, negotiations went on, as we have seen, between
him and Pope Julius. One plan for the decoration of the roof was
abandoned, and another on a grander scale had to be designed. To
produce working Cartoons for that immense scheme in less than two
months would have been beyond the capacities of any human brain and
hands. But there are many indications that the vault was not prepared
for painting, and the materials for fresco not accumulated, till a
much later date. For instance, we possess a series of receipts by
Piero Rosselli, acknowledging several disbursements for the plastering
of the roof between May 11 and July 27. We learn from one of these
that Granacci was in Rome before June 3; and Michelangelo writes for
fine blue colours to a certain Fra Jacopo Gesuato at Florence upon the
13th of May. All is clearly in the air as yet, and on the point of
preparation. Michelangelo's phrase, "on which I begin work to-day,"
will have to be interpreted, therefore, in the widest sense, as
implying that he was engaging assistants, getting the architectural
foundation ready, and procuring a stock of necessary articles. The
whole summer and autumn must have been spent in taking measurements
and expanding the elaborate design to the proper scale of working
drawings; and if Michelangelo had toiled alone without his Florentine
helpers, it would have been impossible for him to have got through
with these preliminary labours in so short a space of time.

Michelangelo's method in preparing his Cartoons seems to have been the
following. He first made a small-scale sketch of the composition,
sometimes including a large variety of figures. Then he went to the
living models, and studied portions of the whole design in careful
transcripts from Nature, using black and red chalk, pen, and sometimes
bistre. Among the most admirable of his drawings left to us are
several which were clearly executed with a view to one or other of
these great Cartoons. Finally, returning to the first composition, he
repeated that, or so much of it as could be transferred to a single
sheet, on the exact scale of the intended fresco. These enlarged
drawings were applied to the wet surface of the plaster, and their
outlines pricked in with dots to guide the painter in his brush-work.
When we reflect upon the extent of the Sistine vault (it is estimated
at more than 10,000 square feet of surface), and the difficulties
presented by its curves, lunettes, spandrels, and pendentives; when we
remember that this enormous space is alive with 343 figures in every
conceivable attitude, some of them twelve feet in height, those seated
as prophets and sibyls measuring nearly eighteen feet when upright,
all animated with extraordinary vigour, presenting types of the utmost
variety and vivid beauty, imagination quails before the intellectual
energy which could first conceive a scheme so complex, and then carry
it out with mathematical precision in its minutest details.

The date on which Michelangelo actually began to paint the fresco is
not certain. Supposing he worked hard all the summer, he might have
done so when his Florentine assistants arrived in August; and,
assuming that the letter to his father above quoted (_Lettere_, x.)
bears a right date, he must have been in full swing before the end of
January 1509. In that letter he mentions that Jacopo, probably
l'Indaco, "the painter whom I brought from Florence, returned a few
days ago; and as he complained about me here in Rome, it is likely
that he will do so there. Turn a deaf ear to him; he is a thousandfold
in the wrong, and I could say much about his bad behaviour toward me."
Vasari informs us that these assistants proved of no use; whereupon,
he destroyed all they had begun to do, refused to see them, locked
himself up in the chapel, and determined to complete the work in
solitude. It seems certain that the painters were sent back to
Florence. Michelangelo had already provided for the possibility of
their not being able to co-operate with him; but what the cause of
their failure was we can only conjecture. Trained in the methods of
the old Florentine school of fresco-painting, incapable of entering
into the spirit of a style so supereminently noble and so astoundingly
original as Michelangelo's, it is probable that they spoiled his
designs in their attempts to colour them. Harford pithily remarks: "As
none of the suitors of Penelope could bend the bow of Ulysses, so one
hand alone was capable of wielding the pencil of Buonarroti." Still it
must not be imagined that Michelangelo ground his own colours,
prepared his daily measure of wet plaster, and executed the whole
series of frescoes with his own hand. Condivi and Vasari imply,
indeed, that this was the case; but, beside the physical
impossibility, the fact remains that certain portions are obviously
executed by inferior masters. Vasari's anecdotes, moreover, contradict
his own assertion regarding Michelangelo's singlehanded labour. He
speaks about the caution which the master exercised to guard himself
against any treason of his workmen in the chapel. Nevertheless, far
the larger part, including all the most important figures, and
especially the nudes, belongs to Michelangelo.

These troubles with his assistants illustrate a point upon which I
shall have to offer some considerations at a future time. I allude to
Michelangelo's inaptitude for forming a school of intelligent
fellow-workers, for fashioning inferior natures into at least a
sympathy with his aims and methods, and finally for living long on
good terms with hired subordinates. All those qualities which the
facile and genial Raffaello possessed in such abundance, and which
made it possible for that young favourite of heaven and fortune to
fill Rome with so much work of mixed merit, were wanting to the stern,
exacting, and sensitive Buonarroti.

But the assistants were not the only hindrance to Michelangelo at the
outset. Condivi says that "he had hardly begun painting, and had
finished the picture of the Deluge, when the work began to throw out
mould to such an extent that the figures could hardly be seen through
it. Michelangelo thought that this excuse might be sufficient to get
him relieved of the whole job. So he went to the Pope and said: 'I
already told your Holiness that painting is not my trade; what I have
done is spoiled; if you do not believe it, send to see.' The Pope sent
San Gallo, who, after inspecting the fresco, pronounced that the
lime-basis had been put on too wet, and that water oozing out produced
this mouldy surface. He told Michelangelo what the cause was, and bade
him proceed with the work. So the excuse helped him nothing." About
the fresco of the Deluge Vasari relates that, having begun to paint
this compartment first, he noticed that the figures were too crowded,
and consequently changed his scale in all the other portions of the
ceiling. This is a plausible explanation of what is striking--namely,
that the story of the Deluge is quite differently planned from the
other episodes upon the vaulting. Yet I think it must be rejected,
because it implies a total change in all the working Cartoons, as well
as a remarkable want of foresight.

Condivi continues: "While he was painting, Pope Julius used oftentimes
to go and see the work, climbing by a ladder, while Michelangelo gave
him a hand to help him on to the platform. His nature being eager and
impatient of delay, he decided to have the roof uncovered, although
Michelangelo had not given the last touches, and had only completed
the first half--that is, from the door to the middle of the vault."
Michelangelo's letters show that the first part of his work was
executed in October. He writes thus to his brother Buonarroto: "I am
remaining here as usual, and shall have finished my painting by the
end of the week after next--that is, the portion of it which I began;
and when it is uncovered, I expect to be paid, and shall also try to
get a month's leave to visit Florence."


V

The uncovering took place upon November 1, 1509. All Rome flocked to
the chapel, feeling that something stupendous was to be expected after
the long months of solitude and seclusion during which the silent
master had been working. Nor were they disappointed. The effect
produced by only half of the enormous scheme was overwhelming. As
Vasari says, "This chapel lighted up a lamp for our art which casts
abroad lustre enough to illuminate the World, drowned, for so many
centuries in darkness." Painters saw at a glance that the genius which
had revolutionised sculpture was now destined to introduce a new style
and spirit into their art. This was the case even with Raffaello, who,
in the frescoes he executed at S. Maria della Pace, showed his
immediate willingness to learn from Michelangelo, and his
determination to compete with him. Condivi and Vasari are agreed upon
this point, and Michelangelo himself, in a moment of hasty
indignation, asserted many years afterwards that what Raffaello knew
of art was derived from him. That is, of course, an over-statement;
for, beside his own exquisite originality, Raffaello formed a
composite style successively upon Perugino, Fra Bartolommeo, and
Lionardo. He was capable not merely of imitating, but of absorbing and
assimilating to his lucid genius the excellent qualities of all in
whom he recognised superior talent. At the same time, Michelangelo's
influence was undeniable, and we cannot ignore the testimony of those
who conversed with both great artists--of Julius himself, for
instance, when he said to Sebastian del Piombo: "Look at the work of
Raffaello, who, after seeing the masterpieces of Michelangelo,
immediately abandoned Perugino's manner, and did his utmost to
approach that of Buonarroti."

Condivi's assertion that the part uncovered in November 1509 was the
first half of the whole vault, beginning from the door and ending in
the middle, misled Vasari, and Vasari misled subsequent biographers.
We now know for certain that what Michelangelo meant by "the portion I
began" was the whole central space of the ceiling--that is to say, the
nine compositions from Genesis, with their accompanying genii and
architectural surroundings. That is rendered clear by a statement in
Albertini's Roman Handbook, to the effect that the "upper portion of
the whole vaulted roof" had been uncovered when he saw it in 1509.
Having established this error in Condivi's narrative, what he proceeds
to relate may obtain some credence. "Raffaello, when he beheld the new
and marvellous style of Michelangelo's work, being extraordinarily apt
at imitation, sought, by Bramante's means, to obtain a commission for
the rest." Had Michelangelo ended at a line drawn halfway across the
breadth of the vault, leaving the Prophets and Sibyls, the lunettes
and pendentives, all finished so far, it would have been a piece of
monstrous impudence even in Bramante, and an impossible discourtesy in
gentle Raffaello, to have begged for leave to carry on a scheme so
marvellously planned. But the history of the Creation, Fall, and
Deluge, when first exposed, looked like a work complete in itself.
Michelangelo, who was notoriously secretive, had almost certainly not
explained his whole design to painters of Bramante's following; and it
is also improbable that he had as yet prepared his working Cartoons
for the lower and larger portion of the vault. Accordingly, there
remained a large vacant space to cover between the older frescoes by
Signorelli, Perugino, Botticelli, and other painters, round the walls
below the windows, and that new miracle suspended in the air. There
was no flagrant impropriety in Bramante's thinking that his nephew
might be allowed to carry the work downward from that altitude. The
suggestion may have been that the Sistine Chapel should become a
Museum of Italian art, where all painters of eminence could deposit
proofs of their ability, until each square foot of wall was covered
with competing masterpieces. But when Michelangelo heard of Bramante's
intrigues, he was greatly disturbed in spirit. Having begun his task
unwillingly, he now felt an equal or greater unwillingness to leave
the stupendous conception of his brain unfinished. Against all
expectation of himself and others, he had achieved a decisive victory,
and was placed at one stroke, Condivi says, "above the reach of envy."
His hand had found its cunning for fresco as for marble. Why should he
be interrupted in the full swing of triumphant energy? "Accordingly,
he sought an audience with the Pope, and openly laid bare all the
persecutions he had suffered from Bramante, and discovered the
numerous misdoings of the man." It was on this occasion, according to
Condivi, that Michelangelo exposed Bramante's scamped work and
vandalism at S. Peter's. Julius, who was perhaps the only man in Rome
acquainted with his sculptor's scheme for the Sistine vault, brushed
the cobwebs of these petty intrigues aside, and left the execution of
the whole to Michelangelo.

There is something ignoble in the task of recording rivalries and
jealousies between artists and men of letters. Genius, however, like
all things that are merely ours and mortal, shuffles along the path of
life, half flying on the wings of inspiration, half hobbling on the
feet of interest the crutches of commissions. Michelangelo, although
he made the David and the Sistine, had also to make money. He was
entangled with shrewd men of business, and crafty spendthrifts,
ambitious intriguers, folk who used undoubted talents, each in its
kind excellent and pure, for baser purposes of gain or getting on. The
art-life of Rome seethed with such blood-poison; and it would be
sentimental to neglect what entered so deeply and so painfully into
the daily experience of our hero. Raffaello, kneaded of softer and
more facile clay than Michelangelo, throve in this environment, and
was somehow able--so it seems--to turn its venom to sweet uses. I like
to think of the two peers, moving like stars on widely separated
orbits, with radically diverse temperaments, proclivities, and habits,
through the turbid atmosphere enveloping but not obscuring their
lucidity. Each, in his own way, as it seems to me, contrived to keep
himself unspotted by the world; and if they did not understand one
another and make friends, this was due to the different conceptions
they were framed to take of life the one being the exact antipodes to
the other.

VI


Postponing descriptive or aesthetic criticism of the Sistine frescoes,
I shall proceed with the narration of their gradual completion. We
have few documents to guide us through the period of time which
elapsed between the first uncovering of Michelangelo's work on the
roof of the Sistine (November 1, 1509) and its ultimate accomplishment
(October 1512). His domestic correspondence is abundant, and will be
used in its proper place; but nothing transpires from those pages of
affection, anger, and financial negotiation to throw light upon the
working of the master's mind while he was busied in creating the
sibyls and prophets, the episodes and idyls, which carried his great
Bible of the Fate of Man downwards through the vaulting to a point at
which the Last Judgment had to be presented as a crowning climax. For,
the anxious student of his mind and life-work, nothing is more
desolating than the impassive silence he maintains about his doings as
an artist. He might have told us all we want to know, and never shall
know here about them. But while he revealed his personal temperament
and his passions with singular frankness, he locked up the secret of
his art, and said nothing.

Eventually we must endeavour to grasp Michelangelo's work in the
Sistine as a whole, although it was carried out at distant epochs of
his life. For this reason I have thrown these sentences forward, in
order to embrace a wide span of his artistic energy (from May 10,
1508, to perhaps December 1541). There is, to my mind, a unity of
conception between the history depicted on the vault, the prophets and
forecomers on the pendentives, the types selected for the
spandrels, and the final spectacle of the day of doom. Living, as he
needs must do, under the category of time, Michelangelo was unable to
execute his stupendous picture-book of human destiny in one sustained
manner. Years passed over him of thwarted endeavour and distracted
energies--years of quarrying and sculpturing, of engineering and
obeying the vagaries of successive Popes. Therefore, when he came
at last to paint the Last Judgment, he was a worn man, exhausted in
services of many divers sorts. And, what is most perplexing to the
reconstructive critic, nothing in his correspondence remains to
indicate the stages of his labour. The letters tell plenty about
domestic anxieties, annoyances in his poor craftsman's household,
purchases of farms, indignant remonstrances with stupid brethren; but
we find in them, as I have said, no clue to guide us through that
mental labyrinth in which the supreme artist was continually walking,
and at the end of which he left to us the Sistine as it now is.


VII

The old reckoning of the time consumed by Michelangelo in painting the
roof of the Sistine, and the traditions concerning his mode of work
there, are clearly fabulous. Condivi says: "He finished the whole in
twenty months, without having any assistance whatsoever, not even of a
man to grind his colours." From a letter of September 7, 1510, we
learn that the scaffolding was going to be put up again, and that he
was preparing to work upon the lower portion of the vaulting. Nearly
two years elapse before we hear of it again. He writes to Buonarroto
on the 24th of July 1512: "I am suffering greater hardships than ever
man endured, ill, and with overwhelming labour; still I put up with
all in order to reach the desired end." Another letter on the 21st of
August shows that he expects to complete his work at the end of
September; and at last, in October, he writes to his father: "I have
finished the chapel I was painting. The Pope is very well satisfied."
On the calculation that he began the first part on May 10, 1508, and
finished the whole in October 1512, four years and a half were
employed upon the work. A considerable part of this time was of course
taken up with the preparation of Cartoons; and the nature of
fresco-painting rendered the winter months not always fit for active
labour. The climate of Rome is not so mild but that wet plaster might
often freeze and crack during December, January, and February.
Besides, with all his superhuman energy, Michelangelo could not have
painted straight on daily without rest or stop. It seems, too, that
the master was often in need of money, and that he made two journeys
to the Pope to beg for supplies. In the letter to Fattucci he says:
"When the vault was nearly finished, the Pope was again at Bologna;
whereupon, I went twice to get the necessary funds, and obtained
nothing, and lost all that time until I came back to Rome. When I
reached Rome, I began to make Cartoons--that is, for the ends and
sides of the said chapel, hoping to get money at last and to complete
the work. I never could extract a farthing; and when I complained one
day to Messer Bernardo da Bibbiena and to Atalante, representing that
I could not stop longer in Rome, and that I should be forced to go
away with God's grace, Messer Bernardo told Atalante he must bear this
in mind, for that he wished me to have money, whatever happened." When
we consider, then, the magnitude of the undertaking, the arduous
nature of the preparatory studies, and the waste of time in journeys
and through other hindrances, four and a half years are not too long a
period for a man working so much alone as Michelangelo was wont to do.

We have reason to believe that, after all, the frescoes of the Sistine
were not finished in their details. "It is true," continues Condivi,
"that I have heard him say he was not suffered to complete the work
according to his wish. The Pope, in his impatience, asked him one day
when he would be ready with the Chapel, and he answered: 'When I shall
be able.' To which his Holiness replied in a rage: 'You want to make
me hurl you from that scaffold!' Michelangelo heard and remembered,
muttering: 'That you shall not do to me.' So he went straightway, and
had the scaffolding taken down. The frescoes were exposed to view on
All Saints' day, to the great satisfaction of the Pope, who went that
day to service there, while all Rome flocked together to admire them.
What Michelangelo felt forced to leave undone was the retouching of
certain parts with ultramarine upon dry ground, and also some gilding,
to give the whole a richer effect. Giulio, when his heat cooled down,
wanted Michelangelo to make these last additions; but he, considering
the trouble it would be to build up all that scaffolding afresh,
observed that what was missing mattered little. 'You ought at least to
touch it up with gold,' replied the Pope; and Michelangelo, with that
familiarity he used toward his Holiness, said carelessly: 'I have not
observed that men wore gold.' The Pope rejoined: 'It will look poor.'
Buonarroti added: 'Those who are painted there were poor men.' So the
matter turned into pleasantry, and the frescoes have remained in their
present state." Condivi goes on to state that Michelangelo received
3000 ducats for all his expenses, and that he spent as much as twenty
or twenty-five ducats on colours alone. Upon the difficult question of
the moneys earned by the great artist in his life-work, I shall have
to speak hereafter, though I doubt whether any really satisfactory
account can now be given of them.


VIII

Michelangelo's letters to his family in Florence throw a light at once
vivid and painful over the circumstances of his life during these
years of sustained creative energy. He was uncomfortable in his
bachelor's home, and always in difficulties with his servants. "I am
living here in discontent, not thoroughly well, and undergoing great
fatigue, without money, and with no one to look after me." Again, when
one of his brothers proposed to visit him in Rome, he writes: "I hear
that Gismondo means to come hither on his affairs. Tell him not to
count on me for anything; not because I do not love him as a brother,
but because I am not in the position to assist him. I am bound to care
for myself first, and I cannot provide myself with necessaries. I live
here in great distress and the utmost bodily fatigue, have no friends,
and seek none. I have not even time enough to eat what I require.
Therefore let no additional burdens be put upon me, for I could not
bear another ounce." In the autumn of 1509 he corresponded with his
father about the severe illness of an assistant workman whom he kept,
and also about a boy he wanted sent from Florence. "I should be glad
if you could hear of some lad at Florence, the son of good parents and
poor, used to hardships, who would be willing to come and live with me
here, to do the work of the house, buy what I want, and go around on
messages; in his leisure time he could learn. Should such a boy be
found, please let me know; because there are only rogues here, and I
am in great need of some one." All through his life, Michelangelo
adopted the plan of keeping a young fellow to act as general servant,
and at the same time to help in art-work. Three of these servants are
interwoven with the chief events of his later years, Pietro Urbano,
Antonio Mini, and Francesco d'Amadore, called Urbino, the last of whom
became his faithful and attached friend till death parted them. Women
about the house he could not bear. Of the serving-maids at Rome he
says: "They are all strumpets and swine." Well, it seems that Lodovico
found a boy, and sent him off to Rome. What followed is related in the
next letter. "As regards the boy you sent me, that rascal of a
muleteer cheated me out of a ducat for his journey. He swore that the
bargain had been made for two broad golden ducats, whereas all the
lads who come here with the muleteers pay only ten carlins. I was more
angry at this than if I had lost twenty-five ducats, because I saw
that his father had resolved to send him on mule-back like a
gentleman. Oh, I had never such good luck, not I! Then both the father
and the lad promised that he would do everything, attend to the mule,
and sleep upon the ground, if it was wanted. And now I am obliged to
look after him. As if I needed more worries than the one I have had
ever since I arrived here! My apprentice, whom I left in Rome, has
been ill from the day on which I returned until now. It is true that
he is getting better; but he lay for about a month in peril of his
life, despaired of by the doctors, and I never went to bed. There are
other annoyances of my own; and now I have the nuisance of this lad,
who says that he does not want to waste time, that he wants to study,
and so on. At Florence he said he would be satisfied with two or three
hours a day. Now the whole day is not enough for him, but he must
needs be drawing all the night. It is all the fault of what his father
tells him. If I complained, he would say that I did not want him to
learn. I really require some one to take care of the house; and if the
boy had no mind for this sort of work, they ought not to have put me
to expense. But they are good-for-nothing, and are working toward a
certain end of their own. Enough, I beg you to relieve me of the boy;
he has bored me so that I cannot bear it any longer. The muleteer has
been so well paid that he can very well take him back to Florence.
Besides, he is a friend of the father. Tell the father to send for him
home. I shall not pay another farthing. I have no money. I will have
patience till he sends; and if he does not send, I will turn the boy
out of doors. I did so already on the second day of his arrival, and
other times also, and the father does not believe it.

"_P.S._--If you talk to the father of the lad, put the matter to him
nicely: as that he is a good boy, but too refined, and not fit for my
service, and say that he had better send for him home."

The repentant postscript is eminently characteristic of Michelangelo.
He used to write in haste, apparently just as the thoughts came.
Afterwards he read his letter over, and softened its contents down, if
he did not, as sometimes happened, feel that his meaning required
enforcement; in that case he added a stinging tail to the epigram. How
little he could manage the people in his employ is clear from the last
notice we possess about the unlucky lad from Florence. "I wrote about
the boy, to say that his father ought to send for him, and that I
would not disburse more money. This I now confirm. The driver is paid
to take him back. At Florence he will do well enough, learning his
trade and dwelling with his parents. Here he is not worth a farthing,
and makes me toil like a beast of burden; and my other apprentice has
not left his bed. It is true that I have not got him in the house; for
when I was so tired out that I could not bear it, I sent him to the
room of a brother of his. I have no money."

These household difficulties were a trifle, however, compared with the
annoyances caused by the stupidity of his father and the greediness of
his brothers. While living like a poor man in Rome, he kept
continually thinking of their welfare. The letters of this period are
full of references to the purchase of land, the transmission of cash
when it was to be had, and the establishment of Buonarroto in a
draper's business. They, on their part, were never satisfied, and
repaid his kindness with ingratitude. The following letter to Giovan
Simone shows how terrible Michelangelo could be when he detected
baseness in a brother:--

"Giovan Simone,--It is said that when one does good to a good man, he
makes him become better, but that a bad man becomes worse. It is now
many years that I have been endeavouring with words and deeds of
kindness to bring you to live honestly and in peace with your father
and the rest of us. You grow continually worse. I do not say that you
are a scoundrel; but you are of such sort that you have ceased to give
satisfaction to me or anybody. I could read you a long lesson on your
ways of living; but they would be idle words, like all the rest that I
have wasted. To cut the matter short, I will tell you as a fact beyond
all question that you have nothing in the world: what you spend and
your house-room, I give you, and have given you these many years, for
the love of God, believing you to be my brother like the rest. Now, I
am sure that you are not my brother, else you would not threaten my
father. Nay, you are a beast; and as a beast I mean to treat you. Know
that he who sees his father threatened or roughly handled is bound to
risk his own life in this cause. Let that suffice. I repeat that you
have nothing in the world; and if I hear the least thing about your
ways of going on, I will come to Florence by the post, and show you
how far wrong you are, and teach you to waste your substance, and set
fire to houses and farms you have not earned. Indeed you are not where
you think yourself to be. If I come, I will open your eyes to what
will make you weep hot tears, and recognise on what false grounds you
base your arrogance.

"I have something else to say to you, which I have said before. If you
will endeavour to live rightly, and to honour and revere your father,
I am willing to help you like the rest, and will put it shortly within
your power to open a good shop. If you act otherwise, I shall come and
settle your affairs in such a way that you will recognise what you are
better than you ever did, and will know what you have to call your
own, and will have it shown to you in every place where you may go. No
more. What I lack in words I will supply with deeds.

"Michelangelo _in Rome_.

"I cannot refrain from adding a couple of lines. It is as follows. I
have gone these twelve years past drudging about through Italy, borne
every shame, suffered every hardship, worn my body out in every toil,
put my life to a thousand hazards, and all with the sole purpose of
helping the fortunes of my family. Now that I have begun to raise it
up a little, you only, you alone, choose to destroy and bring to ruin
in one hour what it has cost me so many years and such labour to build
up. By Christ's body this shall not be; for I am the man to put to the
rout ten thousand of your sort, whenever it be needed. Be wise in
time, then, and do not try the patience of one who has other things to
vex him."

Even Buonarroto, who was the best of the brothers and dearest to his
heart, hurt him by his graspingness and want of truth. He had been
staying at Rome on a visit, and when he returned to Florence it
appears that he bragged about his wealth, as if the sums expended on
the Buonarroti farms were not part of Michelangelo's earnings. The
consequence was that he received a stinging rebuke from his elder
brother. "The said Michele told me you mentioned to him having spent
about sixty ducats at Settignano. I remember your saying here too at
table that you had disbursed a large sum out of your own pocket. I
pretended not to understand, and did not feel the least surprise,
because I know you. I should like to hear from your ingratitude out of
what money you gained them. If you had enough sense to know the truth,
you would not say: 'I spent so and so much of my own;' also you would
not have come here to push your affairs with me, seeing how I have
always acted toward you in the past, but would have rather said:
'Michelangelo remembers what he wrote to us, and if he does not now do
what he promised, he must be prevented by something of which we are
ignorant,' and then have kept your peace; because it is not well to
spur the horse that runs as fast as he is able, and more than he is
able. But you have never known me, and do not know me. God pardon you;
for it is He who granted me the grace to bear what I do bear and have
borne, in order that you might be helped. Well, you will know me when
you have lost me."

Michelangelo's angry moods rapidly cooled down. At the bottom of his
heart lay a deep and abiding love for his family. There is something
caressing in the tone with which he replies to grumbling letters from
his father. "Do not vex yourself. God did not make us to abandon us."
"If you want me, I will take the post, and be with you in two days.
Men are worth more than money." His warm affection transpires even
more clearly in the two following documents:

"I should like you to be thoroughly convinced that all the labours I
have ever undergone have not been more for myself than for your sake.
What I have bought, I bought to be yours so long as you live. If you
had not been here, I should have bought nothing. Therefore, if you
wish to let the house and farm, do so at your pleasure. This income,
together with what I shall give you, will enable you to live like a
lord." At a time when Lodovico was much exercised in his mind and
spirits by a lawsuit, his son writes to comfort the old man. "Do not
be discomfited, nor give yourself an ounce of sadness. Remember that
losing money is not losing one's life. I will more than make up to you
what you must lose. Yet do not attach too much value to worldly goods,
for they are by nature untrustworthy. Thank God that this trial, if it
was bound to come, came at a time when you have more resources than
you had in years past. Look to preserving your life and health, but
let your fortunes go to ruin rather than suffer hardships; for I would
sooner have you alive and poor; if you were dead, I should not care
for all the gold in the world. If those chatterboxes or any one else
reprove you, let them talk, for they are men without intelligence and
without affection."

References to public events are singularly scanty in this
correspondence. Much as Michelangelo felt the woes of Italy--and we
know he did so by his poems--he talked but little, doing his work
daily like a wise man all through the dust and din stirred up by
Julius and the League of Cambrai. The lights and shadows of Italian
experience at that time are intensely dramatic. We must not altogether
forget the vicissitudes of war, plague, and foreign invasion, which
exhausted the country, while its greatest men continued to produce
immortal masterpieces. Aldo Manuzio was quietly printing his complete
edition of Plato, and Michelangelo was transferring the noble figure
of a prophet or a sibyl to the plaster of the Sistine, while young
Gaston de Foix was dying at the point of victory upon the bloody
shores of the Ronco. Sometimes, however, the disasters of his country
touched Michelangelo so nearly that he had to write or speak about
them. After the battle of Ravenna, on the 11th of April 1512, Raimondo
de Cardona and his Spanish troops brought back the Medici to Florence.
On their way, the little town of Prato was sacked with a barbarity
which sent a shudder through the whole peninsula. The Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, who entered Florence on the 14th of September,
established his nephews as despots in the city, and intimidated the
burghers by what looked likely to be a reign of terror. These facts
account for the uneasy tone of a letter written by Michelangelo to
Buonarroto. Prato had been taken by assault upon the 30th of August,
and was now prostrate after those hideous days of torment, massacre,
and outrage indescribable which followed. In these circumstances
Michelangelo advises his family to "escape into a place of safety,
abandoning their household gear and property; for life is far more
worth than money." If they are in need of cash, they may draw upon his
credit with the Spedalingo of S. Maria Novella. The constitutional
liability to panic which must be recognised in Michelangelo emerges at
the close of the letter. "As to public events, do not meddle with them
either by deed or word. Act as though the plague were raging. Be the
first to fly." The Buonarroti did not take his advice, but remained at
Florence, enduring agonies of terror. It was a time when disaffection
toward the Medicean princes exposed men to risking life and limb.
Rumours reached Lodovico that his son had talked imprudently at Rome.
He wrote to inquire what truth there was in the report, and
Michelangelo replied: "With regard to the Medici, I have never spoken
a single word against them, except in the way that everybody
talks--as, for instance, about the sack of Prato; for if the stones
could have cried out, I think they would have spoken. There have been
many other things said since then, to which, when I heard them, I have
answered: 'If they are really acting in this way, they are doing
wrong;' not that I believed the reports; and God grant they are not
true. About a month ago, some one who makes a show of friendship for
me spoke very evilly about their deeds. I rebuked him, told him that
it was not well to talk so, and begged him not to do so again to me.
However, I should like Buonarroto quietly to find out how the rumour
arose of my having calumniated the Medici; for if it is some one who
pretends to be my friend, I ought to be upon my guard."

The Buonarroti family, though well affected toward Savonarola, were
connected by many ties of interest and old association with the
Medici, and were not powerful enough to be the mark of violent
political persecution. Nevertheless, a fine was laid upon them by the
newly restored Government. This drew forth the following epistle from
Michelangelo:--

"Dearest Father,--Your last informs me how things are going on at
Florence, though I already knew something. We must have patience,
commit ourselves to God, and repent of our sins; for these trials are
solely due to them, and more particularly to pride and ingratitude. I
never conversed with a people more ungrateful and puffed up than the
Florentines. Therefore, if judgment comes, it is but right and
reasonable. As for the sixty ducats you tell me you are fined, I think
this a scurvy trick, and am exceedingly annoyed. However, we must have
patience as long as it pleases God. I will write and enclose two lines
to Giuliano de' Medici. Read them, and if you like to present them to
him, do so; you will see whether they are likely to be of any use. If
not, consider whether we can sell our property and go to live
elsewhere.... Look to your life and health; and if you cannot share
the honours of the land like other burghers, be contented that bread
does not fail you, and live well with Christ, and poorly, as I do
here; for I live in a sordid way, regarding neither life nor
honours--that is, the world--and suffer the greatest hardships and
innumerable anxieties and dreads. It is now about fifteen years since
I had a single hour of well-being, and all that I have done has been
to help you, and you have never recognised this nor believed it. God
pardon us all! I am ready to go on doing the same so long as I live,
if only I am able."

We have reason to believe that the petition to Giuliano proved
effectual, for in his next letter he congratulates his father upon
their being restored to favour. In the same communication he mentions
a young Spanish painter whom he knew in Rome, and whom he believes to
be ill at Florence. This was probably the Alonso Berughetta who made a
copy of the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa. In July 1508 Michelangelo
wrote twice about a Spaniard who wanted leave to study the Cartoon;
first begging Buonarroto to procure the keys for him, and afterwards
saying that he is glad to hear that the permission was refused. It
does not appear certain whether this was the same Alonso; but it is
interesting to find that Michelangelo disliked his Cartoon being
copied. We also learn from these letters that the Battle of Pisa then
remained in the Sala del Papa.


IX

I will conclude this chapter by translating a sonnet addressed to
Giovanni da Pistoja, in which Michelangelo humorously describes the
discomforts he endured while engaged upon the Sistine. Condivi tells
us that from painting so long in a strained attitude, gazing up at the
vault, he lost for some time the power of reading except when he
lifted the paper above his head and raised his eyes. Vasari
corroborates the narrative from his own experience in the vast halls
of the Medicean palace.

  _I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den--
  As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
  Or in what other land they hap to be--
  Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
  My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
  Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
  Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
  Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
  My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
  My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
  My feet unguided wander to and fro;
  In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
  By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
  Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
  Whence false and quaint, I know,
  Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
  For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
  Come then, Giovanni, try
  To succour my dead pictures and my fame,
  Since foul I fare and painting is my shame._



CHAPTER VI


I

The Sistine Chapel was built in 1473 by Baccio Pontelli, a Florentine
architect, for Pope Sixtus IV. It is a simple barn-like chamber, 132
feet in length, 44 in breadth, and 68 in height from the pavement. The
ceiling consists of one expansive flattened vault, the central portion
of which offers a large plane surface, well adapted to fresco
decoration. The building is lighted by twelve windows, six upon each
side of its length. These are placed high up, their rounded arches
running parallel with the first spring of the vaulting. The ends of
the chapel are closed by flat walls, against the western of which is
raised the altar.

When Michelangelo was called to paint here, he found both sides of the
building, just below the windows, decorated in fresco by Perugino,
Cosimo Rosselli, Sandro Botticelli, Luca Signorelli, and Domenico
Ghirlandajo. These masters had depicted, in a series of twelve
subjects, the history of Moses and the life of Jesus. Above the lines
of fresco, in the spaces between the windows and along the eastern end
at the same height, Botticelli painted a row of twenty-eight Popes.
The spaces below the frescoed histories, down to the seats which ran
along the pavement, were blank, waiting for the tapestries which
Raffaello afterwards supplied from cartoons now in possession of the
English Crown. At the west end, above the altar, shone three
decorative frescoes by Perugino, representing the Assumption of the
Virgin, between the finding of Moses and the Nativity. The two last of
these pictures opened respectively the history of Moses and the life
of Christ, so that the Old and New Testaments were equally illustrated
upon the Chapel walls. At the opposite, or eastern end, Ghirlandajo
painted the Resurrection, and there was a corresponding picture of
Michael contending with Satan for the body of Moses.

Such was the aspect of the Sistine Chapel when Michelangelo began his
great work. Perugino's three frescoes on the west wall were afterwards
demolished to make room for his Last Judgment. The two frescoes on the
east wall are now poor pictures by very inferior masters; but the
twelve Scripture histories and Botticelli's twenty-eight Popes remain
from the last years of the fifteenth century.

Taken in their aggregate, the wall-paintings I have described afforded
a fair sample of Umbrian and Tuscan art in its middle or
_quattrocento_ age of evolution. It remained for Buonarroti to cover
the vault and the whole western end with masterpieces displaying what
Vasari called the "modern" style in its most sublime and imposing
manifestation. At the same time he closed the cycle of the figurative
arts, and rendered any further progress on the same lines impossible.
The growth which began with Niccolò of Pisa and with Cimabue, which
advanced through Giotto and his school, Perugino and Pinturicchio,
Piero della Francesca and Signorelli, Fra Angelico and Benozzo
Gozzoli, the Ghirlandajo brothers, the Lippi and Botticelli,
effloresced in Michelangelo, leaving nothing for aftercomers but
manneristic imitation.


II

Michelangelo, instinctively and on principle, reacted against the
decorative methods of the fifteenth century. If he had to paint a
biblical or mythological subject, he avoided landscapes, trees,
flowers, birds, beasts, and subordinate groups of figures. He eschewed
the arabesques, the labyrinths of foliage and fruit enclosing pictured
panels, the candelabra and gay bands of variegated patterns, which
enabled a _quattrocento_ painter, like Gozzoli or Pinturicchio, to
produce brilliant and harmonious general effects at a small
expenditure of intellectual energy. Where the human body struck the
keynote of the music in a work of art, he judged that such simple
adjuncts and naïve concessions to the pleasure of the eye should be
avoided. An architectural foundation for the plastic forms to rest on,
as plain in structure and as grandiose in line as could be fashioned,
must suffice. These principles he put immediately to the test in his
first decorative undertaking. For the vault of the Sistine he designed
a mighty architectural framework in the form of a hypaethral temple,
suspended in the air on jutting pilasters, with bold cornices,
projecting brackets, and ribbed arches flung across the void of
heaven. Since the whole of this ideal building was painted upon
plaster, its inconsequence, want of support, and disconnection from
the ground-plan of the chapel do not strike the mind. It is felt to be
a mere basis for the display of pictorial art, the theatre for a
thousand shapes of dignity and beauty.

I have called this imaginary temple hypaethral, because the master
left nine openings in the flattened surface of the central vault. They
are unequal in size, five being short parallelograms, and four being
spaces of the same shape but twice their length. Through these the eye
is supposed to pierce the roof and discover the unfettered region of
the heavens. But here again Michelangelo betrayed the inconsequence of
his invention. He filled the spaces in question with nine dominant
paintings, representing the history of the Creation, the Fall, and the
Deluge. Taking our position at the west end of the chapel and looking
upwards, we see in the first compartment God dividing light from
darkness; in the second, creating the sun and the moon and the solid
earth; in the third, animating the ocean with His brooding influence;
in the fourth, creating Adam; in the fifth, creating Eve. The sixth
represents the temptation of our first parents and their expulsion
from Paradise. The seventh shows Noah's sacrifice before entering the
ark; the eighth depicts the Deluge, and the ninth the drunkenness of
Noah. It is clear that, between the architectural conception of a roof
opening on the skies and these pictures of events which happened upon
earth, there is no logical connection. Indeed, Michelangelo's new
system of decoration bordered dangerously upon the barocco style, and
contained within itself the germs of a vicious mannerism.

It would be captious and unjust to push this criticism home. The
architectural setting provided for the figures and the pictures of the
Sistine vault is so obviously conventional, every point of vantage has
been so skilfully appropriated to plastic uses, every square inch of
the ideal building becomes so naturally, and without confusion, a
pedestal for the human form, that we are lost in wonder at the
synthetic imagination which here for the first time combined the arts
of architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single organism. Each
part of the immense composition, down to the smallest detail, is
necessary to the total effect. We are in the presence of a most
complicated yet mathematically ordered scheme, which owes life and
animation to one master-thought. In spite of its complexity and
scientific precision, the vault of the Sistine does not strike the
mind as being artificial or worked out by calculation, but as being
predestined to existence, inevitable, a cosmos instinct with vitality.

On the pendentives between the spaces of the windows, running up to
the ends of each of the five lesser pictures, Michelangelo placed
alternate prophets and sibyls upon firm projecting consoles. Five
sibyls and five prophets run along the side-walls of the chapel. The
end-walls sustain each of them a prophet. These twelve figures are
introduced as heralds and pioneers of Christ the Saviour, whose
presence on the earth is demanded by the fall of man and the renewal
of sin after the Deluge. In the lunettes above the windows and the
arched recesses or spandrels over them are depicted scenes setting
forth the genealogy of Christ and of His Mother. At each of the four
corner-spandrels of the ceiling, Michelangelo painted, in spaces of a
very peculiar shape and on a surface of embarrassing inequality, one
magnificent subject symbolical of man's redemption. The first is the
raising of the Brazen Serpent in the wilderness; the second, the
punishment of Haman; the third, the victory of David over Goliath; the
fourth, Judith with the head of Holofernes.

Thus, with a profound knowledge of the Bible, and with an intense
feeling for religious symbolism, Michelangelo unrolled the history of
the creation of the world and man, the entrance of sin into the human
heart, the punishment of sin by water, and the reappearance of sin in
Noah's family. Having done this, he intimated, by means of four
special mercies granted to the Jewish people--types and symbols of
God's indulgence--that a Saviour would arise to redeem the erring
human race. In confirmation of this promise, he called twelve potent
witnesses, seven of the Hebrew prophets and five of the Pagan sibyls.
He made appeal to history, and set around the thrones on which these
witnesses are seated scenes detached from the actual lives of our
Lord's human ancestors.

The intellectual power of this conception is at least equal to the
majesty and sublime strength of its artistic presentation. An awful
sense of coming doom and merited damnation hangs in the thunderous
canopy of the Sistine vault, tempered by a solemn and sober
expectation of the Saviour. It is much to be regretted that Christ,
the Desired of all Nations, the Redeemer and Atoner, appears nowhere
adequately represented in the Chapel. When Michelangelo resumed his
work there, it was to portray him as an angered Hercules, hurling
curses upon helpless victims. The August rhetoric of the ceiling loses
its effective value when we can nowhere point to Christ's life and
work on earth; when there is no picture of the Nativity, none of the
Crucifixion, none of the Resurrection; and when the feeble panels of a
Perugino and a Cosimo Rosselli are crushed into insignificance by the
terrible Last Judgment. In spite of Buonarroti's great creative
strength, and injuriously to his real feeling as a Christian, the
piecemeal production which governs all large art undertakings results
here in a maimed and one-sided rendering of what theologians call the
Scheme of Salvation.


III

So much has been written about the pictorial beauty, the sublime
imagination, the dramatic energy, the profound significance, the exact
science, the shy graces, the terrible force, and finally the vivid
powers of characterisation displayed in these frescoes, that I feel it
would be impertinent to attempt a new discourse upon a theme so
time-worn. I must content myself with referring to what I have already
published, which will, I hope, be sufficient to demonstrate that I do
not avoid the task for want of enthusiasm. The study of much
rhetorical criticism makes me feel strongly that, in front of certain
masterpieces, silence is best, or, in lieu of silence, some simple
pregnant sayings, capable of rousing folk to independent observation.

These convictions need not prevent me, however, from fixing attention
upon a subordinate matter, but one which has the most important
bearing upon Michelangelo's genius. After designing the architectural
theatre which I have attempted to describe, and filling its main
spaces with the vast religious drama he unrolled symbolically in a
series of primeval scenes, statuesque figures, and countless minor
groups contributing to one intellectual conception, he proceeded to
charge the interspaces--all that is usually left for facile decorative
details--with an army of passionately felt and wonderfully executed
nudes, forms of youths and children, naked or half draped, in every
conceivable posture and with every possible variety of facial type and
expression. On pedestals, cornices, medallions, tympanums, in the
angles made by arches, wherever a vacant plane or unused curve was
found, he set these vivid transcripts from humanity in action. We need
not stop to inquire what he intended by that host of plastic shapes
evoked from his imagination. The triumphant leaders of the crew, the
twenty lads who sit upon their consoles, sustaining medallions by
ribands which they lift, have been variously and inconclusively
interpreted. In the long row of Michelangelo's creations, those young
men are perhaps the most significant--athletic adolescents, with faces
of feminine delicacy and poignant fascination. But it serves no
purpose to inquire what they symbolise. If we did so, we should have
to go further, and ask, What do the bronze figures below them, twisted
into the boldest attitudes the human frame can take, or the twinned
children on the pedestals, signify? In this region, the region of pure
plastic play, when art drops the wand of the interpreter and allows
physical beauty to be a law unto itself, Michelangelo demonstrated
that no decorative element in the hand of a really supreme master is
equal to the nude.

Previous artists, with a strong instinct for plastic as opposed to
merely picturesque effect, had worked upon the same line. Donatello
revelled in the rhythmic dance and stationary grace of children. Luca
Signorelli initiated the plan of treating complex ornament by means of
the mere human body; and for this reason, in order to define the
position of Michelangelo in Italian art-history, I shall devote the
next section of this chapter to Luca's work at Orvieto. But Buonarroti
in the Sistine carried their suggestions to completion. The result is
a mapped-out chart of living figures--a vast pattern, each detail of
which is a masterpiece of modelling. After we have grasped the
intellectual content of the whole, the message it was meant to
inculcate, the spiritual meaning present to the maker's mind, we
discover that, in the sphere of artistic accomplishment, as distinct
from intellectual suggestion, one rhythm of purely figurative beauty
has been carried throughout--from God creating Adam to the boy who
waves his torch above the censer of the Erythrean sibyl.


IV

Of all previous painters, only Luca Signorelli deserves to be called
the forerunner of Michelangelo, and his Chapel of S. Brizio in the
Cathedral at Orvieto in some remarkable respects anticipates the
Sistine. This eminent master was commissioned in 1499 to finish its
decoration, a small portion of which had been begun by Fra Angelico.
He completed the whole Chapel within the space of two years; so that
the young Michelangelo, upon one of his journeys to or from Rome, may
probably have seen the frescoes in their glory. Although no visit to
Orvieto is recorded by his biographers, the fame of these masterpieces
by a man whose work at Florence had already influenced his youthful
genius must certainly have attracted him to a city which lay on the
direct route from Tuscany to the Campagna.

The four walls of the Chapel of S. Brizio are covered with paintings
setting forth events immediately preceding and following the day of
judgment. A succession of panels, differing in size and shape,
represent the preaching of Antichrist, the destruction of the world by
fire, the resurrection of the body, the condemnation of the lost, the
reception of saved souls into bliss, and the final states of heaven
and hell. These main subjects occupy the upper spaces of each wall,
while below them are placed portraits of poets, surrounded by rich and
fanciful arabesques, including various episodes from Dante and antique
mythology. Obeying the spirit of the fifteenth century, Signorelli did
not aim at what may be termed an architectural effect in his
decoration of this building. Each panel of the whole is treated
separately, and with very unequal energy, the artist seeming to exert
his strength chiefly in those details which made demands on his
profound knowledge of the human form and his enthusiasm for the nude.
The men and women of the Resurrection, the sublime angels of Heaven
and of the Judgment, the discoloured and degraded fiends of Hell, the
magnificently foreshortened clothed figures of the Fulminati, the
portraits in the preaching of Antichrist, reveal Luca's specific
quality as a painter, at once impressively imaginative and crudely
realistic. There is something in his way of regarding the world and of
reproducing its aspects which dominates our fancy, does violence to
our sense of harmony and beauty, leaves us broken and bewildered,
resentful and at the same moment enthralled. He is a power which has
to be reckoned with; and the reason for speaking about him at length
here is that, in this characteristic blending of intense vision with
impassioned realistic effort after truth to fact, this fascination
mingled with repulsion, he anticipated Michelangelo. Deep at the root
of all Buonarroti's artistic qualities lie these contradictions.
Studying Signorelli, we study a parallel psychological problem. The
chief difference between the two masters lies in the command of
aesthetic synthesis, the constructive sense of harmony, which belonged
to the younger, but which might, we feel, have been granted in like
measure to the elder, had Luca been born, as Michelangelo was, to
complete the evolution of Italian figurative art, instead of marking
one of its most important intermediate moments.

The decorative methods and instincts of the two men were closely
similar. Both scorned any element of interest or beauty which was not
strictly plastic--the human body supported by architecture or by rough
indications of the world we live in. Signorelli invented an intricate
design for arabesque pilasters, one on each side of the door leading
from his chapel into the Cathedral. They are painted _en grisaille_,
and are composed exclusively of nudes, mostly male, perched or grouped
in a marvellous variety of attitudes upon an ascending series of
slender-stemmed vases, which build up gigantic candelabra by their
aggregation. The naked form is treated with audacious freedom. It
appears to be elastic in the hands of the modeller. Some dead bodies
carried on the backs of brawny porters are even awful by the contrast
of their wet-clay limpness with the muscular energy of brutal life
beneath them. Satyrs giving drink to one another, fauns whispering in
the ears of stalwart women, centaurs trotting with corpses flung
across their cruppers, combatants trampling in frenzy upon prostrate
enemies, men sunk in self-abandonment to sloth or sorrow--such are the
details of these incomparable columns, where our sense of the
grotesque and vehement is immediately corrected by a perception of
rare energy in the artist who could play thus with his plastic
puppets.

We have here certainly the preludings to Michelangelo's serener, more
monumental work in the Sistine Chapel. The leading motive is the same
in both great masterpieces. It consists in the use of the simple body,
if possible the nude body, for the expression of thought and emotion,
the telling of a tale, the delectation of the eye by ornamental
details. It consists also in the subordination of the female to the
male nude as the symbolic unit of artistic utterance. Buonarroti is
greater than Signorelli chiefly through that larger and truer
perception of aesthetic unity which seems to be the final outcome of a
long series of artistic effort. The arabesques, for instance, with
which Luca wreathed his portraits of the poets, are monstrous,
bizarre, in doubtful taste. Michelangelo, with a finer instinct for
harmony, a deeper grasp on his own dominant ideal, excluded this
element of _quattrocento_ decoration from his scheme. Raffaello, with
the graceful tact essential to the style, developed its crude
rudiments into the choice forms of fanciful delightfulness which charm
us in the Loggie. Signorelli loved violence. A large proportion of the
circular pictures painted _en grisaille_ on these walls represent
scenes of massacre, assassination, torture, ruthless outrage. One of
them, extremely spirited in design, shows a group of three
executioners hurling men with millstones round their necks into a
raging river from the bridge which spans it. The first victim
flounders half merged in the flood; a second plunges head foremost
through the air; the third stands bent upon the parapet, his shoulders
pressed down by the varlets on each side, at the very point of being
flung to death by drowning. In another of these pictures a man seated
upon the ground is being tortured by the breaking of his teeth, while
a furious fellow holds a club suspended over him, in act to shatter
his thigh-bones. Naked soldiers wrestle in mad conflict, whirl staves
above their heads, fling stones, displaying their coarse muscles with
a kind of frenzy. Even the classical subjects suffer from extreme
dramatic energy of treatment. Ceres, seeking her daughter through the
plains of Sicily, dashes frantically on a car of dragons, her hair
dishevelled to the winds, her cheeks gashed by her own crooked
fingers. Eurydice struggles in the clutch of bestial devils; Pluto,
like a mediaeval Satan, frowns above the scene of fiendish riot; the
violin of Orpheus thrills faintly through the infernal tumult. Gazing
on the spasms and convulsions of these grim subjects, we are inclined
to credit a legend preserved at Orvieto to the effect that the painter
depicted his own unfaithful mistress in the naked woman who is being
borne on a demon's back through the air to hell.

No one who has studied Michelangelo impartially will deny that in this
preference for the violent he came near to Signorelli. We feel it in
his choice of attitude, the strain he puts upon the lines of plastic
composition, the stormy energy of his conception and expression. It is
what we call his _terribilità_. But here again that dominating sense
of harmony, that instinct for the necessity of subordinating each
artistic element to one strain of architectonic music, which I have
already indicated as the leading note of difference between him and
the painter of Cortona, intervened to elevate his terribleness into
the region of sublimity. The violence of Michelangelo, unlike that of
Luca, lay not so much in the choice of savage subjects (cruelty,
ferocity, extreme physical and mental torment) as in a forceful,
passionate, tempestuous way of handling all the themes he treated. The
angels of the Judgment, sustaining the symbols of Christ's Passion,
wrestle and bend their agitated limbs like athletes. Christ emerges
from the sepulchre, not in victorious tranquillity, but with the clash
and clangour of an irresistible energy set free. Even in the
Crucifixion, one leg has been wrenched away from the nail which
pierced its foot, and writhes round the knee of the other still left
riven to the cross. The loves of Leda and the Swan, of Ixion and Juno,
are spasms of voluptuous pain; the sleep of the Night is troubled with
fantastic dreams, and the Dawn starts into consciousness with a
shudder of prophetic anguish. There is not a hand, a torso, a simple
nude, sketched by this extraordinary master, which does not vibrate
with nervous tension, as though the fingers that grasped the pen were
clenched and the eyes that viewed the model glowed beneath knit brows.
Michelangelo, in fact, saw nothing, felt nothing, interpreted nothing,
on exactly the same lines as any one who had preceded or who followed
him. His imperious personality he stamped upon the smallest trifle of
his work.

Luca's frescoes at Orvieto, when compared with Michelangelo's in the
Sistine, mark the transition from the art of the fourteenth, through
the art of the fifteenth, to that of the sixteenth century, with broad
and trenchant force. They are what Marlowe's dramas were to
Shakespeare's. They retain much of the mediaeval tradition both as
regards form and sentiment. We feel this distinctly in the treatment
of Dante, whose genius seems to have exerted at least as strong an
influence over Signorelli's imagination as over that of Michelangelo.
The episodes from the Divine Comedy are painted in a rude Gothic
spirit. The spirits of Hell seem borrowed from grotesque bas-reliefs
of the Pisan school. The draped, winged, and armed angels of Heaven
are posed with a ceremonious research of suavity or grandeur. These
and other features of his work carry us back to the period of Giotto
and Niccolò Pisano. But the true force of the man, what made him a
commanding master of the middle period, what distinguished him from
all his fellows of the _quattrocento_, is the passionate delight he
took in pure humanity--the nude, the body studied under all its
aspects and with no repugnance for its coarseness--man in his crudity
made the sole sufficient object for figurative art, anatomy regarded
as the crowning and supreme end of scientific exploration. It is this
in his work which carries us on toward the next age, and justifies our
calling Luca "the morning-star of Michelangelo."

It would be wrong to ascribe too much to the immediate influence of
the elder over the younger artist--at any rate in so far as the
frescoes of the Chapel of S. Brizio may have determined the creation
of the Sistine. Yet Vasari left on record that "even Michelangelo
followed the manner of Signorelli, as any one may see." Undoubtedly,
Buonarroti, while an inmate of Lorenzo de' Medici's palace at
Florence, felt the power of Luca's Madonna with the naked figures in
the background; the leading motive of which he transcended in his Doni
Holy Family. Probably at an early period he had before his eyes the
bold nudities, uncompromising designs, and awkward composition of
Luca's so-called School of Pan. In like manner, we may be sure that
during his first visit to Rome he was attracted by Signorelli's solemn
fresco of Moses in the Sistine. These things were sufficient to
establish a link of connection between the painter of Cortona and the
Florentine sculptor. And when Michelangelo visited the Chapel of S.
Brizio, after he had fixed and formed his style (exhibiting his innate
force of genius in the Pietà, the Bacchus, the Cupid, the David, the
statue of Julius, the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa), that early bond
of sympathy must have been renewed and enforced. They were men of a
like temperament, and governed by kindred aesthetic instincts.
Michelangelo brought to its perfection that system of working wholly
through the human form which Signorelli initiated. He shared his
violence, his _terribilità_, his almost brutal candour. In the fated
evolution of Italian art, describing its parabola of vital energy,
Michelangelo softened, sublimed, and harmonised his predecessor's
qualities. He did this by abandoning Luca's naïvetés and crudities;
exchanging his savage transcripts from coarse life for profoundly
studied idealisations of form; subordinating his rough and casual
design to schemes of balanced composition, based on architectural
relations; penetrating the whole accomplished work, as he intended it
should be, with a solemn and severe strain of unifying intellectual
melody.

Viewed in this light, the vault of the Sistine and the later fresco of
the Last Judgment may be taken as the final outcome of all previous
Italian art upon a single line of creative energy, and that line the
one anticipated by Luca Signorelli. In like manner, the Stanze and
Loggie of the Vatican were the final outcome of the same process upon
another line, suggested by Perugino and Fra Bartolommeo.

Michelangelo adapted to his own uses and bent to his own genius
motives originated by the Pisani, Giotto, Giacopo della Quercia,
Donatello, Masaccio, while working in the spirit of Signorelli. He
fused and recast the antecedent materials of design in sculpture and
painting, producing a quintessence of art beyond which it was
impossible to advance without breaking the rhythm, so intensely
strung, and without contradicting too violently the parent
inspiration. He strained the chord of rhythm to its very utmost, and
made incalculable demands upon the religious inspiration of its
predecessors. His mighty talent was equal to the task of transfusion
and remodelling which the exhibition of the supreme style demanded.
But after him there remained nothing for successors except mechanical
imitation, soulless rehandling of themes he had exhausted by reducing
them to his imperious imagination in a crucible of fiery intensity.


V

No critic with a just sense of phraseology would call Michelangelo a
colourist in the same way as Titian and Rubens were colourists. Still
it cannot be denied with justice that the painter of the Sistine had a
keen perception of what his art required in this region, and of how to
attain it. He planned a comprehensive architectural scheme, which
served as setting and support for multitudes of draped and undraped
human figures. The colouring is kept deliberately low and subordinate
to the two main features of the design--architecture, and the plastic
forms of men and women. Flesh-tints, varying from the strong red tone
of Jonah's athletic manhood, through the glowing browns of the seated
Genii, to the delicate carnations of Adam and the paler hues of Eve;
orange and bronze in draperies, medallions, decorative nudes, russets
like the tints of dead leaves; lilacs, cold greens, blue used
sparingly; all these colours are dominated and brought into harmony by
the greys of the architectural setting. It may indeed be said that the
different qualities of flesh-tints, the architectural greys, and a
dull bronzed yellow strike the chord of the composition. Reds are
conspicuous by their absence in any positive hue. There is no
vermilion, no pure scarlet or crimson, but a mixed tint verging upon
lake. The yellows are brought near to orange, tawny, bronze, except in
the hair of youthful personages, a large majority of whom are blonde.
The only colour which starts out staringly is ultramarine, owing of
course to this mineral material resisting time and change more
perfectly than the pigments with which it is associated. The whole
scheme leaves a grave harmonious impression on the mind, thoroughly in
keeping with the sublimity of the thoughts expressed. No words can
describe the beauty of the flesh-painting, especially in the figures
of the Genii, or the technical delicacy with which the modelling of
limbs, the modulation from one tone to another, have been carried from
silvery transparent shades up to the strongest accents.


VI

Mr. Ruskin has said, and very justly said, that "the highest art can
do no more than rightly represent the human form." This is what the
Italians of the Renaissance meant when, through the mouths of
Ghiberti, Buonarroti, and Cellini, they proclaimed that the perfect
drawing of a fine nude, "un bel corpo ignudo," was the final test of
mastery in plastic art. Mr. Ruskin develops his text in sentences
which have peculiar value from his lips. "This is the simple test,
then, of a perfect school--that it has represented the human form so
that it is impossible to conceive of its being better done. And that,
I repeat, has been accomplished twice only: once in Athens, once in
Florence. And so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive
schools, that it cannot be said of either of them that they
represented the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew and
perfectly moulded the body and limbs, but there is, so far as I am
aware, no instance of their representing the face as well as any great
Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted and carved the face
insuperably; but I believe there is no instance of his having
perfectly represented the body, which, by command of his religion, it
became his pride to despise and his safety to mortify."

We need not pause to consider whether the Italian's inferiority to the
Greek's in the plastic modelling of human bodies was due to the
artist's own religious sentiment. That seems a far-fetched explanation
for the shortcomings of men so frankly realistic and so scientifically
earnest as the masters of the Cinque Cento were. Michelangelo's
magnificent cartoon of Leda and the Swan, if it falls short of some
similar subject in some _gabinetto segreto_ of antique fresco, does
assuredly not do so because the draughtsman's hand faltered in pious
dread or pious aspiration. Nevertheless, Ruskin is right in telling us
that no Italian modelled a female nude equal to the Aphrodite of
Melos, or a male nude equal to the Apoxyomenos of the Braccio Nuovo.
He is also right in pointing out that no Greek sculptor approached the
beauty of facial form and expression which we recognise in Raffaello's
Madonna di San Sisto, in Sodoma's S. Sebastian, in Guercino's Christ
at the Corsini Palace, in scores of early Florentine sepulchral
monuments and pictures, in Umbrian saints and sweet strange
portrait-fancies by Da Vinci.

The fact seems to be that Greek and Italian plastic art followed
different lines of development, owing to the difference of dominant
ideas in the races, and to the difference of social custom. Religion
naturally played a foremost part in the art-evolution of both epochs.
The anthropomorphic Greek mythology encouraged sculptors to
concentrate their attention upon what Hegel called "the sensuous
manifestation of the idea," while Greek habits rendered them familiar
with the body frankly exhibited. Mediaeval religion withdrew Italian
sculptors and painters from the problems of purely physical form, and
obliged them to study the expression of sentiments and aspirations
which could only be rendered by emphasising psychical qualities
revealed through physiognomy. At the same time, modern habits of life
removed the naked body from their ken.

We may go further, and observe that the conditions under which Greek
art flourished developed what the Germans call "Allgemeinheit," a
tendency to generalise, which was inimical to strongly marked facial
expression or characterisation. The conditions of Italian art, on the
other hand, favoured an opposite tendency--to particularise, to
enforce detail, to emphasise the artist's own ideal or the model's
quality. When the type of a Greek deity had been fixed, each
successive master varied this within the closest limits possible. For
centuries the type remained fundamentally unaltered, undergoing subtle
transformations, due partly to the artist's temperament, and partly to
changes in the temper of society. Consequently those aspects of the
human form which are capable of most successful generalisation, the
body and the limbs, exerted a kind of conventional tyranny over Greek
art. And Greek artists applied to the face the same rules of
generalisation which were applicable to the body.

The Greek god or goddess was a sensuous manifestation of the idea, a
particle of universal godhood incarnate in a special fleshly form,
corresponding to the particular psychological attributes of the deity
whom the sculptor had to represent. No deviation from the generalised
type was possible. The Christian God, on the contrary, is a spirit;
and all the emanations from this spirit, whether direct, as in the
person of Christ, or derived, as in the persons of the saints, owe
their sensuous form and substance to the exigencies of mortal
existence, which these persons temporarily and phenomenally obeyed.
Since, then, the sensuous manifestation has now become merely
symbolic, and is no longer an indispensable investiture of the idea,
it may be altered at will in Christian art without irreverence. The
utmost capacity of the artist is now exerted, not in enforcing or
refining a generalised type, but in discovering some new facial
expression which shall reveal psychological quality in a particular
being. Doing so, he inevitably insists upon the face; and having
formed a face expressive of some defined quality, he can hardly give
to the body that generalised beauty which belongs to a Greek nymph or
athlete.

What we mean by the differences between Classic and Romantic art lies
in the distinctions I am drawing. Classicism sacrifices character to
breadth. Romanticism sacrifices breadth to character. Classic art
deals more triumphantly with the body, because the body gains by being
broadly treated. Romantic art deals more triumphantly with the face,
because the features lose by being broadly treated.

This brings me back to Mr. Ruskin, who, in another of his treatises,
condemns Michelangelo for a want of variety, beauty, feeling, in his
heads and faces. Were this the case, Michelangelo would have little
claim to rank as one of the world's chief artists. We have admitted
that the Italians did not produce such perfectly beautiful bodes and
limbs as the Greeks did, and have agreed that the Greeks produced less
perfectly beautiful faces than the Italians. Suppose, then, that
Michelangelo failed in his heads and faces, he, being an Italian, and
therefore confessedly inferior to the Greeks in his bodies and limbs,
must, by the force of logic, emerge less meritorious than we thought
him.


VII

To many of my readers the foregoing section will appear superfluous,
polemical, sophistic--three bad things. I wrote it, and I let it
stand, however, because it serves as preface to what I have to say in
general about Michelangelo's ideal of form. He was essentially a
Romantic as opposed to a Classic artist. That is to say, he sought
invariably for character--character in type, character in attitude,
character in every action of each muscle, character in each
extravagance of pose. He applied the Romantic principle to the body
and the limbs, exactly to that region of the human form which the
Greeks had conquered as their province. He did so with consummate
science and complete mastery of physiological law. What is more, he
compelled the body to become expressive, not, as the Greeks had done,
of broad general conceptions, but of the most intimate and poignant
personal emotions. This was his main originality. At the same time,
being a Romantic, he deliberately renounced the main tradition of that
manner. He refused to study portraiture, as Vasari tells us, and as we
see so plainly in the statues of the Dukes at Florence. He generalised
his faces, composing an ideal cast of features out of several types.
In the rendering of the face and head, then, he chose to be a Classic,
while in the treatment of the body he was vehemently modern. In all
his work which is not meant to be dramatic--that is, excluding the
damned souls in the Last Judgment, the bust of Brutus, and some keen
psychological designs--character is sacrificed to a studied ideal of
form, so far as the face is concerned. That he did this wilfully, on
principle, is certain. The proof remains in the twenty heads of those
incomparable genii of the Sistine, each one of whom possesses a beauty
and a quality peculiar to himself alone. They show that, if he had so
chosen, he could have played upon the human countenance with the same
facility as on the human body, varying its expressiveness _ad
infinitum_.

Why Michelangelo preferred to generalise the face and to particularise
the body remains a secret buried in the abysmal deeps of his
personality. In his studies from the model, unlike Lionardo, he almost
always left the features vague, while working out the trunk and limbs
with strenuous passion. He never seems to have been caught and
fascinated by the problem offered by the eyes and features of a male
or female. He places masks or splendid commonplaces upon frames
palpitant and vibrant with vitality in pleasure or in anguish.

In order to guard against an apparent contradiction, I must submit
that, when Michelangelo particularised the body and the limbs, he
strove to make them the symbols of some definite passion or emotion.
He seems to have been more anxious about the suggestions afforded by
their pose and muscular employment than he was about the expression of
the features. But we shall presently discover that, so far as pure
physical type is concerned, he early began to generalise the structure
of the body, passing finally into what may not unjustly be called a
mannerism of form.

These points may be still further illustrated by what a competent
critic has recently written upon Michelangelo's treatment of form. "No
one," says Professor Brücke, "ever knew so well as Michelangelo
Buonarroti how to produce powerful and strangely harmonious effects by
means of figures in themselves open to criticism, simply by his mode
of placing and ordering them, and of distributing their lines. For him
a figure existed only in his particular representation of it; how it
would have looked in any other position was a matter of no concern to
him." We may even go further, and maintain that Michelangelo was
sometimes wilfully indifferent to the physical capacities of the human
body in his passionate research of attitudes which present picturesque
and novel beauty. The ancients worked on quite a different method.
They created standard types which, in every conceivable posture, would
exhibit the grace and symmetry belonging to well-proportioned frames.
Michelangelo looked to the effect of a particular posture. He may have
been seduced by his habit of modelling figures in clay instead of
going invariably to the living subject, and so may have handled nature
with unwarrantable freedom. Anyhow, we have here another demonstration
of his romanticism.


VIII

The true test of the highest art is that it should rightly represent
the human form. Agreed upon this point, it remains for us to consider
in what way Michelangelo conceived and represented the human form. If
we can discover his ideal, his principles, his leading instincts in
this decisive matter, we shall unlock, so far as that is possible, the
secret of his personality as man and artist. The psychological quality
of every great master must eventually be determined by his mode of
dealing with the phenomena of sex.

In Pheidias we find a large impartiality. His men and women are cast
in the same mould of grandeur, inspired with equal strength and
sweetness, antiphonal notes in dual harmony. Praxiteles leans to the
female, Lysippus to the male; and so, through all the gamut of the
figurative craftsmen, we discover more or less affinity for man or
woman. One is swayed by woman and her gracefulness, the other by man
and his vigour. Few have realised the Pheidian perfection of doing
equal justice.

Michelangelo emerges as a mighty master who was dominated by the
vision of male beauty, and who saw the female mainly through the
fascination of the other sex. The defect of his art is due to a
certain constitutional callousness, a want of sensuous or imaginative
sensibility for what is specifically feminine.

Not a single woman carved or painted by the hand of Michelangelo has
the charm of early youth or the grace of virginity. The Eve of the
Sistine, the Madonna of S. Peter's, the Night and Dawn of the Medicean
Sacristy, are female in the anatomy of their large and grandly
modelled forms, but not feminine in their sentiment. This proposition
requires no proof. It is only needful to recall a Madonna by Raphael,
a Diana by Correggio, a Leda by Lionardo, a Venus by Titian, a S.
Agnes by Tintoretto. We find ourselves immediately in a different
region--the region of artists who loved, admired, and comprehended
what is feminine in the beauty and the temperament of women.
Michelangelo neither loved, nor admired, nor yielded to the female
sex. Therefore he could not deal plastically with what is best and
loveliest in the female form. His plastic ideal of the woman is
masculine. He builds a colossal frame of muscle, bone, and flesh,
studied with supreme anatomical science. He gives to Eve the full
pelvis and enormous haunches of an adult matron. It might here be
urged that he chose to symbolise the fecundity of her who was destined
to be the mother of the human race. But if this was his meaning, why
did he not make Adam a corresponding symbol of fatherhood? Adam is an
adolescent man, colossal in proportions, but beardless, hairless; the
attributes of sex in him are developed, but not matured by use. The
Night, for whom no symbolism of maternity was needed, is a woman who
has passed through many pregnancies. Those deeply delved wrinkles on
the vast and flaccid abdomen sufficiently indicate this. Yet when we
turn to Michelangelo's sonnets on Night, we find that he habitually
thought of her as a mysterious and shadowy being, whose influence,
though potent for the soul, disappeared before the frailest of all
creatures bearing light. The Dawn, again, in her deep lassitude, has
nothing of vernal freshness. Built upon the same type as the Night,
she looks like Messalina dragging herself from heavy slumber, for once
satiated as well as tired, stricken for once with the conscience of
disgust. When he chose to depict the acts of passion or of sensual
pleasure, a similar want of sympathy with what is feminine in
womanhood leaves an even more discordant impression on the mind. I
would base the proof of this remark upon the marble Leda of the
Bargello Museum, and an old engraving of Ixion clasping the phantom of
Juno under the form of a cloud. In neither case do we possess
Michelangelo's own handiwork; he must not, therefore, be credited with
the revolting expression, as of a drunken profligate, upon the face of
Leda. Yet in both cases he is indubitably responsible for the general
design, and for the brawny carnality of the repulsive woman. I find it
difficult to resist the conclusion that Michelangelo felt himself
compelled to treat women as though they were another and less graceful
sort of males. The sentiment of woman, what really distinguishes the
sex, whether voluptuously or passionately or poetically apprehended,
emerges in no eminent instance of his work. There is a Cartoon at
Naples for a Bacchante, which Bronzino transferred to canvas and
coloured. This design illustrates the point on which I am insisting.
An athletic circus-rider of mature years, with abnormally developed
muscles, might have posed as model for this female votary of Dionysus.
Before he made this drawing, Michelangelo had not seen those frescoes
of the dancing Bacchantes from Pompeii; nor had he perhaps seen the
Maenads on Greek bas-reliefs tossing wild tresses backwards, swaying
virginal lithe bodies to the music of the tambourine. We must not,
therefore, compare his concept with those masterpieces of the later
classical imagination. Still, many of his contemporaries, vastly
inferior to him in penetrative insight, a Giovanni da Udine, a Perino
del Vaga, a Primaticcio, not to speak of Raffaello or of Lionardo,
felt what the charm of youthful womanhood upon the revel might be. He
remained insensible to the melody of purely feminine lines; and the
only reason why his transcripts from the female form are not gross
like those of Flemish painters, repulsive like Rembrandt's, fleshly
like Rubens's, disagreeable like the drawings made by criminals in
prisons, is that they have little womanly about them.

Lest these assertions should appear too dogmatic, I will indicate the
series of works in which I recognise Michelangelo's sympathy with
genuine female quality. All the domestic groups, composed of women and
children, which fill the lunettes and groinings between the windows in
the Sistine Chapel, have a charming twilight sentiment of family life
or maternal affection. They are among the loveliest and most tranquil
of his conceptions. The Madonna above the tomb of Julius II. cannot be
accused of masculinity, nor the ecstatic figure of the Rachel beneath
it. Both of these statues represent what Goethe called "das ewig
Weibliche" under a truly felt and natural aspect. The Delphian and
Erythrean Sibyls are superb in their majesty. Again, in those numerous
designs for Crucifixions, Depositions from the Cross, and Pietàs,
which occupied so much of Michelangelo's attention during his old age,
we find an intense and pathetic sympathy with the sorrows of Mary,
expressed with noble dignity and a pious sense of godhead in the human
mother. It will be remarked that throughout the cases I have reserved
as exceptions, it is not woman in her plastic beauty and her radiant
charm that Michelangelo has rendered, but woman in her tranquil or her
saddened and sorrow-stricken moods. What he did not comprehend and
could not represent was woman in her girlishness, her youthful joy,
her physical attractiveness, her magic of seduction.

Michelangelo's women suggest demonic primitive beings, composite and
undetermined products of the human race in evolution, before the
specific qualities of sex have been eliminated from a general
predominating mass of masculinity. At their best, they carry us into
the realm of Lucretian imagination. He could not have incarnated in
plastic form Shakespeare's Juliet and Imogen, Dante's Francesca da
Rimini, Tasso's Erminia and Clorinda; but he might have supplied a
superb illustration to the opening lines of the Lucretian epic, where
Mars lies in the bed of Venus, and the goddess spreads her ample limbs
above her Roman lover. He might have evoked images tallying the vision
of primal passion in the fourth book of that poem. As I have elsewhere
said, writing about Lucretius: "There is something almost tragic in
these sighs and pantings and pleasure-throes, these incomplete
fruitions of souls pent within their frames of flesh. We seem to see a
race of men and women such as never lived, except perhaps in Rome or
in the thought of Michelangelo, meeting in leonine embracements that
yield pain, whereof the climax is, at best, relief from rage and
respite for a moment from consuming fire. There is a life elemental
rather than human in those mighty limbs; and the passion that twists
them on the marriage-bed has in it the stress of storms, the rampings
and roarings of leopards at play. Take this single line:--

  _et Venus in silvis jungebat corpora amantum._

What a picture of primeval breadth and vastness! The forest is the
world, and the bodies of the lovers are things natural and unashamed,
and Venus is the tyrannous instinct that controls the blood in
spring."

What makes Michelangelo's crudity in his plastic treatment of the
female form the more remarkable is that in his poetry he seems to feel
the influence of women mystically. I shall have to discuss this topic
in another place. It is enough here to say that, with very few
exceptions, we remain in doubt whether he is addressing a woman at
all. There are none of those spontaneous utterances by which a man
involuntarily expresses the outgoings of his heart to a beloved
object, the throb of irresistible emotion, the physical ache, the
sense of wanting, the joys and pains, the hopes and fears, the
ecstasies and disappointments, which belong to genuine passion. The
woman is, for him, an allegory, something he has not approached and
handled. Of her personality we learn nothing. Of her bodily
presentment, the eyes alone are mentioned; and the eyes are treated as
the path to Paradise for souls which seek emancipation from the flesh.
Raffaello's few and far inferior sonnets vibrate with an intense and
potent sensibility to this woman or to that.

Michelangelo's "donna" might just as well be a man; and indeed the
poems he addressed to men, though they have nothing sensual about
them, reveal a finer touch in the emotion of the writer. It is
difficult to connect this vaporous incorporeal "donna" of the poems
with those brawny colossal adult females of the statues, unless we
suppose that Michelangelo remained callous both to the physical
attractions and the emotional distinction of woman as she actually is.

I have tried to demonstrate that, plastically, he did not understand
women, and could not reproduce their form in art with sympathetic
feeling for its values of grace, suavity, virginity, and frailty. He
imported masculine qualities into every female theme he handled. The
case is different when we turn to his treatment of the male figure. It
would be impossible to adduce a single instance, out of the many
hundreds of examples furnished by his work, in which a note of
femininity has been added to the masculine type. He did not think
enough of women to reverse the process, and create hermaphroditic
beings like the Apollino of Praxiteles or the S. Sebastian of Sodoma.
His boys and youths and adult men remain, in the truest and the purest
sense of the word, virile. Yet with what infinite variety, with what a
deep intelligence of its resources, with what inexhaustible riches of
enthusiasm and science, he played upon the lyre of the male nude! How
far more fit for purposes of art he felt the man to be than the woman
is demonstrated, not only by his approaching woman from the masculine
side, but also by his close attention to none but male qualities in
men. I need not insist or enlarge upon this point. The fact is
apparent to every one with eyes to see. It would be futile to expound
Michelangelo's fertility in dealing with the motives of the male
figure as minutely as I judged it necessary to explain the poverty of
his inspiration through the female. But it ought to be repeated that,
over the whole gamut of the scale, from the grace of boyhood, through
the multiform delightfulness of adolescence into the firm force of
early manhood, and the sterner virtues of adult age, one severe and
virile spirit controls his fashioning of plastic forms. He even
exaggerates what is masculine in the male, as he caricatures the
female by ascribing impossible virility to her. But the exaggeration
follows here a line of mental and moral rectitude. It is the
expression of his peculiar sensibility to physical structure.


IX

When we study the evolution of Michelangelo's ideal of form, we find
at the beginning of his life a very short period in which he followed
the traditions of Donatello and imitated Greek work. The seated
Madonna in bas-relief and the Giovannino belong to this first stage.
So does the bas-relief of the Centaurs. It soon becomes evident,
however, that Michelangelo was not destined to remain a continuator of
Donatello's manner or a disciple of the classics. The next period,
which includes the Madonna della Febbre, the Bruges Madonna, the
Bacchus, the Cupid, and the David, is marked by an intense search
after the truth of Nature. Both Madonnas might be criticised for
unreality, owing to the enormous development of the thorax and
something artificial in the type of face. But all the male figures
seem to have been studied from the model. There is an individuality
about the character of each, a naturalism, an aiming after realistic
expression, which separate this group from previous and subsequent
works by Buonarroti. Traces of Donatello's influence survive in the
treatment of the long large hands of David, the cast of features
selected for that statue, and the working of the feet. Indeed it may
be said that Donatello continued through life to affect the genius of
Michelangelo by a kind of sympathy, although the elder master's
naïveté was soon discarded by the younger.

The second period culminated in the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa.
This design appears to have fixed the style now known to us as
Michelangelesque, and the loss of it is therefore irreparable. It
exercised the consummate science which he had acquired, his complete
mastery over the male nude. It defined his firm resolve to treat
linear design from the point of view of sculpture rather than of
painting proper. It settled his determination to work exclusively
through and by the human figure, rejecting all subordinate elements of
decoration. Had we possessed this epoch-making masterpiece, we should
probably have known Michelangelo's genius in its flower-period of
early ripeness, when anatomical learning was still combined with a
sustained dependence upon Nature. The transition from the second to
the third stage in this development of form-ideal remains imperfectly
explained, because the bathers in the Arno were necessary to account
for the difference between the realistic David and the methodically
studied genii of the Sistine.

The vault of the Sistine shows Michelangelo's third manner in
perfection. He has developed what may be called a scheme of the human
form. The apparently small head, the enormous breadth of shoulder, the
thorax overweighing the whole figure, the finely modelled legs, the
large and powerful extremities, which characterise his style
henceforward, culminate in Adam, repeat themselves throughout the
genii, govern the prophets. But Nature has not been neglected. Nothing
is more remarkable in that vast decorative mass of figures than the
variety of types selected, the beauty and animation of the faces, the
extraordinary richness, elasticity, and freshness of the attitudes
presented to the eye. Every period of life has been treated with
impartial justice, and both sexes are adequately handled. The
Delphian, Erythrean, and Libyan Sibyls display a sublime sense of
facial beauty. The Eve of the Temptation has even something of
positively feminine charm. This is probably due to the fact that
Michelangelo here studied expression and felt the necessity of
dramatic characterisation in this part of his work. He struck each
chord of what may be called the poetry of figurative art, from the
epic cantos of Creation, Fall, and Deluge, through the tragic odes
uttered by prophets and sibyls down to the lyric notes of the genii,
and the sweet idyllic strains of the groups in the lunettes and
spandrels.

It cannot be said that even here Michelangelo felt the female nude as
sympathetically as he felt the male. The women in the picture of the
Deluge are colossal creatures, scarcely distinguishable from the men
except by their huge bosoms. His personal sense of beauty finds
fullest expression in the genii. The variations on one theme of
youthful loveliness and grace are inexhaustible; the changes rung on
attitude, and face, and feature are endless. The type, as I have said,
has already become schematic. It is adolescent, but the adolescence is
neither that of the Greek athlete nor that of the nude model. Indeed,
it is hardly natural; nor yet is it ideal in the Greek sense of that
term. The physical gracefulness of a slim ephebus was never seized by
Michelangelo. His Ganymede displays a massive trunk and brawny thighs.
Compare this with the Ganymede of Titian. Compare the Cupid at South
Kensington with the Praxitelean Genius of the Vatican--the Adonis and
the Bacchus of the Bargello with Hellenic statues. The bulk and force
of maturity are combined with the smoothness of boyhood and with a
delicacy of face that borders on the feminine.

It is an arid region, the region of this mighty master's spirit. There
are no heavens and no earth or sea in it; no living creatures,
forests, flowers; no bright colours, brilliant lights, or cavernous
darks. In clear grey twilight appear a multitude of naked forms, both
male and female, yet neither male nor female of the actual world;
rather the brood of an inventive intellect, teeming with
preoccupations of abiding thoughts and moods of feeling, which become
for it incarnate in these stupendous figures. It is as though
Michelangelo worked from the image in his brain outwards to a physical
presentment supplied by his vast knowledge of life, creating forms
proper to his own specific concept.

Nowhere else in plastic art does the mental world peculiar to the
master press in so immediately, without modification and without
mitigation, upon our sentient imagination. I sometimes dream that the
inhabitants of the moon may be like Michelangelo's men and women, as I
feel sure its landscape resembles his conception of the material
universe.

What I have called Michelangelo's third manner, the purest
manifestation of which is to be found in the vault of the Sistine,
sustained itself for a period of many years. The surviving fragments
of sculpture for the tomb of Julius, especially the Captives of the
Louvre and the statues in the Sacristy at S. Lorenzo, belong to this
stage. A close and intimate _rapport_ with Nature can be perceived in
all the work he designed and executed during the pontificates of Leo
and Clement. The artist was at his fullest both of mental energy and
physical vigour. What he wrought now bears witness to his plenitude of
manhood. Therefore, although the type fixed for the Sistine
prevailed--I mean that generalisation of the human form in certain
wilfully selected proportions, conceived to be ideally beautiful or
necessary for the grand style in vast architectonic schemes of
decoration--still it is used with an exquisite sensitiveness to the
pose and structure of the natural body, a delicate tact in the
definition of muscle and articulation, an acute feeling for the
qualities of flesh and texture. None of the creations of this period,
moreover, are devoid of intense animating emotions and ideas.

Unluckily, during all the years which intervened between the Sistine
vault and the Last Judgment, Michelangelo was employed upon
architectural problems and engineering projects, which occupied his
genius in regions far removed from that of figurative art. It may,
therefore, be asserted, that although he did not retrograde from want
of practice, he had no opportunity of advancing further by the
concentration of his genius on design. This accounts, I think, for the
change in his manner which we notice when he began to paint in Rome
under Pope Paul III. The fourth stage in his development of form is
reached now. He has lost nothing of his vigour, nothing of his
science. But he has drifted away from Nature. All the innumerable
figures of the Last Judgment, in all their varied attitudes, with
divers moods of dramatic expression, are diagrams wrought out
imaginatively from the stored-up resources of a lifetime. It may be
argued that it was impossible to pose models, in other words, to
appeal to living men and women, for the foreshortenings of falling or
soaring shapes in that huge drift of human beings. This is true; and
the strongest testimony to the colossal powers of observation
possessed by Michelangelo is that none of all those attitudes are
wrong. We may verify them, if we take particular pains to do so, by
training the sense of seeing to play the part of a detective camera.
Michelangelo was gifted with a unique faculty for seizing momentary
movements, fixing them upon his memory, and transferring them to
fresco by means of his supreme acquaintance with the bony structure
and the muscular capacities of the human frame. Regarded from this
point of view, the Last Judgment was an unparalleled success. As such
the contemporaries of Buonarroti hailed it. Still, the breath of life
has exaled from all those bodies, and the tyranny of the schematic
ideal of form is felt in each of them. Without meaning to be
irreverent, we might fancy that two elastic lay-figures, one male, the
other female, both singularly similar in shape, supplied the materials
for the total composition. Of the dramatic intentions and suggestions
underlying these plastic and elastic shapes I am not now speaking. It
is my present business to establish the phases through which my
master's sense of form passed from its cradle to its grave.

In the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina, so ruined at this day that we
can hardly value them, the mechanic manner of the fourth stage seems
to reach its climax. Ghosts of their former selves, they still reveal
the poverty of creative and spontaneous inspiration which presided
over their nativity.

Michelangelo's fourth manner might be compared with that of Milton in
"Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes." Both of these great
artists in old age exaggerate the defects of their qualities.
Michelangelo's ideal of line and proportion in the human form becomes
stereotyped and strained, as do Milton's rhythms and his Latinisms.
The generous wine of the Bacchus and of "Comus," so intoxicating in
its newness, the same wine in the Sistine and "Paradise Lost," so
overwhelming in its mature strength, has acquired an austere aridity.
Yet, strange to say, amid these autumn stubbles of declining genius we
light upon oases more sweet, more tenderly suggestive, than aught the
prime produced. It is not my business to speak of Milton here. I need
not recall his "Knights of Logres and of Lyonesse," or resume his
Euripidean garlands showered on Samson's grave. But, for my master
Michelangelo, it will suffice to observe that all the grace his genius
held, refined, of earthly grossness quit, appeared, under the
dominance of this fourth manner, in the mythological subjects he
composed for Tommaso Cavalieri, and, far more nobly, in his countless
studies for the celebration of Christ's Passion. The designs
bequeathed to us from this period are very numerous. They were never
employed in the production of any monumental work of sculpture or of
painting. For this very reason, because they were occasional
improvisations, preludes, dreams of things to be, they preserve the
finest bloom, the Indian summer of his fancy. Lovers of Michelangelo
must dedicate their latest and most loving studies to this phase of
his fourth manner.


X

If we seek to penetrate the genius of an artist, not merely forming a
correct estimate of his technical ability and science, but also
probing his personality to the core, as near as this is possible for
us to do, we ought to give our undivided study to his drawings. It is
there, and there alone, that we come face to face with the real man,
in his unguarded moments, in his hours of inspiration, in the
laborious effort to solve a problem of composition, or in the happy
flow of genial improvisation. Michelangelo was wont to maintain that
all the arts are included in the art of design. Sculpture, painting,
architecture, he said, are but subordinate branches of
draughtsmanship. And he went so far as to assert that the mechanical
arts, with engineering and fortification, nay, even the minor arts of
decoration and costume, owe their existence to design. The more we
reflect upon this apparent paradox, the more shall we feel it to be
true. At any rate, there are no products of human thought and feeling
capable of being expressed by form which do not find their common
denominator in a linear drawing. The simplicity of a sketch, the
comparative rapidity with which it is produced, the concentration of
meaning demanded by its rigid economy of means, render it more
symbolical, more like the hieroglyph of its maker's mind, than any
finished work can be. We may discover a greater mass of interesting
objects in a painted picture or a carved statue; but we shall never
find exactly the same thing, never the involuntary revelation of the
artist's soul, the irrefutable witness to his mental and moral
qualities, to the mysteries of his genius and to its limitations.

If this be true of all artists, it is in a peculiar sense true of
Michelangelo. Great as he was as sculptor, painter, architect, he was
only perfect and impeccable as draughtsman. Inadequate realisation,
unequal execution, fatigue, satiety, caprice of mood, may sometimes be
detected in his frescoes and his statues; but in design we never find
him faulty, hasty, less than absolute master over the selected realm
of thought. His most interesting and instructive work remains what he
performed with pen and chalk in hand. Deeply, therefore, must we
regret the false modesty which made him destroy masses of his
drawings, while we have reason to be thankful for those marvellous
photographic processes which nowadays have placed the choicest of his
masterpieces within the reach of every one.

The following passages from Vasari's and Condivi's Lives deserve
attention by those who approach the study of Buonarroti's drawings.
Vasari says: "His powers of imagination were such, that he was
frequently compelled to abandon his purpose, because he could not
express by the hand those grand and sublime ideas which he had
conceived in his mind; nay, he has spoiled and destroyed many works
for this cause; and I know, too, that some short time before his death
he burnt a large number of his designs, sketches, and cartoons, that
none might see the labours he had endured, and the trials to which he
had subjected his spirit, in his resolve not to fall short of
perfection. I have myself secured some drawings by his hand, which
were found in Florence, and are now in my book of designs, and these,
although they give evidence of his great genius, yet prove also that
the hammer of Vulcan was necessary to bring Minerva from the head of
Jupiter. He would construct an ideal shape out of nine, ten and even
twelve different heads, for no other purpose than to obtain a certain
grace of harmony and composition which is not to be found in the
natural form, and would say that the artist must have his measuring
tools, not in the hand, but in the eye, because the hands do but
operate, it is the eye that judges; he pursued the same idea in
architecture also." Condivi adds some information regarding his
extraordinary fecundity and variety of invention: "He was gifted with
a most tenacious memory, the power of which was such that, though he
painted so many thousands of figures, as any one can see, he never
made one exactly like another or posed in the same attitude. Indeed, I
have heard him say that he never draws a line without remembering
whether he has drawn it before; erasing any repetition, when the
design was meant to be exposed to public view. His force of
imagination is also most extraordinary. This has been the chief reason
why he was never quite satisfied with his own work, and always
depreciated its quality, esteeming that his hand failed to attain the
idea which he had formed within his brain."


XI

The four greatest draughtsmen of this epoch were Lionardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Raffaello, and Andrea del Sarto. They are not to be
reckoned as equals; for Lionardo and Michelangelo outstrip the other
two almost as much as these surpass all lesser craftsmen. Each of the
four men expressed his own peculiar vision of the world with pen, or
chalk, or metal point, finding the unique inevitable line, the exact
touch and quality of stroke, which should present at once a lively
transcript from real Nature, and a revelation of the artist's
particular way of feeling Nature. In Lionardo it is a line of subtlety
and infinite suggestiveness; in Michelangelo it compels attention, and
forcibly defines the essence of the object; in Raffaello it carries
melody, the charm of an unerring rhythm; in Andrea it seems to call
for tone, colour, atmosphere, and makes their presence felt. Raffaello
was often faulty: even in the wonderful pen-drawing of two nudes he
sent to Albrecht Dürer as a sample of his skill, we blame the knees
and ankles of his models. Lionardo was sometimes wilful, whimsical,
seduced by dreamland, like a god born amateur. Andrea allowed his
facility to lead him into languor, and lacked passion. Michelangelo's
work shows none of these shortcomings; it is always technically
faultness, instinct with passion, supereminent in force. But we crave
more of grace, of sensuous delight, of sweetness, than he chose, or
perhaps was able, to communicate. We should welcome a little more of
human weakness if he gave a little more of divine suavity.

Michelangelo's style of design is that of a sculptor, Andrea's of a
colourist, Lionardo's of a curious student, Raffaello's of a musician
and improvisatore. These distinctions are not merely fanciful, nor
based on what we know about the men in their careers. We feel similar
distinctions in the case of all great draughtsmen. Titian's
chalk-studies, Fra Bartolommeo's, so singularly akin to Andrea del
Sarto's, Giorgione's pen-and-ink sketch for a Lucretia, are seen at
once by their richness and blurred outlines to be the work of
colourists. Signorelli's transcripts from the nude, remarkably similar
to those of Michelangelo, reveal a sculptor rather than a painter.
Botticelli, with all his Florentine precision, shows that, like
Lionardo, he was a seeker and a visionary in his anxious feeling after
curve and attitude. Mantegna seems to be graving steel or cutting into
marble. It is easy to apply this analysis in succession to any
draughtsman who has style. To do so would, however, be superfluous: we
should only be enforcing what is a truism to all intelligent students
of art--namely, that each individual stamps his own specific quality
upon his handiwork; reveals even in the neutral region of design his
innate preference for colour or pure form as a channel of expression;
betrays the predominance of mental energy or sensuous charm, of
scientific curiosity or plastic force, of passion or of tenderness,
which controls his nature. This inevitable and unconscious revelation
of the man in art-work strikes us as being singularly modern. We do
not apprehend it to at all the same extent in the sculpture of the
ancients, whether it be that our sympathies are too remote from Greek
and Roman ways of feeling, or whether the ancients really conceived
art more collectively in masses, less individually as persons.

No master exhibits this peculiarly modern quality more decisively than
Michelangelo, and nowhere is the personality of his genius, what marks
him off and separates him from all fellow-men, displayed with fuller
emphasis than in his drawings. To use the words of a penetrative
critic, from whom it is a pleasure to quote: "The thing about
Michelangelo is this; he is not, so to say, at the head of a class,
but he stands apart by himself: he is not possessed of a skill which
renders him unapproached or unapproachable; but rather, he is of so
unique an order, that no other artist whatever seems to suggest
comparison with him." Mr. Selwyn Image goes on to define in what a
true sense the words "creator" and "creative" may be applied to him:
how the shows and appearances of the world were for him but
hieroglyphs of underlying ideas, with which his soul was familiar, and
from which he worked again outward; "his learning and skill in the
arts supplying to his hand such large and adequate symbols of them as
are otherwise beyond attainment." This, in a very difficult and
impalpable region of aesthetic criticism, is finely said, and accords
with Michelangelo's own utterances upon art and beauty in his poems.
Dwelling like a star apart, communing with the eternal ideas, the
permanent relations of the universe, uttering his inmost thoughts
about these mysteries through the vehicles of science and of art, for
which he was so singularly gifted, Michelangelo, in no loose or
trivial sense of that phrase, proved himself to be a creator. He
introduces us to a world seen by no eyes except his own, compels us to
become familiar with forms unapprehended by our senses, accustoms us
to breathe a rarer and more fiery atmosphere than we were born into.

The vehicles used by Michelangelo in his designs were mostly pen and
chalk. He employed both a sharp-nibbed pen of some kind, and a broad
flexible reed, according to the exigencies of his subject or the
temper of his mood. The chalk was either red or black, the former
being softer than the latter. I cannot remember any instances of those
chiaroscuro washes which Raffaello handled in so masterly a manner,
although Michelangelo frequently combined bistre shading with pen
outlines. In like manner he does not seem to have favoured the metal
point upon prepared paper, with which Lionardo produced unrivalled
masterpieces. Some drawings, where the yellow outline bites into a
parchment paper, blistering at the edges, suggest a rusty metal in the
instrument. We must remember, however, that the inks of that period
were frequently corrosive, as is proved by the state of many documents
now made illegible through the gradual attrition of the paper by
mineral acids. It is also not impossible that artists may have already
invented what we call steel pens. Sarpi, in the seventeenth century,
thanks a correspondent for the gift of one of these mechanical
devices. Speaking broadly, the reed and the quill, red and black
chalk, or _matita,_ were the vehicles of Michelangelo's expression as
a draughtsman. I have seen very few examples of studies heightened
with white chalk, and none produced in the fine Florentine style of
Ghirlandajo by white chalk alone upon a dead-brown surface. In this
matter it is needful to speak with diffidence; for the sketches of our
master are so widely scattered that few students can have examined the
whole of them; and photographic reproductions, however admirable in
their fidelity to outline, do not always give decisive evidence
regarding the materials employed.

One thing seems manifest. Michelangelo avoided those mixed methods
with which Lionardo, the magician, wrought wonders. He preferred an
instrument which could be freely, broadly handled, inscribing form in
strong plain strokes upon the candid paper. The result attained,
whether wrought by bold lines, or subtly hatched, or finished with the
utmost delicacy of modulated shading, has always been traced out
conscientiously and firmly, with one pointed stylus (pen, chalk, or
matita), chosen for the purpose. As I have said, it is the work of a
sculptor, accustomed to wield chisel and mallet upon marble, rather
than that of a painter, trained to secure effects by shadows and
glazings.

It is possible, I think, to define, at least with some approximation
to precision, Michelangelo's employment of his favourite vehicles for
several purposes and at different periods of his life. A broad-nibbed
pen was used almost invariably in making architectural designs of
cornices, pilasters, windows, also in plans for military engineering.
Sketches of tombs and edifices, intended to be shown to patrons, were
partly finished with the pen; and here we find a subordinate and very
limited use of the brush in shading. Such performances may be regarded
as products of the workshop rather than as examples of the artist's
mastery. The style of them is often conventional, suggesting the
intrusion of a pupil or the deliberate adoption of an office
mannerism. The pen plays a foremost part in all the greatest and most
genial creations of his fancy when it worked energetically in
preparation for sculpture or for fresco. The Louvre is rich in
masterpieces of this kind--the fiery study of a David; the heroic
figures of two male nudes, hatched into stubborn salience like pieces
of carved wood; the broad conception of the Madonna at S. Lorenzo in
her magnificent repose and passionate cascade of fallen draperies; the
repulsive but superabundantly powerful profile of a goat-like faun.
These, and the stupendous studies of the Albertina Collection at
Vienna, including the supine man with thorax violently raised, are
worked with careful hatchings, stroke upon stroke, effecting a
suggestion of plastic roundness. But we discover quite a different use
of the pen in some large simple outlines of seated female figures at
the Louvre; in thick, almost muddy, studies at Vienna, where the form
emerges out of oft-repeated sodden blotches; in the grim light and
shade, the rapid suggestiveness of the dissection scene at Oxford. The
pen in the hand of Michelangelo was the tool by means of which he
realised his most trenchant conceptions and his most picturesque
impressions. In youth and early manhood, when his genius was still
vehement, it seems to have been his favourite vehicle.

The use of chalk grew upon him in later life, possibly because he
trusted more to his memory now, and loved the dreamier softer medium
for uttering his fancies. Black chalk was employed for rapid notes of
composition, and also for the more elaborate productions of his
pencil. To this material we owe the head of Horror which he gave to
Gherardo Perini (in the Uffizi), the Phaethon, the Tityos, the
Ganymede he gave to Tommaso Cavalieri (at Windsor). It is impossible
to describe the refinements of modulated shading and the precision of
predetermined outlines by means of which these incomparable drawings
have been produced. They seem to melt and to escape inspection, yet
they remain fixed on the memory as firmly as forms in carven basalt.

The whole series of designs for Christ's Crucifixion and Deposition
from the Cross are executed in chalk, sometimes black, but mostly red.
It is manifest, upon examination, that they are not studies from the
model, but thoughts evoked and shadowed forth on paper. Their
perplexing multiplicity and subtle variety--as though a mighty
improvisatore were preluding again and yet again upon the clavichord
to find his theme, abandoning the search, renewing it, altering the
key, changing the accent--prove that this continued seeking with the
crayon after form and composition was carried on in solitude and
abstract moments. Incomplete as the designs may be, they reveal
Michelangelo's loftiest dreams and purest visions. The nervous energy,
the passionate grip upon the subject, shown in the pen-drawings, are
absent here. These qualities are replaced by meditation and an air of
rapt devotion. The drawings for the Passion might be called the
prayers and pious thoughts of the stern master.

Red chalk he used for some of his most brilliant conceptions. It is
not necessary to dwell upon the bending woman's head at Oxford, or the
torso of the lance-bearer at Vienna. Let us confine our attention to
what is perhaps the most pleasing and most perfect of all
Michelangelo's designs--the "Bersaglio," or the "Arcieri," in the
Queen's collection at Windsor.

It is a group of eleven naked men and one woman, fiercely footing the
air, and driving shafts with all their might to pierce a classical
terminal figure, whose face, like that of Pallas, and broad breast are
guarded by a spreading shield. The draughtsman has indicated only one
bow, bent with fury by an old man in the background. Yet all the
actions proper to archery are suggested by the violent gestures and
strained sinews of the crowd. At the foot of the terminal statue,
Cupid lies asleep upon his wings, with idle bow and quiver. Two little
genii of love, in the background, are lighting up a fire, puffing its
flames, as though to drive the archers onward. Energy and ardour,
impetuous movement and passionate desire, could not be expressed with
greater force, nor the tyranny of some blind impulse be more
imaginatively felt. The allegory seems to imply that happiness is not
to be attained, as human beings mostly strive to seize it, by the
fierce force of the carnal passions. It is the contrast between
celestial love asleep in lustful souls, and vulgar love inflaming
tyrannous appetites:--

  _The one love soars, the other downward tends;
    The soul lights this, while that the senses stir,
    And still lust's arrow at base quarry flies._

This magnificent design was engraved during Buonarroti's lifetime, or
shortly afterwards, by Niccolò Beatrizet. Some follower of Raffaello
used the print for a fresco in the Palazzo Borghese at Rome. It forms
one of the series in which Raffaello's marriage of Alexander and
Roxana is painted. This has led some critics to ascribe the drawing
itself to the Urbinate. Indeed, at first sight, one might almost
conjecture that the original chalk study was a genuine work of
Raffaello, aiming at rivalry with Michelangelo's manner. The calm
beauty of the statue's classic profile, the refinement of all the
faces, the exquisite delicacy of the adolescent forms, and the
dominant veiling of strength with grace, are not precisely
Michelangelesque. The technical execution of the design, however,
makes its attribution certain. Well as Raffaello could draw, he could
not draw like this. He was incapable of rounding and modelling the
nude with those soft stipplings and granulated shadings which bring
the whole surface out like that of a bas-relief in polished marble.
His own drawing for Alexander and Roxana, in red chalk, and therefore
an excellent subject for comparison with the Arcieri, is hatched all
over in straight lines; a method adopted by Michelangelo when working
with the pen, but, so far as I am aware, never, or very rarely, used
when he was handling chalk. The style of this design and its exquisite
workmanship correspond exactly with the finish of the Cavalieri series
at Windsor. The paper, moreover, is indorsed in Michelangelo's
handwriting with a memorandum bearing the date April 12, 1530. We have
then in this masterpiece of draughtsmanship an example, not of
Raffaello in a Michelangelising mood, but of Michelangelo for once
condescending to surpass Raffaello on his own ground of loveliness and
rhythmic grace.



CHAPTER VII


I

Julius died upon the 21st of February 1513. "A prince," says
Guicciardini, "of inestimable courage and tenacity, but headlong, and
so extravagant in the schemes he formed, that his own prudence and
moderation had less to do with shielding him from ruin than the
discord of sovereigns and the circumstances of the times in Europe:
worthy, in all truth, of the highest glory had he been a secular
potentate, or if the pains and anxious thought he employed in
augmenting the temporal greatness of the Church by war had been
devoted to her spiritual welfare in the arts of peace."

Italy rejoiced when Giovanni de' Medici was selected to succeed him,
with the title of Leo X. "Venus ruled in Rome with Alexander, Mars
with Julius, now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo." Such was the
tenor of the epigrams which greeted Leo upon his triumphal progress to
the Lateran. It was felt that a Pope of the house of Medici would be a
patron of arts and letters, and it was hoped that the son of Lorenzo
the Magnificent might restore the equilibrium of power in Italy. Leo
X. has enjoyed a greater fame than he deserved. Extolled as an
Augustus in his lifetime, he left his name to what is called the
golden age of Italian culture. Yet he cannot be said to have raised
any first-rate men of genius, or to have exercised a very wise
patronage over those whom Julius brought forward. Michelangelo and
Raffaello were in the full swing of work when Leo claimed their
services. We shall see how he hampered the rare gifts of the former by
employing him on uncongenial labours; and it was no great merit to
give a free rein to the inexhaustible energy of Raffaello. The project
of a new S. Peter's belonged to Julius. Leo only continued the scheme,
using such assistants as the times provided after Bramante's death in
1514. Julius instinctively selected men of soaring and audacious
genius, who were capable of planning on a colossal scale. Leo
delighted in the society of clever people, poetasters, petty scholars,
lutists, and buffoons. Rome owes no monumental work to his inventive
brain, and literature no masterpiece to his discrimination. Ariosto,
the most brilliant poet of the Renaissance, returned in disappointment
from the Vatican. "When I went to Rome and kissed the foot of Leo,"
writes the ironical satirist, "he bent down from the holy chair, and
took my hand and saluted me on both cheeks. Besides, he made me free
of half the stamp-dues I was bound to pay; and then, breast full of
hope, but smirched with mud, I retired and took my supper at the Ram."

The words which Leo is reported to have spoken to his brother Giuliano
when he heard the news of his election, express the character of the
man and mark the difference between his ambition and that of Julius.
"Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has given it us." To enjoy life,
to squander the treasures of the Church on amusements, to feed a
rabble of flatterers, to contract enormous debts, and to disturb the
peace of Italy, not for some vast scheme of ecclesiastical
aggrandisement, but in order to place the princes of his family on
thrones, that was Leo's conception of the Papal privileges and duties.
The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raffaello, are
eminently characteristic. Julius, bent, white-haired, and emaciated,
has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic temperament. Leo,
heavy-jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the
coarser fibre of a sensualist.


II

We have seen already that Julius, before his death, provided for his
monument being carried out upon a reduced scale. Michelangelo entered
into a new contract with the executors, undertaking to finish the work
within the space of seven years from the date of the deed, May 6,
1513. He received in several payments, during that year and the years
1514, 1515, 1516, the total sum of 6100 golden ducats. This proves
that he must have pushed the various operations connected with the
tomb vigorously forward, employing numerous workpeople, and ordering
supplies of marble. In fact, the greater part of what remains to us of
the unfinished monument may be ascribed to this period of
comparatively uninterrupted labour. Michelangelo had his workshop in
the Macello de' Corvi, but we know very little about the details of
his life there. His correspondence happens to be singularly scanty
between the years 1513 and 1516. One letter, however, written in May
1518, to the Capitano of Cortona throws a ray of light upon this
barren tract of time, and introduces an artist of eminence, whose
intellectual affinity to Michelangelo will always remain a matter of
interest. "While I was at Rome, in the first year of Pope Leo, there
came the Master Luca Signorelli of Cortona, painter. I met him one day
near Monte Giordano, and he told me that he was come to beg something
from the Pope, I forget what: he had run the risk of losing life and
limb for his devotion to the house of Medici, and now it seemed they
did not recognise him: and so forth, saying many things I have
forgotten. After these discourses, he asked me for forty giulios [a
coin equal in value to the more modern paolo, and worth perhaps eight
shillings of present money], and told me where to send them to, at the
house of a shoemaker, his lodgings. I not having the money about me,
promised to send it, and did so by the hand of a young man in my
service, called Silvio, who is still alive and in Rome, I believe.
After the lapse of some days, perhaps because his business with the
Pope had failed, Messer Luca came to my house in the Macello de'
Corvi, the same where I live now, and found me working on a marble
statue, four cubits in height, which has the hands bound behind the
back, and bewailed himself with me, and begged another forty, saying
that he wanted to leave Rome. I went up to my bedroom, and brought the
money down in the presence of a Bolognese maid I kept, and I think the
Silvio above mentioned was also there. When Luca got the cash, he went
away, and I have never seen him since; but I remember complaining to
him, because I was out of health and could not work, and he said:
'Have no fear, for the angels from heaven will come to take you in
their arms and aid you.'" This is in several ways an interesting
document. It brings vividly before our eyes magnificent expensive
Signorelli and his meanly living comrade, each of them mighty masters
of a terrible and noble style, passionate lovers of the nude, devoted
to masculine types of beauty, but widely and profoundly severed by
differences in their personal tastes and habits. It also gives us a
glimpse into Michelangelo's workshop at the moment when he was
blocking out one of the bound Captives at the Louvre. It seems from
what follows in the letter that Michelangelo had attempted to recover
the money through his brother Buonarroto, but that Signorelli refused
to acknowledge his debt. The Capitano wrote that he was sure it had
been discharged. "That," adds Michelangelo, "is the same as calling me
the biggest blackguard; and so I should be, if I wanted to get back
what had been already paid. But let your Lordship think what you like
about it, I am bound to get the money, and so I swear." The remainder
of the autograph is torn and illegible; it seems to wind up with a
threat.

The records of this period are so scanty that every detail acquires a
certain importance for Michelangelo's biographer. By a deed executed
on the 14th of June 1514, we find that he contracted to make a figure
of Christ in marble, "life-sized, naked, erect, with a cross in his
arms, and in such attitude as shall seem best to Michelangelo." The
persons who ordered the statue were Bernardo Cencio (a Canon of S.
Peter's), Mario Scappucci, and Metello Varj dei Porcari, a Roman of
ancient blood. They undertook to pay 200 golden ducats for the work;
and Michelangelo promised to finish it within the space of four years,
when it was to be placed in the Church of S. Maria sopra Minerva.
Metello Varj, though mentioned last in the contract, seems to have
been the man who practically gave the commission, and to whom
Michelangelo was finally responsible for its performance. He began to
hew it from a block, and discovered black veins in the working. This,
then, was thrown aside, and a new marble had to be attacked. The
statue, now visible at the Minerva, was not finished until the year
1521, when we shall have to return to it again.

There is a point of some interest in the wording of this contract, on
which, as facts to dwell upon are few and far between at present, I
may perhaps allow myself to digress. The master is here described as
_Michelangelo (di Lodovico) Simoni, Scultore_. Now Michelangelo always
signed his own letters Michelangelo Buonarroti, although he addressed
the members of his family by the surname of Simoni. This proves that
the patronymic usually given to the house at large was still Simoni,
and that Michelangelo himself acknowledged that name in a legal
document. The adoption of Buonarroti by his brother's children and
descendants may therefore be ascribed to usage ensuing from the
illustration of their race by so renowned a man. It should also be
observed that at this time Michelangelo is always described in deeds
as sculptor, and that he frequently signs with Michelangelo, Scultore.
Later on in life he changed his views. He wrote in 1548 to his nephew
Lionardo: "Tell the priest not to write to me again as _Michelangelo
the sculptor_, for I am not known here except as Michelangelo
Buonarroti. Say, too, that if a citizen of Florence wants to have an
altar-piece painted, he must find some painter; for I was never either
sculptor or painter in the way of one who keeps a shop. I have always
avoided that, for the honour of my father and my brothers. True, I
have served three Popes; but that was a matter of necessity." Earlier,
in 1543, he had written to the same effect: "When you correspond with
me, do not use the superscription _Michelangelo Simoni_, nor
_sculptor_; it is enough to put _Michelangelo Buonarroti_, for that is
how I am known here." On another occasion, advising his nephew what
surname the latter ought to adopt, he says: "I should certainly use
_Simoni_, and if the whole (that is, the whole list of patronymics in
use at Florence) is too long, those who cannot read it may leave it
alone." These communications prove that, though he had come to be
known as Buonarroti, he did not wish the family to drop their old
surname of Simoni. The reason was that he believed in their legendary
descent from the Counts of Canossa through a Podestà of Florence,
traditionally known as Simone da Canossa. This opinion had been
confirmed in 1520, as we have seen above, by a letter he received from
the Conte Alessandro da Canossa, addressing him as "Honoured kinsman."
In the correspondence with Lionardo, Michelangelo alludes to this act
of recognition: "You will find a letter from the Conte Alessandro da
Canossa in the book of contracts. He came to visit me at Rome, and
treated me like a relative. Take care of it." The dislike expressed by
Michelangelo to be called _sculptor_, and addressed upon the same
terms as other artists, arose from a keen sense of his nobility. The
feeling emerges frequently in his letters between 1540 and 1550. I
will give a specimen: "As to the purchase of a house, I repeat that
you ought to buy one of honourable condition, at 1500 or 2000 crowns;
and it ought to be in our quarter (Santa Croce), if possible. I say
this, because an honourable mansion in the city does a family great
credit. It makes more impression than farms in the country; and we are
truly burghers, who claim a very noble ancestry. I always strove my
utmost to resuscitate our house, but I had not brothers able to assist
me. Try then to do what I write you, and make Gismondo come back to
live in Florence, so that I may not endure the shame of hearing it
said here that I have a brother at Settignano who trudges after oxen.
One day, when I find the time, I will tell you all about our origin,
and whence we sprang, and when we came to Florence. Perhaps you know
nothing about it; still we ought not to rob ourselves of what God gave
us." The same feeling runs through the letters he wrote Lionardo about
the choice of a wife. One example will suffice: "I believe that in
Florence there are many noble and poor families with whom it would be
a charity to form connections. If there were no dower, there would
also be no arrogance. Pay no heed should people say you want to
ennoble yourself, since it is notorious that we are ancient citizens
of Florence, and as noble as any other house."

Michelangelo, as we know now, was mistaken in accepting his supposed
connection with the illustrious Counts of Canossa, whose castle played
so conspicuous a part in the struggle between Hildebrand and the
Empire, and who were imperially allied through the connections of the
Countess Matilda. Still he had tradition to support him, confirmed by
the assurance of the head of the Canossa family. Nobody could accuse
him of being a snob or parvenu. He lived like a poor man, indifferent
to dress, establishment, and personal appearances. Yet he prided
himself upon his ancient birth; and since the Simoni had been
indubitably noble for several generations, there was nothing
despicable in his desire to raise his kinsfolk to their proper
station. Almost culpably careless in all things that concerned his
health and comfort, he spent his earnings for the welfare of his
brothers, in order that an honourable posterity might carry on the
name he bore, and which he made illustrious. We may smile at his
peevishness in repudiating the title of sculptor after bearing it
through so many years of glorious labour; but when he penned the
letters I have quoted, he was the supreme artist of Italy, renowned as
painter, architect, military engineer; praised as a poet; befriended
with the best and greatest of his contemporaries; recognised as
unique, not only in the art of sculpture. If he felt some pride of
race, we cannot blame the plain-liver and high-thinker, who, robbing
himself of luxuries and necessaries even, enabled his kinsmen to
maintain their rank among folk gently born and nobly nurtured.


III

In June 1515 Michelangelo was still working at the tomb of Julius. But
a letter to Buonarroto shows that he was already afraid of being
absorbed for other purposes by Leo: "I am forced to put great strain
upon myself this summer in order to complete my undertaking; for I
think that I shall soon be obliged to enter the Pope's service. For
this reason, I have bought some twenty migliaia [measure of weight] of
brass to cast certain figures." The monument then was so far advanced
that, beside having a good number of the marble statues nearly
finished, he was on the point of executing the bronze reliefs which
filled their interspaces. We have also reason to believe that the
architectural basis forming the foundation of the sepulchre had been
brought well forward, since it is mentioned, in the next ensuing
contracts.

Just at this point, however, when two or three years of steady labour
would have sufficed to terminate this mount of sculptured marble, Leo
diverted Michelangelo's energies from the work, and wasted them in
schemes that came to nothing. When Buonarroti penned that sonnet in
which he called the Pope his Medusa, he might well have been thinking
of Leo, though the poem ought probably to be referred to the earlier
pontificate of Julius. Certainly the Medici did more than the Delia
Rovere to paralyse his power and turn the life within him into stone.
Writing to Sebastiano del Piombo in 1521, Michelangelo shows how fully
he was aware of this. He speaks of "the three years I have lost."

A meeting had been arranged for the late autumn of 1515 between Leo X.
and Francis I. at Bologna. The Pope left Rome early in November, and
reached Florence on the 30th. The whole city burst into a tumult of
jubilation, shouting the Medicean cry of _"Palle"_ as Leo passed
slowly through the streets, raised in his pontifical chair upon the
shoulders of his running footmen. Buonarroto wrote a long and
interesting account of this triumphal entry to his brother in Rome. He
describes how a procession was formed by the Pope's court and guard
and the gentlemen of Florence. "Among the rest, there went a bevy of
young men, the noblest in our commonwealth, all dressed alike with
doublets of violet satin, holding gilded staves in their hands. They
paced before the Papal chair, a brave sight to see. And first there
marched his guard, and then his grooms, who carried him aloft beneath
a rich canopy of brocade, which was sustained by members of the
College, while round about the chair walked the Signory." The
procession moved onward to the Church of S. Maria del Fiore, where the
Pope stayed to perform certain ceremonies at the high altar, after
which he was carried to his apartments at S. Maria Novella. Buonarroto
was one of the Priors during this month, and accordingly he took an
official part in all the entertainments and festivities, which
continued for three days. On the 3rd of December Leo left Florence for
Bologna, where Francis arrived upon the 11th. Their conference lasted
till the 15th, when Francis returned to Milan. On the 18th Leo began
his journey back to Florence, which he re-entered on the 22nd. On
Christmas day (Buonarroto writes _Pasgua_) a grand Mass was celebrated
at S. Maria Novella, at which the Signory attended. The Pope
celebrated in person, and, according to custom on high state
occasions, the water with which he washed his hands before and during
the ceremony had to be presented by personages of importance. "This
duty," says Buonarroto, "fell first to one of the Signori, who was
Giannozzo Salviati; and as I happened that morning to be Proposto, I
went the second time to offer water to his Holiness; the third time,
this was done by the Duke of Camerino, and the fourth time by the
Gonfalonier of Justice." Buonarroto remarks that "he feels pretty
certain it will be all the same to Michelangelo whether he hears or
does not hear about these matters. Yet, from time to time, when I have
leisure, I scribble a few lines."

Buonarroto himself was interested in this event; for, having been one
of the Priors, he received from Leo the title of Count Palatine, with
reversion to all his posterity. Moreover, for honourable addition to
his arms, he was allowed to bear a chief charged with the Medicean
ball and fleur-de-lys, between the capital letters L. and X.

Whether Leo conceived the plan of finishing the façade of S. Lorenzo
at Florence before he left Rome, or whether it occurred to him during
this visit, is not certain. The church had been erected by the Medici
and other magnates from Brunelleschi's designs, and was perfect except
for the façade. In its sacristy lay the mortal remains of Cosimo,
Lorenzo the Magnificent, and many other members of the Medicean
family. Here Leo came on the first Sunday in Advent to offer up
prayers, and the Pope is said to have wept upon his father's tomb. It
may possibly have been on this occasion that he adopted the scheme so
fatal to the happiness of the great sculptor. Condivi clearly did not
know what led to Michelangelo's employment on the façade of S.
Lorenzo, and Vasari's account of the transaction is involved. Both,
however, assert that he was wounded, even to tears, at having to
abandon the monument of Julius, and that he prayed in vain to be
relieved of the new and uncongenial task.


IV

Leo at first intended to divide the work between several masters,
giving Buonarroti the general direction of the whole. He ordered
Giuliano da San Gallo, Raffaello da Urbino, Baccio d'Agnolo, Andrea
and Jacopo Sansovino to prepare plans. While these were in progress,
Michelangelo also thought that he would try his hand at a design. As
ill-luck ruled, Leo preferred his sketch to all the rest. Vasari adds
that his unwillingness to be associated with any other artist in the
undertaking, and his refusal to follow the plans of an architect,
prevented the work from being executed, and caused the men selected by
Leo to return in desperation to their ordinary pursuits. There may be
truth in the report; for it is certain that, after Michelangelo had
been forced to leave the tomb of Julius and to take part in the
façade, he must have claimed to be sole master of the business. The
one thing we know about his mode of operation is, that he brooked no
rival near him, mistrusted collaborators, and found it difficult to
co-operate even with the drudges whom he hired at monthly wages.

Light is thrown upon these dissensions between Michelangelo and his
proposed assistants by a letter which Jacopo Sansovino wrote to him at
Carrara, on the 30th of June 1517. He betrays his animus at the
commencement by praising Baccio Bandinelli, to mention whom in the
same breath with Buonarroti was an insult. Then he proceeds: "The
Pope, the Cardinal, and Jacopo Salviati are men who when they say yes,
it is a written contract, inasmuch as they are true to their word, and
not what you pretend them to be. You measure them with your own rod;
for neither contracts nor plighted troth avail with you, who are
always saying nay and yea, according as you think it profitable. I
must inform you, too, that the Pope promised me the sculptures, and so
did Salviati; and they are men who will maintain me in my right to
them. In what concerns you, I have done all I could to promote your
interests and honour, not having earlier perceived that you never
conferred a benefit on any one, and that, beginning with myself, to
expect kindness from you, would be the same as wanting water not to
wet. I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in
familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said
any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this
intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or
other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made
up--probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part. When
Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for
the sepulchral monument to be erected for himself and his wife, he
suggested that Sansovino should execute the work, proving thus by acts
how undeserved the latter's hasty words had been.

The Church of S. Lorenzo exists now just as it was before the scheme
for its façade occurred to Leo. Not the smallest part of that scheme
was carried into effect, and large masses of the marbles quarried for
the edifice lay wasted on the Tyrrhene sea-shore. We do not even know
what design Michelangelo adopted. A model may be seen in the Accademia
at Florence ascribed to Baccio d'Agnolo, and there is a drawing of a
façade in the Uffizi attributed, to Michelangelo, both of which have
been supposed to have some connection with S. Lorenzo. It is hardly
possible, however, that Buonarroti's competitors could have been
beaten from the field by things so spiritless and ugly. A pen-and-ink
drawing at the Museo Buonarroti possesses greater merit, find may
perhaps have been a first rough sketch for the façade. It is not drawn
to scale or worked out in the manner of practical architects; but the
sketch exhibits features which we know to have existed in Buonarroti's
plan--masses of sculpture, with extensive bas-reliefs in bronze. In
form the façade would not have corresponded to Brunelleschi's
building. That, however, signified nothing to Italian architects, who
were satisfied when the frontispiece to a church or palace agreeably
masked what lay behind it. As a frame for sculpture, the design might
have served its purpose, though there are large spaces difficult to
account for; and spiteful folk were surely justified in remarking to
the Pope that no one life sufficed for the performance of the whole.

Nothing testifies more plainly to the ascendancy which this strange
man acquired over the imagination of his contemporaries, while yet
comparatively young, than the fact that Michelangelo had to relinquish
work for which he was pre-eminently fitted (the tomb of Julius) for
work to which his previous studies and his special inclinations in
no-wise called him. He undertook the façade of S. Lorenzo reluctantly,
with tears in his eyes and dolour in his bosom, at the Pope Medusa's
bidding. He was compelled to recommence art at a point which hitherto
possessed for him no practical importance. The drawings of the tomb,
the sketch of the façade, prove that in architecture he was still a
novice. Hitherto, he regarded building as the background to sculpture,
or the surface on which frescoes might be limned. To achieve anything
great in this new sphere implied for him a severe course of
preliminary studies. It depends upon our final estimate of
Michelangelo as an architect whether we regard the three years spent
in Leo's service for S. Lorenzo as wasted. Being what he was, it is
certain that, when the commission had been given, and he determined to
attack his task alone, the man set himself down to grasp the
principles of construction. There was leisure enough for such studies
in the years during which we find him moodily employed among Tuscan
quarries. The question is whether this strain upon his richly gifted
genius did not come too late. When called to paint the Sistine, he
complained that painting was no art of his. He painted, and produced a
masterpiece; but sculpture still remained the major influence in all
he wrought there. Now he was bidden to quit both sculpture and
painting for another field, and, as Vasari hints, he would not work
under the guidance of men trained to architecture. The result was that
Michelangelo applied himself to building with the full-formed spirit
of a figurative artist. The obvious defects and the salient qualities
of all he afterwards performed as architect seem due to the forced
diversion of his talent at this period to a type of art he had not
properly assimilated. Architecture was not the natural mistress of his
spirit. He bent his talents to her service at a Pontiff's word, and,
with the honest devotion to work which characterised the man, he
produced renowned monuments stamped by his peculiar style.
Nevertheless, in building, he remains a sublime amateur, aiming at
scenical effect, subordinating construction to decoration, seeking
ever back toward opportunities for sculpture or for fresco, and
occasionally (as in the cupola of S. Peter's) hitting upon a thought
beyond the reach of inferior minds.

The paradox implied in this diversion of our hero from the path he
ought to have pursued may be explained in three ways. First, he had
already come to be regarded as a man of unique ability, from whom
everything could be demanded. Next, it was usual for the masters of
the Renaissance, from Leo Battista Alberti down to Raffaello da Urbino
and Lionardo da Vinci, to undertake all kinds of technical work
intrusted to their care by patrons. Finally, Michelangelo, though he
knew that sculpture was his goddess, and never neglected her first
claim upon his genius, felt in him that burning ambition for
greatness, that desire to wrestle with all forms of beauty and all
depths of science, which tempted him to transcend the limits of a
single art and try his powers in neighbour regions. He was a man born
to aim at all, to dare all, to embrace all, to leave his personality
deep-trenched on all the provinces of art he chose to traverse.


V

The whole of 1516 and 1517 elapsed before Leo's plans regarding S.
Lorenzo took a definite shape. Yet we cannot help imagining that when
Michelangelo cancelled his first contract with the executors of
Julius, and adopted a reduced plan for the monument, he was acting
under Papal pressure. This was done at Rome in July, and much against
the will of both parties. Still it does not appear that any one
contemplated the abandonment of the scheme; for Buonarroti bound
himself to perform his new contract within the space of nine years,
and to engage "in no work of great importance which should interfere
with its fulfilment." He spent a large part of the year 1516 at
Carrara, quarrying marbles, and even hired the house of a certain
Francesco Pelliccia in that town. On the 1st of November he signed an
agreement with the same Pelliccia involving the purchase of a vast
amount of marble, whereby the said Pelliccia undertook to bring down
four statues of 4-1/2 cubits each and fifteen of 4-1/4 cubits from the
quarries where they were being rough-hewn. It was the custom to block
out columns, statues, &c., on the spot where the stone had been
excavated, in order, probably, to save weight when hauling. Thus the
blocks arrived at the sea-shore with rudely adumbrated outlines of the
shape they were destined to assume under the artist's chisel. It has
generally been assumed that the nineteen figures in question were
intended for the tomb. What makes this not quite certain, however, is
that the contract of July specifies a greatly reduced quantity and
scale of statues. Therefore they may have been intended for the
façade. Anyhow, the contract above-mentioned with Francesco Pelliccia
was cancelled on the 7th of April following, for reasons which will
presently appear.

During the month of November 1516 Michelangelo received notice from
the Pope that he was wanted in Rome. About the same time news reached
him from Florence of his father's severe illness. On the 23rd he wrote
as follows to Buonarroto: "I gathered from your last that Lodovico was
on the point of dying, and how the doctor finally pronounced that if
nothing new occurred he might be considered out of danger. Since it is
so, I shall not prepare to come to Florence, for it would be very
inconvenient. Still, if there is danger, I should desire to see him,
come what might, before he died, if even I had to die together with
him. I have good hope, however, that he will get well, and so I do not
come. And if he should have a relapse--from which may God preserve him
and us--see that he lacks nothing for his spiritual welfare and the
sacraments of the Church, and find out from him if he wishes us to do
anything for his soul. Also, for the necessaries of the body, take
care that he lacks nothing; for I have laboured only and solely for
him, to help him in his needs before he dies. So bid your wife look
with loving-kindness to his household affairs. I will make everything
good to her and all of you, if it be necessary. Do not have the least
hesitation, even if you have to expend all that we possess."

We may assume that the subsequent reports regarding Lodovico's health
were satisfactory; for on the 5th of December Michelangelo set out for
Rome. The executors of Julius had assigned him free quarters in a
house situated in the Trevi district, opposite the public road which
leads to S. Maria del Loreto. Here, then, he probably took up his
abode. We have seen that he had bound himself to finish the monument
of Julius within the space of nine years, and to engage "in no work of
great moment which should interfere with its performance." How this
clause came to be inserted in a deed inspired by Leo is one of the
difficulties with which the whole tragedy of the sepulchre bristles.
Perhaps we ought to conjecture that the Pope's intentions with regard
to the façade of S. Lorenzo only became settled in the late autumn. At
any rate, he had now to transact with the executors of Julius, who
were obliged to forego the rights over Michelangelo's undivided
energies which they had acquired by the clause I have just cited. They
did so with extreme reluctance, and to the bitter disappointment of
the sculptor, who saw the great scheme of his manhood melting into
air, dwindling in proportions, becoming with each change less capable
of satisfactory performance.

Having at last definitely entered the service of Pope Leo,
Michelangelo travelled to Florence, and intrusted Baccio d'Agnolo with
the construction of the model of his façade. It may have been upon the
occasion of this visit that one of his father's whimsical fits of
temper called out a passionate and sorry letter from his son. It
appears that Pietro Urbano, Michelangelo's trusty henchman at this
period, said something which angered Lodovico, and made him set off in
a rage to Settignano:--

"Dearest Father,--I marvelled much at what had happened to you the
other day, when I did not find you at home. And now, hearing that you
complain of me, and say that I have turned you out of doors, I marvel
much the more, inasmuch as I know for certain that never once from the
day that I was born till now had I a single thought of doing anything
or small or great which went against you; and all this time the
labours I have undergone have been for the love of you alone. Since I
returned from Rome to Florence, you know that I have always cared for
you, and you know that all that belongs to me I have bestowed on you.
Some days ago, then, when you were ill, I promised solemnly never to
fail you in anything within the scope of my whole faculties so long as
my life lasts; and this I again affirm. Now I am amazed that you
should have forgotten everything so soon. And yet you have learned to
know me by experience these thirty years, you and your sons, and are
well aware that I have always thought and acted, so far as I was able,
for your good. How can you go about saying I have turned you out of
doors? Do you not see what a reputation you have given me by saying I
have turned you out? Only this was wanting to complete my tale of
troubles, all of which I suffer for your love. You repay me well,
forsooth. But let it be as it must: I am willing to acknowledge that I
have always brought shame and loss on you, and on this supposition I
beg your pardon. Reckon that you are pardoning a son who has lived a
bad life and done you all the harm which it is possible to do. And so
I once again implore you to pardon me, scoundrel that I am, and not
bring on me the reproach of having turned you out of doors; for that
matters more than you imagine to me. After all, I am your son."

From Florence Michelangelo proceeded again to Carrara for the
quarrying of marble. This was on the last day of December. From his
domestic correspondence we find that he stayed there until at least
the 13th of March 1517; but he seems to have gone to Florence just
about that date, in order to arrange matters with Baccio d'Agnolo
about the model. A fragmentary letter to Buonarroto, dated March 13,
shows that he had begun a model of his own at Carrara, and that he no
longer needed Baccio's assistance. On his arrival at Florence he wrote
to Messer Buoninsegni, who acted as intermediary at Rome between
himself and the Pope in all things that concerned the façade: "Messer
Domenico, I have come to Florence to see the model which Baccio has
finished, and find it a mere child's plaything. If you think it best
to have it sent, write to me. I leave again to-morrow for Carrara,
where I have begun to make a model in clay with Grassa [a stone-hewer
from Settignano]." Then he adds that, in the long run, he believes
that he shall have to make the model himself, which distresses him on
account of the Pope and the Cardinal Giulio. Lastly, he informs his
correspondent that he has contracted with two separate companies for
two hundred cartloads of Carrara marble.

An important letter to the same Domenico Buoninsegni, dated Carrara,
May 2, 1517, proves that Michelangelo had become enthusiastic about
his new design. "I have many things to say to you. So I beg you to
take some patience when you read my words, because it is a matter of
moment. Well, then, I feel it in me to make this façade of S. Lorenzo
such that it shall be a mirror of architecture and of sculpture to all
Italy. But the Pope and the Cardinal must decide at once whether they
want to have it done or not. If they desire it, then they must come to
some definite arrangement, either intrusting the whole to me on
contract, and leaving me a free hand, or adopting some other plan
which may occur to them, and about which I can form no idea." He
proceeds at some length to inform Buoninsegni of various transactions
regarding the purchase of marble, and the difficulties he encounters
in procuring perfect blocks. His estimate for the costs of the whole
façade is 35,000 golden ducats, and he offers to carry the work
through for that sum in six years. Meanwhile he peremptorily demands
an immediate settlement of the business, stating that he is anxious to
leave Carrara. The vigorous tone of this document is unmistakable. It
seems to have impressed his correspondents; for Buoninsegni replies
upon the 8th of May that the Cardinal expressed the highest
satisfaction at "the great heart he had for conducting the work of the
façade." At the same time the Pope was anxious to inspect the model.

Leo, I fancy, was always more than half-hearted about the façade. He
did not personally sympathise with Michelangelo's character; and,
seeing what his tastes were, it is impossible that he can have really
appreciated the quality of his genius. Giulio de' Medici, afterwards
Pope Clement VII., was more in sympathy with Buonarroti both as artist
and as man. To him we may with probability ascribe the impulse given
at this moment to the project. After several visits to Florence during
the summer, and much correspondence with the Medici through their
Roman agent, Michelangelo went finally, upon the 31st of August, to
have the model completed under his own eyes by a workman in his native
city. It was carefully constructed of wood, showing the statuary in
wax-relief. Nearly four months were expended on this miniature. The
labour was lost, for not a vestige of it now remains. Near the end of
December he despatched his servant, Pietro Urbano, with the finished
work to Rome. On the 29th of that month, Urbano writes that he exposed
the model in Messer Buoninsegni's apartment, and that the Pope and
Cardinal were very well pleased with it. Buoninsegni wrote to the same
effect, adding, however, that folk said it could never be finished in
the sculptor's lifetime, and suggesting that Michelangelo should hire
assistants from Milan, where he, Buoninsegni, had seen excellent
stonework in progress at the Duomo.

Some time in January 1518, Michelangelo travelled to Rome, conferred
with Leo, and took the façade of S. Lorenzo on contract. In February
he returned by way of Florence to Carrara, where the quarry-masters
were in open rebellion against him, and refused to carry out their
contracts. This forced him to go to Genoa, and hire ships there for
the transport of his blocks. Then the Carraresi corrupted the captains
of these boats, and drove Michelangelo to Pisa (April 7), where he
finally made an arrangement with a certain Francesco Peri to ship the
marbles lying on the sea-shore at Carrara.

The reason of this revolt against him at Carrara may be briefly
stated. The Medici determined to begin working the old marble quarries
of Pietra Santa, on the borders of the Florentine domain, and this
naturally aroused the commercial jealousy of the folk at Carrara.
"Information," says Condivi, "was sent to Pope Leo that marbles could
be found in the high-lands above Pietra Santa, fully equal in quality
and beauty to those of Carrara. Michelangelo, having been sounded on
the subject, chose to go on quarrying at Carrara rather than to take
those belonging to the State of Florence. This he did because he was
befriended with the Marchese Alberigo, and lived on a good
understanding with him. The Pope wrote to Michelangelo, ordering him
to repair to Pietra Santa, and see whether the information he had
received from Florence was correct. He did so, and ascertained that
the marbles were very hard to work, and ill-adapted to their purpose;
even had they been of the proper kind, it would be difficult and
costly to convey them to the sea. A road of many miles would have to
be made through the mountains with pick and crowbar, and along the
plain on piles, since the ground there was marshy. Michelangelo wrote
all this to the Pope, who preferred, however, to believe the persons
who had written to him from Florence. So he ordered him to construct
the road." The road, it may parenthetically be observed, was paid for
by the wealthy Wool Corporation of Florence, who wished to revive this
branch of Florentine industry. "Michelangelo, carrying out the Pope's
commands, had the road laid down, and transported large quantities of
marbles to the sea-shore. Among these were five columns of the proper
dimensions, one of which may be seen upon the Piazza di S. Lorenzo.
The other four, forasmuch as the Pope changed his mind and turned his
thoughts elsewhere, are still lying on the sea-beach. Now the Marquis
of Carrara, deeming that Michelangelo had developed the quarries at
Pietra Santa out of Florentine patriotism, became his enemy, and would
not suffer him to return to Carrara, for certain blocks which had been
excavated there: all of which proved the source of great loss to
Michelangelo."

When the contract with Francesco Pellicia was cancelled, April 7,
1517, the project for developing the Florentine stone-quarries does
not seem to have taken shape. We must assume, therefore, that the
motive for this step was the abandonment of the tomb. The _Ricordi_
show that Michelangelo was still buying marbles and visiting Carrara
down to the end of February 1518. His correspondence from Pietra Santa
and Serravezza, where he lived when he was opening the Florentine
quarries of Monte Altissimo, does not begin, with any certainty, until
March 1518. We have indeed one letter written to Girolamo del Bardella
of Porto Venere upon the 6th of August, without date of year. This was
sent from Serravezza, and Milanesi, when he first made use of it,
assigned it to 1517. Gotti, following that indication, asserts that
Michelangelo began his operations at Monte Altissimo in July 1517; but
Milanesi afterwards changed his opinion, and assigned it to the year
1519. I believe he was right, because the first letter, bearing a
certain date from Pietra Santa, was written in March 1518 to Pietro
Urbano. It contains the account of Michelangelo's difficulties with
the Carraresi, and his journey to Genoa and Pisa. We have, therefore,
every reason to believe that he finally abandoned Carrara, for Pietra
Santa at the end of February 1518.

Pietra Santa is a little city on the Tuscan seaboard; Serravezza is a
still smaller fortress-town at the foot of the Carrara mountains.
Monte Altissimo rises above it; and on the flanks of that great hill
lie the quarries Della Finocchiaja, which Michelangelo opened at the
command of Pope Leo. It was not without reluctance that Michelangelo
departed from Carrara, offending the Marquis Malaspina, breaking his
contracts, and disappointing the folk with whom he had lived on
friendly terms ever since his first visit in 1505. A letter from the
Cardinal Giulio de' Medici shows that great pressure was put upon him.
It runs thus: "We have received yours, and shown it to our Lord the
Pope. Considering that all your doings are in favour of Carrara, you
have caused his Holiness and us no small astonishment. What we heard
from Jacopo Salviati contradicts your opinion. He went to examine the
marble-quarries at Pietra Santa, and informed us that there are
enormous quantities of stone, excellent in quality and easy to bring
down. This being the case, some suspicion has arisen in our minds that
you, for your own interests, are too partial to the quarries of
Carrara, and want to depreciate those of Pietra Santa. This of a
truth, would be wrong in you, considering the trust we have always
reposed in your honesty. Wherefore we inform you that, regardless of
any other consideration, his Holiness wills that all the work to be
done at S. Peter's or S. Reparata, or on the façade of S. Lorenzo,
shall be carried out with marbles supplied from Pietra Santa, and no
others, for the reasons above written. Moreover, we hear that they
will cost less than those of Carrara; but, even should they cost more,
his Holiness is firmly resolved to act as I have said, furthering the
business of Pietra Santa for the public benefit of the city. Look to
it, then, that you carry out in detail all that we have ordered
without fail; for if you do otherwise, it will be against the
expressed wishes of his Holiness and ourselves, and we shall have good
reason to be seriously wroth with you. Our agent Domenico
(Buoninsegni) is bidden to write to the same effect. Reply to him how
much money you want, and quickly, banishing from your mind every kind
of obstinacy."

Michelangelo began to work with his usual energy at roadmaking and
quarrying. What he learned of practical business as engineer,
architect, master of works, and paymaster during these years among the
Carrara mountains must have been of vast importance for his future
work. He was preparing himself to organise the fortifications of
Florence and the Leonine City, and to crown S. Peter's with the
cupola. Quarrying, as I have said, implied cutting out and
rough-hewing blocks exactly of the right dimensions for certain
portions of a building or a piece of statuary. The master was
therefore obliged to have his whole plan perfect in his head before he
could venture to order marble. Models, drawings made to scale, careful
measurements, were necessary at each successive step. Day and night
Buonarroti was at work; in the saddle early in the morning, among
stone-cutters and road-makers; in the evening, studying, projecting,
calculating, settling up accounts by lamplight.


VI

The narrative of Michelangelo's personal life and movements must here
be interrupted in order to notice an event in which he took no common
interest. The members of the Florentine Academy addressed a memorial
to Leo X., requesting him to authorise the translation of Dante
Alighieri's bones from Ravenna to his native city. The document was
drawn up in Latin, and dated October 20, 1518. Among the names and
signatures appended, Michelangelo's alone is written in Italian: "I,
Michelangelo, the sculptor, pray the like of your Holiness, offering
my services to the divine poet for the erection of a befitting
sepulchre to him in some honourable place in this city." Nothing
resulted from this petition, and the supreme poet's remains still rest
beneath "the little cupola, more neat than solemn," guarded by Pietro
Lombardi's half-length portrait.

Of Michelangelo's special devotion to Dante and the "Divine Comedy" we
have plenty of proof. In the first place, there exist the two fine
sonnets to his memory, which were celebrated in their author's
lifetime, and still remain among the best of his performances in
verse. It does not appear when they were composed. The first is
probably earlier than the second; for below the autograph of the
latter is written, "Messer Donato, you ask of me what I do not
possess." The Donato is undoubtedly Donato Giannotti, with whom
Michelangelo lived on very familiar terms at Rome about 1545. I will
here insert my English translation of these sonnets:--

  _From heaven his spirit came, and, robed in clay,
    The realms of justice and of mercy trod:
    Then rose a living man to gaze on God,
    That he might make the truth as clear as day._
  _For that pure star, that brightened with his ray
    The undeserving nest where I was born,
    The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn;
    None but his Maker can due guerdon pay.
  I speak of Dante, whose high work remains
    Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood,
    Who only to just men deny their wage.
  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!

  No tongue can tell of him what should be told,
    For on blind eyes his splendour shines too strong;
    'Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong,
    Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold.
  He to explore the place of pain was bold,
    Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song;
    The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along,
    Against his just desire his country rolled.
  Thankless I call her, and to her own pain
    The nurse of fell mischance; for sign take this,
    That ever to the best she deals more scorn;
  Among a thousand proofs let one remain;
    Though ne'er was fortune more unjust than his,
    His equal or his better ne'er was born._

The influence of Dante over Buonarroti's style of composition
impressed his contemporaries. Benedetto Varchi, in the proemium to a
lecture upon one of Michelangelo's poems, speaks of it as "a most
sublime sonnet, full of that antique purity and Dantesque gravity."
Dante's influence over the great artist's pictorial imagination is
strongly marked in the fresco of the Last Judgment, where Charon's
boat, and Minos with his twisted tail, are borrowed direct from the
_Inferno._ Condivi, moreover, informs us that the statues of the Lives
Contemplative and Active upon the tomb of Julius were suggested by the
Rachel and Leah of the _Purgatorio._ We also know that he filled a
book with drawings illustrative of the "Divine Comedy." By a miserable
accident this most precious volume, while in the possession of Antonio
Montauti, the sculptor, perished at sea on a journey from Livorno to
Rome.

But the strongest proof of Michelangelo's reputation as a learned
student of Dante is given in Donato Giannotti's Dialogue upon the
number of days spent by the poet during his journey through Hell and
Purgatory. Luigi del Riccio, who was a great friend of the sculptor's,
is supposed to have been walking one day toward the Lateran with
Antonio Petreo. Their conversation fell upon Cristoforo Landino's
theory that the time consumed by Dante in this transit was the whole
of the night of Good Friday, together with the following day. While
engaged in this discussion, they met Donato Giannotti taking the air
with Michelangelo. The four friends joined company, and Petreo
observed that it was a singular good fortune to have fallen that
morning upon two such eminent Dante scholars. Donato replied: "With
regard to Messer Michelangelo, you have abundant reason to say that he
is an eminent Dantista, since I am acquainted with no one who
understands him better and has a fuller mastery over his works." It is
not needful to give a detailed account of Buonarroti's Dantesque
criticism, reported in these dialogues, although there are good
grounds for supposing them in part to represent exactly what Giannotti
heard him say. This applies particularly to his able interpretation of
the reason why Dante placed Brutus and Cassius in hell--not as being
the murderers of a tyrant, but as having laid violent hands upon the
sacred majesty of the Empire in the person of Caesar. The narrative of
Dante's journey through Hell and Purgatory, which is put into
Michelangelo's mouth, if we are to believe that he really made it
extempore and without book, shows a most minute knowledge of the
_Inferno_.


VII

Michelangelo's doings at Serravezza can be traced with some accuracy
during the summers of 1518 and 1519. An important letter to
Buonarroto, dated April 2, 1518, proves that the execution of the road
had not yet been decided on. He is impatient to hear whether the Wool
Corporation has voted the necessary funds and appointed him to
engineer it. "With regard to the construction of the road here, please
tell Jacopo Salviati that I shall carry out his wishes, and he will
not be betrayed by me. I do not look after any interests of my own in
this matter, but seek to serve my patrons and my country. If I begged
the Pope and Cardinal to give me full control over the business, it
was that I might be able to conduct it to those places where the best
marbles are. Nobody here knows anything about them. I did not ask for
the commission in order to make money; nothing of the sort is in my
head." This proves conclusively that much which has been written about
the waste of Michelangelo's abilities on things a lesser man might
have accomplished is merely sentimental. On the contrary, he was even
accused of begging for the contract from a desire to profit by it. In
another letter, of April 18, the decision of the Wool Corporation was
still anxiously expected. Michelangelo gets impatient. "I shall mount
my horse, and go to find the Pope and Cardinal, tell them how it is
with me, leave the business here, and return to Carrara. The folk
there pray for my return as one is wont to pray to Christ." Then he
complains of the worthlessness and disloyalty of the stone-hewers he
brought from Florence, and winds up with an angry postscript: "Oh,
cursed a thousand times the day and hour when I left Carrara! This is
the cause of my utter ruin. But I shall go back there soon. Nowadays
it is a sin to do one's duty." On the 22nd of April the Wool
Corporation assigned to Michelangelo a contract for the quarries,
leaving him free to act as he thought best. Complaints follow about
his workmen. One passage is curious: "Sandro, he too has gone away
from here. He stopped several months with a mule and a little mule in
grand style, doing nothing but fish and make love. He cost me a
hundred ducats to no purpose; has left a certain quantity of marble,
giving me the right to take the blocks that suit my purpose. However,
I cannot find among them what is worth twenty-five ducats, the whole
being a jumble of rascally work. Either maliciously or through
ignorance, he has treated me very ill."

Upon the 17th April 1517, Michelangelo had bought a piece of ground in
Via Mozza, now Via S. Zanobi, at Florence, from the Chapter of S.
Maria del Fiore, in order to build a workshop there. He wished, about
the time of the last letter quoted, to get an additional lot of land,
in order to have larger space at his command for the finishing of
marbles. The negotiations went on through the summer of 1518, and on
the 24th of November he records that the purchase was completed.
Premises adapted to the sculptor's purpose were erected, which
remained in Michelangelo's possession until the close of his life.

In August 1518 he writes to a friend at Florence that the road is now
as good as finished, and that he is bringing down his columns. The
work is more difficult than he expected. One man's life had been
already thrown away, and Michelangelo himself was in great danger.
"The place where we have to quarry is exceedingly rough, and the
workmen are very stupid at their business. For some months I must make
demands upon my powers of patience until the mountains are tamed and
the men instructed. Afterwards we shall proceed more quickly. Enough,
that I mean to do what I promised, and shall produce the finest thing
that Italy has ever seen, if God assists me."

There is no want of heart and spirit in these letters. Irritable at
moments, Michelangelo was at bottom enthusiastic, and, like Napoleon
Buonaparte, felt capable of conquering the world with his sole arm.

In September we find him back again at Florence, where he seems to
have spent the winter. His friends wanted him to go to Rome; they
thought that his presence there was needed to restore the confidence
of the Medici and to overpower calumniating rivals. In reply to a
letter of admonition written in this sense by his friend Lionardo di
Compagno, the saddle-maker, he writes: "Your urgent solicitations are
to me so many stabs of the knife. I am dying of annoyance at not being
able to do what I should like to do, through my ill-luck." At the same
time he adds that he has now arranged an excellent workshop, where
twenty statues can be set up together. The drawback is that there are
no means of covering the whole space in and protecting it against the
weather. This yard, encumbered with the marbles for S. Lorenzo, must
have been in the Via Mozza.

Early in the spring he removed to Serravezza, and resumed the work of
bringing down his blocked-out columns from the quarries. One of these
pillars, six of which he says were finished, was of huge size,
intended probably for the flanks to the main door at S. Lorenzo. It
tumbled into the river, and was smashed to pieces. Michelangelo
attributed the accident solely to the bad quality of iron which a
rascally fellow had put into the lewis-ring by means of which the
block was being raised. On this occasion he again ran considerable
risk of injury, and suffered great annoyance. The following letter of
condolence, written by Jacopo Salviati, proves how much he was
grieved, and also shows that he lived on excellent terms with the
Pope's right-hand man and counsellor: "Keep up your spirits and
proceed gallantly with your great enterprise, for your honour requires
this, seeing you have commenced the work. Confide in me; nothing will
be amiss with you, and our Lord is certain to compensate you for far
greater losses than this. Have no doubt upon this point, and if you
want one thing more than another, let me know, and you shall be served
immediately. Remember that your undertaking a work of such magnitude
will lay our city under the deepest obligation, not only to yourself,
but also to your family for ever. Great men, and of courageous spirit,
take heart under adversities, and become more energetic."

A pleasant thread runs through Michelangelo's correspondence during
these years. It is the affection he felt for his workman Pietro
Urbano. When he leaves the young man behind him at Florence, he writes
frequently, giving him advice, bidding him mind his studies, and also
telling him to confess. It happened that Urbano fell ill at Carrara,
toward the end of August. Michelangelo, on hearing the news, left
Florence and travelled by post to Carrara. Thence he had his friend
transported on the backs of men to Serravezza, and after his recovery
sent him to pick up strength in his native city of Pistoja. In one of
the _Ricordi_ he reckons the cost of all this at 33-1/2 ducats.

While Michelangelo was residing at Pietra Santa in 1518, his old
friend and fellow-worker, Pietro Rosselli, wrote to him from Rome,
asking his advice about a tabernacle of marble which Pietro Soderini
had ordered. It was to contain the head of S. John the Baptist, and to
be placed in the Church of the Convent of S. Silvestro. On the 7th of
June Soderini wrote upon the same topic, requesting a design. This
Michelangelo sent in October, the execution of the shrine being
intrusted to Federigo Frizzi. The incident would hardly be worth
mentioning, except for the fact that it brings to mind one of
Michelangelo's earliest patrons, the good-hearted Gonfalonier of
Justice, and anticipates the coming of the only woman he is known to
have cared for, Vittoria Colonna. It was at S. Silvestro that she
dwelt, retired in widowhood, and here occurred those Sunday morning
conversations of which Francesco d'Olanda has left us so interesting a
record.

During the next year, 1519, a certain Tommaso di Dolfo invited him to
visit Adrianople. He reminded him how, coming together in Florence,
when Michelangelo lay there in hiding from Pope Julius, they had
talked about the East, and he had expressed a wish to travel into
Turkey. Tommaso di Dolfo dissuaded him on that occasion, because the
ruler of the province was a man of no taste and careless about the
arts. Things had altered since, and he thought there was a good
opening for an able sculptor. Things, however, had altered in Italy
also, and Buonarroti felt no need to quit the country where his fame
was growing daily.

Considerable animation is introduced into the annals of Michelangelo's
life at this point by his correspondence with jovial Sebastiano del
Piombo. We possess one of this painter's letters, dating as early as
1510, when he thanks Buonarroti for consenting to be godfather to his
boy Luciano; a second of 1512, which contains the interesting account
of his conversation with Pope Julius about Michelangelo and Raffaello;
and a third, of 1518, turning upon the rivalry between the two great
artists. But the bulk of Sebastiano's gossipy and racy communications
belongs to the period of thirteen years between 1520 and 1533; then it
suddenly breaks off, owing to Michelangelo's having taken up his
residence at Rome during the autumn of 1533. A definite rupture at
some subsequent period separated the old friends. These letters are a
mine of curious information respecting artistic life at Rome. They
prove, beyond the possibility of doubt, that, whatever Buonarroti and
Sanzio may have felt, their flatterers, dependants, and creatures
cherished the liveliest hostility and lived in continual rivalry. It
is somewhat painful to think that Michelangelo could have lent a
willing ear to the malignant babble of a man so much inferior to
himself in nobleness of nature--have listened when Sebastiano taunted
Raffaello as "Prince of the Synagogue," or boasted that a picture of
his own was superior to "the tapestries just come from Flanders." Yet
Sebastiano was not the only friend to whose idle gossip the great
sculptor indulgently stooped. Lionardo, the saddle-maker, was even
more offensive. He writes, for instance, upon New Year's Day, 1519, to
say that the Resurrection of Lazarus, for which Michelangelo had
contributed some portion of the design, was nearly finished, and adds:
"Those who understand art rank it far above Raffaello. The vault, too,
of Agostino Chigi has been exposed to view, and is a thing truly
disgraceful to a great artist, far worse than the last hall of the
Palace. Sebastiano has nothing to fear."

We gladly turn from these quarrels to what Sebastiano teaches us about
Michelangelo's personal character. The general impression in the world
was that he was very difficult to live with. Julius, for instance,
after remarking that Raffaello changed his style in imitation of
Buonarroti, continued: "'But he is terrible, as you see; one cannot
get on with him.' I answered to his Holiness that your terribleness
hurt nobody, and that you only seem to be terrible because of your
passionate devotion to the great works you have on hand." Again, he
relates Leo's estimate of his friend's character:

"I know in what esteem the Pope holds you, and when he speaks of you,
it would seem that he were talking about a brother, almost with tears
in his eyes; for he has told me you were brought up together as boys"
(Giovanni de' Medici and the sculptor were exactly of the same age),
"and shows that he knows and loves you. But you frighten everybody,
even Popes!" Michelangelo must have complained of this last remark,
for Sebastiano, in a letter dated a few days later, reverts to the
subject: "Touching what you reply to me about your terribleness, I,
for my part, do not esteem you terrible; and if I have not written on
this subject do not be surprised, seeing you do not strike me as
terrible, except only in art--that is to say, in being the greatest
master who ever lived: that is my opinion; if I am in error, the loss
is mine." Later on, he tells us what Clement VII. thought: "One letter
to your friend (the Pope) would be enough; you would soon see what
fruit it bore; because I know how he values you. He loves you, knows
your nature, adores your work, and tastes its quality as much as it is
possible for man to do. Indeed, his appreciation is miraculous, and
such as ought to give great satisfaction to an artist. He speaks of
you so honourably, and with such loving affection, that a father could
not say of a son what he does of you. It is true that he has been
grieved at times by buzzings in his ear about you at the time of the
siege of Florence. He shrugged his shoulders and cried, 'Michelangelo
is in the wrong; I never did him any injury.'" It is interesting to
find Sebastiano, in the same letter, complaining of Michelangelo's
sensitiveness. "One favour I would request of you, that is, that you
should come to learn your worth, and not stoop as you do to every
little thing, and remember that eagles do not prey on flies. Enough! I
know that you will laugh at my prattle; but I do not care; Nature has
made me so, and I am not Zuan da Rezzo."


VIII

The year 1520 was one of much importance for Michelangelo. A _Ricordo_
dated March 10 gives a brief account of the last four years, winding
up with the notice that "Pope Leo, perhaps because he wants to get the
façade at S. Lorenzo finished quicker than according to the contract
made with me, and I also consenting thereto, sets me free ... and so
he leaves me at liberty, under no obligation of accounting to any one
for anything which I have had to do with him or others upon his
account." It appears from the draft of a letter without date that some
altercation between Michelangelo and the Medici preceded this rupture.
He had been withdrawn from Serravezza to Florence in order that he
might plan the new buildings at S. Lorenzo; and the workmen of the
Opera del Duomo continued the quarrying business in his absence.
Marbles which he had excavated for S. Lorenzo were granted by the
Cardinal de' Medici to the custodians of the cathedral, and no attempt
was made to settle accounts. Michelangelo's indignation was roused by
this indifference to his interests, and he complains in terms of
extreme bitterness. Then he sums up all that he has lost, in addition
to expected profits. "I do not reckon the wooden model for the said
façade, which I made and sent to Rome; I do not reckon the period of
three years wasted in this work; I do not reckon that I have been
ruined (in health and strength perhaps) by the undertaking; I do not
reckon the enormous insult put on me by being brought here to do the
work, and then seeing it taken away from me, and for what reason I
have not yet learned; I do not reckon my house in Rome, which I left,
and where marbles, furniture and blocked-out statues have suffered to
upwards of 500 ducats. Omitting all these matters, out of the 2300
ducats I received, only 500 remain in my hands."

When he was an old man, Michelangelo told Condivi that Pope Leo
changed his mind about S. Lorenzo. In the often-quoted letter to the
prelate he said: "Leo, not wishing me to work at the tomb of Julius,
_pretended that he wanted to complete_ the façade of S. Lorenzo at
Florence." What was the real state of the case can only be
conjectured. It does not seem that the Pope took very kindly to the
façade; so the project may merely have been dropped through
carelessness. Michelangelo neglected his own interests by not going to
Rome, where his enemies kept pouring calumnies into the Pope's ears.
The Marquis of Carrara, as reported by Lionardo, wrote to Leo that "he
had sought to do you honour, and had done so to his best ability. It
was your fault if he had not done more--the fault of your sordidness,
your quarrelsomeness, your eccentric conduct." When, then, a dispute
arose between the Cardinal and the sculptor about the marbles, Leo may
have felt that it was time to break off from an artist so impetuous
and irritable. Still, whatever faults of temper Michelangelo may have
had, and however difficult he was to deal with, nothing can excuse the
Medici for their wanton waste of his physical and mental energies at
the height of their development.

On the 6th of April 1520 Raffaello died, worn out with labour and with
love, in the flower of his wonderful young manhood. It would be rash
to assert that he had already given the world the best he had to
offer, because nothing is so incalculable as the evolution of genius.
Still we perceive now that his latest manner, both as regards style
and feeling, and also as regards the method of execution by
assistants, shows him to have been upon the verge of intellectual
decline. While deploring Michelangelo's impracticability--that
solitary, self-reliant, and exacting temperament which made him reject
collaboration, and which doomed so much of his best work to
incompleteness--we must remember that to the very end of his long life
he produced nothing (except perhaps in architecture) which does not
bear the seal and superscription of his fervent self. Raffaello, on
the contrary, just before his death, seemed to be exhaling into a
nebulous mist of brilliant but unsatisfactory performances. Diffusing
the rich and facile treasures of his genius through a host of lesser
men, he had almost ceased to be a personality. Even his own work, as
proved by the Transfiguration, was deteriorating. The blossom was
overblown, the bubble on the point of bursting; and all those pupils
who had gathered round him, drawing like planets from the sun their
lustre, sank at his death into frigidity and insignificance. Only
Giulio Romano burned with a torrid sensual splendour all his own.
Fortunately for the history of the Renaissance, Giulio lived to evoke
the wonder of the Mantuan villa, that climax of associated crafts of
decoration, which remains for us the symbol of the dream of art
indulged by Raffaello in his Roman period.

These pupils of the Urbinate claimed now, on their master's death, and
claimed with good reason, the right to carry on his great work in the
Borgian apartments of the Vatican. The Sala de' Pontefici, or the Hall
of Constantine, as it is sometimes called, remained to be painted.
They possessed designs bequeathed by Raffaello for its decoration, and
Leo, very rightly, decided to leave it in their hands. Sebastiano del
Piombo, however, made a vigorous effort to obtain the work for
himself. His Raising of Lazarus, executed in avowed competition with
the Transfiguration, had brought him into the first rank of Roman
painters. It was seen what the man, with Michelangelo to back him up,
could do. We cannot properly appreciate this picture in its present
state. The glory of the colouring has passed away; and it was
precisely here that Sebastiano may have surpassed Raffaello, as he was
certainly superior to the school. Sebastiano wrote letter after letter
to Michelangelo in Florence. He first mentions Raffaello's death,
"whom may God forgive;" then says that the _"garzoni"_ of the Urbinate
are beginning to paint in oil upon the walls of the Sala de'
Pontefici. "I pray you to remember me, and to recommend me to the
Cardinal, and if I am the man to undertake the job, I should like you
to set me to work at it; for I shall not disgrace you, as indeed I
think I have not done already. I took my picture (the Lazarus) once
more to the Vatican, and placed it beside Raffaello's (the
Transfiguration), and I came without shame out of the comparison." In
answer, apparently, to this first letter on the subject, Michelangelo
wrote a humorous recommendation of his friend and gossip to the
Cardinal Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena. It runs thus: "I beg your most
reverend Lordship, not as a friend or servant, for I am not worthy to
be either, but as a low fellow, poor and brainless, that you will
cause Sebastian, the Venetian painter, now that Rafael is dead, to
have some share in the works, at the Palace. If it should seem to your
Lordship that kind offices are thrown away upon a man like me, I might
suggest that on some rare occasions a certain sweetness may be found
in being kind even to fools, as onions taste well, for a change of
food, to one who is tired of capons. You oblige men of mark every day.
I beg your Lordship to try what obliging me is like. The obligation
will be a very great one, and Sebastian is a worthy man. If, then,
your kind offers are thrown away on me, they will not be so on
Sebastian, for I am certain he will prove a credit to your Lordship."

In his following missives Sebastiano flatters Michelangelo upon the
excellent effect produced by the letter. "The Cardinal informed me
that the Pope had given the Hall of the Pontiffs to Raffaello's
'prentices, and they have begun with a figure in oils upon the wall, a
marvellous production which eclipses all the rooms painted by their
master, and proves that when it is finished, this hall will beat the
record, and be the finest thing done in painting since the ancients.
Then he asked if I had read your letter. I said, No. He laughed
loudly, as though at a good joke, and I quitted him with compliments.
Bandinelli, who is copying the Laocoon, tells me that the Cardinal
showed him your letter, and also showed it to the Pope; in fact,
nothing is talked about at the Vatican except your letter, and it
makes everybody laugh." He adds that he does not think the hall ought
to be committed to young men. Having discovered what sort of things
they meant to paint there, battle-pieces and vast compositions, he
judges the scheme beyond their scope. Michelangelo alone is equal to
the task. Meanwhile, Leo, wishing to compromise matters, offered
Sebastiano the great hall in the lower apartments of the Borgias,
where Alexander VI. used to live, and where Pinturicchio
painted--rooms shut up in pious horror by Julius when he came to
occupy the palace of his hated and abominable predecessor.
Sebastiano's reliance upon Michelangelo, and his calculation that the
way to get possession of the coveted commission would depend on the
latter's consenting to supply him with designs, emerge in the
following passage: "The Cardinal told me that he was ordered by the
Pope to offer me the lower hall. I replied that I could accept nothing
without your permission, or until your answer came, which is not to
hand at the date of writing. I added that, unless I were engaged to
Michelangelo, even if the Pope commanded me to paint that hall, I
would not do so, because I do not think myself inferior to Raffaello's
'prentices, especially after the Pope, with his own mouth, had offered
me half of the upper hall; and anyhow, I do not regard it as
creditable to myself to paint the cellars, and they to have the gilded
chambers. I said they had better be allowed to go on painting. He
answered that the Pope had only done this to avoid rivalries. The men
possessed designs ready for that hall, and I ought to remember that
the lower one was also a hall of the Pontiffs. My reply was that I
would have nothing to do with it; so that now they are laughing at me,
and I am so worried that I am well-nigh mad." Later on he adds: "It
has been my object, through you and your authority, to execute
vengeance for myself and you too, letting malignant fellows know that
there are other demigods alive beside Raffael da Urbino and his
'prentices." The vacillation of Leo in this business, and his desire
to make things pleasant, are characteristic of the man, who acted just
in the same way while negotiating with princes.


IX

When Michelangelo complained that he was "rovinato per detta opera di
San Lorenzo," he probably did not mean that he was ruined in purse,
but in health and energy. For some while after Leo gave him his
liberty, he seems to have remained comparatively inactive. During this
period the sacristy at S. Lorenzo and the Medicean tombs were probably
in contemplation. Giovanni Cambi says that they were begun at the end
of March 1520. But we first hear something definite about them in a
_Ricordo_ which extends from April 9 to August 19, 1521. Michelangelo
says that on the former of these dates he received money from the
Cardinal de' Medici for a journey to Carrara, whither he went and
stayed about three weeks, ordering marbles for "the tombs which are to
be placed in the new sacristy at S. Lorenzo. And there I made out
drawings to scale, and measured models in clay for the said tombs." He
left his assistant Scipione of Settignano at Carrara as overseer of
the work and returned to Florence. On the 20th of July following he
went again to Carrara, and stayed nine days. On the 16th of August the
contractors for the blocks, all of which were excavated from the old
Roman quarry of Polvaccio, came to Florence, and were paid for on
account. Scipione returned on the 19th of August. It may be added that
the name of Stefano, the miniaturist, who acted as Michelangelo's
factotum through several years, is mentioned for the first time in
this minute and interesting record.

That the commission for the sacristy came from the Cardinal Giulio,
and not from the Pope, appears in the document I have just cited. The
fact is confirmed by a letter written to Fattucci in 1523: "About two
years have elapsed since I returned from Carrara, whither I had gone
to purchase marbles for the tombs of the Cardinal." The letter is
curious in several respects, because it shows how changeable through
many months Giulio remained about the scheme; at one time bidding
Michelangelo prepare plans and models, at another refusing to listen
to any proposals; then warming up again, and saying that, if he lived
long enough, he meant to erect the façade as well. The final issue of
the affair was, that after Giulio became Pope Clement VII., the
sacristy went forward, and Michelangelo had to put the sepulchre of
Julius aside. During the pontificate of Adrian, we must believe that
he worked upon his statues for that monument, since a Cardinal was
hardly powerful enough to command his services; but when the Cardinal
became Pope, and threatened to bring an action against him for moneys
received, the case was altered. The letter to Fattucci, when carefully
studied, leads to these conclusions.

Very little is known to us regarding his private life in the year
1521. We only possess one letter, relating to the purchase of a house.
In October he stood godfather to the infant son of Niccolò Soderini,
nephew of his old patron, the Gonfalonier.

This barren period is marked by only one considerable event--that is,
the termination of the Cristo Risorto, or Christ Triumphant, which had
been ordered by Metello Varj de' Porcari in 1514. The statue seems to
have been rough-hewn at the quarries, packed up, and sent to Pisa on
its way to Florence as early as December 1518, but it was not until
March 1521 that Michelangelo began to occupy himself about it
seriously. He then despatched Pietro Urbano to Rome with orders to
complete it there, and to arrange with the purchaser for placing it
upon a pedestal. Sebastiano's letters contain some references to this
work, which enable us to understand how wrong it would be to accept it
as a representative piece of Buonarroti's own handicraft. On the 9th
of November 1520 he writes that his gossip, Giovanni da Reggio, "goes
about saying that you did not execute the figure, but that it is the
work of Pietro Urbano. Take good care that it should be seen to be
from your hand, so that poltroons and babblers may burst." On the 6th
of September 1521 he returns to the subject. Urbano was at this time
resident in Rome, and behaving himself so badly, in Sebastiano's
opinion, that he feels bound to make a severe report. "In the first
place, you sent him to Rome with the statue to finish and erect it.
What he did and left undone you know already. But I must inform you
that he has spoiled the marble wherever he touched it. In particular,
he shortened the right foot and cut the toes off; the hands too,
especially the right hand, which holds the cross, have been mutilated
in the fingers. Frizzi says they seem to have been worked by a
biscuit-maker, not wrought in marble, but kneaded by some one used to
dough. I am no judge, not being familiar with the method of
stone-cutting; but I can tell you that the fingers look to me very
stiff and dumpy. It is clear also that he has been peddling at the
beard; and I believe my little boy would have done so with more sense,
for it looks as though he had used a knife without a point to chisel
the hair. This can easily be remedied, however. He has also spoiled
one of the nostrils. A little more, and the whole nose would have been
ruined, and only God could have restored it." Michelangelo apparently
had already taken measures to transfer the Christ from Urbano's hands
to those of the sculptor Federigo Frizzi. This irritated his former
friend and workman. "Pietro shows a very ugly and malignant spirit
after finding himself cast off by you. He does not seem to care for
you or any one alive, but thinks he is a great master. He will soon
find out his mistake, for the poor young man will never be able to
make statues. He has forgotten all he knew of art, and the knees of
your Christ are worth more than all Rome together." It was
Sebastiano's wont to run babbling on this way. Once again he returns
to Pietro Urbano. "I am informed that he has left Rome; he has not
been seen for several days, has shunned the Court, and I certainly
believe that he will come to a bad end. He gambles, wants all the
women of the town, struts like a Ganymede in velvet shoes through
Rome, and flings his cash about. Poor fellow! I am sorry for him
since, after all, he is but young."

Such was the end of Pietro Urbano. Michelangelo was certainly
unfortunate with his apprentices. One cannot help fancying he may have
spoiled them by indulgence. Vasari, mentioning Pietro, calls him "a
person of talent, but one who never took the pains to work."

Frizzi brought the Christ Triumphant into its present state, patching
up what "the lither lad" from Pistoja had boggled. Buonarroti, who was
sincerely attached to Varj, and felt his artistic reputation now at
stake, offered to make a new statue. But the magnanimous Roman
gentleman replied that he was entirely satisfied with the one he had
received. He regarded and esteemed it "as a thing of gold," and, in
refusing Michelangelo's offer, added that "this proved his noble soul
and generosity, inasmuch as, when he had already made what could not
be surpassed and was incomparable, he still wanted to serve his friend
better." The price originally stipulated was paid, and Varj added an
autograph testimonial, strongly affirming his contentment with the
whole transaction.

These details prove that the Christ of the Minerva must be regarded as
a mutilated masterpiece. Michelangelo is certainly responsible for the
general conception, the pose, and a large portion of the finished
surface, details of which, especially in the knees, so much admired by
Sebastiano, and in the robust arms, are magnificent. He designed the
figure wholly nude, so that the heavy bronze drapery which now
surrounds the loins, and bulges drooping from the left hip, breaks the
intended harmony of lines. Yet, could this brawny man have ever
suggested any distinctly religious idea? Christ, victor over Death and
Hell, did not triumph by ponderosity and sinews. The spiritual nature
of his conquest, the ideality of a divine soul disencumbered from the
flesh, to which it once had stooped in love for sinful man, ought
certainly to have been emphasised, if anywhere through art, in the
statue of a Risen Christ. Substitute a scaling-ladder for the cross,
and here we have a fine life-guardsman, stripped and posing for some
classic battle-piece. We cannot quarrel with Michelangelo about the
face and head. Those vulgarly handsome features, that beard, pomaded
and curled by a barber's 'prentice, betray no signs of his
inspiration. Only in the arrangement of the hair, hyacinthine locks
descending to the shoulders, do we recognise the touch of the divine
sculptor.

The Christ became very famous. Francis I. had it cast and sent to
Paris, to be repeated in bronze. What is more strange, it has long
been the object of a religious cult. The right foot, so mangled by
poor Pietro, wears a fine brass shoe, in order to prevent its being
kissed away. This almost makes one think of Goethe's hexameter:
"Wunderthätige Bilder sind meist nur schlechte Gemälde." Still it must
be remembered that excellent critics have found the whole work
admirable. Gsell-Fels says: "It is his second Moses; in movement and
physique one of the greatest masterpieces; as a Christ-ideal, the
heroic conception of a humanist." That last observation is just. We
may remember that Vida was composing his _Christiad_ while Frizzi was
curling the beard of the Cristo Risorto. Vida always speaks of Jesus
as _Heros_ and of God the Father as _Superum Pater Nimbipotens_ or
_Regnator Olympi_.



CHAPTER VIII


I

Leo X. expired upon the 1st day of December 1521. The vacillating game
he played in European politics had just been crowned with momentary
success. Some folk believed that the Pope died of joy after hearing
that his Imperial allies had entered the town of Milan; others thought
that he succumbed to poison. We do not know what caused his death. But
the unsoundness of his constitution, over-taxed by dissipation and
generous living, in the midst of public cares for which the man had
hardly nerve enough, may suffice to account for a decease certainly
sudden and premature. Michelangelo, born in the same year, was
destined to survive him through more than eight lustres of the life of
man.

Leo was a personality whom it is impossible to praise without reserve.
The Pope at that time in Italy had to perform three separate
functions. His first duty was to the Church. Leo left the See of Rome
worse off than he found it: financially bankrupt, compromised by vague
schemes set on foot for the aggrandisement of his family, discredited
by many shameless means for raising money upon spiritual securities.
His second duty was to Italy. Leo left the peninsula so involved in a
mesh of meaningless entanglements, diplomatic and aimless wars, that
anarchy and violence proved to be the only exit from the situation.
His third duty was to that higher culture which Italy dispensed to
Europe, and of which the Papacy had made itself the leading
propagator. Here Leo failed almost as conspicuously as in all else he
attempted. He debased the standard of art and literature by his
ill-placed liberalities, seeking quick returns for careless
expenditure, not selecting the finest spirits of his age for timely
patronage, diffusing no lofty enthusiasm, but breeding round him
mushrooms of mediocrity.

Nothing casts stronger light upon the low tone of Roman society
created by Leo than the outburst of frenzy and execration which
exploded when a Fleming was elected as his successor. Adrian Florent,
belonging to a family surnamed Dedel, emerged from the scrutiny of the
Conclave into the pontifical chair. He had been the tutor of Charles
V., and this may suffice to account for his nomination. Cynical wits
ascribed that circumstance to the direct and unexpected action of the
Holy Ghost. He was the one foreigner who occupied the seat of S. Peter
after the period when the metropolis of Western Christendom became an
Italian principality. Adrian, by his virtues and his failings, proved
that modern Rome, in her social corruption and religious indifference,
demanded an Italian Pontiff. Single-minded and simple, raised
unexpectedly by circumstances into his supreme position, he shut his
eyes absolutely to art and culture, abandoned diplomacy, and
determined to act only as the chief of the Catholic Church. In
ecclesiastical matters Adrian was undoubtedly a worthy man. He
returned to the original conception of his duty as the Primate of
Occidental Christendom; and what might have happened had he lived to
impress his spirit upon Rome, remains beyond the reach of calculation.
Dare we conjecture that the sack of 1527 would have been averted?

Adrian reigned only a year and eight months. He had no time to do
anything of permanent value, and was hardly powerful enough to do it,
even if time and opportunity had been afforded. In the thunderstorm
gathering over Rome and the Papacy, he represents that momentary lull
during which men hold their breath and murmur. All the place-seekers,
parasites, flatterers, second-rate artificers, folk of facile talents,
whom Leo gathered round him, vented their rage against a Pope who
lived sparsely, shut up the Belvedere, called statues "idols of the
Pagans," and spent no farthing upon twangling lutes and frescoed
chambers. Truly Adrian is one of the most grotesque and significant
figures upon the page of modern history. His personal worth, his
inadequacy to the needs of the age, and his incompetence to control
the tempest loosed by Della Roveres, Borgias, and Medici around him,
give the man a tragic irony.

After his death, upon the 23rd of September 1523, the Cardinal Giulio
de' Medici was made Pope. He assumed the title of Clement VII. upon
the 9th of November. The wits who saluted Adrian's doctor with the
title of "Saviour of the Fatherland," now rejoiced at the election of
an Italian and a Medici. The golden years of Leo's reign would
certainly return, they thought; having no foreknowledge of the tragedy
which was so soon to be enacted, first at Rome, and afterwards at
Florence, Michelangelo wrote to his friend Topolino at Carrara: "You
will have heard that Medici is made Pope; all the world seems to me to
be delighted, and I think that here at Florence great things will soon
be set on foot in our art. Therefore, serve well and faithfully."


II

Our records are very scanty, both as regards personal details and
art-work, for the life of Michelangelo during the pontificate of
Adrian VI. The high esteem in which he was held throughout Italy is
proved by three incidents which may shortly be related. In 1522, the
Board of Works for the cathedral church of S. Petronio at Bologna
decided to complete the façade. Various architects sent in designs;
among them Peruzzi competed with one in the Gothic style, and another
in that of the Classical revival. Great differences of opinion arose
in the city as to the merits of the rival plans, and the Board in July
invited Michelangelo, through their secretary, to come and act as
umpire. They promised to reward him magnificently. It does not appear
that Michelangelo accepted the offer. In 1523, Cardinal Grimani, who
was a famous collector of art-objects, wrote begging for some specimen
of his craft. Grimani left it open to him "to choose material and
subject; painting, bronze, or marble, according to his fancy."
Michelangelo must have promised to fulfill the commission, for we have
a letter from Grimani thanking him effusively. He offers to pay fifty
ducats at the commencement of the work, and what Michelangelo thinks
fit to demand at its conclusion: "for such is the excellence of your
ability, that we shall take no thought of money-value." Grimani was
Patriarch of Aquileja. In the same year, 1523, the Genoese entered
into negotiations for a colossal statue of Andrea Doria, which they
desired to obtain from the hand of Michelangelo. Its execution must
have been seriously contemplated, for the Senate of Genoa banked 300
ducats for the purpose. We regret that Michelangelo could not carry
out a work so congenial to his talent as this ideal portrait of the
mighty Signer Capitano would have been; but we may console ourselves
by reflecting that even his energies were not equal to all tasks
imposed upon him. The real matter for lamentation is that they
suffered so much waste in the service of vacillating Popes.

To the year 1523 belongs, in all probability, the last extant letter
which Michelangelo wrote to his father. Lodovico was dissatisfied with
a contract which had been drawn up on the 16th of June in that year,
and by which a certain sum of money, belonging to the dowry of his
late wife, was settled in reversion upon his eldest son. Michelangelo
explains the tenor of the deed, and then breaks forth into the,
following bitter and ironical invective: "If my life is a nuisance to
you, you have found the means of protecting yourself, and will inherit
the key of that treasure which you say that I possess. And you will be
acting rightly; for all Florence knows how mighty rich you were, and
how I always robbed you, and deserve to be chastised. Highly will men
think of you for this. Cry out and tell folk all you choose about me,
but do not write again, for you prevent my working. What I have now to
do is to make good all you have had from me during the past
five-and-twenty years. I would rather not tell you this, but I cannot
help it. Take care, and be on your guard against those whom it
concerns you. A man dies but once, and does not come back again to
patch up things ill done. You have put off till the death to do this.
May God assist you!"

In another draft of this letter Lodovico is accused of going about the
town complaining that he was once a rich man, and that Michelangelo
had robbed him. Still, we must not take this for proved; one of the
great artist's main defects was an irritable suspiciousness, which
caused him often to exaggerate slights and to fancy insults. He may
have attached too much weight to the grumblings of an old man, whom at
the bottom of his heart he loved dearly.


III

Clement, immediately after his election, resolved on setting
Michelangelo at work in earnest on the Sacristy. At the very beginning
of January he also projected the building of the Laurentian Library,
and wrote, through his Roman agent, Giovanni Francesco Fattucci,
requesting to have two plans furnished, one in the Greek, the other in
the Latin style. Michelangelo replied as follows: "I gather from your
last that his Holiness our Lord wishes that I should furnish the
design for the library. I have received no information, and do not
know where it is to be erected. It is true that Stefano talked to me
about the scheme, but I paid no heed. When he returns from Carrara I
will inquire, and will do all that is in my power, _albeit
architecture is not my profession_." There is something pathetic in
this reiterated assertion that his real art was sculpture. At the same
time Clement wished to provide for him for life. He first proposed
that Buonarroti should promise not to marry, and should enter into
minor orders. This would have enabled him to enjoy some ecclesiastical
benefice, but it would also have handed him over firmly bound to the
service of the Pope. Circumstances already hampered him enough, and
Michelangelo, who chose to remain his own master, refused. As Berni
wrote: "Voleva far da se, non comandato." As an alternative, a pension
was suggested. It appears that he only asked for fifteen ducats a
month, and that his friend Pietro Gondi had proposed twenty-five
ducats. Fattucci, on the 13th of January 1524, rebuked him in
affectionate terms for his want of pluck, informing him that "Jacopo
Salviati has given orders that Spina should be instructed to pay you a
monthly provision of fifty ducats." Moreover, all the disbursements
made for the work at S. Lorenzo were to be provided by the same agent
in Florence, and to pass through Michelangelo's hands. A house was
assigned him, free of rent, at S. Lorenzo, in order that he might be
near his work. Henceforth he was in almost weekly correspondence with
Giovanni Spina on affairs of business, sending in accounts and drawing
money by means of his then trusted servant, Stefano, the miniaturist.

That Stefano did not always behave himself according to his master's
wishes appears from the following characteristic letter addressed by
Michelangelo to his friend Pietro Gondi: "The poor man, who is
ungrateful, has a nature of this sort, that if you help him in his
needs, he says that what you gave him came out of superfluities; if
you put him in the way of doing work for his own good, he says you
were obliged, and set him to do it because you were incapable; and all
the benefits which he received he ascribes to the necessities of the
benefactor. But when everybody can see that you acted out of pure
benevolence, the ingrate waits until you make some public mistake,
which gives him the opportunity of maligning his benefactor and
winning credence, in order to free himself from the obligation under
which he lies. This has invariably happened in my case. No one ever
entered into relations with me--I speak of workmen--to whom I did not
do good with all my heart. Afterwards, some trick of temper, or some
madness, which they say is in my nature, which hurts nobody except
myself, gives them an excuse for speaking evil of me and calumniating
my character. Such is the reward of all honest men."

These general remarks, he adds, apply to Stefano, whom he placed in a
position of trust and responsibility, in order to assist him. "What I
do is done for his good, because I have undertaken to benefit the man,
and cannot abandon him; but let him not imagine or say that I am doing
it because of my necessities, for, God be praised, I do not stand in
need of men." He then begs Gondi to discover what Stefano's real mind
is. This is a matter of great importance to him for several reasons,
and especially for this: "If I omitted to justify myself, and were to
put another in his place, I should be published among the Piagnoni for
the biggest traitor who ever lived, even though I were in the right."

We conclude, then, that Michelangelo thought of dismissing Stefano,
but feared lest he should get into trouble with the powerful political
party, followers of Savonarola, who bore the name of Piagnoni at
Florence. Gondi must have patched the quarrel up, for we still find
Stefano's name in the _Ricordi_ down to April 4, 1524. Shortly after
that date, Antonio Mini seems to have taken his place as
Michelangelo's right-hand man of business. These details are not so
insignificant as they appear. They enable us to infer that the
Sacristy of S. Lorenzo may have been walled and roofed in before the
end of April 1524; for, in an undated letter to Pope Clement,
Michelangelo says that Stefano has finished the lantern, and that it
is universally admired. With regard to this lantern, folk told him
that he would make it better than Brunelleschi's. "Different perhaps,
but better, no!" he answered. The letter to Clement just quoted is
interesting in several respects. The boldness of the beginning makes
one comprehend how Michelangelo was terrible even to Popes:--

"Most Blessed Father,--Inasmuch as intermediates are often the cause
of grave misunderstandings, I have summoned up courage to write
without their aid to your Holiness about the tombs at S. Lorenzo. I
repeat, I know not which is preferable, the evil that does good, or
the good that hurts. I am certain, mad and wicked as I may be, that if
I had been allowed to go on as I had begun, all the marbles needed for
the work would have been in Florence to-day, and properly blocked out,
with less cost than has been expended on them up to this date; and
they would have been superb, as are the others I have brought here."

After this he entreats Clement to give him full authority in carrying
out the work, and not to put superiors over him. Michelangelo, we
know, was extremely impatient of control and interference; and we
shall see, within a short time, how excessively the watching and
spying of busybodies worried and disturbed his spirits.

But these were not his only sources of annoyance. The heirs of Pope
Julius, perceiving that Michelangelo's time and energy were wholly
absorbed at S. Lorenzo, began to threaten him with a lawsuit. Clement,
wanting apparently to mediate between the litigants, ordered Fattucci
to obtain a report from the sculptor, with a full account of how
matters stood. This evoked the long and interesting document which has
been so often cited. There is no doubt whatever that Michelangelo
acutely felt the justice of the Duke of Urbino's grievances against
him. He was broken-hearted at seeming to be wanting in his sense of
honour and duty. People, he says, accused him of putting the money
which had been paid for the tomb out at usury, "living meanwhile at
Florence and amusing himself." It also hurt him deeply to be
distracted from the cherished project of his early manhood in order to
superintend works for which he had no enthusiasm, and which lay
outside his sphere of operation.

It may, indeed, be said that during these years Michelangelo lived in
a perpetual state of uneasiness and anxiety about the tomb of Julius.
As far back as 1518 the Cardinal Leonardo Grosso, Bishop of Agen, and
one of Julius's executors, found it necessary to hearten him with
frequent letters of encouragement. In one of these, after commending
his zeal in extracting marbles and carrying on the monument, the
Cardinal proceeds: "Be then of good courage, and do not yield to any
perturbations of the spirit, for we put more faith in your smallest
word than if all the world should say the contrary. We know your
loyalty, and believe you to be wholly devoted to our person; and if
there shall be need of aught which we can supply, we are willing, as
we have told you on other occasions, to do so; rest then in all
security of mind, because we love you from the heart, and desire to do
all that may be agreeable to you." This good friend was dead at the
time we have now reached, and the violent Duke Francesco Maria della
Rovere acted as the principal heir of Pope Julius.

In a passion of disgust he refused to draw his pension, and abandoned
the house at S. Lorenzo. This must have happened in March 1524, for
his friend Leonardo writes to him from Rome upon the 24th: "I am also
told that you have declined your pension, which seems to me mere
madness, and that you have thrown the house up, and do not work.
Friend and gossip, let me tell you that you have plenty of enemies,
who speak their worst; also that the Pope and Pucci and Jacopo
Salviati are your friends, and have plighted their troth to you. It is
unworthy of you to break your word to them, especially in an affair of
honour. Leave the matter of the tomb to those who wish you well, and
who are able to set you free without the least encumbrance, and take
care you do not come short in the Pope's work. Die first. And take the
pension, for they give it with a willing heart." How long he remained
in contumacy is not quite certain; apparently until the 29th of
August. We have a letter written on that day to Giovanni Spina: "After
I left you yesterday, I went back thinking over my affairs; and,
seeing that the Pope has set his heart on S. Lorenzo, and how he
urgently requires my service, and has appointed me a good provision in
order that I may serve him with more convenience and speed; seeing
also that not to accept it keeps me back, and that I have no good
excuse for not serving his Holiness; I have changed my mind, and
whereas I hitherto refused, I now demand it (_i.e._, the salary),
considering this far wiser, and for more reasons than I care to write;
and, more especially, I mean to return to the house you took for me at
S. Lorenzo, and settle down there like an honest man: inasmuch as it
sets gossip going, and does me great damage not to go back there."
From a _Ricordo_ dated October 19, 1524, we learn in fact that he then
drew his full pay for eight months.


IV

Since Michelangelo was now engaged upon the Medicean tombs at S.
Lorenzo, it will be well to give some account of the several plans he
made before deciding on the final scheme, which he partially executed.
We may assume, I think, that the sacristy, as regards its general form
and dimensions, faithfully represents the first plan approved by
Clement. This follows from the rapidity and regularity with which the
structure was completed. But then came the question of filling it with
sarcophagi and statues. As early as November 28, 1520, Giulio de'
Medici, at that time Cardinal, wrote from the Villa Magliana. to
Buonarroti, addressing him thus: "_Spectabilis vir, amice noster
charissime_." He says that he is pleased with the design for the
chapel, and with the notion of placing the four tombs in the middle.
Then he proceeds to make some sensible remarks upon the difficulty of
getting these huge masses of statuary into the space provided for
them. Michelangelo, as Heath Wilson has pointed out, very slowly
acquired the sense of proportion on which technical architecture
depends. His early sketches only show a feeling for mass and
picturesque effect, and a strong inclination to subordinate the
building to sculpture.

It may be questioned who were the four Medici for whom these tombs
were intended. Cambi, in a passage quoted above, writing at the end of
March 1520(?), says that two were raised for Giuliano, Duke of
Nemours, and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and that the Cardinal meant one
to be for himself. The fourth he does not speak about. It has been
conjectured that Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano,
fathers respectively of Leo and of Clement, were to occupy two of the
sarcophagi; and also, with greater probability, that the two Popes,
Leo and Clement, were associated with the Dukes.

Before 1524 the scheme expanded, and settled into a more definite
shape. The sarcophagi were to support statue-portraits of the Dukes
and Popes, with Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano. At
their base, upon the ground, were to repose six rivers, two for each
tomb, showing that each sepulchre would have held two figures. The
rivers were perhaps Arno, Tiber, Metauro, Po, Taro, and Ticino. This
we gather from a letter written to Michelangelo on the 23rd of May in
that year. Michelangelo made designs to meet this plan, but whether
the tombs were still detached from the wall does not appear. Standing
inside the sacristy, it seems impossible that six statue-portraits and
six river-gods on anything like a grand scale could have been crowded
into the space, especially when we remember that there was to be an
altar, with other objects described as ornaments--"gli altri
ornamenti." Probably the Madonna and Child, with SS. Cosimo and
Damiano, now extant in the chapel, formed an integral part of the
successive schemes.

One thing is certain, that the notion of placing the tombs in the
middle of the sacristy was soon abandoned. All the marble panelling,
pilasters, niches, and so forth, which at present clothe the walls and
dominate the architectural effect, are clearly planned for mural
monuments. A rude sketch preserved in the Uffizi throws some light
upon the intermediate stages of the scheme. It is incomplete, and was
not finally adopted; but we see in it one of the four sides of the
chapel, divided vertically above into three compartments, the middle
being occupied by a Madonna, the two at the sides filled in with
bas-reliefs. At the base, on sarcophagi or _cassoni_, recline two nude
male figures. The space between these and the upper compartments seems
to have been reserved for allegorical figures, since a colossal naked
boy, ludicrously out of scale with the architecture and the recumbent
figures, has been hastily sketched in. In architectural proportion and
sculpturesque conception this design is very poor. It has the merit,
however, of indicating a moment in the evolution of the project when
the mural scheme had been adopted. The decorative details which
surmount the composition confirm the feeling every one must have,
that, in their present state, the architecture of the Medicean
monuments remains imperfect.

In this process of endeavouring to trace the development of
Michelangelo's ideas for the sacristy, seven original drawings at the
British Museum are of the greatest importance. They may be divided
into three groups. One sketch seems to belong to the period when the
tombs were meant to be placed in the centre of the chapel. It shows a
single facet of the monument, with two sarcophagi placed side by side
and seated figures at the angles. Five are variations upon the mural
scheme, which was eventually adopted. They differ considerably in
details, proving what trouble the designer took to combine a large
number of figures in a single plan. He clearly intended at some time
to range the Medicean statues in pairs, and studied several types of
curve for their sepulchral urns. The feature common to all of them is
a niche, of door or window shape, with a powerfully indented
architrave. Reminiscences of the design for the tomb of Julius are not
infrequent; and it may be remarked, as throwing a side-light upon that
irrecoverable project of his earlier manhood, that the figures posed
upon the various spaces of architecture differ in their scale. Two
belonging to this series are of especial interest, since we learn from
them how he thought of introducing the rivers at the basement of the
composition. It seems that he hesitated long about the employment of
circular spaces in the framework of the marble panelling. These were
finally rejected. One of the finest and most comprehensive of the
drawings I am now describing contains a rough draft of a curved
sarcophagus, with an allegorical figure reclining upon it, indicating
the first conception of the Dawn. Another, blurred and indistinct,
with clumsy architectural environment, exhibits two of these
allegories, arranged much as we now see them at S. Lorenzo. A
river-god, recumbent beneath the feet of a female statue, carries the
eye down to the ground, and enables us to comprehend how these
subordinate figures were wrought into the complex harmony of flowing
lines he had imagined. The seventh study differs in conception from
the rest; it stands alone. There are four handlings of what begins
like a huge portal, and is gradually elaborated into an architectural
scheme containing three great niches for statuary. It is powerful and
simple in design, governed by semicircular arches--a feature which is
absent from the rest.

All these drawings are indubitably by the hand of Michelangelo, and
must be reckoned among his first free efforts to construct a working
plan. The Albertina Collection at Vienna yields us an elaborate design
for the sacristy, which appears to have been worked up from some of
the rougher sketches. It is executed in pen, shaded with bistre, and
belongs to what I have ventured to describe as office work. It may
have been prepared for the inspection of Leo and the Cardinal. Here we
have the sarcophagi in pairs, recumbent figures stretched upon a
shallow curve inverted, colossal orders of a bastard Ionic type, a
great central niche framing a seated Madonna, two male figures in side
niches, suggestive of Giuliano and Lorenzo as they were at last
conceived, four allegorical statues, and, to crown the whole
structure, candelabra of a peculiar shape, with a central round,
supported by two naked genii. It is difficult, as I have before
observed, to be sure how much of the drawings executed in this way can
be ascribed with safety to Michelangelo himself. They are carefully
outlined, with the precision of a working architect; but the
sculptural details bear the aspect of what may be termed a generic
Florentine style of draughtsmanship.

Two important letters from Michelangelo to Fattucci, written in
October 1525 and April 1526, show that he had then abandoned the
original scheme, and adopted one which was all but carried into
effect. "I am working as hard as I can, and in fifteen days I shall
begin the other captain. Afterwards the only important things left
will be the four rivers. The four statues on the sarcophagi, the four
figures on the ground which are the rivers, the two captains, and Our
Lady, who is to be placed upon the tomb at the head of the chapel;
these are what I mean to do with my own hand. Of these I have begun
six; and I have good hope of finishing them in due time, and carrying
the others forward in part, which do not signify so much." The six he
had begun are clearly the Dukes and their attendant figures of Day,
Night, Dawn, Evening. The Madonna, one of his noblest works, came
within a short distance of completion. SS. Cosimo and Damiano passed
into the hands of Montelupo and Montorsoli. Of the four rivers we have
only fragments in the shape of some exquisite little models. Where
they could have been conveniently placed is difficult to imagine;
possibly they were abandoned from a feeling that the chapel would be
overcrowded.


V

According to the plan adopted in this book, I shall postpone such
observations as I have to make upon the Medicean monuments until the
date when Michelangelo laid down his chisel, and shall now proceed
with the events of his life during the years 1525 and 1526.

He continued to be greatly troubled about the tomb of Julius II. The
lawsuit instituted by the Duke of Urbino hung over his head; and
though he felt sure of the Pope's powerful support, it was extremely
important, both for his character and comfort, that affairs should be
placed upon a satisfactory basis. Fattucci in Rome acted not only as
Clement's agent in business connected with S. Lorenzo; he also was
intrusted with negotiations for the settlement of the Duke's claims.
The correspondence which passed between them forms, therefore, our
best source of information for this period. On Christmas Eve in 1524
Michelangelo writes from Florence to his friend, begging him not to
postpone a journey he had in view, if the only business which detained
him was the trouble about the tomb. A pleasant air of manly affection
breathes through this document, showing Michelangelo to have been
unselfish in a matter which weighed heavily and daily on his spirits.
How greatly he was affected can be inferred from a letter written to
Giovanni Spina on the 19th of April 1525. While reading this, it must
be remembered that the Duke laid his action for the recovery of a
considerable balance, which he alleged to be due to him upon
disbursements made for the monument. Michelangelo, on the contrary,
asserted that he was out of pocket, as we gather from the lengthy
report he forwarded in 1524 to Fattucci. The difficulty in the
accounts seems to have arisen from the fact that payments for the
Sistine Chapel and the tomb had been mixed up. The letter to Spina
runs as follows: "There is no reason for sending a power of attorney
about the tomb of Pope Julius, because I do not want to plead. They
cannot bring a suit if I admit that I am in the wrong; so I assume
that I have sued and lost, and have to pay; and this I am disposed to
do, if I am able. Therefore, if the Pope will help me in the
matter--and this would be the greatest satisfaction to me, seeing I am
too old and ill to finish the work--he might, as intermediary, express
his pleasure that I should repay what I have received for its
performance, so as to release me from this burden, and to enable the
relatives of Pope Julius to carry out the undertaking by any master
whom they may choose to employ. In this way his Holiness could be of
very great assistance to me. Of course I desire to reimburse as little
as possible, always consistently with justice. His Holiness might
employ some of my arguments, as, for instance, the time spent for the
Pope at Bologna, and other times wasted without any compensation,
according to the statements I have made in full to Ser Giovan
Francesco (Fattucci). Directly the terms of restitution have been
settled, I will engage my property, sell, and put myself in a position
to repay the money. I shall then be able to think of the Pope's orders
and to work; as it is, I can hardly be said to live, far less to work.
There is no other way of putting an end to the affair more safe for
myself, nor more agreeable, nor more certain to ease my mind. It can
be done amicably without a lawsuit. I pray to God that the Pope may be
willing to accept the mediation, for I cannot see that any one else is
fit to do it."

Giorgio Vasari says that he came in the year 1525 for a short time as
pupil to Michelangelo. In his own biography he gives the date, more
correctly, 1524. At any rate, the period of Vasari's brief
apprenticeship was closed by a journey which the master made to Rome,
and Buonarroti placed the lad in Andrea del Sarto's workshop. "He left
for Rome in haste. Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, was again
molesting him, asserting that he had received 16,000 ducats to
complete the tomb, while he stayed idling at Florence for his own
amusement. He threatened that, if he did not attend to the work, he
would make him suffer. So, when he arrived there, Pope Clement, who
wanted to command his services, advised him to reckon with the Duke's
agents, believing that, for what he had already done, he was rather
creditor than debtor. The matter remained thus." We do not know when
this journey to Rome took place. From a hint in the letter of December
24, 1524, to Fattucci, where Michelangelo observes that only he in
person would be able to arrange matters, it is possible that we may
refer it to the beginning of 1525. Probably he was able to convince,
not only the Pope, but also the Duke's agents that he had acted with
scrupulous honesty, and that his neglect of the tomb was due to
circumstances over which he had no control, and which he regretted as
acutely as anybody. There is no shadow of doubt that this was really
the case. Every word written by Michelangelo upon the subject shows
that he was heart-broken at having to abandon the long-cherished
project.

Some sort of arrangement must have been arrived at. Clement took the
matter into his own hands, and during the summer of 1525 amicable
negotiations were in progress. On the 4th of September Michelangelo
writes again to Fattucci, saying that he is quite willing to complete
the tomb upon the same plan as that of the Pope Pius (now in the
Church of S. Andrea della Valle)--that is, to adopt a mural system
instead of the vast detached monument. This would take less time. He
again urges his friend not to stay at Rome for the sake of these
affairs. He hears that the plague is breaking out there. "And I would
rather have you alive than my business settled. If I die before the
Pope, I shall not have to settle any troublesome affairs. If I live, I
am sure the Pope will settle them, if not now, at some other time. So
come back. I was with your mother yesterday, and advised her, in the
presence of Granacci and John the turner, to send for you home."

While in Rome Michelangelo conferred with Clement about the sacristy
and library at S. Lorenzo. For a year after his return to Florence he
worked steadily at the Medicean monuments, but not without severe
annoyances, as appears from the following to Fattucci: "The four
statues I have in hand are not yet finished, and much has still to be
done upon them. The four rivers are not begun, because the marble is
wanting, and yet it is here. I do not think it opportune to tell you
why. With regard to the affairs of Julius, I am well disposed to make
the tomb like that of Pius in S. Peter's, and will do so little by
little, now one piece and now another, and will pay for it out of my
own pocket, if I keep my pension and my house, as you promised me. I
mean, of course, the house at Rome, and the marbles and other things I
have there. So that, in fine, I should not have to restore to the
heirs of Julius, in order to be quit of the contract, anything which I
have hitherto received; the tomb itself, completed after the pattern
of that of Pius, sufficing for my full discharge. Moreover, I
undertake to perform the work within a reasonable time, and to finish
the statues with my own hand." He then turns to his present troubles
at Florence. The pension was in arrears, and busybodies annoyed him
with interferences of all sorts. "If my pension were paid, as was
arranged, I would never stop working for Pope Clement with all the
strength I have, small though that be, since I am old. At the same
time I must not be slighted and affronted as I am now, for such
treatment weighs greatly on my spirits. The petty spites I speak of
have prevented me from doing what I want to do these many months; one
cannot work at one thing with the hands, another with the brain,
especially in marble. 'Tis said here that these annoyances are meant
to spur me on; but I maintain that those are scurvy spurs which make a
good steed jib. I have not touched my pension during the past year,
and struggle with poverty. I am left in solitude to bear my troubles,
and have so many that they occupy me more than does my art; I cannot
keep a man to manage my house through lack of means."

Michelangelo's dejection caused serious anxiety to his friends. Jacopo
Salviati, writing on the 30th October from Rome, endeavoured to
restore his courage. "I am greatly distressed to hear of the fancies
you have got into your head. What hurts me most is that they should
prevent your working, for that rejoices your ill-wishers, and confirms
them in what they have always gone on preaching about your habits." He
proceeds to tell him how absurd it is to suppose that Baccio
Bandinelli is preferred before him. "I cannot perceive how Baccio
could in any way whatever be compared to you, or his work be set on
the same level as your own." The letter winds up with exhortations to
work. "Brush these cobwebs of melancholy away; have confidence in his
Holiness; do not give occasion to your enemies to blaspheme, and be
sure that your pension will be paid; I pledge my word for it."
Buonarroti, it is clear, wasted his time, not through indolence, but
through allowing the gloom of a suspicious and downcast
temperament--what the Italians call _accidia_--to settle on his
spirits.

Skipping a year, we find that these troublesome negotiations about the
tomb were still pending. He still hung suspended between the devil and
the deep sea, the importunate Duke of Urbino and the vacillating Pope.
Spina, it seems, had been writing with too much heat to Rome, probably
urging Clement to bring the difficulties about the tomb to a
conclusion. Michelangelo takes the correspondence up again with
Fattucci on November 6, 1526. What he says at the beginning of the
letter is significant. He knows that the political difficulties in
which Clement had become involved were sufficient to distract his
mind, as Julius once said, from any interest in "stones small or big."
Well, the letter starts thus: "I know that Spina wrote in these days
past to Rome very hotly about my affairs with regard to the tomb of
Julius. If he blundered, seeing the times in which we live, I am to
blame, for I prayed him urgently to write. It is possible that the
trouble of my soul made me say more than I ought. Information reached
me lately about the affair which alarmed me greatly. It seems that the
relatives of Julius are very ill-disposed towards me. And not without
reason.--The suit is going on, and they are demanding capital and
interest to such an amount that a hundred of my sort could not meet
the claims. This has thrown me into terrible agitation, and makes me
reflect where I should be if the Pope failed me. I could not live a
moment. It is that which made me send the letter alluded to above.
Now, I do not want anything but what the Pope thinks right. I know
that he does not desire my ruin and my disgrace."

He proceeds to notice that the building work at S. Lorenzo is being
carried forward very slowly, and money spent upon it with increasing
parsimony. Still he has his pension and his house; and these imply no
small disbursements. He cannot make out what the Pope's real wishes
are. If he did but know Clement's mind, he would sacrifice everything
to please him. "Only if I could obtain permission to begin something
either here or in Rome, for the tomb of Julius, I should be extremely
glad; for, indeed, I desire to free myself from that obligation more
than to live." The letter closes on a note of sadness: "If I am unable
to write what you will understand, do not be surprised, for I have
lost my wits entirely."

After this we hear nothing more about the tomb in Michelangelo's
correspondence till the year 1531. During the intervening years Italy
was convulsed by the sack of Rome, the siege of Florence, and the
French campaigns in Lombardy and Naples. Matters only began to mend
when Charles V. met Clement at Bologna in 1530, and established the
affairs of the peninsula upon a basis which proved durable. That fatal
lustre (1526-1530) divided the Italy of the Renaissance from the Italy
of modern times with the abruptness of an Alpine watershed. Yet
Michelangelo, aged fifty-one in 1526, was destined to live on another
thirty-eight years, and, after the death of Clement, to witness the
election of five successive Popes. The span of his life was not only
extraordinary in its length, but also in the events it comprehended.
Born in the mediaeval pontificate of Sixtus IV., brought up in the
golden days of Lorenzo de' Medici, he survived the Franco-Spanish
struggle for supremacy, watched the progress of the Reformation, and
only died when a new Church and a new Papacy had been established by
the Tridentine Council amid states sinking into the repose of
decrepitude.


VI

We must return from this digression and resume the events of
Michelangelo's life in 1525.

The first letter to Sebastiano del Piombo is referred to April of that
year. He says that a picture, probably the portrait of Anton Francesco
degli Albizzi, is eagerly expected at Florence. When it arrived in
May, he wrote again under the influence of generous admiration for his
friend's performance: "Last evening our friend the Captain Cuio and
certain other gentlemen were so kind as to invite me to sup with them.
This gave me exceeding great pleasure, since it drew me forth a little
from my melancholy, or shall we call it my mad mood. Not only did I
enjoy the supper, which was most agreeable, but far more the
conversation. Among the topics discussed, what gave me most delight
was to hear your name mentioned by the Captain; nor was this all, for
he still added to my pleasure, nay, to a superlative degree, by saying
that, in the art of painting he held you to be sole and without peer
in the whole world, and that so you were esteemed at Rome. I could not
have been better pleased. You see that my judgment is confirmed; and
so you must not deny that you are peerless, when I write it, since I
have a crowd of witnesses to my opinion. There is a picture too of
yours here, God be praised, which wins credence for me with every one
who has eyes."

Correspondence was carried on during this year regarding the library
at S. Lorenzo; and though I do not mean to treat at length about that
building in this chapter, I cannot omit an autograph postscript added
by Clement to one of his secretary's missives: "Thou knowest that
Popes have no long lives; and we cannot yearn more than we do to
behold the chapel with the tombs of our kinsmen, or at any rate to
hear that it is finished. Likewise, as regards the library. Wherefore
we recommend both to thy diligence. Meantime we will betake us (as
thou saidst erewhile) to a wholesome patience, praying God that He may
put it into thy heart to push the whole forward together. Fear not
that either work to do or rewards shall fail thee while we live.
Farewell, with the blessing of God and ours.--Julius." [Julius was the
Pope's baptismal name.--ED.]

Michelangelo began the library in 1526, as appears from his _Ricordi._
Still the work went on slowly, not through his negligence, but, as we
have seen, from the Pope's preoccupation with graver matters. He had a
great many workmen in his service at this period, and employed
celebrated masters in their crafts, as Tasso and Carota for
wood-carving, Battista del Cinque and Ciapino for carpentry, upon the
various fittings of the library. All these details he is said to have
designed; and it is certain that he was considered responsible for
their solidity and handsome appearance. Sebastiano, for instance,
wrote to him about the benches: "Our Lord wishes that the whole work
should be of carved walnut. He does not mind spending three florins
more; for that is a trifle, if they are Cosimesque in style, I mean
resemble the work done for the magnificent Cosimo." Michelangelo could
not have been the solitary worker of legend and tradition. The nature
of his present occupations rendered this impossible. For the
completion of his architectural works he needed a band of able
coadjutors. Thus in 1526 Giovanni da Udine came from Rome to decorate
the vault of the sacristy with frescoed arabesques. His work was
nearly terminated in 1533, when some question arose about painting the
inside of the lantern. Sebastiano, apparently in good faith, made the
following burlesque suggestion: "For myself, I think that the Ganymede
would go there very well; one could put an aureole about him, and turn
him into a S. John of the Apocalypse when he is being caught up into
the heavens." The whole of one side of the Italian Renaissance, its
so-called neo-paganism, is contained in this remark.

While still occupied with thoughts about S. Lorenzo, Clement ordered
Michelangelo to make a receptacle for the precious vessels and
reliques collected by Lorenzo the Magnificent. It was first intended
to place this chest, in the form of a ciborium, above the high altar,
and to sustain it on four columns. Eventually, the Pope resolved that
it should be a sacrarium, or cabinet for holy things, and that this
should stand above the middle entrance door to the church. The chest
was finished, and its contents remained there until the reign of the
Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, when they were removed to the chapel next
the old sacristy.

Another very singular idea occurred to his Holiness in the autumn of
1525. He made Fattucci write that he wished to erect a colossal statue
on the piazza of S. Lorenzo, opposite the Stufa Palace. The giant was
to surmount the roof of the Medicean Palace, with its face turned in
that direction and its back to the house of Luigi della Stufa. Being
so huge, it would have to be composed of separate pieces fitted
together. Michelangelo speedily knocked this absurd plan on the head
in a letter which gives a good conception of his dry and somewhat
ponderous humour.

"About the Colossus of forty cubits, which you tell me is to go or to
be placed at the corner of the loggia in the Medicean garden, opposite
the corner of Messer Luigi della Stufa, I have meditated not a little,
as you bade me. In my opinion that is not the proper place for it,
since it would take up too much room on the roadway. I should prefer
to put it at the other, where the barber's shop is. This would be far
better in my judgment, since it has the square in front, and would not
encumber the street. There might be some difficulty about pulling down
the shop, because of the rent. So it has occurred to me that the
statue might be carved in a sitting position; the Colossus would be so
lofty that if we made it hollow inside, as indeed is the proper method
for a thing which has to be put together from pieces, the shop might
be enclosed within it, and the rent be saved. And inasmuch as the shop
has a chimney in its present state, I thought of placing a cornucopia
in the statue's hand, hollowed out for the smoke to pass through. The
head too would be hollow, like all the other members of the figure.
This might be turned to a useful purpose, according to the suggestion
made me by a huckster on the square, who is my good friend. He privily
confided to me that it would make an excellent dovecote. Then another
fancy came into my head, which is still better, though the statue
would have to be considerably heightened. That, however, is quite
feasible, since towers are built up of blocks; and then the head might
serve as bell-tower to San Lorenzo, which is much in need of one.
Setting up the bells inside, and the sound booming through the mouth,
it would seem as though the Colossus were crying mercy, and mostly
upon feast-days, when peals are rung most often and with bigger
bells."

Nothing more is heard of this fantastic project; whence we may
conclude that the irony of Michelangelo's epistle drove it out of the
Pope's head.



CHAPTER IX


I

It lies outside the scope of this work to describe the series of
events which led up to the sack of Rome in 1527. Clement, by his
tortuous policy, and by the avarice of his administration, had
alienated every friend and exasperated all his foes. The Eternal City
was in a state of chronic discontent and anarchy. The Colonna princes
drove the Pope to take refuge in the Castle of S. Angelo; and when the
Lutheran rabble raised by Frundsberg poured into Lombardy, the Duke of
Ferrara assisted them to cross the Po, and the Duke of Urbino made no
effort to bar the passes of the Apennines. Losing one leader after the
other, these ruffians, calling themselves an Imperial army, but being
in reality the scum and offscourings of all nations, without any aim
but plunder and ignorant of policy, reached Rome upon the 6th of May.
They took the city by assault, and for nine months Clement, leaning
from the battlements of Hadrian's Mausoleum, watched smoke ascend from
desolated palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women
and the groans of tortured men, mingling with the ribald jests of
German drunkards and the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming those
galleries and gazing from those windows, he is said to have exclaimed
in the words of Job: "Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give
up the ghost when I came out of the belly?"

The immediate effect of this disaster was that the Medici lost their
hold on Florence. The Cardinal of Cortona, with the young princes
Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici, fled from the city on the 17th of
May, and a popular government was set up under the presidency of
Niccolò Capponi.

During this year and the next, Michelangelo was at Florence; but we
know very little respecting the incidents of his life. A _Ricordo_
bearing the date April 29 shows the disturbed state of the town. "I
record how, some days ago, Piero di Filippo Gondi asked for permission
to enter the new sacristy at S. Lorenzo, in order to hide there
certain goods belonging to his family, by reason of the perils in
which we are now. To-day, upon the 29th of April 1527, he has begun to
carry in some bundles, which he says are linen of his sisters; and I,
not wishing to witness what he does or to know where he hides the gear
away, have given him the key of the sacristy this evening."

There are only two letters belonging to the year 1527. Both refer to a
small office which had been awarded to Michelangelo with the right to
dispose of the patronage. He offered it to his favourite brother,
Buonarroto, who does not seem to have thought it worth accepting.

The documents for 1528 are almost as meagre. We do not possess a
single letter, and the most important _Ricordi_ relate to Buonarroto's
death and the administration of his property. He died of the plague
upon the 2nd of July, to the very sincere sorrow of his brother. It is
said that Michelangelo held him in his arms while he was dying,
without counting the risk to his own life. Among the minutes of
disbursements made for Buonarroto's widow and children after his
burial, we find that their clothes had been destroyed because of the
infection. All the cares of the family now fell on Michelangelo's
shoulders. He placed his niece Francesca in a convent till the time
that she should marry, repaid her dowry to the widow Bartolommea, and
provided for the expenses of his nephew Lionardo.

For the rest, there is little to relate which has any bearing on the
way in which he passed his time before the siege of Florence began.
One glimpse, however, is afforded of his daily life and conversation
by Benvenuto Cellini, who had settled in Florence after the sack of
Rome, and was working in a shop he opened at the Mercato Nuovo. The
episode is sufficiently interesting to be quoted. A Sienese gentleman
had commissioned Cellini to make him a golden medal, to be worn in the
hat. "The subject was to be Hercules wrenching the lion's mouth. While
I was working at this piece, Michel Agnolo Buonarroti came oftentimes
to see it. I had spent infinite pains upon the design, so that the
attitude of the figure and the fierce passion of the beast were
executed in quite a different style from that of any craftsman who had
hitherto attempted such groups. This, together with the fact that the
special branch of art was totally unknown to Michel Agnolo, made the
divine master give such praises to my work that I felt incredibly
inspired for further effort.

"Just then I met with Federigo Ginori, a young man of very lofty
spirit. He had lived some years in Naples and being endowed with great
charms of person and presence, had been the lover of a Neapolitan
princess. He wanted to have a medal made with Atlas bearing the world
upon his shoulders, and applied to Michel Agnolo for a design. Michel
Agnolo made this answer: 'Go and find out a young goldsmith named
Benvenuto; he will serve you admirably, and certainly he does not
stand in need of sketches by me. However, to prevent your thinking
that I want to save myself the trouble of so slight a matter, I will
gladly sketch you something; but meanwhile speak to Benvenuto, and let
him also make a model; he can then execute the better of the two
designs.' Federigo Ginori came to me and told me what he wanted,
adding thereto how Michel Agnolo had praised me, and how he had
suggested I should make a waxen model while he undertook to supply a
sketch. The words of that great man so heartened me, that I set myself
to work at once with eagerness upon the model; and when I had finished
it, a painter who was intimate with Michel Agnolo, called Giuliano
Bugiardini, brought me the drawing of Atlas. On the same occasion I
showed Giuliano my little model in wax, which was very different from
Michel Agnolo's drawing; and Federigo, in concert with Bugiardini,
agreed that I should work upon my model. So I took it in hand, and
when Michel Agnolo saw it, he praised me to the skies."

The courtesy shown by Michelangelo on this occasion to Cellini may be
illustrated by an inedited letter addressed to him from Vicenza. The
writer was Valerio Belli, who describes himself as a cornelian-cutter.
He reminds the sculptor of a promise once made to him in Florence of a
design for an engraved gem. A remarkably fine stone has just come into
his hands, and he should much like to begin to work upon it. These
proofs of Buonarroti's liberality to brother artists are not
unimportant, since he was unjustly accused during his lifetime of
stinginess and churlishness.


II

At the end of the year 1528 it became clear to the Florentines that
they would have to reckon with Clement VII. As early as August 18,
1527, France and England leagued together, and brought pressure upon
Charles V., in whose name Rome had been sacked. Negotiations were
proceeding, which eventually ended in the peace of Barcelona (June 20,
1529), whereby the Emperor engaged to sacrifice the Republic to the
Pope's vengeance. It was expected that the remnant of the Prince of
Orange's army would be marched up to besiege the town. Under the
anxiety caused by these events, the citizens raised a strong body of
militia, enlisted Malatesta Baglioni and Stefano Colonna as generals,
and began to take measures for strengthening the defences. What may be
called the War Office of the Florentine Republic bore the title of
Dieci della Guerra, or the Ten. It was their duty to watch over and
provide for all the interests of the commonwealth in military matters,
and now at this juncture serious measures had to be taken for putting
the city in a state of defence. Already in the year 1527, after the
expulsion of the Medici, a subordinate board had been created, to whom
very considerable executive and administrative faculties were
delegated. This board, called the Nove della Milizia, or the Nine,
were empowered to enrol all the burghers under arms, and to take
charge of the walls, towers, bastions, and other fortifications. It
was also within their competence to cause the destruction of
buildings, and to compensate the evicted proprietors at a valuation
which they fixed themselves. In the spring of 1529 the War Office
decided to gain the services of Michelangelo, not only because he was
the most eminent architect of his age in Florence, but also because
the Buonarroti family had always been adherents of the Medicean party,
and the Ten judged that his appointment to a place on the Nove di
Milizia would be popular with the democracy. The patent conferring
this office upon him, together with full authority over the work of
fortification, was issued on the 6th of April. Its terms were highly
complimentary. "Considering the genius and practical attainments of
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti, our citizen, and knowing how
excellent he is in architecture, beside his other most singular
talents in the liberal arts, by virtue whereof the common consent of
men regards him as unsurpassed by any masters of our times; and,
moreover, being assured that in love and affection toward the country
he is the equal of any other good and loyal burgher; bearing in mind,
too, the labour he has undergone and the diligence he has displayed,
gratis and of his free will, in the said work (of fortification) up to
this day; and wishing to employ his industry and energies to the like
effect in future; we, of our motion and initiative, do appoint him to
be governor and procurator-general over the construction and
fortification of the city walls, as well as every other sort of
defensive operation and munition for the town of Florence, for one
year certain, beginning with the present date; adding thereto full
authority over all persons in respect to the said work of reparation
or pertaining to it." From this preamble it appears that Michelangelo
had been already engaged in volunteer service connected with the
defence of Florence. A stipend of one golden florin per diem was fixed
by the same deed; and upon the 22nd of April following a payment of
thirty florins was decreed, for one month's salary, dating from the
6th of April.

If the Government thought to gain popular sympathy by Michelangelo's
appointment, they made the mistake of alienating the aristocracy. It
was the weakness of Florence at this momentous crisis in her fate, to
be divided into parties, political, religious, social; whose internal
jealousies deprived her of the strength which comes alone from unity.
When Giambattista Busini wrote that interesting series of letters to
Benedetto Varchi from which the latter drew important materials for
his annals of the siege, he noted this fact. "Envy must always be
reckoned as of some account in republics, especially when the nobles
form a considerable element, as in ours: for they were angry, among
other matters, to see a Carducci made Gonfalonier, Michelangelo a
member of the Nine, a Cei or a Giugni elected to the Ten."

Michelangelo had scarcely been chosen to control the general scheme
for fortifying Florence, when the Signory began to consider the
advisability of strengthening the citadels of Pisa and Livorno, and
erecting lines along the Arno. Their commissary at Pisa wrote urging
the necessity of Buonarroti's presence on the spot. In addition to
other pressing needs, the Arno, when in flood, threatened the ancient
fortress of the city. Accordingly we find that Michelangelo went to
Pisa on the 5th of June, and that he stayed there over the 13th,
returning to Florence perhaps upon the 17th of the month. The
commissary, who spent several days in conferring with him and in
visiting the banks of the Arno, was perturbed in mind because
Michelangelo refused to exchange the inn where he alighted for an
apartment in the official residence. This is very characteristic of
the artist. We shall soon find him, at Ferrara, refusing to quit his
hostelry for the Duke's palace, and, at Venice, hiring a remote
lodging on the Giudecca in order to avoid the hospitality of S. Mark.

An important part of Michelangelo's plan for the fortification of
Florence was to erect bastions covering the hill of S. Miniato. Any
one who stands upon the ruined tower of the church there will see at a
glance that S. Miniato is the key to the position for a beleaguering
force; and "if the enemy once obtained possession of the hill, he
would become immediately master of the town." It must, I think, have
been at this spot that Buonarroti was working before he received the
appointment of controller-general of the works. Yet he found some
difficulty in persuading the rulers of the state that his plan was the
right one. Busini, using information supplied by Michelangelo himself
at Rome in 1549, speaks as follows: "Whatever the reason may have
been, Niccolò Capponi, while he was Gonfalonier, would not allow the
hill of S. Miniato to be fortified, and Michelangelo, who is a man of
absolute veracity, tells me that he had great trouble in convincing
the other members of the Government, but that he could never convince
Niccolò. However, he began the work, in the way you know, with those
fascines of tow. But Niccolò made him abandon it, and sent him to
another post; and when he was elected to the Nine, they despatched him
twice or thrice outside the city. Each time, on his return, he found
the hill neglected, whereupon he complained, feeling this a blot upon
his reputation and an insult to his magistracy. Eventually, the works
went on, until, when the besieging army arrived, they were tenable."

Michelangelo had hitherto acquired no practical acquaintance with the
art of fortification. That the system of defence by bastions was an
Italian invention (although Albert Dürer first reduced it to written
theory in his book of 1527, suggesting improvements which led up to
Vauban's method) is a fact acknowledged by military historians. But it
does not appear that Michelangelo did more than carry out defensive
operations in the manner familiar to his predecessors. Indeed, we
shall see that some critics found reason to blame him for want of
science in the construction of his outworks. When, therefore, a
difference arose between the controller-general of defences and the
Gonfalonier upon this question of strengthening S. Miniato, it was
natural that the War Office should have thought it prudent to send
their chief officer to the greatest authority upon fortification then
alive in Italy. This was the Duke of Ferrara. Busini must serve as our
text in the first instance upon this point. "Michelangelo says that,
when neither Niccolò Capponi nor Baldassare Carducci would agree to
the outworks at S. Miniato, he convinced all the leading men except
Niccolò of their necessity, showing that Florence could not hold out a
single day without them. Accordingly he began to throw up bastions
with fascines of tow; but the result was far from perfect, as he
himself confessed. Upon this, the Ten resolved to send him to Ferrara
to inspect that renowned work of defence. Thither accordingly he went;
nevertheless, he believes that Niccolò did this in order to get him
out of the way, and to prevent the construction of the bastion. In
proof thereof he adduces the fact that, upon his return, he found the
whole work interrupted."

Furnished with letters to the Duke, and with special missives from the
Signory and the Ten to their envoy, Galeotto Giugni, Michelangelo left
Florence for Ferrara after the 28th of July, and reached it on the and
of August. He refused, as Giugni writes with some regret, to abandon
his inn, but was personally conducted with great honour by the Duke
all round the walls and fortresses of Ferrara. On what day he quitted
that city, and whither he went immediately after his departure, is
uncertain. The Ten wrote to Giugni on the 8th of August, saying that
his presence was urgently required at Florence, since the work of
fortification was going on apace, "a multitude of men being employed,
and no respect being paid to feast-days and holidays." It would also
seem that, toward the close of the month, he was expected at Arezzo,
in order to survey and make suggestions on the defences of the city.

These points are not insignificant, since we possess a _Ricordo_ by
Michelangelo, written upon an unfinished letter bearing the date
"Venice, September 10," which has been taken to imply that he had been
resident in Venice fourteen days--that is, from the 28th of August.
None of his contemporaries or biographers mention a visit to Venice at
the end of August 1529. It has, therefore, been conjectured that he
went there after leaving Ferrara, but that his mission was one of a
very secret nature. This seems inconsistent with the impatient desire
expressed by the War Office for his return to Florence after the 8th
of August. Allowing for exchange of letters and rate of travelling,
Michelangelo could not have reached home much before the 15th. It is
also inconsistent with the fact that he was expected in Arezzo at the
beginning of September. I shall have to return later on to the
_Ricordo_ in question, which has an important bearing on the next and
most dramatic episode in his biography.


III

Michelangelo must certainly have been at Florence soon after the
middle of September. One of those strange panics to which he was
constitutionally subject, and which impelled him to act upon a
suddenly aroused instinct, came now to interrupt his work at S.
Miniato, and sent him forth into outlawry. It was upon the 21st of
September that he fled from Florence, under circumstances which have
given considerable difficulty to his biographers. I am obliged to
disentangle the motives and to set forth the details of this escapade,
so far as it is possible for criticism to connect them into a coherent
narrative. With this object in view, I will begin by translating what
Condivi says upon the subject.

"Michelangelo's sagacity with regard to the importance of S. Miniato
guaranteed the safety of the town, and proved a source of great damage
to the enemy. Although he had taken care to secure the position, he
still remained at his post there, in case of accidents; and after
passing some six months, rumours began to circulate among the soldiers
about expected treason. Buonarroti, then, noticing these reports, and
being also warned by certain officers who were his friends, approached
the Signory, and laid before them what he had heard and seen. He
explained the danger hanging over the city, and told them there was
still time to provide against it, if they would. Instead of receiving
thanks for this service, he was abused, and rebuked as being timorous
and too suspicious. The man who made him this answer would have done
better had he opened his ears to good advice; for when the Medici
returned he was beheaded, whereas he might have kept himself alive.
When Michelangelo perceived how little his words were worth, and in
what certain peril the city stood, he caused one of the gates to be
opened, by the authority which he possessed, and went forth with two
of his comrades, and took the road for Venice."

As usual with Condivi, this paragraph gives a general and yet
substantially accurate account of what really took place. The decisive
document, however, which throws light upon Michelangelo's mind in the
transaction, is a letter written by him from Venice to his friend
Battista della Palla on the 25th of September. Palla, who was an agent
for Francis I. in works of Italian art, antiques, and bric-a-brac, had
long purposed a journey into France; and Michelangelo, considering the
miserable state of Italian politics, agreed to join him. These
explanations will suffice to make the import of Michelangelo's letter
clear.

"Battista, dearest friend, I left Florence, as I think you know,
meaning to go to France. When I reached Venice, I inquired about the
road, and they told me I should have to pass through German territory,
and that the journey is both perilous and difficult. Therefore I
thought it well to ask you, at your pleasure, whether you are still
inclined to go, and to beg you; and so I entreat you, let me know, and
say where you want me to wait for you, and we will travel together, I
left home without speaking to any of my friends, and in great
confusion. You know that I wanted in any case to go to France, and
often asked for leave, but did not get it. Nevertheless I was quite
resolved, and without any sort of fear, to see the end of the war out
first. But on Tuesday morning, September 21, a certain person came out
by the gate at S. Niccolò, where I was attending to the bastions, and
whispered in my ear that, if I meant to save my life, I must not stay
at Florence. He accompanied me home, dined there, brought me horses,
and never left my side till he got me outside the city, declaring that
this was my salvation. Whether God or the devil was the man, I do not
know.

"Pray answer the questions in this letter as soon as possible, because
I am burning with impatience to set out. If you have changed your
mind, and do not care to go, still let me know, so that I may provide
as best I can for my own journey."

What appears manifest from this document is that Michelangelo was
decoyed away from Florence by some one, who, acting on his sensitive
nervous temperament, persuaded him that his life was in danger. Who
the man was we do not know, but he must have been a person delegated
by those who had a direct interest in removing Buonarroti from the
place. If the controller-general of the defences already scented
treason in the air, and was communicating his suspicions to the
Signory, Malatesta Baglioni, the archtraitor, who afterwards delivered
Florence over for a price to Clement, could not but have wished to
frighten him away.

From another of Michelangelo's letters we learn that he carried 3000
ducats in specie with him on the journey. It is unlikely that he could
have disposed so much cash upon his person. He must have had
companions.

Talking with Michelangelo in 1549--that is, twenty years after the
event--Busini heard from his lips this account of the flight. "I asked
Michelangelo what was the reason of his departure from Florence. He
spoke as follows: 'I was one of the Nine when the Florentine troops
mustered within our lines under Malatesta Baglioni and Mario Orsini
and the other generals: whereupon the Ten distributed the men along
the walls and bastions, assigning to each captain his own post, with
victuals and provisions; and among the rest, they gave eight pieces of
artillery to Malatesta for the defence of part of the bastions at S.
Miniato. He did not, however, mount these guns within the bastions,
but below them, and set no guard.' Michelangelo, as architect and
magistrate, having to inspect the lines at S. Miniato, asked Mario
Orsini how it was that Malatesta treated his artillery so carelessly.
The latter answered: 'You must know that the men of his house are all
traitors, and in time he too will betray this town.' These words
inspired him with such terror that he was obliged to fly, impelled by
dread lest the city should come to misfortune, and he together with
it. Having thus resolved, he found Rinaldo Corsini, to whom he
communicated his thought, and Corsini replied lightly: 'I will go with
you.' So they mounted horse with a sum of money, and road to the Gate
of Justice, where the guards would not let them pass. While waiting
there, some one sung out: 'Let him by, for he is of the Nine, and it
is Michelangelo.' So they went forth, three on horseback, he, Rinaldo,
and that man of his who never left him. They came to Castelnuovo (in
the Garfagnana), and heard that Tommaso Soderini and Niccolò Capponi
were staying there. Michelangelo refused to go and see them, but
Rinaldo went, and when he came back to Florence, as I shall relate, he
reported how Niccolò had said to him: 'O Rinaldo, I dreamed to-night
that Lorenzo Zampalochi had been made Gonfalonier;' alluding to
Lorenzo Giacomini, who had a swollen leg, and had been his adversary
in the Ten. Well, they took the road for Venice; but when they came to
Polesella, Rinaldo proposed to push on to Ferrara and have an
interview with Galeotto Giugni. This he did, and Michelangelo awaited
him, for so he promised. Messer Galeotto, who was spirited and sound
of heart, wrought so with Rinaldo that he persuaded him to turn back
to Florence. But Michelangelo pursued his journey to Venice, where he
took a house, intending in due season to travel into France."

Varchi follows this report pretty closely, except that he represents
Rinaldo Corsini as having strongly urged him to take flight,
"affirming that the city in a few hours, not to say days, would be in
the hands of the Medici." Varchi adds that Antonio Mini rode in
company with Michelangelo, and, according to his account of the
matter, the three men came together to Ferrara. There the Duke offered
hospitality to Michelangelo, who refused to exchange his inn for the
palace, but laid all the cash he carried with him at the disposition
of his Excellency.

Segni, alluding briefly to this flight of Michelangelo from Florence,
says that he arrived at Castelnuovo with Rinaldo Corsini, and that
what they communicated to Niccolò Capponi concerning the treachery of
Malatesta and the state of the city, so affected the ex-Gonfalonier
that he died of a fever after seven days. Nardi, an excellent
authority on all that concerns Florence during the siege, confirms the
account that Michelangelo left his post together with Corsini under a
panic; "by common agreement, or through fear of war, as man's
fragility is often wont to do." Vasari, who in his account of this
episode seems to have had Varchi's narrative under his eyes, adds a
trifle of information, to the effect that Michelangelo was accompanied
upon his flight, not only by Antonio Mini, but also by his old friend
Piloto. It may be worth adding that while reading in the Archivio
Buonarroti, I discovered two letters from a friend named Piero Paesano
addressed to Michelangelo on January 1, 1530, and April 21, 1532, both
of which speak of his having "fled from Florence." The earlier plainly
says: "I heard from Santi Quattro (the Cardinal, probably) that you
have left Florence in order to escape from the annoyance and also from
the evil fortune of the war in which the country is engaged." These
letters, which have not been edited, and the first of which is
important, since it was sent to Michelangelo in Florence, help to
prove that Michelangelo's friends believed he had run away from
Florence.

It was necessary to enter into these particulars, partly in order that
the reader may form his own judgment of the motives which prompted
Michelangelo to desert his official post at Florence, and partly
because we have now to consider the _Ricordo_ above mentioned, with
the puzzling date, September 10. This document is a note of expenses
incurred during a residence of fourteen days at Venice. It runs as
follows:--

"Honoured Sir. In Venice, this tenth day of September.... Ten ducats
to Rinaldo Corsini. Five ducats to Messer Loredan for the rent of the
house. Seventeen lire for the stockings of Antonio (Mini, perhaps).
For two stools, a table to eat on, and a coffer, half a ducat. Eight
soldi for straw. Forty soldi for the hire of the bed. Ten lire to the
man (_fante_) who came from Florence. Three ducats to Bondino for the
journey to Venice with boats. Twenty soldi to Piloto for a pair of
shoes. Fourteen days' board in Venice, twenty lire."

It has been argued from the date of the unfinished letter below which
these items are jotted down, that Michelangelo must have been in
Venice early in September, before his flight from Florence at the end
of that month. But whatever weight we may attach to this single date,
there is no corroborative proof that he travelled twice to Venice, and
everything in the _Ricordo_ indicates that it refers to the period of
his flight from Florence. The sum paid to Corsini comes first, because
it must have been disbursed when that man broke the journey at
Ferrara. Antonio Mini and Piloto are both mentioned: a house has been
engaged, and furnished with Michelangelo's usual frugality, as though
he contemplated a residence of some duration. All this confirms
Busini, Varchi, Segni, Nardi, and Vasari in the general outlines of
their reports. I am of opinion that, unassisted by further evidence,
the _Ricordo_, in spite of its date, will not bear out Gotti's view
that Michelangelo sought Venice on a privy mission at the end of
August 1529. He was not likely to have been employed as ambassador
extraordinary; the Signory required his services at home; and after
Ferrara, Venice had little of importance to show the
controller-general of defences in the way of earthworks and bastions.


IV

Varchi says that Michelangelo, when he reached Venice, "wishing to
avoid visits and ceremonies, of which he was the greatest enemy, and
in order to live alone, according to his custom, far away from
company, retired quietly to the Giudecca; but the Signory, unable to
ignore the advent of so eminent a man, sent two of their first
noblemen to visit him in the name of the Republic, and to offer kindly
all things which either he or any persons of his train might stand in
need of. This public compliment set forth the greatness of his fame as
artist, and showed in what esteem the arts are held by their
magnificent and most illustrious lordships." Vasari adds that the
Doge, whom he calls Gritti, gave him commission to design a bridge for
the Rialto, marvellous alike in its construction and its ornament.

Meanwhile the Signory of Florence issued a decree of outlawry against
thirteen citizens who had quitted the territory without leave. It was
promulgated on the 30th of September, and threatened them with extreme
penalties if they failed to appear before the 8th of October. On the
7th of October a second decree was published, confiscating the
property of numerous exiles. But this document does not contain the
name of Michelangelo; and by a third decree, dated November 16, it
appears that the Government were satisfied with depriving him of his
office and stopping his pay. We gather indeed, from what Condivi and
Varchi relate, that they displayed great eagerness to get him back,
and corresponded to this intent with their envoy at Ferrara.
Michelangelo's flight from Florence seemed a matter of sufficient
importance to be included in the despatches of the French ambassador
resident at Venice. Lazare de Baïf, knowing his master's desire to
engage the services of the great sculptor, and being probably informed
of Buonarroti's own wish to retire to France, wrote several letters in
the month of October, telling Francis that Michelangelo might be
easily persuaded to join his court. We do not know, however, whether
the King acted on this hint.

His friends at home took the precaution of securing his effects,
fearing that a decree for their confiscation might be issued. We
possess a schedule of wine, wheat, and furniture found in his house,
and handed over by the servant Caterina to his old friend Francesco
Granacci for safe keeping. They also did their best to persuade
Michelangelo that he ought to take measures for returning under a
safe-conduct. Galeotto Giugni wrote upon this subject to the War
Office, under date October 13, from Ferrara. He says that Michelangelo
has begged him to intercede in his favour, and that he is willing to
return and lay himself at the feet of their lordships. In answer to
this despatch, news was sent to Giugni on the 20th that the Signory
had signed a safe-conduct for Buonarroti. On the 22nd Granacci paid
Sebastiano di Francesco, a stone-cutter, to whom Michelangelo was much
attached, money for his journey to Venice. It appears that this man
set out upon the 23rd, carrying letters from Giovan Battista della
Palla, who had now renounced all intention of retiring to France, and
was enthusiastically engaged in, the defence of Florence. On the
return of the Medici, Palla was imprisoned in the castle of Pisa, and
paid the penalty of his patriotism by death. A second letter which he
wrote to Michelangelo on this occasion deserves to be translated,
since it proves the high spirit with which the citizens of Florence
were now awaiting the approach of the Prince of Orange and his veteran
army. "Yesterday I sent you a letter, together with ten from other
friends, and the safe-conduct granted by the Signory for the whole
month of November and though I feel sure that it will reach you
safely, I take the precaution of enclosing a copy under this cover. I
need hardly repeat what I wrote at great length in my last, nor shall
I have recourse to friends for the same purpose. They all of them, I
know, with one voice, without the least disagreement or hesitation,
have exhorted you, immediately upon the receipt of their letters and
the safe-conduct, to return home, in order to preserve your life, your
country, your friends, your honour, and your property, and also to
enjoy those times so earnestly desired and hoped for by you. If any
one had foretold that I could listen without the least affright to
news of an invading army marching on our walls, this would have seemed
to me impossible. And yet I now assure you that I am not only quite
fearless, but also full of confidence in a glorious victory. For many
days past my soul has been filled with such gladness, that if God,
either for our sins or for some other reason, according to the
mysteries of His just judgment, does not permit that army to be broken
in our hands, my sorrow will be the same as when one loses, not a good
thing hoped for, but one gained and captured. To such an extent am I
convinced in my fixed imagination of our success, and have put it to
my capital account. I already foresee our militia system, established
on a permanent basis, and combined with that of the territory,
carrying our city to the skies. I contemplate a fortification of
Florence, not temporary, as it now is, but with walls and bastions to
be built hereafter. The principal and most difficult step has been
already taken; the whole space round the town swept clean, without
regard for churches or for monasteries, in accordance with the public
need. I contemplate in these our fellow-citizens a noble spirit of
disdain for all their losses and the bygone luxuries of villa-life; an
admirable unity and fervour for the preservation of liberty; fear of
God alone; confidence in Him and in the justice of our cause;
innumerable other good things, certain to bring again the age of gold,
and which I hope sincerely you will enjoy in company with all of us
who are your friends. For all these reasons, I most earnestly entreat
you, from the depth of my heart, to come at once and travel through
Lucca, where I will meet you, and attend you with due form and
ceremony until here: such is my intense desire that our country should
not lose you, nor you her. If, after your arrival at Lucca, you should
by some accident fail to find me, and you should not care to come to
Florence without my company, write a word, I beg. I will set out at
once, for I feel sure that I shall get permission.... God, by His
goodness, keep you in good health, and bring you back to us safe and
happy."

Michelangelo set forth upon his journey soon after the receipt of this
letter. He was in Ferrara on the 9th of November, as appears from a
despatch written by Galeotto Giugni, recommending him to the
Government of Florence. Letters patent under the seal of the Duke
secured him free passage through the city of Modena and the province
of Garfagnana. In spite of these accommodations, he seems to have met
with difficulties on the way, owing to the disturbed state of the
country. His friend Giovan Battista Palla was waiting for him at
Lucca, without information of his movements, up to the 18th of the
month. He had left Florence on the 11th, and spent the week at Pisa
and Lucca, expecting news in vain. Then, "with one foot in the
stirrup," as he says, "the license granted by the Signory" having
expired, he sends another missive to Venice, urging Michelangelo not
to delay a day longer. "As I cannot persuade myself that you do not
intend to come, I urgently request you to reflect, if you have not
already started, that the property of those who incurred outlawry with
you is being sold, and if you do not arrive within the term conceded
by your safe-conduct--that is, during this month--the same will happen
to yourself without the possibility of any mitigation. If you do come,
as I still hope and firmly believe, speak with my honoured friend
Messer Filippo Calandrini here, to whom I have given directions for
your attendance from this town without trouble to yourself. God keep
you safe from harm, and grant we see you shortly in our country, by
His aid, victorious."

With this letter, Palla, who was certainly a good friend to the
wayward artist, and an amiable man to boot, disappears out of this
history. At some time about the 20th of November, Michelangelo
returned to Florence. We do not know how he finished the journey, and
how he was received; but the sentence of outlawry was commuted, on the
23rd, into exclusion from the Grand Council for three years. He set to
work immediately at S. Miniato, strengthening the bastions, and
turning the church-tower into a station for sharpshooters. Florence by
this time had lost all her territory except a few strong places, Pisa,
Livorno, Arezzo, Empoli, Volterra. The Emperor Charles V. signed her
liberties away to Clement by the peace of Barcelona (June 20,1529),
and the Republic was now destined to be the appanage of his
illegitimate daughter in marriage with the bastard Alessandro de'
Medici. It only remained for the army of the Prince of Orange to
reduce the city. When Michelangelo arrived, the Imperial troops were
leaguered on the heights above the town. The inevitable end of the
unequal struggle could be plainly foreseen by those who had not
Palla's enthusiasm to sustain their faith. In spite of Ferrucci's
genius and spirit, in spite of the good-will of the citizens, Florence
was bound to fall. While admitting that Michelangelo abandoned his
post in a moment of panic, we must do him the justice of remembering
that he resumed it when all his darkest prognostications were being
slowly but surely realised. The worst was that his old enemy,
Malatesta Baglioni, had now opened a regular system of intrigue with
Clement and the Prince of Orange, terminating in the treasonable
cession of the city. It was not until August 1530 that Florence
finally capitulated. Still the months which intervened between that
date and Michelangelo's return from Venice were but a dying close, a
slow agony interrupted by spasms of ineffectual heroism.

In describing the works at S. Miniato, Condivi lays great stress upon
Michelangelo's plan for arming the bell-tower. "The incessant
cannonade of the enemy had broken it in many places, and there was a
serious risk that it might come crashing down, to the great injury of
the troops within the bastion. He caused a large number of mattresses
well stuffed with wool to be brought, and lowered these by night from
the summit of the tower down to its foundations, protecting those
parts which were exposed to fire. Inasmuch as the cornice projected,
the mattresses hung free in the air, at the distance of six cubits
from the wall; so that when the missiles of the enemy arrived, they
did little or no damage, partly owing to the distance they had
travelled, and partly to the resistance offered by this swinging,
yielding panoply." An anonymous writer, quoted by Milanesi, gives a
fairly intelligible account of the system adopted by Michelangelo.
"The outer walls of the bastion were composed of unbaked bricks, the
clay of which was mingled with chopped tow. Its thickness he filled in
with earth; and," adds this critic, "of all the buildings which
remained, this alone survived the siege." It was objected that, in
designing these bastions, he multiplied the flanking lines and
embrasures beyond what was either necessary or safe. But, observes the
anonymous writer, all that his duty as architect demanded was that he
should lay down a plan consistent with the nature of the ground,
leaving details to practical engineers and military men. "If, then, he
committed any errors in these matters, it was not so much his fault as
that of the Government, who did not provide him with experienced
coadjutors. But how can mere merchants understand the art of war,
which needs as much science as any other of the arts, nay more,
inasmuch as it is obviously more noble and more perilous?" The
confidence now reposed in him is further demonstrated by a license
granted on the 22nd of February 1530, empowering him to ascend the
cupola of the Duomo on one special occasion with two companions, in
order to obtain a general survey of the environs of Florence.

Michelangelo, in the midst of these serious duties, could not have had
much time to bestow upon his art. Still there is no reason to doubt
Vasari's emphatic statement that he went on working secretly at the
Medicean monuments. To have done so openly while the city was in
conflict to the death with Clement, would have been dangerous; and yet
every one who understands the artist's temperament must feel that a
man like Buonarroti was likely to seek rest and distraction from
painful anxieties in the tranquillising labour of the chisel. It is
also certain that, during the last months of the siege, he found
leisure to paint a picture of Leda for the Duke of Ferrara, which will
be mentioned in its proper place.

Florence surrendered in the month of August 1530. The terms were drawn
up by Don Ferrante Gonzaga, who commanded the Imperial forces after
the death of Filiberto, Prince of Orange, in concert with the Pope's
commissary-general, Baccio Valori. Malatesta Baglioni, albeit he went
about muttering that Florence "was no stable for mules" (alluding to
the fact that all the Medici were bastards), approved of the articles,
and showed by his conduct that he had long been plotting treason. The
act of capitulation was completed on the 12th, and accepted
unwillingly by the Signory. Valori, supported by Baglioni's military
force, reigned supreme in the city, and prepared to reinstate the
exiled family of princes. It said that Marco Dandolo of Venice, when
news reached the Pregadi of the fall of Florence, exclaimed aloud:
"Baglioni has put upon his head the cap of the biggest traitor upon
record."


V

The city was saved from wreckage by a lucky quarrel between the
Italian and Spanish troops in the Imperial camp. But no sooner was
Clement aware that Florence lay at his mercy, than he disregarded the
articles of capitulation, and began to act as an autocratic despot.
Before confiding the government to his kinsmen, the Cardinal Ippolito
and Alessandro Duke of Penna, he made Valori institute a series of
criminal prosecutions against the patriots. Battista della Palla and
Raffaello Girolami were sent to prison and poisoned. Five citizens
were tortured and decapitated in one day of October. Those who had
managed to escape from Florence were sentenced to exile, outlawry, and
confiscation of goods by hundreds. Charles V. had finally to interfere
and put a stop to the fury of the Pope's revenges. How cruel and
exasperated the mind of Clement was, may be gathered from his
treatment of Fra Benedetto da Foiano, who sustained the spirit of the
burghers by his fiery preaching during the privations of the siege.
Foiano fell into the clutches of Malatesta Baglioni, who immediately
sent him down to Rome. By the Pope's orders the wretched friar was
flung into the worst dungeon in the Castle of S. Angelo, and there
slowly starved to death by gradual diminution of his daily dole of
bread and water. Readers of Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs will remember
the horror with which he speaks of this dungeon and of its dreadful
reminiscences, when it fell to his lot to be imprisoned there.

Such being the mood of Clement, it is not wonderful that Michelangelo
should have trembled for his own life and liberty. As Varchi says, "He
had been a member of the Nine, had fortified the hill and armed the
bell-tower of S. Miniato. What was more annoying, he was accused,
though falsely, of proposing to raze the palace of the Medici, where
in his boyhood Lorenzo and Piero de' Medici had shown him honour as a
guest at their own tables, and to name the space on which it stood the
Place of Mules." For this reason he hid himself, as Condivi and Varchi
assert, in the house of a trusty friend. The Senator Filippo
Buonarroti, who diligently collected traditions about his illustrious
ancestor, believed that his real place of retreat was the bell-tower
of S. Nicolò, beyond the Arno. "When Clement's fury abated," says
Condivi, "he wrote to Florence ordering that search should be made for
Michelangelo, and adding that when he was found, if he agreed to go on
working at the Medicean monuments, he should be left at liberty and
treated with due courtesy. On hearing news of this, Michelangelo came
forth from his hiding-place, and resumed the statues in the sacristy
of S. Lorenzo, moved thereto more by fear of the Pope than by love for
the Medici." From correspondence carried on between Rome and Florence
during November and December, we learn that his former pension of
fifty crowns a month was renewed, and that Giovan Battista Figiovanni,
a Prior of S. Lorenzo, was appointed the Pope's agent and paymaster.

An incident of some interest in the art-history of Florence is
connected with this return of the Medici, and probably also with
Clement's desire to concentrate Michelangelo's energies upon the
sacristy. So far back as May 10, 1508, Piero Soderini wrote to the
Marquis of Massa-Carrara, begging him to retain a large block of
marble until Michelangelo could come in person and superintend its
rough-hewing for a colossal statue to be placed on the Piazza. After
the death of Leo, the stone was assigned to Baccio Bandinelli; but
Michelangelo, being in favour with the Government at the time of the
expulsion of the Medici, obtained the grant of it. His first
intention, in which Bandinelli followed him, was to execute a Hercules
trampling upon Cacus, which should stand as pendant to his own David.

By a deliberation of the Signory, under date August 22, 1528, we are
informed that the marble had been brought to Florence about three
years earlier, and that Michelangelo now received instructions,
couched in the highest terms of compliment, to proceed with a group of
two figures until its accomplishment. If Vasari can be trusted,
Michelangelo made numerous designs and models for the Cacus, but
afterwards changed his mind, and thought that he would extract from
the block a Samson triumphing over two prostrate Philistines. The
evidence for this change of plan is not absolutely conclusive. The
deliberation of August 22, 1528, indeed left it open to his discretion
whether he should execute a Hercules and Cacus, or any other group of
two figures; and the English nation at South Kensington possesses one
of his noble little wax models for a Hercules. We may perhaps,
therefore, assume that while Bandinelli adhered to the Hercules and
Cacus, Michelangelo finally decided on a Samson. At any rate, the
block was restored in 1530 to Bandinelli, who produced the misbegotten
group which still deforms the Florentine Piazza.

Michelangelo had some reason to be jealous of Bandinelli, who
exercised considerable influence at the Medicean court, and was an
unscrupulous enemy both in word and deed. A man more widely and worse
hated than Bandinelli never lived. If any piece of mischief happened
which could be fixed upon him with the least plausibility, he bore the
blame. Accordingly, when Buonarroti's workshop happened to be broken
open, people said that Bandinelli was the culprit. Antonio Mini left
the following record of the event: "Three months before the siege,
Michelangelo's studio in Via Mozza was burst into with chisels, about
fifty drawings of figures were stolen, and among them the designs for
the Medicean tombs, with others of great value; also four models in
wax and clay. The young men who did it left by accident a chisel
marked with the letter M., which led to their discovery. When they
knew they were detected, they made off or hid themselves, and sent to
say they would return the stolen articles, and begged for pardon." Now
the chisel branded with an M. was traced to Michelangelo, the father
of Baccio Bandinelli, and no one doubted that he was the burglar.

The history of Michelangelo's Leda, which now survives only in
doubtful reproductions, may be introduced by a passage from Condivi's
account of his master's visit to Ferrara in 1529. "The Duke received
him with great demonstrations of joy, no less by reason of his eminent
fame than because Don Ercole, his son, was Captain of the Signory of
Florence. Riding forth with him in person, there was nothing
appertaining to the business of his mission which the Duke did not
bring beneath his notice, whether fortifications or artillery. Beside
this, he opened his own private treasure-room, displaying all its
contents, and particularly some pictures and portraits of his
ancestors, executed by masters in their time excellent. When the hour
approached for Michelangelo's departure, the Duke jestingly said to
him: 'You are my prisoner now. If you want me to let you go free, I
require that you shall promise to make me something with your own
hand, according to your will and fancy, be it sculpture or painting.'
Michelangelo agreed; and when he arrived at Florence, albeit he was
overwhelmed with work for the defences, he began a large piece for a
saloon, representing the congress of the swan with Leda. The breaking
of the egg was also introduced, from which sprang Castor and Pollux,
according to the ancient fable. The Duke heard of this; and on the
return of the Medici, he feared that he might lose so great a treasure
in the popular disturbance which ensued. Accordingly he despatched one
of his gentlemen, who found Michelangelo at home, and viewed the
picture. After inspecting it, the man exclaimed: 'Oh! this is a mere
trifle.' Michelangelo inquired what his own art was, being aware that
men can only form a proper judgment in the arts they exercise. The
other sneered and answered: 'I am a merchant.' Perhaps he felt
affronted at the question, and at not being recognised in his quality
of nobleman; he may also have meant to depreciate the industry of the
Florentines, who for the most part are occupied with trade, as though
to say: 'You ask me what my art is? Is it possible you think a man
like me could be a trader?' Michelangelo, perceiving his drift,
growled out: 'You are doing bad business for your lord! Take yourself
away!' Having thus dismissed the ducal messenger, he made a present of
the picture, after a short while, to one of his serving-men, who,
having two sisters to marry, begged for assistance. It was sent to
France, and there bought by King Francis, where it still exists."

As a matter of fact, we know now that Antonio Mini, for a long time
Michelangelo's man of all work, became part owner of this Leda, and
took it with him to France. A certain Francesco Tedaldi acquired
pecuniary interest in the picture, of which one Benedetto Bene made a
copy at Lyons in 1532. The original and the copy were carried by Mini
to Paris in 1533, and deposited in the house of Giuliano Buonaccorsi,
whence they were transferred in some obscure way to the custody of
Luigi Alamanni, and finally passed into the possession of the King.
Meanwhile, Antonio Mini died, and Tedaldi wrote a record of his losses
and a confused account of money matters and broker business, which he
sent to Michelangelo in 1540. The Leda remained at Fontainebleau till
the reign of Louis XIII., when M. Desnoyers, Minister of State,
ordered the picture to be destroyed because of its indecency. Pierre
Mariette says that this order was not carried into effect; for the
canvas, in a sadly mutilated state, reappeared some seven or eight
years before his date of writing, and was seen by him. In spite of
injuries, he could trace the hand of a great master; "and I confess
that nothing I had seen from the brush of Michelangelo showed better
painting." He adds that it was restored by a second-rate artist and
sent to England. What became of Mini's copy is uncertain. We possess a
painting in the Dresden Gallery, a Cartoon in the collection of the
Royal Academy of England, and a large oil picture, much injured, in
the vaults of the National Gallery. In addition to these works, there
is a small marble statue in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. All of
them represent Michelangelo's design. If mere indecency could justify
Desnoyers in his attempt to destroy a masterpiece, this picture
deserved its fate. It represented the act of coition between a swan
and a woman; and though we cannot hold Michelangelo responsible for
the repulsive expression on the face of Leda, which relegates the
marble of the Bargello to a place among pornographic works of art,
there is no reason to suppose that the general scheme of his
conception was abandoned in the copies made of it.

Michelangelo, being a true artist, anxious only for the presentation
of his subject, seems to have remained indifferent to its moral
quality. Whether it was a crucifixion, or a congress of the swan with
Leda, or a rape of Ganymede, or the murder of Holofernes in his tent,
or the birth of Eve, he sought to seize the central point in the
situation, and to accentuate its significance by the inexhaustible
means at his command for giving plastic form to an idea. Those,
however, who have paid attention to his work will discover that he
always found emotional quality corresponding to the nature of the
subject. His ways of handling religious and mythological motives
differ in sentiment, and both are distinguished from his treatment of
dramatic episodes. The man's mind made itself a mirror to reflect the
vision gloating over it; he cared not what that vision was, so long as
he could render it in lines of plastic harmony, and express the utmost
of the feeling which the theme contained.

Among the many statues left unfinished by Michelangelo is one
belonging to this period of his life. "In order to ingratiate himself
with Baccio Valori," says Vasari, "he began a statue of three cubits
in marble. It was an Apollo drawing a shaft from his quiver. This he
nearly finished. It stands now in the chamber of the Prince of
Florence; a thing of rarest beauty, though not quite completed." This
noble piece of sculpture illustrates the certainty and freedom of the
master's hand. Though the last touches of the chisel are lacking,
every limb palpitates and undulates with life. The marble seems to be
growing into flesh beneath the hatched lines left upon its surface.
The pose of the young god, full of strength and sinewy, is no less
admirable for audacity than for ease and freedom. Whether Vasari was
right in his explanation of the action of this figure may be
considered more than doubtful. Were we not accustomed to call it an
Apollo, we should rather be inclined to class it with the Slaves of
the Louvre, to whom in feeling and design it bears a remarkable
resemblance. Indeed, it might be conjectured with some probability
that, despairing of bringing his great design for the tomb of Julius
to a conclusion, he utilised one of the projected captives for his
present to the all-powerful vizier of the Medicean tyrants. It ought,
in conclusion, to be added, that there was nothing servile in
Michelangelo's desire to make Valori his friend. He had accepted the
political situation; and we have good reason, from letters written at
a later date by Valori from Rome, to believe that this man took a
sincere interest in the great artist. Moreover, Varchi, who is
singularly severe in his judgment on the agents of the Medici,
expressly states that Baccio Valori was "less cruel than the other
Palleschi, doing many and notable services to some persons out of
kindly feeling, and to others for money (since he had little and spent
much); and this he was well able to perform, seeing he was then the
lord of Florence, and the first citizens of the land paid court to him
and swelled his train."


VI

During the siege Lodovico Buonarroti passed his time at Pisa. His
little grandson, Lionardo, the sole male heir of the family, was with
him. Born September 25, 1519, the boy was now exactly eleven years
old, and by his father's death in 1528 he had been two years an
orphan. Lionardo was ailing, and the old man wearied to return. His
two sons, Gismondo and Giansimone, had promised to fetch him home when
the country should be safe for travelling. But they delayed; and at
last, upon the 30th of September, Lodovico wrote as follows to
Michelangelo: "Some time since I directed a letter to Gismondo, from
whom you have probably learned that I am staying here, and, indeed,
too long; for the flight of Buonarroto's pure soul to heaven, and my
own need and earnest desire to come home, and Nardo's state of health,
all makes me restless. The boy has been for some days out of health
and pining, and I am anxious about him." It is probable that some
means were found for escorting them both safely to Settignano. We hear
no more about Lodovico till the period of his death, the date of which
has not been ascertained with certainty.

From the autumn of 1530 on to the end of 1533 Michelangelo worked at
the Medicean monuments. His letters are singularly scanty during all
this period, but we possess sufficient information from other sources
to enable us to reconstruct a portion of his life. What may be called
the chronic malady of his existence, that never-ending worry with the
tomb of Julius, assumed an acute form again in the spring of 1531. The
correspondence with Sebastiano del Piombo, which had been interrupted
since 1525, now becomes plentiful, and enables us to follow some of
the steps which led to the new and solemn contract of May 1532.

It is possible that Michelangelo thought he ought to go to Rome in the
beginning of the year. If we are right in ascribing a letter written
by Benvenuto della Volpaia from Rome upon the 18th of January to the
year 1531, and not to 1532, he must have already decided on this step.
The document is curious in several respects. "Yours of the 13th
informs me that you want a room. I shall be delighted if I can be of
service to you in this matter; indeed, it is nothing in respect to
what I should like to do for you. I can offer you a chamber or two
without the least inconvenience; and you could not confer on me a
greater pleasure than by taking up your abode with me in either of the
two places which I will now describe. His Holiness has placed me in
the Belvedere, and made me guardian there. To-morrow my things will be
carried thither, for a permanent establishment; and I can place at
your disposal a room with a bed and everything you want. You can even
enter by the gate outside the city, which opens into the spiral
staircase, and reach your apartment and mine without passing through
Rome. From here I can let you into the palace, for I keep a key at
your service; and what is better, the Pope comes every day to visit
us. If you decide on the Belvedere, you must let me know the day of
your departure, and about when you will arrive. In that case I will
take up my post at the spiral staircase of Bramante, where you will be
able to see me. If you wish, nobody but my brother and Mona Lisabetta
and I shall know that you are here, and you shall do just as you
please; and, in short, I beg you earnestly to choose this plan.
Otherwise, come to the Borgo Nuovo, to the houses which Volterra
built, the fifth house toward S. Angelo. I have rented it to live
there, and my brother Fruosino is also going to live and keep shop in
it. There you will have a room or two, if you like, at your disposal.
Please yourself, and give the letter to Tommaso di Stefano Miniatore,
who will address it to Messer Lorenzo de' Medici, and I shall have it
quickly."

Nothing came of these proposals. But that Michelangelo did not abandon
the idea of going to Rome appears from a letter of Sebastiano's
written on the 24th of February. It was the first which passed between
the friends since the terrible events of 1527 and 1530. For once, the
jollity of the epicurean friar has deserted him. He writes as though
those awful months of the sack of Rome were still present to his
memory. "After all those trials, hardships, and perils, God Almighty
has left us alive and in health, by His mercy and piteous kindness. A
thing, in sooth, miraculous, when I reflect upon it; wherefore His
Majesty be ever held in gratitude.... Now, gossip mine, since we have
passed through fire and water, and have experienced things we never
dreamed of, let us thank God for all; and the little remnant left to
us of life, may we at least employ it in such peace as can be had. For
of a truth, what fortune does or does not do is of slight importance,
seeing how scurvy and how dolorous she is. I am brought to this, that
if the universe should crumble round me, I should not care, but laugh
at all. Menighella will inform you what my life is, how I am. I do not
yet seem to myself to be the same Bastiano I was before the Sack. I
cannot yet get back into my former frame of mind." In a postscript to
this letter, eloquent by its very naivete, Sebastiano says that he
sees no reason for Michelangelo's coming to Rome, except it be to look
after his house, which is going to ruin, and the workshop tumbling to
pieces. In another letter, of April 29, Sebastiano repeats that there
is no need for Michelangelo to come to Rome, if it be only to put
himself right with the Pope. Clement is sincerely his friend, and has
forgiven the part he played during the siege of Florence. He then
informs his gossip that, having been lately at Pesaro, he met the
painter Girolamo Genga, who promised to be serviceable in the matter
of the tomb of Julius. The Duke of Urbino, according to this man's
account, was very eager to see it finished. "I replied that the work
was going forward, but that 8000 ducats were needed for its
completion, and we did not know where to get this money. He said that
the Duke would provide, but his Lordship was afraid of losing both the
ducats and the work, and was inclined to be angry. After a good deal
of talking, he asked whether it would not be possible to execute the
tomb upon a reduced scale, so as to satisfy both parties. I answered
that you ought to be consulted." We have reason to infer from this
that the plan which was finally adopted, of making a mural monument
with only a few figures from the hand of Michelangelo, had already
been suggested. In his next letter, Sebastiano communicates the fact
that he has been appointed to the office of Piombatore; "and if you
could see me in my quality of friar, I am sure you would laugh. I am
the finest friar loon in Rome." The Duke of Urbino's agent, Hieronimo
Staccoli, now appears for the first time upon the stage. It was
through his negotiations that the former contracts for the tomb of
Julius were finally annulled and a new design adopted. Michelangelo
offered, with the view of terminating all disputes, to complete the
monument on a reduced scale at his own cost, and furthermore to
disburse the sum of 2000 ducats in discharge of any claims the Della
Rovere might have against him. This seemed too liberal, and when
Clement was informed of the project, he promised to make better terms.
Indeed, during the course of these negotiations the Pope displayed the
greatest interest in Michelangelo's affairs. Staccoli, on the Duke's
part, raised objections; and Sebastiano had to remind him that, unless
some concessions were made, the scheme of the tomb might fall through:
"for it does not rain Michelangelos, and men could hardly be found to
preserve the work, far less to finish it." In course of time the
Duke's ambassador at Rome, Giovan Maria della Porta, intervened, and
throughout the whole business Clement was consulted upon every detail.

Sebastiano kept up his correspondence through the summer of 1531.
Meanwhile the suspense and anxiety were telling seriously on
Michelangelo's health. Already in June news must have reached Rome
that his health was breaking down; for Clement sent word recommending
him to work less, and to relax his spirits by exercise. Toward the
autumn he became alarmingly ill. We have a letter from Paolo Mini, the
uncle of his servant Antonio, written to Baccio Valori on the 29th of
September. After describing the beauty of two statues for the Medicean
tombs, Mini says he fears that "Michelangelo will not live long,
unless some measures are taken for his benefit. He works very hard,
eats little and poorly, and sleeps less. In fact, he is afflicted with
two kinds of disorder, the one in his head, the other in his heart.
Neither is incurable, since he has a robust constitution; but for the
good of his head, he ought to be restrained by our Lord the Pope from
working through the winter in the sacristy, the air of which is bad
for him; and for his heart, the best remedy would be if his Holiness
could accommodate matters with the Duke of Urbino." In a second
letter, of October 8, Mini insists again upon the necessity of freeing
Michelangelo's mind from his anxieties. The upshot was that Clement,
on the 21st of November, addressed a brief to his sculptor, whereby
Buonarroti was ordered, under pain of excommunication, to lay aside
all work except what was strictly necessary for the Medicean
monuments, and to take better care of his health. On the 26th of the
same month Benvenuto della Volpaia wrote, repeating what the Pope had
written in his brief, and adding that his Holiness desired him to
select some workshop more convenient for his health than the cold and
cheerless sacristy.

In spite of Clement's orders that Michelangelo should confine himself
strictly to working on the Medicean monuments, he continued to be
solicited with various commissions. Thus the Cardinal Cybo wrote in
December begging him to furnish a design for a tomb which he intended
to erect. Whether Michelangelo consented is not known.

Early in December Sebastiano resumed his communications on the subject
of the tomb of Julius, saying that Michelangelo must not expect to
satisfy the Duke without executing the work, in part at least,
himself. "There is no one but yourself that harms you: I mean, your
eminent fame and the greatness of your works. I do not say this to
flatter you. Therefore, I am of opinion that, without some shadow of
yourself, we shall never induce those parties to do what we want. It
seems to me that you might easily make designs and models, and
afterwards assign the completion to any master whom you choose. But
the shadow of yourself there must be. If you take the matter in this
way, it will be a trifle; you will do nothing, and seem to do all; but
remember that the work must be carried out under your shadow." A
series of despatches, forwarded between December 4, 1531, and April
29, 1532, by Giovan Maria della Porta to the Duke of Urbino, confirm
the particulars furnished by the letters which Sebastiano still
continued to write from Rome. At the end of 1531 Michelangelo
expressed his anxiety to visit Rome, now that the negotiations with
the Duke were nearly complete. Sebastiano, hearing this, replies: "You
will effect more in half an hour than I can do in a whole year. I
believe that you will arrange everything after two words with his
Holiness; for our Lord is anxious to meet your wishes." He wanted to
be present at the drawing up and signing of the contract. Clement,
however, although he told Sebastiano that he should be glad to see
him, hesitated to send the necessary permission, and it was not until
the month of April 1532 that he set out. About the 6th, as appears
from the indorsement of a letter received in his absence, he must have
reached Rome. The new contract was not ready for signature before the
29th, and on that date Michelangelo left for Florence, having, as he
says, been sent off by the Pope in a hurry on the very day appointed
for its execution. In his absence it was duly signed and witnessed
before Clement; the Cardinals Gonzaga and da Monte and the Lady Felice
della Rovere attesting, while Giovan Maria della Porta and Girolamo
Staccoli acted for the Duke of Urbino. When Michelangelo returned and
saw the instrument, he found that several clauses prejudicial to his
interests had been inserted by the notary. "I discovered more than
1000 ducats charged unjustly to my debit, also the house in which I
live, and certain other hooks and crooks to ruin me. The Pope would
certainly not have tolerated this knavery, as Fra Sebastiano can bear
witness, since he wished me to complain to Clement and have the notary
hanged. I swear I never received the moneys which Giovan Maria della
Porta wrote against me, and caused to be engrossed upon the contract."

It is difficult to understand why Michelangelo should not have
immediately taken measures to rectify these errors. He seems to have
been well aware that he was bound to refund 2000 ducats, since the
only letter from his pen belonging to the year 1532 is one dated May,
and addressed to Andrea Quarantesi in Pisa. In this document he
consults Quarantesi about the possibility of raising that sum, with
1000 ducats in addition. "It was in my mind, in order that I might not
be left naked, to sell houses and possessions, and to let the lira go
for ten soldi." As the contract was never carried out, the fraudulent
passages inserted in the deed did not prove of practical importance.
Delia Porta, on his part, wrote in high spirits to his master:
"Yesterday we executed the new contract with Michelangelo, for the
ratification of which by your Lordship we have fixed a limit of two
months. It is of a nature to satisfy all Rome, and reflects great
credit on your Lordship for the trouble you have taken in concluding
it. Michelangelo, who shows a very proper respect for your Lordship,
has promised to make and send you a design. Among other items, I have
bound him to furnish six statues by his own hand, which will be a
world in themselves, because they are sure to be incomparable. The
rest he may have finished by some sculptor at his own choice, provided
the work is done under his direction. The Pope allows him to come
twice a year to Rome, for periods of two months each, in order to push
the work forward. And he is to execute the whole at his own costs." He
proceeds to say, that since the tomb cannot be put up in S. Peter's,
S. Pietro in Vincoli has been selected as the most suitable church. It
appears that the Duke's ratification was sent upon the 5th of June and
placed in the hands of Clement, so that Michelangelo probably did not
see it for some months. Della Porta, writing to the Duke again upon
the 19th of June, says that Clement promised to allow Michelangelo to
come to Rome in the winter, and to reside there working at the tomb.
But we have no direct information concerning his doings after the
return to Florence at the end of April 1532.

It will be worth while to introduce Condivi's account of these
transactions relating to the tomb of Julius, since it throws some
light upon the sculptor's private feelings and motives, as well as
upon the falsification of the contract as finally engrossed.

"When Michelangelo had been called to Rome by Pope Clement, he began
to be harassed by the agents of the Duke of Urbino about the sepulchre
of Julius. Clement, who wished to employ him in Florence, did all he
could to set him free, and gave him for his attorney in this matter
Messer Tommaso da Prato, who was afterwards datary. Michelangelo,
however, knowing the devil disposition of Duke Alessandro toward him,
and being in great dread on this account, also because he bore love
and reverence to the memory of Pope Julius and to the illustrious
house of Della Rovere, strained every nerve to remain in Rome and busy
himself about the tomb. What made him more anxious was that every one
accused him of having received from Pope Julius at least 16,000
crowns, and of having spent them on himself without fulfilling his
engagements. Being a man sensitive about his reputation, he could not
bear the dishonour of such reports, and wanted the whole matter to be
cleared up; nor, although he was now old, did he shrink from the very
onerous task of completing what he had begun so long ago. Consequently
they came to strife together, and his antagonists were unable to prove
payments to anything like the amount which had first been noised
abroad; indeed, on the contrary, more than two thirds of the whole sum
first stipulated by the two Cardinals was wanting. Clement then
thinking he had found an excellent opportunity for setting him at
liberty and making use of his whole energies, called Michelangelo to
him, and said: 'Come, now, confess that you want to make this tomb,
but wish to know who will pay you the balance.' Michelangelo, knowing
well that the Pope was anxious to employ him on his own work,
answered: 'Supposing some one is found to pay me.' To which Pope
Clement: 'You are a great fool if you let yourself believe that any
one will come forward to offer you a farthing.' Accordingly, his
attorney, Messer Tommaso, and the agents of the Duke, after some
negotiations, came to an agreement that a tomb should at least be made
for the amount he had received. Michelangelo, thinking the matter had
arrived at a good conclusion, consented with alacrity. He was much
influenced by the elder Cardinal di Monte, who owed his advancement to
Julius II., and was uncle of Julius III., our present Pope by grace of
God. The arrangement was as follows: That he should make a tomb of one
façade only; should utilise those marbles which he had already blocked
out for the quadrangular monument, adapting them as well as
circumstances allowed; and finally, that he should be bound to furnish
six statues by his own hand. In spite of this arrangement, Pope
Clement was allowed to employ Michelangelo in Florence or where he
liked during four months of the year, that being required by his
Holiness for his undertakings at S. Lorenzo. Such then was the
contract made between the Duke and Michelangelo. But here it has to be
observed, that after all accounts had been made up, Michelangelo
secretly agreed with the agents of his Excellency that it should be
reported that he had received some thousands of crowns above what had
been paid to him; the object being to make his obligation to the Duke
of Urbino seem more considerable, and to discourage Pope Clement from
sending him to Florence, whither he was extremely unwilling to go.
This acknowledgment was not only bruited about in words, but, without
his knowledge or consent, was also inserted into the deed; not when
this was drawn up, but when it was engrossed; a falsification which
caused Michelangelo the utmost vexation. The ambassador, however,
persuaded him that this would do him no real harm: it did not signify,
he said, whether the contract specified a thousand or twenty thousand
crowns, seeing they were agreed that the tomb should be reduced to
suit the sums actually received; adding, that nobody was concerned in
the matter except himself, and that Michelangelo might feel safe with
him on account of the understanding between them. Upon this
Michelangelo grew easy in his mind, partly because he thought he might
have confidence, and partly because he wished the Pope to receive the
impression I have described above. In this way the thing was settled
for the time, but it did not end there; for when he had worked his
four months in Florence and came back to Rome, the Pope set him to
other tasks, and ordered him to paint the wall above the altar in the
Sistine Chapel. He was a man of excellent judgment in such matters,
and had meditated many different subjects for this fresco. At last he
fixed upon the Last Judgment, considering that the variety and
greatness of the theme would enable the illustrious artist to exhibit
his powers in their full extent. Michelangelo, remembering the
obligation he was under to the Duke of Urbino, did all he could to
evade this new engagement; but when this proved impossible, he began
to procrastinate, and, pretending to be fully occupied with the
cartoons for his huge picture, he worked in secret at the statues
intended for the monument."


VII

Michelangelo's position at Florence was insecure and painful, owing to
the undisguised animosity of the Duke Alessandro. This man ruled like
a tyrant of the worst sort, scandalising good citizens by his brutal
immoralities, and terrorising them by his cruelties. "He remained,"
says Condivi, "in continual alarm; because the Duke, a young man, as
is known to every one, of ferocious and revengeful temper, hated him
exceedingly. There is no doubt that, but for the Pope's protection, he
would have been removed from this world. What added to Alessandro's
enmity was that when he was planning the fortress which he afterwards
erected, he sent Messer Vitelli for Michelangelo, ordering him to ride
with them, and to select a proper position for the building.
Michelangelo refused, saying that he had received no commission from
the Pope. The Duke waxed very wroth; and so, through this new
grievance added to old grudges and the notorious nature of the Duke,
Michelangelo not unreasonably lived in fear. It was certainly by God's
aid that he happened to be away from Florence when Clement died."
Michelangelo was bound under solemn obligations to execute no work but
what the Pope ordered for himself or permitted by the contract with
the heirs of Julius. Therefore he acted in accordance with duty when
he refused to advise the tyrant in this scheme for keeping the city
under permanent subjection. The man who had fortified Florence against
the troops of Clement could not assist another bastard Medici to build
a strong place for her ruin. It may be to this period of his life that
we owe the following madigral, written upon the loss of Florentine
liberty and the bad conscience of the despot:--

  _Lady, for joy of lovers numberless
      Thou wast created fair as angels are.
      Sure God hath fallen asleep in heaven afar
      When one man calls the bliss of many his!
      Give back to streaming eyes
      The daylight of thy face, that seems to shun
      Those who must live defrauded of their bliss!

  Vex not your pure desire with tears and sighs:
      For he who robs you of my light hath none.
      Dwelling in fear, sin hath no happiness;
      Since, amid those who love, their joy is less,
      Whose great desire great plenty still curtails,
      Than theirs who, poor, have hope that never fails._

During the siege Michelangelo had been forced to lend the Signory a
sum of about 1500 ducats. In the summer of 1533 he corresponded with
Sebastiano about means for recovering this loan. On the 16th of August
Sebastiano writes that he has referred the matter to the Pope. "I
repeat, what I have already written, that I presented your memorial to
his Holiness. It was about eight in the evening, and the Florentine
ambassador was present. The Pope then ordered the ambassador to write
immediately to the Duke; and this he did with such vehemence and
passion as I do not think he has displayed on four other occasions
concerning the affairs of Florence. His rage and fury were tremendous,
and the words he used to the ambassador would stupefy you, could you
hear them. Indeed, they are not fit to be written down, and I must
reserve them for _viva voce_. I burn to have half an hour's
conversation with you, for now I know our good and holy master to the
ground. Enough, I think you must have already seen something of the
sort. In brief, he has resolved that you are to be repaid the 400
ducats of the guardianship and the 500 ducats lent to the old
Government." It may be readily imagined that this restitution of a
debt incurred by Florence when she was fighting for her liberties, to
which act of justice her victorious tyrant was compelled by his Papal
kinsman, did not soften Alessandro's bad feeling for the creditor.

Several of Sebastiano's letters during the summer and autumn of 1533
refer to an edition of some madrigals by Michelangelo, which had been
set to music by Bartolommeo Tromboncino, Giacomo Archadelt, and
Costanzo Festa. We have every reason to suppose that the period we
have now reached was the richest in poetical compositions. It was also
in 1532 or 1533 that he formed the most passionate attachment of which
we have any knowledge in his life; for he became acquainted about this
time with Tommaso Cavalieri. A few years later he was destined to meet
with Vittoria Colonna. The details of these two celebrated friendships
will be discussed in another chapter.

Clement VII. journeyed from Rome in September, intending to take ship
at Leghorn for Nice and afterwards Marseilles, where his young cousin,
Caterina de' Medici, was married to the Dauphin. He had to pass
through S. Miniato al Tedesco, and thither Michelangelo went to wait
upon him on the 22nd. This was the last, and not the least imposing,
public act of the old Pope, who, six years after his imprisonment and
outrage in the Castle of S. Angelo, was now wedding a daughter of his
plebeian family to the heir of the French crown. What passed between
Michelangelo and his master on this occasion is not certain.

The years 1532-1534 form a period of considerable chronological
perplexity in Michelangelo's life. This is in great measure due to the
fact that he was now residing regularly part of the year in Rome and
part in Florence. We have good reason to believe that he went to Rome
in September 1532, and stayed there through the winter. It is probable
that he then formed the friendship with Cavalieri, which played so
important a part in his personal history. A brisk correspondence
carried on between him and his two friends, Bartolommeo Angelini and
Sebastiano del Piombo, shows that he resided at Florence during the
summer and early autumn of 1533. From a letter addressed to Figiovanni
on the 15th of October, we learn that he was then impatient to leave
Florence for Rome. But a _Ricordo,_ bearing date October 29, 1533,
renders it almost certain that he had not then started. Angelini's
letters, which had been so frequent, stop suddenly in that month. This
renders it almost certain that Michelangelo must have soon returned to
Rome. Strangely enough there are no letters or _Ricordi_ in his
handwriting which bear the date 1534. When we come to deal with this
year, 1534, we learn from Michelangelo's own statement to Vasari that
he was in Florence during the summer, and that he reached Rome two
days before the death of Clement VII., _i.e._, upon September 23.
Condivi observes that it was lucky for him that the Pope did not die
while he was still at Florence, else he would certainly have been
exposed to great peril, and probably been murdered or imprisoned by
Duke Alessandro.

Nevertheless, Michelangelo was again in Florence toward the close of
1534. An undated letter to a certain Febo (di Poggio) confirms this
supposition. It may probably be referred to the month of December. In
it he says that he means to leave Florence next day for Pisa and Rome,
and that he shall never return. Febo's answer, addressed to Rome, is
dated January 14, 1534, which, according to Florentine reckoning,
means 1535.

We may take it, then, as sufficiently well ascertained that
Michelangelo departed from Florence before the end of 1534, and that
he never returned during the remainder of his life. There is left,
however, another point of importance referring to this period, which
cannot be satisfactorily cleared up. We do not know the exact date of
his father, Lodovico's, death. It must have happened either in 1533 or
in 1534. In spite of careful researches, no record of the event has
yet been discovered, either at Settignano or in the public offices of
Florence. The documents of the Buonarroti family yield no direct
information on the subject. We learn, however, from the Libri delle
Età, preserved at the Archivio di Stato, that Lodovico di Lionardo di
Buonarrota Simoni was born upon the 11th of June 1444. Now
Michelangelo, in his poem on Lodovico's death, says very decidedly
that his father was ninety when he breathed his last. If we take this
literally, it must be inferred that he died after the middle of June
1534. There are many reasons for supposing that Michelangelo was in
Florence when this happened. The chief of these is that no
correspondence passed between the Buonarroti brothers on the occasion,
while Michelangelo's minutes regarding the expenses of his father's
burial seem to indicate that he was personally responsible for their
disbursement. I may finally remark that the schedule of property
belonging to Michelangelo, recorded under the year 1534 in the
archives of the Decima at Florence, makes no reference at all to
Lodovico. We conclude from it that, at the time of its redaction,
Michelangelo must have succeeded to his father's estate.

The death of Lodovico and Buonarroto, happening within a space of
little more than five years, profoundly affected Michelangelo's mind,
and left an indelible mark of sadness on his life. One of his best
poems, a _capitolo_, or piece of verse in _terza rima_ stanzas, was
written on the occasion of his father's decease. In it he says that
Lodovico had reached the age of ninety. If this statement be literally
accurate, the old man must have died in 1534, since he was born upon
the 11th of June 1444. But up to the present time, as I have observed
above, the exact date of his death has not been discovered. One
passage of singular and solemn beauty may be translated from the
original:--

  _Thou'rt dead of dying, and art made divine,
     Nor fearest now to change or life or will;
     Scarce without envy can I call this thine.
  Fortune and time beyond your temple-sill
     Dare not advance, by whom is dealt for us
     A doubtful gladness, and too certain ill.
  Cloud is there none to dim you glorious:
     The hours distinct compel you not to fade:
     Nor chance nor fate o'er you are tyrannous.
  Your splendour with the night sinks not in shade,
     Nor grows with day, howe'er that sun ride high
     Which on our mortal hearts life's heat hath rayed.
  Thus from thy dying I now learn to die,
     Dear father mine! In thought I see thy place,
     Where earth but rarely lets men climb the sky._
  _Not, as some deem, is death the worst disgrace
     For one whose last day brings him to the first,
     The next eternal throne to God's by grace.
  There by God's grace I trust that thou art nursed,
     And hope to find thee, If but my cold heart
     High reason draw from earthly slime accursed._



CHAPTER X


I

The collegiate church of S. Lorenzo at Florence had long been
associated with the Medicean family, who were its most distinguished
benefactors, Giovanni d'Averardo de' Medici, together with the heads
of six other Florentine houses, caused it to be rebuilt at the
beginning of the fifteenth century. He took upon himself the entire
costs of the sacristy and one chapel; it was also owing to his
suggestion that Filippo Brunelleschi, in the year 1421, designed the
church and cloister as they now appear. When he died, Giovanni was
buried in its precincts, while his son Cosimo de' Medici, the father
of his country, continued these benevolences, and bestowed a capital
of 40,000 golden florins on the Chapter. He too was buried in the
church, a simple monument in the sacristy being erected to his memory.
Lorenzo the Magnificent followed in due course, and found his last
resting-place at S. Lorenzo.

We have seen in a previous chapter how and when Leo X. conceived the
idea of adding a chapel which should serve as mausoleum for several
members of the Medicean family at S. Lorenzo, and how Clement
determined to lodge the famous Medicean library in a hall erected over
the west side of the cloister. Both of these undertakings, as well as
the construction of a façade for the front of the church, were
assigned to Michelangelo. The ground plan of the monumental chapel
corresponds to Brunelleschi's sacristy, and is generally known as the
Sagrestia Nuova. Internally Buonarroti altered its decorative
panellings, and elevated the vaulting of the roof into a more
ambitious cupola. This portion of the edifice was executed in the
rough during his residence at Florence. The façade was never begun in
earnest, and remains unfinished. The library was constructed according
to his designs, and may be taken, on the whole, as a genuine specimen
of his style in architecture.

The books which Clement lodged there were the priceless manuscripts
brought together by Cosimo de' Medici in the first enthusiasm of the
Revival, at that critical moment when the decay of the Eastern Empire
transferred the wrecks of Greek literature from Constantinople to
Italy. Cosimo built a room to hold them in the Convent of S. Marco,
which Flavio Biondo styled the first library opened for the use of
scholars. Lorenzo the Magnificent enriched the collection with
treasures acquired during his lifetime, buying autographs wherever it
was possible to find them, and causing copies to be made. In the year
1508 the friars of S. Marco sold this inestimable store of literary
documents, in order to discharge the debts contracted by them during
their ill-considered interference in the state affairs of the
Republic. It was purchased for the sum of 2652 ducats by the Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, a second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and
afterwards Pope Leo X. He transferred them to his Roman villa, where
the collection was still further enlarged by all the rarities which a
prince passionate for literature and reckless in expenditure could
there assemble. Leo's cousin and executor, Giulio de' Medici, Pope
Clement VII., fulfilled his last wishes by transferring them to
Florence, and providing the stately receptacle in which they still
repose.

The task assigned to Michelangelo, when he planned the library, was
not so simple as that of the new sacristy. Some correspondence took
place before the west side of the cloister was finally decided on.
What is awkward in the approach to the great staircase must be
ascribed to the difficulty of fitting this building into the old
edifice; and probably, if Michelangelo had carried out the whole work,
a worthier entrance from the piazza into the loggia, and from the
loggia into the vestibule, might have been devised.


II

Vasari, in a well-known passage of his Life of Michelangelo, reports
the general opinion of his age regarding the novelties introduced by
Buonarroti into Italian architecture. The art of building was in a
state of transition. Indeed, it cannot be maintained that the
Italians, after they abandoned the traditions of the Romanesque
manner, advanced with certitude on any line of progress in this art.
Their work, beautiful as it often is, ingenious as it almost always
is, marked invariably by the individuality of the district and the
builder, seems to be tentative, experimental. The principles of the
Pointed Gothic style were never seized or understood by Italian
architects. Even such cathedrals as those of Orvieto and Siena are
splendid monuments of incapacity, when compared with the Romanesque
churches of Pisa, S. Miniato, S. Zenone at Verona, the Cathedral of
Parma. The return from Teutonic to Roman standards of taste, which
marked the advent of humanism, introduced a hybrid manner. This, in
its first commencement, was extremely charming. The buildings of Leo
Battista Alberti, of Brunelleschi, and of Bramante are distinguished
by an exquisite purity and grace combined with picturesqueness. No
edifice in any style is more stately, and at the same time more
musical in linear proportions, than the Church of S. Andrea at Mantua.
The Cappella dei Pazzi and the Church of S. Spirito at Florence are
gems of clear-cut and harmonious dignity. The courtyard of the
Cancelleria at Rome, the Duomo at Todi, show with what supreme ability
the great architect of Casteldurante blended sublimity with suavity,
largeness and breadth with naïveté and delicately studied detail. But
these first endeavours of the Romantic spirit to assimilate the
Classic mannerism--essays no less interesting than those of Boiardo in
poetry, of Botticelli in painting, of Donatello and Omodei in
sculpture--all of them alike, whether buildings, poems, paintings, or
statues, displaying the genius of the Italic race, renascent,
recalcitrant against the Gothic style, while still to some extent
swayed by its influence (at one and the same time both Christian and
chivalrous, Pagan and precociously cynical; yet charmingly fresh,
unspoiled by dogma, uncontaminated by pedantry)--these first
endeavours of the Romantic spirit to assimilate the Classic mannerism
could not create a new style representative of the national life. They
had the fault inherent in all hybrids, however fanciful and graceful.
They were sterile and unprocreative. The warring elements, so deftly
and beautifully blent in them, began at once to fall asunder. The San
Galli attempted to follow classical precedent with stricter severity.
Some buildings of their school may still be reckoned among the purest
which remain to prove the sincerity of the Revival of Learning. The
Sansovini exaggerated the naïveté of the earlier Renaissance manner,
and pushed its picturesqueness over into florid luxuriance or
decorative detail. Meanwhile, humanists and scholars worked slowly but
steadily upon the text of Vitruvius, impressing the paramount
importance of his theoretical writings upon practical builders.
Neither students nor architects reflected that they could not
understand Vitruvius; that, if they could understand him, it was by no
means certain he was right; and that, if he was right for his own age,
he would not be right for the sixteenth century after Christ. It was
just at this moment, when Vitruvius began to dominate the Italian
imagination, that Michelangelo was called upon to build. The genial
adaptation of classical elements to modern sympathies and uses, which
had been practised by Alberti, Brunelleschi, Bramante, yielded now to
painful efforts after the appropriation of pedantic principles.
Instead of working upon antique monuments with their senses and
emotions, men approached them through the medium of scholastic
erudition. Instead of seeing and feeling for themselves, they sought
by dissection to confirm the written precepts of a defunct Roman
writer. This diversion of a great art from its natural line of
development supplies a striking instance of the fascination which
authority exercises at certain periods of culture. Rather than trust
their feeling for what was beautiful and useful, convenient and
attractive, the Italians of the Renaissance surrendered themselves to
learning. Led by the spirit of scholarship, they thought it their duty
to master the text of Vitruvius, to verify his principles by the
analysis of surviving antique edifices, and, having formed their own
conception of his theory, to apply this, as well as they were able, to
the requirements of contemporary life.

Two exits from the false situation existed: one was the
picturesqueness of the Barocco style; the other was the specious vapid
purity of the Palladian. Michelangelo, who was essentially the genius
of this transition, can neither be ascribed to the Barocco architects,
although he called them into being, nor yet can he be said to have
arrived at the Palladian solution. He held both types within himself
in embryo, arriving at a moment of profound and complicated difficulty
for the practical architect; without technical education, but gifted
with supreme genius, bringing the imperious instincts of a sublime
creative amateur into every task appointed him. We need not wonder if
a man of his calibre left the powerful impress of his personality upon
an art in chaos, luring lesser craftsmen into the Barocco mannerism,
while he provoked reaction in the stronger, who felt more
scientifically what was needed to secure firm standing-ground. Bernini
and the superb fountain of Trevi derive from Michelangelo on one side;
Vignola's cold classic profiles and Palladio's resuscitation of old
Rome in the Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza emerge upon the other. It
remained Buonarroti's greatest-glory that, lessoned by experience and
inspired for high creation by the vastness of the undertaking, he
imagined a world's wonder in the cupola of S. Peter's.


III

Writing in the mid-stream of this architectural regurgitation, Vasari
explains what contemporaries thought about Michelangelo's innovations.
"He wished to build the new sacristy upon the same lines as the older
one by Brunelleschi, but at the same time to clothe the edifice with a
different style of decoration. Accordingly, he invented for the
interior a composite adornment, of the newest and most varied manner
which antique and modern masters joined together could have used. The
novelty of his style consisted in those lovely cornices, capitals,
basements, doors, niches, and sepulchres which transcended all that
earlier builders, working by measurements, distribution of parts, and
rule, had previously effected, following Vitruvius and the ancient
relics. Such men were afraid to supplement tradition with original
invention. The license he introduced gave great courage to those who
studied his method, and emboldened them to follow on his path. Since
that time, new freaks of fancy have been seen, resembling the style of
arabesque and grotesque more than was consistent with tradition. For
this emancipation of the art, all craftsmen owe him an infinite and
everduring debt of gratitude, since he at one blow broke down the
bands and chains which barred the path they trod in common."

If I am right in thus interpreting an unusually incoherent passage of
Vasari's criticism, no words could express more clearly the advent of
Barocco mannerism. But Vasari proceeds to explain his meaning with
still greater precision. Afterwards he made a plainer demonstration
of his intention in the library of S. Lorenzo, by the splendid
distribution of the windows, the arrangement of the upper chamber, and
the marvellous entrance-hall into that enclosed building.

"The grace and charm of art were never seen more perfectly displayed
in the whole and in the parts of any edifice than here. I may refer in
particular to the corbels, the recesses for statues, and the cornices.
The staircase, too, deserves attention for its convenience, with the
eccentric breakage of its flights of steps; the whole construction
being so altered from the common usage of other architects as to
excite astonishment in all who see it."

What emerges with distinctness from Vasari's account of Michelangelo's
work at S. Lorenzo is that a practical Italian architect, who had been
engaged on buildings of importance since this work was carried out,
believed it to have infused freedom and new vigour into architecture.
That freedom and new vigour we now know to have implied the Barocco
style.


IV

In estimating Michelangelo's work at S. Lorenzo, we must not forget
that at this period of his life he contemplated statuary, bronze
bas-relief, and painting, as essential adjuncts to architecture. The
scheme is, therefore, not so much constructive as decorative, and a
great many of its most offensive qualities may be ascribed to the fact
that the purposes for which it was designed have been omitted. We know
that the façade of S. Lorenzo was intended to abound in bronze and
marble carvings. Beside the Medicean tombs, the sacristy ought to have
contained a vast amount of sculpture, and its dome was actually
painted in fresco by Giovanni da Udine under Michelangelo's own eyes.
It appears that his imagination still obeyed those leading principles
which he applied in the rough sketch for the first sepulchre of
Julius. The vestibule and staircase of the library cannot therefore be
judged fairly now; for if they had been finished according to their
maker's plan, the faults of their construction would have been
compensated by multitudes of plastic shapes.

M. Charles Gamier, in _L'OEuvre et la Vie_, speaking with the
authority of a practical architect, says: "Michelangelo was not,
properly speaking, an architect. He made architecture, which is quite
a different thing; and most often it was the architecture of a painter
and sculptor, which points to colour, breadth, imagination, but also
to insufficient studies and incomplete education. The thought may be
great and strong, but the execution of it is always feeble and
naïve.... He had not learned the language of the art. He has all the
qualities of imagination, invention, will, which form a great
composer; but he does not know the grammar, and can hardly write....
In seeking the great, he has too often found the tumid; seeking the
original, he has fallen upon the strange, and also on bad taste."

There is much that is true in this critique, severe though it may seem
to be. The fact is that Michelangelo aimed at picturesque effect in
his buildings; not, as previous architects had done, by a lavish use
of loosely decorative details, but by the piling up and massing
together of otherwise dry orders, cornices, pilasters, windows, all of
which, in his conception, were to serve as framework and pedestals for
statuary. He also strove to secure originality and to stimulate
astonishment by bizarre modulations of accepted classic forms, by
breaking the lines of architraves, combining angularities with curves,
adopting a violently accented rhythm and a tortured multiplicity of
parts, wherever this was possible.


V

In this new style, so much belauded by Vasari, the superficial design
is often rich and grandiose, making a strong pictorial appeal to the
imagination. Meanwhile, the organic laws of structure have been
sacrificed; and that chaste beauty which emerges from a perfectly
harmonious distribution of parts, embellished by surface decoration
only when the limbs and members of the building demand emphasis, may
be sought for everywhere in vain. The substratum is a box, a barn, an
inverted bottle; built up of rubble, brick, and concrete; clothed with
learned details, which have been borrowed from the pseudo-science of
the humanist. There is nothing here of divine Greek candour, of
dominant Roman vigour, of Gothic vitality, of fanciful invention
governed by a sincere sense of truth. Nothing remains of the shy
graces, the melodious simplicities, the pure seeking after musical
proportion, which marked the happier Italian effort of the early
Renaissance, through Brunelleschi and Alberti, Bramante, Giuliano da
Sangallo, and Peruzzi. Architecture, in the highest sense of that
word, has disappeared. A scenic scheme of panelling for empty walls
has superseded the conscientious striving to construct a living and
intelligible whole.

The fault inherent in Italian building after the close of the Lombard
period, reaches its climax here. That fault was connected with the
inability of the Italians to assimilate the true spirit of the Gothic
style, while they attempted its imitation in practice. The fabrication
of imposing and lovely façades at Orvieto, at Siena, at Cremona, and
at Crema, glorious screens which masked the poverty of the edifice,
and corresponded in no point to the organism of the structure, taught
them to overrate mere surface-beauty. Their wonderful creativeness in
all the arts which can be subordinated to architectural effect seduced
them further. Nothing, for instance, taken by itself alone, can be
more satisfactory than the façade of the Certosa at Pavia; but it is
not, like the front of Chartres or Rheims or Amiens, a natural
introduction to the inner sanctuary. At the end of the Gothic period
architecture had thus come to be conceived as the art of covering
shapeless structures with a wealth of arabesques in marble, fresco,
bronze, mosaic.

The revival of learning and a renewed interest in the antique withdrew
the Italians for a short period from this false position. With more or
less of merit, successive builders, including those I have above
mentioned, worked in a pure style: pure because it obeyed the laws of
its own music, because it was intelligible and self-consistent, aiming
at construction as the main end, subordinating decoration of richer
luxuriance or of sterner severity to the prime purpose of the total
scheme. But this style was too much the plaything of particular minds
to create a permanent tradition. It varied in the several provinces of
Italy, and mingled personal caprice with the effort to assume a
classic garb. Meanwhile the study of Vitruvius advanced, and that
pedantry which infected all the learned movements of the Renaissance
struck deep and venomous roots into the art of building.

Michelangelo arrived at the moment I am attempting to indicate. He
protested that architecture was not his trade. Over and over again he
repeated this to his Medicean patrons; but they compelled him to
build, and he applied himself with the predilections and
prepossessions of a plastic artist to the task. The result was a
retrogression from the point reached by his immediate predecessors to
the vicious system followed by the pseudo-Gothic architects in Italy.
That is to say, he treated the structure as an inert mass, to be made
as substantial as possible, and then to be covered with details
agreeable to the eye. At the beginning of his career he had a
defective sense of the harmonic ratios upon which a really musical
building may be constructed out of mere bricks and mortar--such, for
example, as the Church of S. Giustina at Padua. He was overweighted
with ill-assimilated erudition; and all the less desirable licenses of
Brunelleschi's school, especially in the abuse of square recesses, he
adopted without hesitation. It never seems to have occurred to him
that doors which were intended for ingress and egress, windows which
were meant to give light, and attics which had a value as the means of
illumination from above, could not with any propriety be applied to
the covering of blank dead spaces in the interiors of buildings.

The vestibule of the Laurentian Library illustrates his method of
procedure. It is a rectangular box of about a cube and two thirds, set
length-way up. The outside of the building, left unfinished, exhibits
a mere blank space of bricks. The interior might be compared to a
temple in the grotesque-classic style turned outside in: colossal
orders, meaningless consoles, heavy windows, square recesses, numerous
doors--the windows, doors, and attics having no right to be there,
since they lead to nothing, lend view to nothing, clamour for bronze
and sculpture to explain their existence as niches and receptacles for
statuary. It is nevertheless indubitably true that these incongruous
and misplaced elements, crowded together, leave a strong impression of
picturesque force upon the mind. From certain points and angles, the
effect of the whole, considered as a piece of deception and
insincerity, is magnificent. It would be even finer than it is, were
not the Florentine _pietra serena_ of the stonework so repellent in
its ashen dulness, the plaster so white, and the false architectural
system so painfully defrauded of the plastic forms for which it was
intended to subserve as setting.

We have here no masterpiece of sound constructive science, but a freak
of inventive fancy using studied details for the production of a
pictorial effect. The details employed to compose this curious
illusion are painfully dry and sterile; partly owing to the scholastic
enthusiasm for Vitruvius, partly to the decline of mediaeval delight
in naturalistic decoration, but, what seems to me still more apparent,
through Michelangelo's own passionate preoccupation with the human
figure. He could not tolerate any type of art which did not concede a
predominant position to the form of man. Accordingly, his work in
architecture at this period seems waiting for plastic illustration,
demanding sculpture and fresco for its illumination and justification.

It is easy, one would think, to make an appeal to the eye by means of
colossal orders, bold cornices, enormous consoles, deeply indented
niches. How much more easy to construct a box, and then say, "Come,
let us cover its inside with an incongruous and inappropriate but
imposing parade of learning," than to lift some light and genial thing
of beauty aloft into the air, as did the modest builder of the
staircase to the hall at Christ Church, Oxford! The eye of the vulgar
is entranced, the eye of the artist bewildered. That the imagination
which inspired that decorative scheme was powerful, original, and
noble, will not be denied; but this does not save us from the
desolating conviction that the scheme itself is a specious and
pretentious mask, devised to hide a hideous waste of bricks and
mortar.

Michelangelo's imagination, displayed in this distressing piece of
work, was indeed so masterful that, as Vasari says, a new delightful
style in architecture seemed to be revealed by it. A new way of
clothing surfaces, falsifying façades, and dealing picturesquely with
the lifeless element of Vitruvian tradition had been demonstrated by
the genius of one who was a mighty amateur in building. In other
words, the _Barocco_ manner had begun; the path was opened to prank,
caprice, and license. It required the finer tact and taste of a
Palladio to rectify the false line here initiated, and to bring the
world back to a sense of seriousness in its effort to deal
constructively and rationally with the pseudo-classic mannerism.

The qualities of wilfulness and amateurishness and seeking after
picturesque effect, upon which I am now insisting, spoiled
Michelangelo's work as architect, until he was forced by circumstance,
and after long practical experience, to confront a problem of pure
mathematical construction. In the cupola of S. Peter's he rose to the
stern requirements of his task. There we find no evasion of the
builder's duty by mere surface-decoration, no subordination of the
edifice to plastic or pictorial uses. Such side-issues were excluded
by the very nature of the theme. An immortal poem resulted, an aërial
lyric of melodious curves and solemn harmonies, a thought combining
grace and audacity translated into stone uplifted to the skies. After
being cabined in the vestibule to the Laurentian Library, our soul
escapes with gladness to those airy spaces of the dome, that great
cloud on the verge of the Campagna, and feels thankful that we can
take our leave of Michelangelo as architect elsewhere.


VI

While seeking to characterise what proved pernicious to contemporaries
in Michelangelo's work as architect, I have been led to concentrate
attention upon the Library at S. Lorenzo. This was logical; for, as we
have seen, Vasari regarded that building as the supreme manifestation
of his manner. Vasari never saw the cupola of S. Peter's in all its
glory, and it may be doubted whether he was capable of learning much
from it.

The sacristy demands separate consideration. It was an earlier work,
produced under more favourable conditions of place and space, and is
in every way a purer specimen of the master's style. As Vasari
observed, the Laurentian Library indicated a large advance upon the
sacristy in the development of Michelangelo's new manner.

At this point it may not unprofitably be remarked, that none of the
problems offered for solution at S. Lorenzo were in the strictest
sense of that word architectural. The façade presented a problem of
pure panelling. The ground-plan of the sacristy was fixed in
correspondence with Brunelleschi's; and here again the problem
resolved itself chiefly into panelling. A builder of genius, working
on the library, might indeed have displayed his science and his taste
by some beautiful invention adapted to the awkward locality; as
Baldassare Peruzzi, in the Palazzo Massimo at Rome, converted the
defects of the site into graces by the exquisite turn he gave to the
curved portion of the edifice. Still, when the scheme was settled,
even the library became more a matter of panelling and internal
fittings than of structural design. Nowhere at S. Lorenzo can we
affirm that Michelangelo enjoyed, the opportunity of showing what he
could achieve in the production of a building independent in itself
and planned throughout with a free hand. Had he been a born architect,
he would probably have insisted upon constructing the Medicean
mausoleum after his own conception instead of repeating Brunelleschi's
ground-plan, and he would almost certainly have discovered a more
genial solution for the difficulties of the library. But he protested
firmly against being considered an architect by inclination or by
education. Therefore he accepted the most obvious conditions of each
task, and devoted himself to schemes of surface decoration.

The interior of the sacristy is planned with a noble sense of unity.
For the purpose of illuminating a gallery of statues, the lighting may
be praised without reserve; and there is no doubt whatever that
Michelangelo intended every tabernacle to be filled with figures, and
all the whitewashed spaces of the walls to be encrusted with
bas-reliefs in stucco or painted in fresco. The recesses or niches,
taking the form of windows, are graduated in three degrees of depth to
suit three scales of sculptural importance. The sepulchres of the
Dukes had to emerge into prominence; the statues subordinate to these
main masses occupied shallower recesses; the shallowest of all,
reserved for minor statuary, are adorned above with garlands, which
suggest the flatness of the figures to be introduced. Architecturally
speaking, the building is complete; but it sadly wants the plastic
decoration for which it was designed, together with many finishing
touches of importance. It is clear, for instance, that the square
pedestals above the double pilasters flanking each of the two Dukes
were meant to carry statuettes or candelabra, which would have
connected the marble panelling with the cornices and stucchi and
frescoed semicircles of the upper region. Our eyes are everywhere
defrauded of the effect calculated by Michelangelo when he planned
this chapel. Yet the total impression remains harmonious. Proportion
has been observed in all the parts, especially in the relation of the
larger to the smaller orders, and in the balance of the doors and
windows. Merely decorative carvings are used with parsimony, and
designed in a pure style, although they exhibit originality of
invention. The alternation of white marble surfaces and mouldings with
_pietra serena_ pilasters, cornices, and arches, defines the
structural design, and gives a grave but agreeable sense of variety.
Finally, the recess behind the altar adds lightness and space to what
would otherwise have been a box. What I have already observed when
speaking of the vestibule to the library must be repeated here: the
whole scheme is that of an exterior turned outside in, and its
justification lies in the fact that it demanded statuary and colour
for its completion. Still the bold projecting cornices, the deeper and
shallower niches resembling windows, have the merit of securing broken
lights and shadows under the strong vertical illumination, all of
which are eminently picturesque. No doubt remains now that tradition
is accurate in identifying the helmeted Duke with Lorenzo de' Medici,
and the more graceful seated hero opposite with Giuliano. The
recumbent figures on the void sepulchres beneath them are with equal
truth designated as Night and Day, Morning and Evening. But
Michelangelo condescended to no realistic portraiture in the statues
of the Dukes, and he also meant undoubtedly to treat the phases of
time which rule man's daily life upon the planet as symbols for
far-reaching thoughts connected with our destiny. These monumental
figures are not men, not women, but vague and potent allegories of our
mortal fate. They remain as he left them, except that parts of
Giuliano's statue, especially the hands, seem to have been worked over
by an assistant. The same is true of the Madonna, which will ever be
regarded, in her imperfectly finished state, as one of the finest of
his sculptural conceptions. To Montelupo belongs the execution of S.
Damiano, and to Montorsoli that of S. Cosimo. Vasari says that Tribolo
was commissioned by Michelangelo to carve statues of Earth weeping for
the loss of Giuliano, and Heaven rejoicing over his spirit. The death
of Pope Clement, however, put a stop to these subordinate works,
which, had they been accomplished, might perhaps have shown us how
Buonarroti intended to fill the empty niches on each side of the
Dukes.

When Michelangelo left Florence for good at the end of 1534, his
statues had not been placed; but we have reason to think that the
Dukes and the four allegorical figures were erected in his lifetime.
There is something singular in the maladjustment of the recumbent men
and women to the curves of the sarcophagi, and in the contrast between
the roughness of their bases and the smooth polish of the chests they
rest on. These discrepancies do not, however, offend the eye, and they
may even have been deliberately adopted from a keen sense of what the
Greeks called _asymmetreia_ as an adjunct to effect. It is more
difficult to understand what he proposed to do with the Madonna and
her two attendant saints. Placed as they now are upon a simple ledge,
they strike one as being too near the eye, and out of harmony with the
architectural tone of the building. It is also noticeable that the
saints are more than a head taller than the Dukes, while the Madonna
overtops the saints by more than another head. We are here in a region
of pure conjecture; and if I hazard an opinion, it is only thrown out
as a possible solution of a now impenetrable problem. I think, then,
that Michelangelo may have meant to pose these three figures where
they are, facing the altar; to raise the Madonna upon a slightly
projecting bracket above the level of SS. Damiano and Cosimo, and to
paint the wall behind them with a fresco of the Crucifixion. That he
had no intention of panelling that empty space with marble may be
taken for granted, considering the high finish which has been given to
every part of this description of work in the chapel. Treated as I
have suggested, the statue of the Madonna, with the patron saints of
the House of Medici, overshadowed by a picture of Christ's sacrifice,
would have confronted the mystery of the Mass during every celebration
at the altar. There are many designs for the Crucifixion, made by
Michelangelo in later life, so lofty as almost to suggest a group of
figures in the foreground, cutting the middle distance.

At the close of Michelangelo's life the sacristy was still unfinished.
It contained the objects I have described--the marble panelling, the
altar with its candelabra, the statues of the Dukes and their
attendant figures, the Madonna and two Medicean patron saints--in
fact, all that we find there now, with the addition of Giovanni da
Udine's frescoes in the cupola, the relics of which have since been
buried under cold Florentine whitewash.

All the views I have advanced in the foregoing paragraphs as to the
point at which Michelangelo abandoned this chapel, and his probable
designs for its completion, are in the last resort based upon an
important document penned at the instance of the Duke of Florence by
Vasari to Buonarroti, not long before the old man's death in Rome.
This epistle has so weighty a bearing upon the matter in hand that I
shall here translate it. Careful study of its fluent periods will
convince an unprejudiced mind that the sacristy, as we now see it, is
even less representative of its maker's design than it was when Vasari
wrote. The frescoes of Giovanni da Udine are gone. It will also show
that the original project involved a wealth of figurative decoration,
statuary, painting, stucco, which never arrived at realisation.


VII

Vasari, writing in the spring of 1562, informs Michelangelo concerning
the Academy of Design founded by Duke Cosimo de' Medici, and of the
Duke's earnest desire that he should return to Florence in order that
the sacristy at S. Lorenzo may be finished. "Your reasons for not
coming are accepted as sufficient. He is therefore considering
--forasmuch as the place is being used now for religious services by day
and night, according to the intention of Pope Clement--he is
considering, I say, a plan for erecting the statues which are missing in
the niches above the sepulchres and the tabernacles above the doors. The
Duke then wishes that all the eminent sculptors of this academy, in
competition man with man, should each of them make one statue, and that
the painters in like manner should exercise their art upon the chapel.
Designs are to be prepared for the arches according to your own project,
including works of painting and of stucco; the other ornaments and the
pavement are to be provided; in short, he intends that the new
academicians shall complete the whole imperfect scheme, in order that
the world may see that, while so many men of genius still exist among
us, the noblest work which was ever yet conceived on earth has not been
left unfinished. He has commissioned me to write to you and unfold his
views, begging you at the same time to favour him by communicating to
himself or to me what your intentions were, or those of the late Pope
Clement, with regard to the name and title of the chapel; moreover, to
inform us what designs you made for the four tabernacles on each side of
the Dukes Lorenzo and Giuliano; also what you projected for the eight
statues above the doors and in the tabernacles of the corners; and,
finally, what your idea was of the paintings to adorn the flat walls and
the semicircular spaces of the chapel. He is particularly anxious that
you should be assured of his determination to alter nothing you have
already done or planned, but, on the contrary, to carry out the whole
work according to your own conception. The academicians too are
unanimous in their hearty desire to abide by this decision. I am
furthermore instructed to tell you, that if you possess sketches,
working cartoons, or drawings made for this purpose, the same would be
of the greatest service in the execution of his project; and he promises
to be a good and faithful administrator, so that honour may ensue. In
case you do not feel inclined to do all this, through the burden of old
age or for any other reason, he begs you at least to communicate with
some one who shall write upon the subject; seeing that he would be
greatly grieved, as indeed would the whole of our academy, to have no
ray of light from your own mind, and possibly to add things to your
masterpiece which were not according to your designs and wishes. We all
of us look forward to being comforted by you, if not with actual work,
at least with words. His Excellency founds this hope upon your former
willingness to complete the edifice by allotting statues to Tribolo,
Montelupo, and the Friar (Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli). The last named of
these masters is here, eagerly desirous to have the opportunity of doing
you honour. So are Francesco Sangallo, Giovanni Bologna, Benvenuto
Cellini, Ammanato, Rossi and Vincenzio Danti of Perugia, not to mention
other sculptors of note. The painters, headed by Bronzino, include many
talented young men, skilled in design, and colourists, quite capable of
establishing an honourable reputation. Of myself I need not speak. You
know well that in devotion, attachment, love, and loyalty (and let me
say this with prejudice to no one) I surpass the rest of your admirers
by far. Therefore, I entreat you, of your goodness, to console his
Excellency, and all these men of parts, and our city, as well as to show
this particular favour to myself, who have been selected by the Duke to
write to you, under the impression that, being your familiar and loving
friend, I might obtain from you some assistance of sterling utility for
the undertaking. His Excellency is prepared to spend both substance and
labour on the task, in order to honour you. Pray then, albeit age is
irksome, endeavour to aid him by unfolding your views; for, in doing so,
you will confer benefits on countless persons, and will be the cause of
raising all these men of parts to higher excellence, each one of whom
has learned what he already knows in the sacristy, or rather let me say
our school."

This eloquent despatch informs us very clearly that the walls of the
sacristy, above the tall Corinthian order which, encloses the part
devoted to sculpture, were intended to be covered with stucco and
fresco paintings, completing the polychromatic decoration begun by
Giovanni da Udine in the cupola. Twelve statues had been designed for
the niches in the marble panelling; and one word used by Vasari,
_facciate_, leaves the impression that the blank walls round and
opposite the altar were also to be adorned with pictures. We remain
uncertain how Michelangelo originally meant to dispose of the colossal
Madonna with SS. Damian and Cosimo.

Unhappily, nothing came of the Duke's project. Michelangelo was either
unable or unwilling--probably unable--to furnish the necessary plans
and drawings. In the eighth chapter of this book I have discussed the
hesitations with regard to the interior of the sacristy which are
revealed by some of his extant designs for it. We also know that he
was not in the habit of preparing accurate working cartoons for the
whole of a large scheme, but that he proceeded from point to point,
trusting to slight sketches and personal supervision of the work.
Thus, when Vasari wrote to him from Rome about the staircase of the
library, he expressed a perfect readiness to help, but could only
remember its construction in a kind of dream. We may safely assume,
then, that he had not sufficient material to communicate; plans
definite enough in general scope and detailed incident to give a true
conception of his whole idea were lacking.


VIII

Passing to aesthetical considerations, I am forced to resume here what
I published many years ago about the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo, as it now
exists. Repeated visits to that shrine have only renewed former
impressions, which will not bear to be reproduced in other language,
and would lose some of their freshness by the stylistic effort. No
other course remains then but to quote from my own writings, indorsing
them with such weight as my signature may have acquired since they
were first given to the world.

"The sacristy may be looked on either as the masterpiece of a sculptor
who required fit setting for his statues, or of an architect who
designed statues to enhance the structure he had planned. Both arts
are used with equal ease, nor has the genius of Michelangelo dealt
more masterfully with the human frame than with the forms of Roman
architecture in this chapel. He seems to have paid no heed to classic
precedent, and to have taken no pains to adapt the parts to the
structural purpose of the building. It was enough for him to create a
wholly novel framework for the modern miracle of sculpture it
enshrines, attending to such rules of composition as determine light
and shade, and seeking by the relief of mouldings and pilasters to
enhance the terrible and massive forms that brood above the Medicean
tombs. The result is a product of picturesque and plastic art as true
to the Michelangelesque spirit as the Temple of the Wingless Victory
to that of Pheidias. But where Michelangelo achieved a triumph of
boldness, lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie; and this
chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose simplicity, proved a
stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to
despise propriety and violate the laws of structure.

"We may assume then that the colossal statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo
were studied with a view to their light and shadow as much as to their
form; and this is a fact to be remembered by those who visit the
chapel where Buonarroti laboured both as architect and sculptor. Of
the two Medici, it is not fanciful to say that the Duke of Urbino is
the most immovable of spectral shapes eternalised in marble; while the
Duke of Nemours, more graceful and elegant, seems intended to present
a contrast to this terrible thought-burdened form. The allegorical
figures, stretched on segments of ellipses beneath the pedestals of
the two Dukes, indicate phases of darkness and of light, of death and
life. They are two women and two men; tradition names them Night and
Day, Twilight and Dawning. Thus in the statues themselves and in their
attendant genii we have a series of abstractions, symbolising the
sleep and waking of existence, action and thought, the gloom of death,
the lustre of life, and the intermediate states of sadness and of hope
that form the borderland of both. Life is a dream between two
slumbers; sleep is death's twin-brother; night is the shadow of death;
death is the gate of life:--such is the mysterious mythology wrought
by the sculptor of the modern world in marble. All these figures, by
the intensity of their expression, the vagueness of their symbolism,
force us to think and question. What, for example, occupies Lorenzo's
brain? Bending forward, leaning his chin upon his wrist, placing the
other hand upon his knee, on what does he for ever ponder?

"The sight, as Rogers said well, 'fascinates and is intolerable.'
Michelangelo has shot the beaver of the helmet forward on his
forehead, and bowed his head, so as to clothe the face in darkness.
But behind the gloom there lurks no fleshless skull, as Rogers
fancied. The whole frame of the powerful man is instinct with some
imperious thought. Has he outlived his life and fallen upon
everlasting contemplation? Is he brooding, injured and indignant, over
his own doom and the extinction of his race? Is he condemned to
witness in immortal immobility the woes of Italy he helped to cause?
Or has the sculptor symbolised in him the burden of that personality
we carry with us in this life, and bear for ever when we wake into
another world? Beneath this incarnation of oppressive thought there
lie, full length and naked, the figures of Dawn and Twilight, Morn and
Evening. So at least they are commonly called, and these names are not
inappropriate; for the breaking of the day and the approach of night
are metaphors for many transient conditions of the soul. It is only as
allegories in a large sense, comprehending both the physical and
intellectual order, and capable of various interpretation, that any of
these statues can be understood. Even the Dukes do not pretend to be
portraits, and hence in part perhaps the uncertainty that has gathered
round them. Very tranquil and noble is Twilight: a giant in repose, he
meditates, leaning upon his elbow, looking down. But Dawn starts from
her couch, as though some painful summons had reached her, sunk in
dreamless sleep, and called her forth to suffer. Her waking to
consciousness is like that of one who has been drowned, and who finds
the return to life agony. Before her eyes, seen even through the mists
of slumber, are the ruin and the shame of Italy. Opposite lies Night,
so sorrowful, so utterly absorbed in darkness and the shade of death,
that to shake off that everlasting lethargy seems impossible. Yet she
is not dead. If we raise our voices, she too will stretch her limbs,
and, like her sister, shudder into sensibility with sighs. Only we
must not wake her; for he who fashioned her has told us that her sleep
of stone is great good fortune. Both of these women are large and
brawny, unlike the Fates of Pheidias, in their muscular maturity. The
burden of Michelangelo's thought was too tremendous to be borne by
virginal and graceful beings. He had to make women no less capable of
suffering, no less world-wearied, than his country.

"Standing before these statues, we do not cry, How beautiful! We
murmur, How terrible, how grand! Yet, after long gazing, we find them
gifted with beauty beyond grace. In each of them there is a
palpitating thought, torn from the artist's soul and crystallised in
marble. It has been said that architecture is petrified music. In the
Sacristy of S. Lorenzo we feel impelled to remember phrases of
Beethoven. Each of these statues becomes for us a passion, fit for
musical expression, but turned like Niobe to stone. They have the
intellectual vagueness, the emotional certainty, that belong to the
motives of a symphony. In their allegories, left without a key,
sculpture has passed beyond her old domain of placid concrete form.
The anguish of intolerable emotion, the quickening of the
consciousness to a sense of suffering, the acceptance of the
inevitable, the strife of the soul with destiny, the burden and the
passion of mankind:--that is what they contain in their cold
chisel-tortured marble. It is open to critics of the school of Lessing
to object that here is the suicide of sculpture. It is easy to remark
that those strained postures and writhen limbs may have perverted the
taste of lesser craftsmen. Yet if Michelangelo was called to carve
Medicean statues after the sack of Rome and the fall of Florence--if
he was obliged in sober sadness to make sculpture a fit language for
his sorrow-laden heart--how could he have wrought more truthfully than
this? To imitate him without sharing his emotion or comprehending his
thoughts, as the soulless artists of the decadence attempted, was
without all doubt a grievous error. Surely also we may regret, not
without reason, that in the evil days upon which he had fallen, the
fair antique _Heiterkeit_ and _Allgemeinheit_ were beyond his reach."

That this regret is not wholly sentimental may be proved, I think, by
an exchange of verses, which we owe to Vasari's literary sagacity. He
tells us that when the statue of the Night was opened to the public
view, it drew forth the following quatrain from an author unknown to
himself by name:--

  _The Night thou seest here, posed gracefully
  In act of slumber, was by an Angel wrought
  Out of this stone; sleeping, with life she's fraught:
  Wake her, incredulous wight; she'll speak to thee._

Michelangelo would have none of these academical conceits and
compliments. He replied in four verses, which show well enough what
thoughts were in his brain when he composed the nightmare-burdened,
heavy-sleeping women:

  _Dear is my sleep, but more to be mere stone,
  So long as ruin and dishonour reign:
  To hear naught, to feel naught, is my great gain;
  Then wake me not; speak in an undertone._



CHAPTER XI


I

After the death of Clement VII., Michelangelo never returned to reside
for any length of time at Florence. The rest of his life was spent in
Rome, and he fell almost immediately under the kind but somewhat
arbitrary patronage of Alessandro Farnese, who succeeded to the Papal
chair in October 1534, with the title of Paul III.

One of the last acts of Clement's life had been to superintend the
second contract with the heirs of Julius, by which Michelangelo
undertook to finish the tomb upon a reduced scale within the space of
three years. He was allowed to come to Rome and work there during four
months annually. Paul, however, asserted his authority by upsetting
these arrangements and virtually cancelling the contract.

"In the meanwhile," writes Condivi, "Pope Clement died, and Paul III.
sent for him, and requested him to enter his service. Michelangelo saw
at once that he would be interrupted in his work upon the Tomb of
Julius. So he told Paul that he was not his own master, being bound to
the Duke of Urbino until the monument was finished. The Pope grew
angry, and exclaimed: 'It is thirty years that I have cherished this
desire, and now that I am Pope, may I not indulge it? Where is the
contract? I mean to tear it up.' Michelangelo, finding himself reduced
to these straits, almost resolved to leave Rome and take refuge in the
Genoese, at an abbey held by the Bishop of Aleria, who had been a
creature of Julius, and was much attached to him. He hoped that the
neighbourhood of the Carrara quarries, and the facility of
transporting marbles by sea, would help him to complete his
engagements. He also thought of settling at Urbino, which he had
previously selected as a tranquil retreat, and where he expected to be
well received for the sake of Pope Julius. Some months earlier, he
even sent a man of his to buy a house and land there. Still he dreaded
the greatness of the Pontiff, as indeed he had good cause to do; and
for this reason he abandoned the idea of quitting Rome, hoping to
pacify his Holiness with fair words.

"The Pope, however, stuck to his opinion; and one day he visited
Michelangelo at his house, attended by eight or ten Cardinals. He
first of all inspected the cartoon prepared in Clement's reign for the
great work of the Sistine; then the statues for the tomb, and
everything in detail. The most reverend Cardinal of Mantua, standing
before the statue of Moses, cried out: 'That piece alone is sufficient
to do honour to the monument of Julius.' Pope Paul, having gone
through the whole workshop, renewed his request that Michelangelo
should enter his service; and when the latter still resisted, he
clinched the matter by saying: 'I will provide that the Duke of Urbino
shall be satisfied with three statues from your hand, and the
remaining three shall be assigned to some other sculptor.'
Accordingly, he settled on the terms of a new contract with the agents
of the Duke, which were confirmed by his Excellency, who did not care
to displeasure the Pope. Michelangelo, albeit he was now relieved from
the obligation of paying for the three statues, preferred to take this
cost upon himself, and deposited 1580 ducats for the purpose. And so
the Tragedy of the Tomb came at last to an end. This may now be seen
at S. Pietro ad Vincula; and though, truth to tell, it is but a
mutilated and botched-up remnant of Michelangelo's original design,
the monument is still the finest to be found in Rome, and perhaps
elsewhere in the world, if only for the three statues finished by the
hand of the great master."


II

In this account, Condivi, has condensed the events of seven years. The
third and last contract with the heirs of Julius was not ratified
until the autumn of 1542, nor was the tomb erected much before the
year 1550. We shall see that the tragedy still cost its hero many
anxious days during this period.

Paul III., having obtained his object, issued a brief, whereby he
appointed Michelangelo chief architect, sculptor, and painter at the
Vatican. The instrument is dated September 1, 1535, and the terms with
which it describes the master's eminence in the three arts are highly
flattering. Allusion is directly made to the fresco of the Last
Judgment, which may therefore have been begun about this date.
Michelangelo was enrolled as member of the Pontifical household, with
a permanent pension of 1200 golden crowns, to be raised in part on the
revenues accruing from a ferry across the Po at Piacenza. He did not,
however, obtain possession of this ferry until 1537, and the benefice
proved so unremunerative that it was exchanged for a little post in
the Chancery at Rimini.

When Michelangelo began to work again in the Sistine Chapel, the wall
above the altar was adorned with three great sacred subjects by the
hand of Pietro Perugino. In the central fresco of the Assumption
Perugino introduced a portrait of Sixtus IV. kneeling in adoration
before the ascending Madonna. The side panels were devoted to the
Nativity and the finding of Moses. In what condition Michelangelo
found these frescoes before the painting of the Last Judgment we do
not know. Vasari says that he caused the wall to be rebuilt with
well-baked carefully selected bricks, and sloped inwards so that the
top projected half a cubit from the bottom. This was intended to
secure the picture from dust. Vasari also relates that Sebastiano del
Piombo, acting on his own responsibility, prepared this wall with a
ground for oil-colours, hoping to be employed by Michelangelo, but
that the latter had it removed, preferring the orthodox method of
fresco-painting. The story, as it stands, is not very probable; yet we
may perhaps conjecture that, before deciding on the system to be
adopted for his great work, Buonarroti thought fit to make experiments
in several surfaces. The painters of that period, as is proved by
Sebastiano's practice, by Lionardo da Vinci's unfortunate innovations
at Florence, and by the experiments of Raffaello's pupils in the hall
of Constantine, not unfrequently invented methods for mural decoration
which should afford the glow and richness of oil-colouring.
Michelangelo may even have proposed at one time to intrust a large
portion of his fresco to Sebastiano's executive skill, and afterwards
have found the same difficulties in collaboration which reduced him to
the necessity of painting the Sistine vault in solitude.

Be that as it may, when the doors of the chapel once closed behind the
master, we hear nothing whatsoever about his doings till they opened
again on Christmas Day in 1541. The reticence of Michelangelo
regarding his own works is one of the most trying things about him. It
is true indeed that his correspondence between 1534 and 1541 almost
entirely fails; still, had it been abundant, we should probably have
possessed but dry and laconic references to matters connected with the
business of his art.

He must have been fully occupied on the Last Judgment during 1536 and
1537. Paul III. was still in correspondence with the Duke of Urbino,
who showed himself not only willing to meet the Pope's wishes with
regard to the Tomb of Julius, but also very well disposed toward the
sculptor. In July 1537, Hieronimo Staccoli wrote to the Duke of
Camerino about a silver salt-cellar which Michelangelo had designed at
his request. This prince, Guidobaldo della Rovere, when he afterwards
succeeded to the Duchy of Urbino, sent a really warm-hearted despatch
to his "dearest Messer Michelangelo." He begins by saying that, though
he still cherishes the strongest wish to see the monument of his uncle
completed, he does not like to interrupt the fresco in the Sistine
Chapel, upon which his Holiness has set his heart. He thoroughly
trusts in Michelangelo's loyalty, and is assured that his desire to
finish the tomb, for the honour of his former patron's memory, is keen
and sincere. Therefore, he hopes that when the picture of the Last
Judgment is terminated, the work will be resumed and carried to a
prosperous conclusion. In the meantime, let Buonarroti attend to his
health, and not put everything again to peril by overstraining his
energies.

Signer Gotti quotes a Papal brief, issued on the 18th of September
1537, in which the history of the Tomb of Julius up to date is set
forth, and Michelangelo's obligations toward the princes of Urbino are
recited. It then proceeds to declare that Clement VII. ordered him to
paint the great wall of the Sistine, and that Paul desires this work
to be carried forward with all possible despatch. He therefore lets it
be publicly known that Michelangelo has not failed to perform his
engagements in the matter of the tomb through any fault or action of
his own, but by the express command of his Holiness. Finally, he
discharges him and his heirs from all liabilities, pecuniary or other,
to which he may appear exposed by the unfulfilled contracts.


III

While thus engaged upon his fresco, Michelangelo received a letter,
dated Venice, September 15, 1537, from that rogue of genius, Pietro
Aretino. It opens in the strain of hyperbolical compliment and florid
rhetoric which Aretino affected when he chose to flatter. The man,
however, was an admirable stylist, the inventor of a new epistolary
manner. Like a volcano, his mind blazed with wit, and buried sound
sense beneath the scoriae and ashes it belched forth. Gifted with a
natural feeling for rhetorical contrast, he knew the effect of some
simple and impressive sentence, placed like a gem of value in the
midst of gimcrack conceits. Thus: "I should not venture to address
you, had not my name, accepted by the ears of every prince in Europe,
outworn much of its native indignity. And it is but meet that that I
should approach you with this reverence; for the world has many kings,
and one only Michelangelo.

"Strange miracle, that Nature, who cannot place aught so high but that
you explore it with your art, should be impotent to stamp upon her
works that majesty which she contains within herself, the immense
power of your style and your chisel! Wherefore, when we gaze on you,
we regret no longer that we may not meet with Pheidias, Apelles, or
Vitruvius, whose spirits were the shadow of your spirit." He piles the
panegyric up to its climax, by adding it is fortunate for those great
artists of antiquity that their masterpieces cannot be compared with
Michelangelo's, since, "being arraigned before the tribunal of our
eyes, we should perforce proclaim you unique as sculptor, unique as
painter, and as architect unique." After the blare of this exordium,
Aretino settles down to the real business of his letter, and
communicates his own views regarding the Last Judgment, which he hears
that the supreme master of all arts is engaged in depicting. "Who
would not quake with terror while dipping his brush into the dreadful
theme? I behold Anti-christ in the midst of thronging multitudes, with
an aspect such as only you could limn. I behold affright upon the
forehead of the living; I see the signs of the extinction of the sun,
the moon, the stars; I see the breath of life exhaling from the
elements; I see Nature abandoned and apart, reduced to barrenness,
crouching in her decrèpitude; I see Time sapless and trembling, for
his end has come, and he is seated on an arid throne; and while I hear
the trumpets of the angels with their thunder shake the hearts of all,
I see both Life and Death convulsed with horrible confusion, the one
striving to resuscitate the dead, the other using all his might to
slay the living; I see Hope and Despair guiding the squadrons of the
good and the cohorts of the wicked; I see the theatre of clouds,
blazing with rays that issue from the purest fires of heaven, upon
which among his hosts Christ sits, ringed round with splendours and
with terrors; I see the radiance of his face, coruscating flames of
light both glad and awful, filling the blest with joy, the damned with
fear intolerable. Then I behold the satellites of the abyss, who with
horrid gestures, to the glory of the saints and martyrs, deride Caesar
and the Alexanders; for it is one thing to have trampled on the world,
but more to have conquered self. I see Fame, with her crowns and palms
trodden under foot, cast out among the wheels of her own chariots. And
to conclude all, I see the dread sentence issue from the mouth of the
Son of God. I see it in the form of two darts, the one of salvation,
the other of damnation; and as they hustle down, I hear the fury of
its onset shock the elemental frame of things, and, with the roar of
thunderings and voices, smash the universal scheme to fragments. I see
the vault of ether merged in gloom, illuminated only by the lights of
Paradise and the furnaces of hell. My thoughts, excited by this vision
of the day of Doom, whisper: 'If we quake in terror before the
handiwork of Buonarroti, how shall we shake and shrink affrighted when
He who shall judge passes sentence on our souls?'"

This description of the Last Day, in which it is more than doubtful
whether a man like Aretino had any sincere faith, possesses
considerable literary interest. In the first place, it is curious as
coming from one who lived on terms of closest intimacy with painters,
and who certainly appreciated art; for this reason, that nothing less
pictorial than the images evoked could be invented. Then, again, in
the first half of the sixteenth century it anticipated the rhetoric of
the _barocco_ period--the eloquence of seventeenth-century divines,
Dutch poets, Jesuit pulpiteers. Aretino's originality consisted in his
precocious divination of a whole new age of taste and style, which was
destined to supersede the purer graces of the Renaissance.

The letter ends with an assurance that if anything could persuade him
to break a resolution he had formed, and to revisit Rome, it would be
his great anxiety to view the Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel with
his own eyes. Michelangelo sent an answer which may be cited as an
example of his peculiar irony. Under the form of elaborate compliment
it conceals the scorn he must have conceived for Aretino and his
insolent advice. Yet he knew how dangerous the man could be, and felt
obliged to humour him.

"Magnificent Messer Pietro, my lord and brother,--The receipt of your
letter gave me both joy and sorrow. I rejoiced exceedingly, since it
came from you, who are without peer in all the world for talent. Yet
at the same time I grieved, inasmuch as, having finished a large part
of the fresco, I cannot realise your conception, which is so complete,
that if the Day of Judgment had come, and you had been present and
seen it with your eyes, your words could not have described it better.
Now, touching an answer to my letter, I reply that I not only desire
it, but I entreat you to write one, seeing that kings and emperors
esteem it the highest favour to be mentioned by your pen. Meanwhile,
if I have anything that you would like, I offer it with all my heart.
In conclusion, do not break your resolve of never revisiting Rome on
account of the picture I am painting, for this would be too much."

Aretino's real object was to wheedle some priceless sketch or drawing
out of the great master. This appears from a second letter written by
him on the 20th of January 1538. "Does not my devotion deserve that I
should receive from you, the prince of sculpture and of painting, one
of those cartoons which you fling into the fire, to the end that
during life I may enjoy it, and in death carry it with me to the
tomb?" After all, we must give Aretino credit for genuine feelings of
admiration toward illustrious artists like Titian, Sansovino, and
Michelangelo. Writing many years after the date of these letters, when
he has seen an engraving of the Last Judgment, he uses terms,
extravagant indeed, but apparently sincere, about its grandeur of
design. Then he repeats his request for a drawing. "Why will you not
repay my devotion to your divine qualities by the gift of some scrap
of a drawing, the least valuable in your eyes? I should certainly
esteem two strokes of the chalk upon a piece of paper more than all
the cups and chains which all the kings and princes gave me." It seems
that Michelangelo continued to correspond with him, and that Benvenuto
Cellini took part in their exchange of letters. But no drawings were
sent; and in course of time the ruffian got the better of the virtuoso
in Aretino's rapacious nature. Without ceasing to fawn and flatter
Michelangelo, he sought occasion to damage his reputation. Thus we
find him writing in January 1546 to the engraver Enea Vico, bestowing
high praise upon a copper-plate which a certain Bazzacco had made from
the Last Judgment, but criticising the picture as "licentious and
likely to cause scandal with the Lutherans, by reason of its immodest
exposure of the nakedness of persons of both sexes in heaven and
hell." It is not clear what Aretino expected from Enea Vico. A
reference to the Duke of Florence seems to indicate that he wished to
arouse suspicions among great and influential persons regarding the
religious and moral quality of Michelangelo's work.

This malevolent temper burst out at last in one of the most remarkable
letters we possess of his. It was obviously intended to hurt and
insult Michelangelo as much as lay within his power of innuendo and
direct abuse. The invective offers so many points of interest with
regard to both men, that I shall not hesitate to translate it here in
full.

"Sir, when I inspected the complete sketch of the whole of your Last
Judgment, I arrived at recognising the eminent graciousness of
Raffaello in its agreeable beauty of invention.

"Meanwhile, as a baptized Christian, I blush before the license, so
forbidden to man's intellect, which you have used in expressing ideas
connected with the highest aims and final ends to which our faith
aspires. So, then, that Michelangelo stupendous in his fame, that
Michelangelo renowned for prudence, that Michelangelo whom all admire,
has chosen to display to the whole world an impiety of irreligion only
equalled by the perfection of his painting! Is it possible that you,
who, since you are divine, do not condescend to consort with human
beings, have done this in the greatest temple built to God, upon the
highest altar raised to Christ, in the most sacred chapel upon earth,
where the mighty hinges of the Church, the venerable priests of our
religion, the Vicar of Christ, with solemn ceremonies and holy
prayers, confess, contemplate, and adore his body, his blood, and his
flesh?

"If it were not infamous to introduce the comparison, I would plume
myself upon my virtue when I wrote _La Nanna_. I would demonstrate the
superiority of my reserve to your indiscretion, seeing that I, while
handling themes lascivious and immodest, use language comely and
decorous, speak in terms beyond reproach and inoffensive to chaste
ears. You, on the contrary, presenting so awful a subject, exhibit
saints and angels, these without earthly decency, and those without
celestial honours.

"The pagans, when they modelled a Diana, gave her clothes; when they
made a naked Venus, hid the parts which are not shown with the hand of
modesty. And here there comes a Christian, who, because he rates art
higher than the faith, deems it a royal spectacle to portray martyrs
and virgins in improper attitudes, to show men dragged down by their
shame, before which things houses of ill-fame would shut the eyes in
order not to see them. Your art would be at home in some voluptuous
bagnio, certainly not in the highest chapel of the world. Less
criminal were it if you were an infidel, than, being a believer, thus
to sap the faith of others. Up to the present time the splendour of
such audacious marvels hath not gone unpunished; for their very
superexcellence is the death of your good name. Restore them to repute
by turning the indecent parts of the damned to flames, and those of
the blessed to sunbeams; or imitate the modesty of Florence, who hides
your David's shame beneath some gilded leaves. And yet that statue is
exposed upon a public square, not in a consecrated chapel.

"As I wish that God may pardon you, I do not write this out of any
resentment for the things I begged of you. In truth, if you had sent
me what you promised, you would only have been doing what you ought to
have desired most eagerly to do in your own interest; for this act of
courtesy would silence the envious tongues which say that only certain
Gerards and Thomases dispose of them.

"Well, if the treasure bequeathed you by Pope Julius, in order that
you might deposit his ashes in an urn of your own carving, was not
enough to make you keep your plighted word, what can I expect from
you? It is not your ingratitude, your avarice, great painter, but the
grace and merit of the Supreme Shepherd, which decide his fame. God
wills that Julius should live renowned for ever in a simple tomb,
inurned in his own merits, and not in some proud monument dependent on
your genius. Meantime, your failure to discharge your obligations is
reckoned to you as an act of thieving.

"Our souls need the tranquil emotions of piety more than the lively
impressions of plastic art. May God, then, inspire his Holiness Paul
with the same thoughts as he instilled into Gregory of blessed memory,
who rather chose to despoil Rome of the proud statues of the Pagan
deities than to let their magnificence deprive the humbler images of
the saints of the devotion of the people.

"Lastly, when you set about composing your picture of the universe and
hell and heaven, if you had steeped your heart with those suggestions
of glory, of honour, and of terror proper to the theme which I
sketched out and offered to you in the letter I wrote you and the
whole world reads, I venture to assert that not only would nature and
all kind influences cease to regret the illustrious talents they
endowed you with, and which to-day render you, by virtue of your art,
an image of the marvellous: but Providence, who sees all things, would
herself continue to watch over such a masterpiece, so long as order
lasts in her government of the hemispheres.

                                           "Your servant,
                                           "The Aretine.

"Now that I have blown off some of the rage I feel against you for the
cruelty you used to my devotion, and have taught you to see that,
while you may be divine, I am not made of water, I bid you tear up
this letter, for I have done the like, and do not forget that I am one
to whose epistles kings and emperors reply.

"To the great Michelangelo Buonarroti in Rome."

The malignancy of this letter is only equalled by its stylistic
ingenuity. Aretino used every means he could devise to wound and
irritate a sensitive nature. The allusion to Raffaello, the comparison
of his own pornographic dialogues with the Last Judgment in the
Sistine, the covert hint that folk gossiped about Michelangelo's
relations to young men, his sneers at the great man's exclusiveness,
his cruel insinuations with regard to the Tomb of Julius, his devout
hope that Paul will destroy the fresco, and the impudent eulogy of his
precious letter on the Last Day, were all nicely calculated to annoy.
Whether the missive was duly received by Buonarroti we do not know.
Gaye asserts that it appears to have been sent through the post. He
discovered it in the Archives of the Strozzi Palace.

The virtuous Pietro Aretino was not the only one to be scandalised by
the nudities of the Last Judgment; and indeed it must be allowed that
when Michelangelo treated such a subject in such a manner, he was
pushing the principle of art for art's sake to its extremity. One of
the most popular stories told about this work shows that it early
began to create a scandal. When it was three fourths finished, Pope
Paul went to see the fresco, attended by Messer Biagio da Cesena, his
Master of the Ceremonies. On being asked his opinion of the painting,
Messer Biagio replied that he thought it highly improper to expose so
many naked figures in a sacred picture, and that it was more fit for a
place of debauchery than for the Pope's chapel. Michelangelo, nettled
by this, drew the prelate's portrait to the life, and placed him in
hell with horns on his head and a serpent twisted round his loins.
Messer Biagio, finding himself in this plight, and being no doubt
laughed at by his friends, complained to the Pope, who answered that
he could do nothing to help him. "Had the painter sent you to
Purgatory, I would have used my best efforts to get you released; but
I exercise no influence in hell; _ubi nulla est redemptio_." Before
Michelangelo's death, his follower, Daniele da Volterra, was employed
to provide draperies for the most obnoxious figures, and won thereby
the name of _Il Braghettone_, or the breeches-maker. Paul IV. gave the
painter this commission, having previously consulted Buonarroti on the
subject. The latter is said to have replied to the Pope's messenger:
"Tell his Holiness that this is a small matter, and can easily be set
straight. Let him look to setting the world in order: to reform a
picture costs no great trouble." Later on, during the Pontificate of
Pio V., a master named Girolamo da Fano continued the process begun by
Daniele da Volterra. As a necessary consequence of this tribute to
modesty, the scheme of Michelangelo's colouring and the balance of his
masses have been irretrievably damaged.


IV

Vasari says that not very long before the Last Judgment was finished,
Michelangelo fell from the scaffolding, and seriously hurt his leg.
The pain he suffered and his melancholy made him shut himself up at
home, where he refused to be treated by a doctor. There was a
Florentine physician in Rome, however, of capricious humour, who
admired the arts, and felt a real affection for Buonarroti. This man
contrived to creep into the house by some privy entrance, and roamed
about it till he found the master. He then insisted upon remaining
there on watch and guard until he had effected a complete cure. The
name of this excellent friend, famous for his skill and science in
those days, was Baccio Rontini.

After his recovery Michelangelo returned to work, and finished the
Last Judgment in a few months. It was exposed to the public on
Christmas Day in 1541.

Time, negligence, and outrage, the dust of centuries, the burned
papers of successive conclaves, the smoke of altar-candles, the
hammers and the hangings of upholsterers, the brush of the
breeches-maker and restorer, have so dealt with the Last Judgment that
it is almost impossible to do it justice now. What Michelangelo
intended by his scheme of colour is entirely lost. Not only did
Daniele da Volterra, an execrable colourist, dab vividly tinted
patches upon the modulated harmonies of flesh-tones painted by the
master; but the whole surface has sunk into a bluish fog, deepening to
something like lamp-black around the altar. Nevertheless, in its
composition the fresco may still be studied; and after due inspection,
aided by photographic reproductions of each portion, we are not unable
to understand the enthusiasm which so nobly and profoundly planned a
work of art aroused among contemporaries.

It has sometimes been asserted that this enormous painting, the
largest and most comprehensive in the world, is a tempest of
contending forms, a hurly-burly of floating, falling, soaring, and
descending figures. Nothing can be more opposed to the truth.
Michelangelo was sixty-six years of age when he laid his brush down at
the end of the gigantic task. He had long outlived the spontaneity of
youthful ardour. His experience through half a century in the planning
of monuments, the painting of the Sistine vault, the designing of
façades and sacristies and libraries, had developed the architectonic
sense which was always powerful in his conceptive faculty.
Consequently, we are not surprised to find that, intricate and
confused as the scheme may appear to an unpractised eye, it is in
reality a design of mathematical severity, divided into four bands or
planes of grouping. The wall, since it occupies one entire end of a
long high building, is naturally less broad than lofty. The pictorial
divisions are therefore horizontal in the main, though so combined and
varied as to produce the effect of multiplied curves, balancing and
antiphonally inverting their lines of sinuosity. The pendentive upon
which the prophet Jonah sits, descends and breaks the surface at the
top, leaving a semicircular compartment on each side of its corbel.
Michelangelo filled these upper spaces with two groups of wrestling
angels, the one bearing a huge cross, the other a column, in the air.
The cross and whipping-post are the chief emblems of Christ's Passion.
The crown of thorns is also there, the sponge, the ladder, and the
nails. It is with no merciful intent that these signs of our Lord's
suffering are thus exhibited. Demonic angels, tumbling on clouds like
Leviathans, hurl them to and fro in brutal wrath above the crowd of
souls, as though to demonstrate the justice of damnation. In spite of
a God's pain and shameful death, mankind has gone on sinning. The
Judge is what the crimes of the world and Italy have made him.
Immediately below the corbel, and well detached from the squadrons of
attendant saints, Christ rises from His throne. His face is turned in
the direction of the damned, His right hand is lifted as though loaded
with thunderbolts for their annihilation. He is a ponderous young
athlete; rather say a mass of hypertrophied muscles, with the features
of a vulgarised Apollo. The Virgin sits in a crouching attitude at His
right side, slightly averting her head, as though in painful
expectation of the coming sentence. The saints and martyrs who
surround Christ and His Mother, while forming one of the chief planes
in the composition, are arranged in four unequal groups of subtle and
surprising intricacy. All bear the emblems of their cruel deaths, and
shake them in the sight of Christ as though appealing to His
judgment-seat. It has been charitably suggested that they intend to
supplicate for mercy. I cannot, however, resist the impression that
they are really demanding rigid justice. S. Bartholomew flourishes his
flaying-knife and dripping skin with a glare of menace. S. Catherine
struggles to raise her broken wheel. S. Sebastian frowns down on hell
with a sheaf of arrows quivering in his stalwart arm. The saws, the
carding-combs, the crosses, and the grid-irons, all subserve the same
purpose of reminding Christ that, if He does not damn the wicked,
confessors will have died with Him in vain. It is singular that, while
Michelangelo depicted so many attitudes of expectation, eagerness,
anxiety, and astonishment in the blest, he has given to none of them
the expression of gratitude, or love, or sympathy, or shrinking awe.
Men and women, old and young alike, are human beings of Herculean
build. Paradise, according to Buonarroti's conception, was not meant
for what is graceful, lovely, original, and tender. The hosts of
heaven are adult and over-developed gymnasts. Yet, while we record
these impressions, it would be unfair to neglect the spiritual beauty
of some souls embracing after long separation in the grave, with
folding arms, and clasping hands, and clinging lips. While painting
these, Michelangelo thought peradventure of his father and his
brother.

The two planes which I have attempted to describe occupy the upper and
the larger portion of the composition. The third in order is made up
of three masses. In the middle floats a band of Titanic cherubs,
blowing their long trumpets over earth and sea to wake the dead.
Dramatically, nothing can be finer than the strained energy and
superhuman force of these superb creatures. Their attitudes compel our
imagination to hear the crashing thunders of the trump of doom. To the
left of the spectator are souls ascending to be judged, some floating
through vague ether, enwrapped with grave-clothes, others assisted by
descending saints and angels, who reach a hand, a rosary, to help the
still gross spirit in its flight. To the right are the condemned,
sinking downwards to their place of torment, spurned by seraphs,
cuffed by angelic grooms, dragged by demons, hurling, howling, huddled
in a mass of horror. It is just here, and still yet farther down, that
Michelangelo put forth all his power as a master of expression. While
the blessed display nothing which is truly proper to their state of
holiness and everlasting peace, the damned appear in every realistic
aspect of most stringent agony and terror. The colossal forms of flesh
with which the multitudes of saved and damned are equally endowed,
befit that extremity of physical and mental anguish more than they
suit the serenity of bliss eternal. There is a wretch, twined round
with fiends, gazing straight before him as he sinks; one half of his
face is buried in his hand, the other fixed in a stony spasm of
despair, foreshadowing perpetuity of hell. Nothing could express with
sublimity of a higher order the sense of irremediable loss, eternal
pain, a future endless without hope, than the rigid dignity of this
not ignoble sinner's dread. Just below is the place to which the
doomed are sinking. Michelangelo reverted to Dante for the symbolism
chosen to portray hell. Charon, the demon, with eyes of burning coal,
compels a crowd of spirits in his ferryboat. They land and are
received by devils, who drag them before Minos, judge of the infernal
regions. He towers at the extreme right end of the fresco, indicating
that the nether regions yawn infinitely deep, beyond our ken; just as
the angels above Christ suggest a region of light and glory, extending
upward through illimitable space. The scene of judgment on which
attention is concentrated forms but an episode in the universal,
sempiternal scheme of things. Balancing hell, on the left hand of the
spectator, is brute earth, the grave, the forming and the swallowing
clay, out of which souls, not yet acquitted or condemned, emerge with
difficulty, in varied forms of skeletons or corpses, slowly thawing
into life eternal.

Vasari, in his description of the Last Judgment, seized upon what
after all endures as the most salient aspect of this puzzling work, at
once so fascinating and so repellent. "It is obvious," he says, "that
the peerless painter did not aim at anything but the portrayal of the
human body in perfect proportions and most varied attitudes, together
with the passions and affections of the soul. That was enough for him,
and here he has no equal. He wanted to exhibit the grand style:
consummate draughtsmanship in the nude, mastery over all problems of
design. He concentrated his power upon the human form, attending to
that alone, and neglecting all subsidiary things, as charm of colour,
capricious inventions, delicate devices and novelties of fancy."
Vasari might have added that Michelangelo also neglected what ought to
have been a main object of his art: convincing eloquence, the
solemnity proper to his theme, spirituality of earthly grossness quit.
As a collection of athletic nudes in all conceivable postures of rest
and action, of foreshortening, of suggested movement, the Last
Judgment remains a stupendous miracle. Nor has the aged master lost
his cunning for the portrayal of divinely simple faces, superb limbs,
masculine beauty, in the ideal persons of young men. The picture, when
we dwell long enough upon its details, emerges into prominence,
moreover, as indubitably awe-inspiring, terrifying, dreadful in its
poignant expression of wrath, retaliation, thirst for vengeance,
cruelty, and helpless horror. But the supreme point even of Doomsday,
of the Dies Irae, has not been seized. We do not hear the still small
voice of pathos and of human hope which thrills through Thomas a
Celano's hymn:--

  _Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
  Redemisti crucem passus:
  Tantus labor non sit cassus._

The note is one of sustained menace and terror, and the total scheme
of congregated forms might be compared to a sense-deafening solo on a
trombone. While saying this, we must remember that it was the constant
impulse of Michelangelo to seize one moment only, and what he deemed
the most decisive moment, in the theme he had to develop. Having
selected the instant of time at which Christ, half risen from his
Judgment-seat of cloud, raises an omnific hand to curse, the master
caused each fibre of his complex composition to thrill with the
tremendous passion of that coming sentence. The long series of designs
for Crucifixions, Depositions from the Cross, and Pietàs which we
possess, all of them belonging to a period of his life not much later
than 1541, prove that his nature was quite as sensitive to pathos as
to terror; only, it was not in him to attempt a combination of terror
and pathos.

"He aimed at the portrayal of the human body. He wanted to exhibit the
grand style." So says Vasari, and Vasari is partly right. But we must
not fall into the paradox, so perversely maintained by Ruskin in his
lecture on Tintoretto and Michelangelo, that the latter was a cold and
heartless artist, caring chiefly for the display of technical skill
and anatomical science. Partial and painful as we may find the meaning
of the Last Judgment, that meaning has been only too powerfully and
personally felt. The denunciations of the prophets, the woes of the
Apocalypse, the invectives of Savonarola, the tragedies of Italian
history, the sense of present and indwelling sin, storm through and
through it. Technically, the masterpiece bears signs of fatigue and
discontent, in spite of its extraordinary vigour of conception and
execution. The man was old and tired, thwarted in his wishes and
oppressed with troubles. His very science had become more formal, his
types more arid and schematic, than they used to be. The thrilling
life, the divine afflatus, of the Sistine vault have passed out of the
Last Judgment. Wholly admirable, unrivalled, and unequalled by any
other human work upon a similar scale as this fresco may be in its
command over the varied resources of the human body, it does not
strike our mind as the production of a master glorying in carnal pride
and mental insolence, but rather as that of one discomfited and
terrified, upon the point of losing heart.

Henri Beyle, jotting down his impressions in the Sistine Chapel, was
reminded of the Grand Army's flight after the burning of Moscow.
"When, in our disastrous retreat from Russia, it chanced that we were
suddenly awakened in the middle of the dark night by an obstinate
cannonading, which at each moment seemed to gain in nearness, then all
the forces of a man's nature gathered close around his heart; he felt
himself in the presence of fate, and having no attention left for
things of vulgar interest, he made himself ready to dispute his life
with destiny. The sight of Michelangelo's picture has brought back to
my consciousness that almost forgotten sensation." This is a piece of
just and sympathetic criticism, and upon its note I am fain to close.


V

It is probable that the fame of the Last Judgment spread rapidly
abroad through Italy, and that many visits to Rome were made for the
purpose of inspecting it. Complimentary sonnets must also have been
addressed to the painter. I take it that Niccolò Martelli sent some
poems on the subject from Florence, for Michelangelo replied upon the
20th of January 1542 in the following letter of singular modesty and
urbane kindness:--

"I received from Messer Vincenzo Perini your letter with two sonnets
and a madrigal. The letter and the sonnet addressed to me are so
marvellously fine, that if a man should find in them anything to
castigate, it would be impossible to castigate him as thoroughly as
they are castigated. It is true they praise me so much, that had I
Paradise in my bosom, less of praise would suffice. I perceive that
you suppose me to be just what God wishes that I were. I am a poor man
and of little merit, who plod along in the art which God gave me, to
lengthen out my life as far as possible. Such as I am, I remain your
servant and that of all the house of Martelli. I thank you for your
letter and the poems, but not as much as duty bids, for I cannot soar
to such heights of courtesy."

When the Last Judgment was finished, Michelangelo not unreasonably
hoped that he might resume his work upon the Tomb of Julius. But this
was not to be. Antonio da San Gallo had just completed the Chapel of
the Holy Sacrament in the Vatican, which is known as the Cappella
Paolina, and the Pope resolved that its frescoes should be painted by
Buonarroti. The Duke of Urbino, yielding to his wishes, wrote to
Michelangelo upon the 6th of March 1542, saying that he should be
quite satisfied if the three statues by his hand, including the Moses,
were assigned to the tomb, the execution of the rest being left to
competent workmen under his direction.

In effect, we possess documents proving that the tomb was consigned to
several masters during this year, 1542. The first is a contract dated
February 27, whereby Raffaello da Montelupo undertakes to finish three
statues, two of these being the Active Life and the Contemplative. The
second is a contract dated May 16, in which Michelangelo assigns the
architectural and ornamental portion of the monument conjointly to
Giovanni de' Marchesi and Francesco d' Amadore, called Urbino,
providing that differences which may arise between them shall be
referred to Donato Giannotti. There is a third contract, under date
June 1, about the same work intrusted to the same two craftsmen,
prescribing details with more exactitude. It turned out that the
apprehension of disagreement between the masters about the division of
their labour was not unfounded, for Michelangelo wrote twice in July
to his friend Luigi del Riccio, complaining bitterly of their
dissensions, and saying that he has lost two months in these trifles.
He adds that one of them is covetous, the other mad, and he fears
their quarrel may end in wounds or murder. The matter disturbs his
mind greatly, chiefly on account of Urbino, because he has brought him
up, and also because of the time wasted over "their ignorance and
bestial stupidity." The dispute was finally settled by the
intervention of three master-masons (acting severally for
Michelangelo, Urbino, and Giovanni), who valued the respective
portions of the work.

I must interrupt this narrative of the tomb to explain who some of the
persons just mentioned were, and how they came to be connected with
Buonarroti. Donato Giannotti was the famous writer upon political and
literary topics, who, after playing a conspicuous part in the
revolution of Florence against the Medici, now lived in exile at Rome.
His dialogues on Dante, and Francesco d'Olanda's account of the
meetings at S. Silvestro, prove that he formed a member of that little
circle which included Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna. Luigi del
Riccio was a Florentine merchant, settled in the banking-house of the
Strozzi at Rome. For many years he acted as Michelangelo's man of
business; but their friendship was close and warm in many other ways.
They were drawn together by a common love of poetry, and by the charm
of a rarely gifted youth called Cecchino dei Bracci. Urbino was the
great sculptor's servant and man of all work, the last and best of
that series, which included Stefano Miniatore, Pietro Urbino, Antonio
Mini. Michelangelo made Urbino's fortune, mourned his death, and
undertook the guardianship of his children, as will appear in due
course. All through his life the great sculptor was dependent upon
some trusted servant, to whom he became personally attached, and who
did not always repay his kindness with gratitude. After Urbino's
death, Ascanio Condivi filled a similar post, and to this circumstance
we owe the most precious of our contemporary biographies.

Our most important document with regard to the Tomb of Julius is an
elaborate petition addressed by Michelangelo to Paul III. upon the
20th of July. It begins by referring to the contract of April 18,
1532, and proceeds to state that the Pope's new commission for the
Cappella Paolina has interfered once more with the fulfilment of the
sculptor's engagements. Then it recites the terms suggested by the
Duke of Urbino in his letter of March 6, 1542, according to which
three of the statues of the tomb may be assigned to capable craftsmen,
while the other three, including the Moses, will have to be finished
by Michelangelo himself. Raffaello da Montelupo has already undertaken
the Madonna and Child, a Prophet, and a Sibyl. Giovanni de' Marchese
and Francesco da Urbino are at work upon the architecture. It remains
for Michelangelo to furnish the Moses and two Captives, all three of
which are nearly completed. The Captives, however, were designed for a
much larger monument, and will not suit the present scheme.
Accordingly, he has blocked out two other figures, representing the
Active and Contemplative Life. But even these he is unable to finish,
since the painting of the chapel absorbs his time and energy. He
therefore prays the Pope to use his influence with the Duke of Urbino,
so that he may be henceforward wholly and absolutely freed from all
obligations in the matter of the tomb. The Moses he can deliver in a
state of perfection, but he wishes to assign the Active and
Contemplative Life to Raffaello or to any other sculptor who may be
preferred by the Duke. Finally, he is prepared to deposit a sum of
1200 crowns for the total costs, and to guarantee that the work shall
be efficiently executed in all its details.

It is curious that in this petition and elsewhere no mention is made
of what might be considered the most important portion of the
tomb--namely, the portrait statue of Julius.

The document was presented to Messer Piero Giovanni Aliotti, Bishop of
Forli, and keeper of the wardrobe to Pope Paul. Accordingly, the final
contract regarding the tomb was drawn up and signed upon the 20th of
August. I need not recapitulate its terms, for I have already printed
a summary of them in a former chapter of this work. Suffice it to say
that Michelangelo was at last released from all active responsibility
with regard to the tomb, and that the vast design of his early manhood
now dwindled down to the Moses. To Raffaello da Montelupo was left the
completion of the remaining five statues.

This lamentable termination to the cherished scheme of his lifetime
must have preyed upon Michelangelo's spirits. The letters in which he
alludes to it, after the contract had been signed, breathe a spirit of
more than usual fretfulness. Moreover, the Duke of Urbino now delayed
to send his ratification, by which alone the deed could become valid.
In October, writing to Del Riccio, Michelangelo complains that Messer
Aliotti is urging him to begin painting in the chapel; but the plaster
is not yet fit to work on. Meanwhile, although he has deposited 1400
crowns, "which would have kept him working for seven years, and would
have enabled him to finish two tombs," the Duke's ratification does
not come. "It is easy enough to see what that means without writing it
in words! Enough; for the loyalty of thirty-six years, and for having
given myself of my own free will to others, I deserve no better.
Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin, and
I go continually from bad to worse. Better would it have been for me
if I had set myself to making matches in my youth! I should not be in
such distress of mind.... I will not remain under this burden, nor be
vilified every day for a swindler by those who have robbed my life and
honour. Only death or the Pope can extricate me." It appears that at
this time the Duke of Urbino's agents were accusing him of having lent
out moneys which he had received on account for the execution of the
monument. Then follows, in the same month of October, that stormy
letter to some prelate, which is one of the most weighty
autobiographical documents from the hand of Michelangelo in our
possession.

"Monsignore,--Your lordship sends to tell me that I must begin to
paint, and have no anxiety. I answer that one paints with the brain
and not with the hands; and he who has not his brains at his command
produces work that shames him. Therefore, until my business is
settled, I can do nothing good. The ratification of the last contract
does not come. On the strength of the other, made before Clement, I am
daily stoned as though I had crucified Christ.... My whole youth and
manhood have been lost, tied down to this tomb.... I see multitudes
with incomes of 2000 or 3000 crowns lying in bed, while I with all my
immense labour toil to grow poor.... I am not a thief and usurer, but
a citizen of Florence, noble, the son of an honest man, and do not
come from Cagli." (These and similar outbursts of indignant passion
scattered up and down the epistle, show to what extent the sculptor's
irritable nature had been exasperated by calumnious reports. As he
openly declares, he is being driven mad by pin-pricks. Then follows
the detailed history of his dealings with Julius, which, as I have
already made copious use of it, may here be given in outline.) "In the
first year of his pontificate, Julius commissioned me to make his
tomb, and I stayed eight months at Carrara quarrying marbles and
sending them to the Piazza of S. Peter's, where I had my lodgings
behind S. Caterina. Afterwards the Pope decided not to build his tomb
during his lifetime, and set me down to painting. Then he kept me two
years at Bologna casting his statue in bronze, which has been
destroyed. After that I returned to Rome and stayed with him until his
death, always keeping my house open without post or pension, living on
the money for the tomb, since I had no other income. After the death
of Julius, Aginensis wanted me to go on with it, but on a larger
scale. So I brought the marbles to the Macello dei Corvi, and got that
part of the mural scheme finished which is now walled in at S. Pietro
in Vincoli, and made the figures which I have at home still.
Meanwhile, Leo, not wishing me to work at the tomb, pretended that he
wanted to complete the façade of S. Lorenzo at Florence, and begged me
of the Cardinal.

"To continue my history of the tomb of Julius, I say that when he
changed his mind about building it in his lifetime, some shiploads of
marble came to the Ripa, which I had ordered a short while before from
Carrara, and as I could not get money from the Pope to pay the
freightage, I had to borrow 150 or 200 ducats from Baldassare
Balducci--that is, from the bank of Jacopo Gallo. At the same time
workmen came from Florence, some of whom are still alive; and I
furnished the house which Julius gave me behind S. Caterina with beds
and other furniture for the men, and what was wanted for the work of
the tomb. All this being done without money, I was greatly
embarrassed. Accordingly, I urged the Pope with all my power to go
forward with the business, and he had me turned away by a groom one
morning when I came to speak upon the matter." (Here intervenes the
story of the flight to Florence, which has been worked up in the
course of Chapter IV.) "Later on, while I was at Florence, Julius sent
three briefs to the Signory. At last the latter sent for me and said:
'We do not want to go to war with Pope Julius because of you. You must
return; and if you do so, we will write you letters of such authority
that if he does you harm, he will be doing it to this Signory.'
Accordingly, I took the letters, and went back to the Pope, and what
followed would be long to tell!

"All the dissensions between Pope Julius and me arose from the envy of
Bramante and Raffaello da Urbino; and this was the cause of my not
finishing the tomb in his lifetime. They wanted to ruin me. Raffaello
had indeed good reason, for all he had of art, he had from me."

Twice again in October Michelangelo wrote to Luigi del Riccio about
the ratification of his contract. "I cannot live, far less paint." "I
am resolved to stop at home and finish the three figures, as I agreed
to do. This would be better for me than to drag my limbs daily to the
Vatican. Let him who likes get angry. If the Pope wants me to paint,
he must send for the Duke's ambassador and procure the ratification."

What happened at this time about the tomb can be understood by help of
a letter written to Salvestro da Montauto on the 3rd of February 1545.
Michelangelo refers to the last contract, and says that the Duke of
Urbino ratified the deed. Accordingly, five statues were assigned to
Raffaello da Montelupo. "But while I was painting the new chapel for
Pope Paul III., his Holiness, at my earnest prayer, allowed me a
little time, during which I finished two of them, namely, the Active
and Contemplative Life, with my own hand."

With all his good-will, however, Michelangelo did not wholly extricate
himself from the anxieties of this miserable affair. As late as the
year 1553, Annibale Caro wrote to Antonio Gallo entreating him to
plead for the illustrious old man with the Duke of Urbino. "I assure
you that the extreme distress caused him by being in disgrace with his
Excellency is sufficient to bring his grey hairs to the grave before
his time."


VI

The Tomb of Julius, as it now appears in the Church of S. Pietro in
Vincoli in Rome, is a monument composed of two discordant parts, by
inspecting which a sympathetic critic is enabled to read the dreary
history of its production. As Condivi allows, it was a thing
"rattoppata e rifatta," patched together and hashed up.

The lower half represents what eventually survived from the grandiose
original design for one façade of that vast mount of marble which was
to have been erected in the Tribune of St. Peter's. The socles, upon
which captive Arts and Sciences were meant to stand, remain; but
instead of statues, inverted consoles take their places, and lead
lamely up to the heads and busts of terminal old men. The pilasters of
these terms have been shortened. There are four of them, enclosing two
narrow niches, where beautiful female figures, the Active Life and the
Contemplative Life, still testify to the enduring warmth and vigour of
the mighty sculptor's genius. As single statues duly worked into a
symmetrical scheme, these figures would be admirable, since grace of
line and symbolical contrast of attitude render both charming. In
their present position they are reduced to comparative insignificance
by heavy architectural surroundings. The space left free between the
niches and the terms is assigned to the seated statue of Moses, which
forms the main attraction of the monument, and of which, as a
masterpiece of Michelangelo's best years, I shall have to speak later
on.

The architectural plan and the surface decoration of this lower half
are conceived in a style belonging to the earlier Italian Renaissance.
Arabesques and masks and foliated patterns adorn the flat slabs. The
recess of each niche is arched with a concave shell. The terminal
busts are boldly modelled, and impose upon the eye. The whole is rich
in detail, and, though somewhat arid in fanciful invention, it carries
us back to the tradition of Florentine work by Mino da Fiesole and
Desiderio da Settignano.

When we ascend to the upper portion, we seem to have passed, as indeed
we do pass, into the region of the new manner created by Michelangelo
at S. Lorenzo. The orders of the pilasters are immensely tall in
proportion to the spaces they enclose. Two of these spaces, those on
the left and right side, are filled in above with meaningless
rectangular recesses, while seated statues occupy less than a whole
half in altitude of the niches. The architectural design is
nondescript, corresponding to no recognised style, unless it be a
bastard Roman Doric. There is absolutely no decorative element except
four shallow masks beneath the abaci of the pilasters. All is cold and
broad and dry, contrasting strangely with the accumulated details of
the lower portion. In the central niche, immediately above the Moses,
stands a Madonna of fine sculptural quality, beneath a shallow arch,
which repeats the shell-pattern. At her feet lies the extended figure
of Pope Julius II., crowned with the tiara, raising himself in a
half-recumbent attitude upon his right arm.

Of the statues in the upper portion, by far the finest in artistic
merit is the Madonna. This dignified and gracious lady, holding the
Divine Child in her arms, must be reckoned among Buonarroti's triumphs
in dealing with the female form. There is more of softness and
sweetness here than in the Madonna of the Medicean sacristy, while the
infant playing with a captured bird is full of grace. Michelangelo
left little in this group for the chisel of Montelupo to deform by
alteration. The seated female, a Sibyl, on the left, bears equally the
stamp of his design. Executed by himself, this would have been a
masterpiece for grandeur of line and dignified repose. As it is, the
style, while seeming to aim at breadth, remains frigid and formal. The
so-called Prophet on the other side counts among the signal failures
of Italian sculpture. It has neither beauty nor significance. Like a
heavy Roman consul of the Decadence, the man sits there, lumpy and
meaningless; we might take it for a statue-portrait erected by some
provincial municipality to celebrate a local magnate; but of prophecy
or inspiration there is nothing to detect in this inert figure. We
wonder why he should be placed so near a Pope.

It is said that Michelangelo expressed dissatisfaction with
Montelupo's execution of the two statues finally committed to his
charge, and we know from documents that the man was ill when they were
finished. Still we can hardly excuse the master himself for the cold
and perfunctory performance of a task which had such animated and
heroic beginnings. Competent judges, who have narrowly surveyed the
monument, say that the stones are badly put together, and the
workmanship is defective in important requirements of the
sculptor-mason's craft. Those who defend Buonarroti must fall back
upon the theory that weariness and disappointment made him at last
indifferent to the fate of a design which had cost him so much
anxiety, pecuniary difficulties, and frustrated expectations in past
years. He let the Tomb of Julius, his first vast dream of art, be
botched up out of dregs and relics by ignoble hands, because he was
heart-sick and out of pocket.

As artist, Michelangelo might, one thinks, have avoided the glaring
discord of styles between the upper and the lower portions of the
tomb; but sensitiveness to harmony of manner lies not in the nature of
men who rapidly evolve new forms of thought and feeling from some
older phase. Probably he felt the width and the depth of that gulf
which divided himself in 1505 from the same self in 1545, less than we
do. Forty years in a creative nature introduce subtle changes, which
react upon the spirit of the age, and provoke subsequent criticism to
keen comments and comparisons. The individual and his contemporaries
are not so well aware of these discrepancies as posterity.

The Moses, which Paul and his courtiers thought sufficient to
commemorate a single Pope, stands as the eminent jewel of this
defrauded tomb. We may not be attracted by it. We may even be repelled
by the goat-like features, the enormous beard, the ponderous muscles,
and the grotesque garments of the monstrous statue. In order to do it
justice, Jet us bear in mind that the Moses now remains detached from
a group of environing symbolic forms which Michelangelo designed.
Instead of taking its place as one among eight corresponding and
counterbalancing giants, it is isolated, thrust forward on the eye;
whereas it was intended to be viewed from below in concert with a
scheme of balanced figures, male and female, on the same colossal
scale.

Condivi writes not amiss, in harmony with the gusto of his age, and
records what a gentle spirit thought about the Moses then: "Worthy of
all admiration is the statue of Moses, duke and captain of the
Hebrews. He sits posed in the attitude of a thinker and a sage,
holding beneath his right arm the tables of the law, and with the left
hand giving support to his chin, like one who is tired and full of
anxious cares. From the fingers of this hand escape long flowing lines
of beard, which are very beautiful in their effect upon the eye. The
face is full of vivid life and spiritual force, fit to inspire both
love and terror, as perhaps the man in truth did. He bears, according
to the customary wont of artists while portraying Moses, two horns
upon the head, not far removed from the summit of the brows. He is
robed and girt about the legs with hosen, the arms bare, and all the
rest after the antique fashion. It is a marvellous work, and full of
art: mostly in this, that underneath those subtleties of raiment one
can perceive the naked form, the garments detracting nothing from the
beauty of the body; as was the universal way of working with this
master in all his clothed figures, whether painted or sculptured."

Except that Condivi dwelt too much upon the repose of this
extraordinary statue, too little upon its vivacity and agitating
unrest, his description serves our purpose as well as any other. He
does not seem to have felt the turbulence and carnal insolence which
break our sense of dignity and beauty now.

Michelangelo left the Moses incomplete in many details, after bringing
the rest of the figure to a high state of polish. Tooth-marks of the
chisel are observable upon the drapery, the back, both hands, part of
the neck, the hair, and the salient horns. It seems to have been his
habit, as Condivi and Cellini report, to send a finished statue forth
with some sign-manual of roughness in the final touches. That gave his
work the signature of the sharp tools he had employed upon it. And
perhaps he loved the marble so well that he did not like to quit the
good white stone without sparing a portion of its clinging strength
and stubbornness, as symbol of the effort of his brain and hand to
educe live thought from inert matter.

In the century after Michelangelo's death a sonnet was written by
Giovanni Battista Felice Zappi upon this Moses. It is famous in
Italian literature, and expresses adequately the ideas which occur to
ordinary minds when they approach the Moses. For this reason I think
that it is worthy of being introduced in a translation here:--

 _Who is the man who, carved in this huge stone,
    Sits giant, all renowned things of art
    Transcending? he whose living lips, that start,
    Speak eager words? I hear, and take their tone.

  He sure is Moses. That the chin hath shown
    By its dense honour, the brows' beam bipart:
    'Tis Moses, when he left the Mount, with part,
    A great-part, of God's glory round him thrown.

  Such was the prophet when those sounding vast
    Waters he held suspense about him; such
    When he the sea barred, made it gulph his foe.

  And you, his tribes, a vile calf did you cast?
    Why not an idol worth like this so much?
    To worship that had wrought you lesser woe._


VII

Before quitting the Tomb of Julius, I must discuss the question of
eight scattered statues, partly unfinished, which are supposed, on
more or less good grounds, to have been designed for this monument.
About two of them, the bound Captives in the Louvre, there is no
doubt. Michelangelo mentions these in his petition to Pope Paul,
saying that the change of scale implied by the last plan obliged him
to abstain from using them. We also know their history. When the
sculptor was ill at Rome in 1544, Luigi del Riccio nursed him in the
palace of the Strozzi. Gratitude for this hospitality induced him to
make a present of the statues to Ruberto degli Strozzi, who took them
to France and offered them to the King. Francis gave them to the
Constable de Montmorenci; and he placed them in his country-house of
Ecouen. In 1793 the Republic offered them for sale, when they were
bought for the French nation by M. Lenoir.

One of these Captives deserves to be called the most fascinating
creation of the master's genius. Together with the Adam, it may be
taken as fixing his standard of masculine beauty. He is a young man,
with head thrown back, as though in swoon or slumber; the left arm
raised above the weight of massy curls, the right hand resting on his
broad full bosom. There is a divine charm in the tranquil face, tired
but not fatigued, sad but not melancholy, suggesting that the sleeping
mind of the immortal youth is musing upon solemn dreams. Praxiteles
might have so expressed the Genius of Eternal Repose; but no Greek
sculptor would have given that huge girth to the thorax, or have
exaggerated the mighty hand with such delight in sinewy force. These
qualities, peculiar to Buonarroti's sense of form, do not detract from
the languid pose and supple rhythm of the figure, which flows down, a
sinuous line of beauty, through the slightly swelling flanks, along
the finely moulded thighs, to loveliest feet emerging from the marble.
It is impossible, while gazing on this statue, not to hear a strain of
intellectual music. Indeed, like melody, it tells no story, awakes no
desire, but fills the soul with something beyond thought or passion,
subtler and more penetrating than words.

The companion figure has not equal grace. Athletically muscular,
though adolescent, the body of this young man, whose hands are tied
behind his back, is writhed into an attitude of vehement protest and
rebellion. He raises his face with appealing pain to heaven. The head,
which is only blocked out, overweighs the form, proving that
Michelangelo, unlike the Greeks, did not observe a fixed canon of
proportion for the human frame. This statue bears a strong resemblance
in feeling and conception to the Apollo designed for Baccio Valori.

There are four rough-hewn male figures, eccentrically wrought into the
rock-work of a grotto in the Boboli Gardens, which have been assigned
to the Tomb of Julius. This attribution involves considerable
difficulties. In the first place, the scale is different, and the
stride of one of them, at any rate, is too wide for the pedestals of
that monument. Then their violent contortions and ponderous adult
forms seem to be at variance with the spirit of the Captives. Mr.
Heath Wilson may perhaps be right in his conjecture that Michelangelo
began them for the sculptural decoration on the façade of S. Lorenzo.
Their incompleteness baffles criticism; yet we feel instinctively that
they were meant for the open air and for effect at a considerable
distance. They remind us of Deucalion's men growing out of the stones
he threw behind his back. We could not wish them to be finished, or to
lose their wild attraction, as of primeval beings, the remnants of dim
generations nearer than ourselves to elemental nature. No better
specimens of Buonarroti's way of working in the marble could be
chosen. Almost savage hatchings with the point blend into finer
touches from the toothed chisel; and here and there the surface has
been treated with innumerable smoothing lines that round it into skin
and muscle. To a man who chiselled thus, marble must have yielded like
softest freestone beneath his tools; and how recklessly he wrought is
clear from the defective proportions of one old man's figure, whose
leg below the knee is short beyond all excuse.

A group of two figures, sometimes called the Victory, now in the
Bargello Palace, was catalogued without hesitation by Vasari among the
statues for the tomb. A young hero, of gigantic strength and height,
stands firmly poised upon one foot, while his other leg, bent at the
knee, crushes the back of an old man doubled up beneath him. In the
face of the vanquished warrior critics have found a resemblance to
Michelangelo. The head of the victorious youth seems too small for his
stature, and the features are almost brutally vacuous, though burning
with an insolent and carnal beauty. The whole forcible figure
expresses irresistible energy and superhuman litheness combined with
massive strength. This group cannot be called pleasing, and its great
height renders it almost inconceivable that it was meant to range upon
one monument with the Captives of the Louvre. There are, however, so
many puzzles and perplexities connected with that design in its
several stages, that we dare affirm or deny nothing concerning it. M.
Guillaume, taking it for granted that the Victory was intended for the
tomb, makes the plausible suggestion that some of the peculiarities
which render it in composition awkward, would have been justified by
the addition of bronze wings. Mr. Heath Wilson, seeking after an
allegory, is fain to believe that it represents Michelangelo's own
state of subjection while employed upon the Serravezza quarries.

Last comes the so-called Adonis of the Bargello Palace, which not
improbably was designed for one of the figures prostrate below the
feet of a victorious Genius. It bears, indeed, much resemblance to a
roughly indicated nude at the extreme right of the sketch for the
tomb. Upon this supposition, Michelangelo must have left it in a very
unfinished state, with an unshaped block beneath the raised right
thigh. This block has now been converted into a boar. Extremely
beautiful as the Adonis undoubtedly is, the strained, distorted
attitude seems to require some explanation. That might have been given
by the trampling form and robes of a Genius. Still it is difficult to
comprehend why the left arm and hand, finished, I feel almost sure, by
Michelangelo, should have been so carefully executed. The Genius, if
draped, would have hidden nearly the whole of that part of the statue.
The face of this Adonis displays exactly the same type as that of the
so-called Victory and of Giuliano de' Medici. Here the type assumes
singular loveliness.



CHAPTER XII


I

After the death of Clement VII. Michelangelo never returned to reside
at Florence. The rest of his life was spent in Rome. In the year 1534
he had reached the advanced age of fifty-nine, and it is possible that
he first became acquainted with the noble lady Vittoria Colonna about
1538. Recent students of his poetry and friendships have suggested
that their famous intimacy began earlier, during one of his not
infrequent visits to Rome. But we have no proof of this. On the
contrary, the only letters extant which he sent to her, two in number,
belong to the year 1545. It is certain that anything like friendship
between them grew up at some considerable time after his final
settlement in Rome.

Vittoria was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, Grand Constable of
Naples, by his marriage with Agnesina di Montefeltro, daughter of
Federigo, Duke of Urbino. Blood more illustrious than hers could not
be found in Italy. When she was four years old, her parents betrothed
her to Ferrante Francesco d'Avalos, a boy of the same age, the only
son of the Marchese di Pescara. In her nineteenth year the affianced
couple were married at Ischia, the fief and residence of the house of
D'Avalos. Ferrante had succeeded to his father's title early in
boyhood, and was destined for a brilliant military career. On the
young bride's side at least it was a love-match. She was tenderly
attached to her handsome husband, ignorant of his infidelities, and
blind to his fatal faults of character. Her happiness proved of short
duration. In 1512 Pescara was wounded and made prisoner at the battle
of Ravenna, and, though he returned to his wife for a short interval,
duty called him again to the field of war in Lombardy in 1515. After
this date Vittoria saw him but seldom. The last time they met was in
October 1522. As general of the Imperial forces, Pescara spent the
next years in perpetual military operations. Under his leadership the
battle of Pavia was won in 1525, and King Francis became his master's
prisoner. So far, nothing but honour, success, and glory waited on the
youthful hero. But now the tide turned. Pescara, when he again settled
down at Milan, began to plot with Girolamo Morone, Grand Chancellor of
Francesco Sforza's duchy. Morone had conceived a plan for reinstating
his former lord in Milan by the help of an Italian coalition. He
offered Pescara the crown of Naples if he would turn against the
Emperor. The Marquis seems at first to have lent a not unwilling ear
to these proposals, but seeing reason to doubt the success of the
scheme, he finally resolved to betray Morone to Charles V., and did
this with cold-blooded ingenuity. A few months afterwards, on November
25, 1525, he died, branded as a traitor, accused of double treachery,
both to his sovereign and his friend.

If suspicions of her husband's guilt crossed Vittoria's mind, as we
have some reason to believe they did, these were not able to destroy
her loyalty and love. Though left so young a widow and childless, she
determined to consecrate her whole life to his memory and to religion.
His nephew and heir, the Marchese del Vasto, became her adopted son.
The Marchioness survived Pescara two-and-twenty years, which were
spent partly in retirement at Ischia, partly in journeys, partly in
convents at Orvieto and Viterbo, and finally in a semi-monastic
seclusion at Rome. The time spared from pious exercises she devoted to
study, the composition of poetry, correspondence with illustrious men
of letters, and the society of learned persons. Her chief friends
belonged to that group of earnest thinkers who felt the influences of
the Reformation without ceasing to be loyal children of the Church.
With Vittoria's name are inseparably connected those of Gasparo
Contarini, Reginald Pole, Giovanni Morone, Jacopo Sadoleto,
Marcantonio Flaminio, Pietro Carnesecchi, and Fra Bernardino Ochino.
The last of these avowed his Lutheran principles, and was severely
criticised by Vittoria Colonna for doing so. Carnesecchi was burned
for heresy. Vittoria never adopted Protestantism, and died an orthodox
Catholic. Yet her intimacy with men of liberal opinions exposed her to
mistrust and censure in old age. The movement of the
Counter-Reformation had begun, and any kind of speculative freedom
aroused suspicion. This saintly princess was accordingly placed under
the supervision of the Holy Office, and to be her friend was slightly
dangerous. It is obvious that Vittoria's religion was of an
evangelical type, inconsistent with the dogmas developed by the
Tridentine Council; and it is probable that, like her friend
Contarini, she advocated a widening rather than a narrowing of Western
Christendom. To bring the Church back to purer morals and sincerity of
faith was their aim. They yearned for a reformation and regeneration
from within.

In all these matters, Michelangelo, the devout student of the Bible
and the disciple of Savonarola, shared Vittoria's sentiments. His
nature, profoundly and simply religious from the outset, assumed a
tone of deeper piety and habitual devotion during the advance of
years. Vittoria Colonna's influence at this period strengthened his
Christian emotions, which remained untainted by asceticism or
superstition. They were further united by another bond, which was
their common interest in poetry. The Marchioness of Pescara was justly
celebrated during her lifetime as one of the most natural writers of
Italian verse. Her poems consist principally of sonnets consecrated to
the memory of her husband, or composed on sacred and moral subjects.
Penetrated by genuine feeling, and almost wholly free from literary
affectation, they have that dignity and sweetness which belong to the
spontaneous utterances of a noble heart. Whether she treats of love or
of religion, we find the same simplicity and sincerity of style. There
is nothing in her pious meditations that a Christian of any communion
may not read with profit, as the heartfelt outpourings of a soul
athirst for God and nourished on the study of the gospel.

Michelangelo preserved a large number of her sonnets, which he kept
together in one volume. Writing to his nephew Lionardo in 1554, he
says: "Messer Giovan Francesco (Fattucci) asked me about a month ago
if I possessed any writings of the Marchioness. I have a little book
bound in parchment, which she gave me some ten years ago. It has one
hundred and three sonnets, not counting another forty she afterwards
sent on paper from Viterbo. I had these bound into the same book, and
at that time I used to lend them about to many persons, so that they
are all of them now in print. In addition to these poems I have many
letters which she wrote from Orvieto and Viterbo. These then are the
writings I possess of the Marchioness." He composed several pieces,
madrigals and sonnets, under the genial influence of this exchange of
thoughts. It was a period at which his old love of versifying revived
with singular activity. Other friends, like Tommaso Cavalieri, Luigi
del Riccio, and afterwards Vasari, enticed his Muse to frequent
utterance. Those he wrote for the Marchioness were distributed in
manuscript among his private friends, and found their way into the
first edition of his collected poems. But it is a mistake to suppose
that she was the sole or even the chief source of his poetical
inspiration.

We shall see that it was his custom to mark his feeling for particular
friends by gifts of drawings as well as of poems. He did this notably
in the case of both Vittoria Colonna and Tommaso dei Cavalieri. For
the latter he designed subjects from Greek mythology; for the former,
episodes in the Passion of our Lord. "At the request of this lady,"
says Condivi, "he made a naked Christ, at the moment when, taken from
the cross, our Lord would have fallen like an abandoned corpse at the
feet of his most holy Mother, if two angels did not support him in
their arms. She sits below the cross with a face full of tears and
sorrow, lifting both her widespread arms to heaven, while on the stem
of the tree above is written this legend, 'Non vi si pensa quanto
sangue costa.' The cross is of the same kind as that which was carried
in procession by the White Friars at the time of the plague of 1348,
and afterwards deposited in the Church of S. Croce at Florence. He
also made, for love of her, the design of a Jesus Christ upon the
cross, not with the aspect of one dead, as is the common wont, but in
a divine attitude, with face raised to the Father, seeming to exclaim,
'Eli! Eli!' In this drawing the body does not appear to fall, like an
abandoned corpse, but as though in life to writhe and quiver with the
agony it feels."

Of these two designs we have several more or less satisfactory
mementoes. The Pietà was engraved by Giulio Bonasoni and Tudius
Bononiensis (date 1546), exactly as Condivi describes it. The
Crucifixion survives in a great number of pencil-drawings, together
with one or two pictures painted by men like Venusti, and many early
engravings of the drawings. One sketch in the Taylor Museum at Oxford
is generally supposed to represent the original designed for Vittoria.


II

What remains of the correspondence between Michelangelo and the
Marchioness opens with a letter referring to their interchange of
sonnets and drawings. It is dated Rome, 1545. Vittoria had evidently
sent him poems, and he wishes to make her a return in kind: "I
desired, lady, before I accepted the things which your ladyship has
often expressed the will to give me--I desired to produce something
for you with my own hand, in order to be as little as possible
unworthy of this kindness. I have now come to recognise that the grace
of God is not to be bought, and that to keep it waiting is a grievous
sin. Therefore I acknowledge my error, and willingly accept your
favours. When I possess them, not indeed because I shall have them in
my house, but for that I myself shall dwell in them, the place will
seem to encircle me with Paradise. For which felicity I shall remain
ever more obliged to your ladyship than I am already, if that is
possible.

"The bearer of this letter will be Urbino, who lives in my service.
Your ladyship may inform him when you would like me to come and see
the head you promised to show me."

This letter is written under the autograph copy of a sonnet which must
have been sent with it, since it expresses the same thought in its
opening quatrain. My translation of the poem runs thus:

  _Seeking at least to be not all unfit
     For thy sublime and-boundless courtesy,
     My lowly thoughts at first were fain to try
     What they could yield for grace so infinite.
  But now I know my unassisted wit
     Is all too weak to make me soar so high,
     For pardon, lady, for this fault I cry,
     And wiser still I grow, remembering it.
  Yea, well I see what folly 'twere to think
     That largess dropped from thee like dews from heaven
     Could e'er be paid by work so frail as mine!
  To nothingness my art and talent sink;
     He fails who from his mortal stores hath given
     A thousandfold to match one gift divine_.

Michelangelo's next letter refers to the design for the Crucified
Christ, described by Condivi. It is pleasant to find that this was
sent by the hand of Cavalieri: "Lady Marchioness,--Being myself in
Rome, I thought it hardly fitting to give the Crucified Christ to
Messer Tommaso, and to make him an intermediary between your ladyship
and me, your servant; especially because it has been my earnest wish
to perform more for you than for any one I ever knew upon the world.
But absorbing occupations, which still engage me, have prevented my
informing your ladyship of this. Moreover, knowing that you know that
love needs no taskmaster, and that he who loves doth not sleep, I
thought the less of using go-betweens. And though I seemed to have
forgotten, I was doing what I did not talk about in order to effect a
thing that was not looked for. My purpose has been spoiled: _He sins
who faith like this so soon forgets._"

A sonnet which may or may not have been written at this time, but
seems certainly intended for the Marchioness, shall here be given as a
pendant to the letter:--

  _Blest spirit, who with loving tenderness
    Quickenest my heart, so old and near to die,
    Who 'mid thy joys on me dost bend an eye,
    Though many nobler men around thee press!
  As thou wert erewhile wont my sight to bless,
    So to console, my mind thou now dost fly;
    Hope therefore stills the pangs of memory,
    Which, coupled with desire, my soul distress.
  So finding in thee grace to plead for me--
    Thy thoughts for me sunk in so sad a case--
    He who now writes returns thee thanks for these.
    Lo! it were foul and monstrous usury
    To send thee ugliest paintings in the place
    Of thy fair spirit's living phantasies.

Unfortunately we possess no other document in prose addressed
immediately to Vittoria. But four of her letters to him exist, and
from these I will select some specimens reflecting light upon the
nature of the famous intimacy. The Marchioness writes always in the
tone and style of a great princess, adding that peculiar note of
religious affectionateness which the French call "_onction_," and
marking her strong admiration of the illustrious artist. The letters
are not dated; but this matters little, since they only turn on
literary courtesies exchanged, drawings presented, and pious interests
in common.

"Unique Master Michelangelo, and my most singular friend,--I have
received your letter, and examined the crucifix, which truly hath
crucified in my memory every other picture I ever saw. Nowhere could
one find another figure of our Lord so well executed, so living, and
so exquisitely finished. Certes, I cannot express in words how subtly
and marvellously it is designed. Wherefore I am resolved to take the
work as coming from no other hand but yours, and accordingly I beg you
to assure me whether this is really yours or another's. Excuse the
question. If it is yours, I must possess it under any conditions. In
case it is not yours, and you want to have it carried out by your
assistant, we will talk the matter over first. I know how extremely
difficult it would be to copy it, and therefore I would rather let him
finish something else than this. But if it be in fact yours, rest
assured, and make the best of it, that it will never come again into
your keeping. I have examined it minutely in full light and by the
lens and mirror, and never saw anything more perfect.--Yours to
command,

          "The Marchioness of Pescara."

Like many grand ladies of the highest rank, even though they are
poetesses, Vittoria Colonna did not always write grammatically or
coherently. I am not therefore sure that I have seized the exact
meaning of this diplomatical and flattering letter. It would appear,
however, that Michelangelo had sent her the drawing for a crucifix,
intimating that, if she liked it, he would intrust its execution to
one of his workmen, perhaps Urbino. This, as we know, was a common
practice adopted by him in old age, in order to avoid commissions
which interfered with his main life-work at S. Peter's. The noble
lady, fully aware that the sketch is an original, affects some doubt
upon the subject, declines the intervention of a common craftsman, and
declares her firm resolve to keep it, leaving an impression that she
would gladly possess the crucifix if executed by the same hand which
had supplied the masterly design.

Another letter refers to the drawing of a Christ upon the cross
between two angels.

"Your works forcibly stimulate the judgment of all who look at them.
My study of them made me speak of adding goodness to things perfect in
themselves, and I have seen now that 'all is possible to him who
believes.' I had the greatest faith in God that He would bestow upon
you supernatural grace for the making of this Christ. When I came to
examine it, I found it so marvellous that it surpasses all my
expectations. Wherefore, emboldened by your miracles, I conceived a
great desire for that which I now see marvellously accomplished: I
mean that the design is in all parts perfect and consummate, and one
could not desire more, nor could desire attain to demanding so much. I
tell you that I am mighty pleased that the angel on the right hand is
by far the fairer, since Michael will place you, Michelangelo, upon
the right hand of our Lord at that last day. Meanwhile, I do not know
how else to serve you than by making orisons to this sweet Christ,
whom you have drawn so well and exquisitely, and praying you to hold
me yours to command as yours in all and for all."

The admiration and the good-will of the great lady transpire in these
somewhat incoherent and studied paragraphs. Their verbiage leaves much
to be desired in the way of logic and simplicity. It is pleasanter
perhaps to read a familiar note, sent probably by the hand of a
servant to Buonarroti's house in Rome.

"I beg you to let me have the crucifix a short while in my keeping,
even though it be unfinished. I want to show it to some gentlemen who
have come from the Most Reverend the Cardinal of Mantua. If you are
not working, will you not come to-day at your leisure and talk with
me?--Yours to command,

                         "The Marchioness of Pescara."

It seems that Michelangelo's exchange of letters and poems became at
last too urgent. We know it was his way (as in the case of Luigi del
Riccio) to carry on an almost daily correspondence for some while, and
then to drop it altogether when his mood changed. Vittoria, writing
from Viterbo, gives him a gentle and humorous hint that he is taking
up too much of her time:

"Magnificent Messer Michelangelo,--I did not reply earlier to your
letter, because it was, as one might say, an answer to my last: for I
thought that if you and I were to go on writing without intermission
according to my obligation and your courtesy, I should have to neglect
the Chapel of S. Catherine here, and be absent at the appointed hours
for company with my sisterhood, while you would have to leave the
Chapel of S. Paul, and be absent from morning through the day from
your sweet usual colloquy with painted forms, the which with their
natural accents do not speak to you less clearly than the living
persons round me speak to me. Thus we should both of us fail in our
duty, I to the brides, you to the vicar of Christ. For these reasons,
inasmuch as I am well assured of our steadfast friendship and firm
affection, bound by knots of Christian kindness, I do not think it
necessary to obtain the proof of your good-will in letters by writing
on my side, but rather to await with well-prepared mind some
substantial occasion for serving you. Meanwhile I address my prayers
to that Lord of whom you spoke to me with so fervent and humble a
heart when I left Rome, that when I return thither I may find you with
His image renewed and enlivened by true faith in your soul, in like
measure as you have painted it with perfect art in my Samaritan.
Believe me to remain always yours and your Urbino's."

This letter must have been written when Michelangelo was still working
on the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina, and therefore before 1549.
The check to his importunacy, given with genial tact by the
Marchioness, might be taken, by those who believe their _liaison_ to
have had a touch of passion in it, as an argument in favour of that
view. The great age which Buonarroti had now reached renders this,
however, improbable; while the general tenor of their correspondence
is that of admiration for a great artist on the lady's side, and of
attraction to a noble nature on the man's side, cemented by religious
sentiment and common interests in serious topics.


III

All students of Michelangelo's biography are well acquainted with the
Dialogues on Painting, composed by the Portuguese miniature artist,
Francis of Holland. Written in the quaint style of the sixteenth
century, which curiously blent actual circumstance and fact with the
author's speculation, these essays present a vivid picture of
Buonarroti's conferences with Vittoria Colonna and her friends. The
dialogues are divided into four parts, three of which profess to give
a detailed account of three several Sunday conversations in the
Convent of S. Silvestro on Monte Cavallo. After describing the objects
which brought him to Rome, Francis says: "Above all, Michelangelo
inspired me with such esteem, that when I met him in the palace of the
Pope or on the streets, I could not make my mind up to leave him until
the stars forced us to retire." Indeed, it would seem from his frank
admissions in another place that the Portuguese painter had become a
little too attentive to the famous old man, and that Buonarroti "did
all he could to shun his company, seeing that when they once came
together, they could not separate." It happened one Sunday that
Francis paid a visit to his friend Lattanzio Tolomei, who had gone
abroad, leaving a message that he would be found in the Church of S.
Silvestro, where he was hoping to hear a lecture by Brother Ambrose of
Siena on the Epistles of S. Paul, in company with the Marchioness.
Accordingly he repaired to this place, and was graciously received by
the noble lady. She courteously remarked that he would probably enjoy
a conversation with Michelangelo more than a sermon from Brother
Ambrose, and after an interval of compliments a servant was sent to
find him. It chanced that Buonarroti was walking with the man whom
Francis of Holland calls "his old friend and colour-grinder," Urbino,
in the direction of the Thermae. So the lackey, having the good chance
to meet him, brought him at once to the convent. The Marchioness made
him sit between her and Messer Tolomei, while Francis took up his
position at a little distance. The conversation then began, but
Vittoria Colonna had to use the tact for which she was celebrated
before she could engage the wary old man on a serious treatment of his
own art.

He opened his discourse by defending painters against the common
charge of being "eccentric in their habits, difficult to deal with,
and unbearable; whereas, on the contrary, they are really most
humane." Common people do not consider, he remarked, that really
zealous artists are bound to abstain from the idle trivialities and
current compliments of society, not because they are haughty or
intolerant by nature, but because their art imperiously claims the
whole of their energies. "When such a man shall have the same leisure
as you enjoy, then I see no objection to your putting him to death if
he does not observe your rules of etiquette and ceremony. You only
seek his company and praise him in order to obtain honour through him
for yourselves, nor do you really mind what sort of man he is, so long
as kings and emperors converse with him. I dare affirm that any artist
who tries to satisfy the better vulgar rather than men of his own
craft, one who has nothing singular, eccentric, or at least reputed to
be so, in his person, will never become a superior talent. For my
part, I am bound to confess that even his Holiness sometimes annoys
and wearies me by begging for too much of my company. I am most
anxious to serve him, but, when there is nothing important going
forward, I think I can do so better by studying at home than by
dancing attendance through a whole day on my legs in his
reception-rooms. He allows me to tell him so; and I may add that the
serious occupations of my life have won for me such liberty of action
that, in talking to the Pope, I often forget where I am, and place my
hat upon my head. He does not eat me up on that account, but treats me
with indulgence, knowing that it is precisely at such times that I am
working hard to serve him. As for solitary habits, the world is right
in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity,
shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against
him. Those, however, who act in this way naturally, because their
profession obliges them to lead a recluse life, or because their
character rebels against feigned politenesses and conventional usage,
ought in common justice to be tolerated. What claim by right have you
on him? Why should you force him to take part in those vain pastimes,
which his love for a quiet life induces him to shun? Do you not know
that there are sciences which demand the whole of a man, without
leaving the least portion of his spirit free for your distractions?"
This apology for his own life, couched in a vindication of the
artistic temperament, breathes an accent of sincerity, and paints
Michelangelo as he really was, with his somewhat haughty sense of
personal dignity. What he says about his absence of mind in the
presence of great princes might be illustrated by a remark attributed
to Clement VII. "When Buonarroti comes to see me, I always take a seat
and bid him to be seated, feeling sure that he will do so without
leave or license."

The conversation passed by natural degrees to a consideration of the
fine arts in general. In the course of this discussion, Michelangelo
uttered several characteristic opinions, strongly maintaining the
superiority of the Italian to the Flemish and German schools, and
asserting his belief that, while all objects are worthy of imitation
by the artist, the real touch stone of excellence lies in his power to
represent the human form. His theory of the arts in their reciprocal
relations and affinities throws interesting light upon the qualities
of his own genius and his method in practice. "The science of design,
or of line-drawing, if you like to use this term, is the source and
very essence of painting, sculpture, architecture, and of every form
of representation, as well too as of all the sciences. He who has made
himself a master in this art possesses a great treasure. Sometimes,
when I meditate upon these topics, it seems to me that I can discover
but one art or science, which is design, and that all the works of the
human brain and hand are either design itself or a branch of that
art." This theme he develops at some length, showing how a complete
mastery of drawing is necessary not only to the plastic arts of
painting and sculpture, but also to the constructive and mechanical
arts of architecture, fortification, gun-foundry, and so forth,
applying the same principle to the minutest industries.

With regard to the personal endowments of the artist, he maintained
that "a lofty style, grave and decorous, was essential to great work.
Few artists understand this, and endeavour to appropriate these
qualities. Consequently we find many members of the confraternity who
are only artists in name. The world encourages this confusion of
ideas, since few are capable of distinguishing between a fellow who
has nothing but his colour-box and brushes to make him a painter, and
the really gifted natures who appear only at wide intervals." He
illustrates the position that noble qualities in the artist are
indispensable to nobility in the work of art, by a digression on
religious painting and sculpture. "In order to represent in some
degree the adored image of our Lord, it is not enough that a master
should be great and able. I maintain that he must also be a man of
good conduct and morals, if possible a saint, in order that the Holy
Ghost may rain down inspiration on his understanding. Ecclesiastical
and secular princes ought, therefore, to permit only the most
illustrious among the artists of their realm to paint the benign
sweetness of our Saviour, the purity of our Lady, and the virtues of
the saints. It often happens that ill-executed images distract the
minds of worshippers and ruin their devotion, unless it be firm and
fervent. Those, on the contrary, which are executed in the high style
I have described, excite the soul to contemplation and to tears, even
among the least devout, by inspiring reverence and fear through the
majesty of their aspect." This doctrine is indubitably sound. To our
minds, nevertheless, it rings a little hollow on the lips of the great
master who modelled the Christ of the Minerva and painted the Christ
and Madonna of the Last Judgment. Yet we must remember that, at the
exact period when these dialogues took place, Buonarroti, under the
influence of his friendship with Vittoria Colonna, was devoting his
best energies to the devout expression of the Passion of our Lord. It
is deeply to be regretted that, out of the numerous designs which
remain to us from this endeavour, all of them breathing the purest
piety, no monumental work except the Pietà at Florence emerged for
perpetuity.

Many curious points, both of minute criticism and broad opinion, might
still be gleaned from the dialogues set down by Francis of Holland. It
must suffice here to resume what Michelangelo maintained about the
artist's method. One of the interlocutors begged to be informed
whether he thought that a master ought to aim at working slowly or
quickly. "I will tell you plainly what I feel about this matter. It is
both good and useful to be able to work with promptitude and address.
We must regard it as a special gift from God to be able to do that in
a few hours which other men can only perform in many days of labour.
Consequently, artists who paint rapidly, without falling in quality
below those who paint but slowly, deserve the highest commendation.
Should this rapidity of execution, however, cause a man to transgress
the limits of sound art, it would have been better to have proceeded
with more tardiness and study. A good artist ought never to allow the
impetuosity of his nature to overcome his sense of the main end of
art, perfection. Therefore we cannot call slowness of execution a
defect, nor yet the expenditure of much time and trouble, if this be
employed with the view of attaining greater perfection. The one
unpardonable fault is bad work. And here I would remind you of a thing
essential to our art, which you will certainly not ignore, and to
which I believe you attach the full importance it deserves. In every
kind of plastic work we ought to strive with all our might at making
what has cost time and labour look as though it had been produced with
facility and swiftness. It sometimes happens, but rarely, that a
portion of our work turns out excellent with little pains bestowed
upon it. Most frequently, however, it is the expenditure of care and
trouble which conceals our toil. Plutarch relates that a bad painter
showed Apelles a picture, saying: 'This is from my hand; I have just
made it in a moment.' The other replied: 'I should have recognised the
fact without your telling me; and I marvel that you do not make a
multitude of such things every day.'" Michelangelo is reported to have
made a similar remark to Vasari when the latter took him to inspect
some frescoes he had painted, observing that they had been dashed off
quickly.

We must be grateful to Francis of Holland for this picture of the
Sunday-morning interviews at S. Silvestro. The place was cool and
tranquil. The great lady received her guests with urbanity, and led
the conversation with highbred courtesy and tact. Fra Ambrogio, having
discoursed upon the spiritual doctrines of S. Paul's Epistles, was at
liberty to turn an attentive ear to purely aesthetical speculations.
The grave and elderly Lattanzio Tolomei added the weight of philosophy
and literary culture to the dialogue. Michelangelo, expanding in the
genial atmosphere, spoke frankly on the arts which he had mastered,
not dictating _ex cathedra_ rules, but maintaining a note of modesty
and common-sense and deference to the opinion of others. Francis
engaged on equal terms in the discussion. His veneration for
Buonarroti, and the eagerness with which he noted all the great man's
utterances, did not prevent him from delivering lectures at a somewhat
superfluous length. In short, we may fairly accept his account of
these famous conferences as a truthful transcript from the refined and
witty social gatherings of which Vittoria Colonna formed the centre.


IV

This friendship with Vittoria Colonna forms a very charming episode in
the history of Michelangelo's career, and it was undoubtedly one of
the consolations of his declining years. Yet too great stress has
hitherto been laid on it by his biographers. Not content with
exaggerating its importance in his life, they have misinterpreted its
nature. The world seems unable to take interest in a man unless it can
contrive to discover a love-affair in his career. The singular thing
about Michelangelo is that, with the exception of Vittoria Colonna, no
woman is known to have influenced his heart or head in any way. In his
correspondence he never mentions women, unless they be aunts, cousins,
grand-nieces, or servants. About his mother he is silent. We have no
tradition regarding amours in youth or middle age; and only two words
dropped by Condivi lead us to conjecture that he was not wholly
insensible to the physical attractions of the female. Romancers and
legend-makers have, therefore, forced Vittoria Colonna to play the
rôle of Juliet in Michelangelo's life-drama. It has not occurred to
these critics that there is something essentially disagreeable in the
thought of an aged couple entertaining an amorous correspondence. I
use these words deliberately, because poems which breathe obvious
passion of no merely spiritual character have been assigned to the
number he composed for Vittoria Colonna. This, as we shall see, is
chiefly the fault of his first editor, who printed all the sonnets and
madrigals as though they were addressed to one woman or another. It is
also in part due to the impossibility of determining their exact date
in the majority of instances. Verses, then, which were designed for
several objects of his affection, male or female, have been
indiscriminately referred to Vittoria Colonna, whereas we can only
attribute a few poems with certainty to her series.

This mythus of Michelangelo's passion for the Marchioness of Pescara
has blossomed and brought forth fruit abundantly from a single and
pathetic passage in Condivi. "In particular, he greatly loved the
Marchioness of Pescara, of whose divine spirit he was enamoured, being
in return dearly beloved by her. He still preserves many of her
letters, breathing honourable and most tender affection, and such as
were wont to issue from a heart like hers. He also wrote to her a
great number of sonnets, full of wit and sweet longing. She frequently
removed from Viterbo and other places, whither she had gone for solace
or to pass the summer, and came to Rome with the sole object of seeing
Michelangelo. He for his part, loved her so, that I remember to have
heard him say that he regretted nothing except that when he went to
visit her upon the moment of her passage from this life, he did not
kiss her forehead or her face, as he did kiss her hand. Her death was
the cause that oftentimes he dwelt astonied, thinking of it, even as a
man bereft of sense."

Michelangelo himself, writing immediately after Vittoria's death,
speaks of her thus: "She felt the warmest affection for me, and I not
less for her. Death has robbed me of a great friend." It is curious
that he here uses the masculine gender: "un grande amico." He also
composed two sonnets, which were in all probability inspired by the
keen pain of this bereavement. To omit them here would be unjust to
the memory of their friendship:--

  _When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
     Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
     Following his hand who wields and guides it still,
     It moves upon another's feet alone:_

The third illustrates in a singular manner that custom of
sixteenth-century literature which Shakespeare followed in his
sonnets, of weaving poetical images out of thoughts borrowed from law
and business. It is also remarkable in this respect, that Michelangelo
has here employed precisely the same conceit for Vittoria Colonna
which he found serviceable when at an earlier date he wished to
deplore the death of the Florentine, Cecchino dei Bracci. For both of
them he says that Heaven bestowed upon the beloved object all its
beauties, instead of scattering these broad-cast over the human race,
which, had it done so, would have entailed the bankruptcy and death of
all:--

  _So that high heaven should have not to distrain
  From several that vast beauty ne'er yet shown,
  To one exalted dame alone
  The total sum was lent in her pure self:--
  Heaven had made sorry gain,
  Recovering from the crowd its scattered pelf.
  Now in a puff of breath,
  Nay, in one second, God
  Hath ta'en her back through death,
  Back from the senseless folk and from our eyes.
  Yet earth's oblivious sod,
  Albeit her body dies,
  Will bury not her live words fair and holy.
  Ah, cruel mercy! Here thou showest solely
  How, had heaven lent us ugly what she took,
  And death the debt reclaimed, all men were broke_.

Without disputing the fact that a very sincere emotion underlay these
verses, it must be submitted that, in the words of Samuel Johnson
about "Lycidas," "he who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who
thus praises will confer no honour." This conviction will be enforced
when we reflect that the thought upon which the madrigal above
translated has been woven (1547) had been already used for Cecchino
dei Bracci in 1544. It is clear that, in dealing with Michelangelo's
poetical compositions, we have to accept a mass of conventional
utterances, penetrated with a few firmly grasped Platonical ideas. It
is only after long familiarity with his work that a man may venture to
distinguish between the accents of the heart and the head-notes in the
case of so great a master using an art he practised mainly as an
amateur. I shall have to return to these considerations when I discuss
the value of his poetry taken as a whole.

The union of Michelangelo and Vittoria was beautiful and noble, based
upon the sympathy of ardent and high-feeling natures. Nevertheless we
must remember that when Michelangelo lost his old servant Urbino, his
letters and the sonnet written upon that occasion express an even
deeper passion of grief.

Love is an all-embracing word, and may well be used to describe this
exalted attachment, as also to qualify the great sculptor's affection
for a faithful servant or for a charming friend. We ought not,
however, to distort the truth of biography or to corrupt criticism,
from a personal wish to make more out of his feeling than fact and
probability warrant. This is what has been done by all who approached
the study of Michelangelo's life and writings. Of late years, the
determination to see Vittoria Colonna through every line written by
him which bears the impress of strong emotion, and to suppress other
aspects of his sensibility, has been so deliberate, that I am forced
to embark upon a discussion which might otherwise have not been
brought so prominently forward. For the understanding of his
character, and for a proper estimate of his poetry, it has become
indispensable to do so.


V

Michelangelo's best friend in Rome was a young nobleman called Tommaso
Cavalieri. Speaking of his numerous allies and acquaintances, Vasari
writes: "Immeasurably more than all the rest, he loved Tommaso dei
Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, as he was young and devoted to
the arts, Michelangelo made many stupendous drawings of superb heads
in black and red chalk, wishing him to learn the method of design.
Moreover, he drew for him a Ganymede carried up to heaven by Jove's
eagle, a Tityos with the vulture feeding on his heart, the fall of
Phaeton with the sun's chariot into the river Po, and a Bacchanal of
children; all of them things of the rarest quality, and drawings the
like of which were never seen. Michelangelo made a cartoon portrait of
Messer Tommaso, life-size, which was the only portrait that he ever
drew, since he detested to imitate the living person, unless it was
one of incomparable beauty." Several of Michelangelo's sonnets are
addressed to Tommaso Cavalieri. Benedetto Varchi, in his commentary,
introduces two of them with these words: "The first I shall present is
one addressed to M. Tommaso Cavalieri, a young Roman of very noble
birth, in whom I recognised, while I was sojourning at Rome, not only
incomparable physical beauty, but so much elegance of manners, such
excellent intelligence, and such graceful behaviour, that he well
deserved, and still deserves, to win the more love the better he is
known." Then Varchi recites the sonnet:--

  Why should I seek to ease intense desire
  With still more tears and windy words of grief,
  When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
  To souls whom love hath robed around with fire?

  Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
  When all must die? Nay, death beyond belief
  Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
  Since in my sum of woes all joys expire!

  Therefore, because I cannot shun the blow
  I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
  Gliding between her gladness and her woe?

  If only chains and bands can make me blest,
  No marvel if alone and bare I go,
  An armèd KNIGHT'S captive and slave confessed.

"The other shall be what follows, written perhaps for the same person,
and worthy, in my opinion, not only of the ripest sage, but also of a
poet not unexercised in writing verse:--

  With your fair eyes a charming light I see,
  For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain;
  Stayed by your feet, the burden I sustain
  Which my lame feet find all too strong for me;

  Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly;
  Heavenward your sprit stirreth me to strain;
  E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
  Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.

  Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
  Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
  My words begin to breathe upon your breath:
  Like to the-moon am I, that cannot shine
  Alone; for, lo! our eyes see naught in heaven
  Save what the living sun illumineth."

The frank and hearty feeling for a youth of singular distinction which
is expressed in these sonnets, gave no offence to society during the
period of the earlier Renaissance; but after the Tridentine Council
social feeling altered upon this and similar topics. While morals
remained what they had been, language and manners grew more nice and
hypocritical. It happened thus that grievous wrong was done to the
text of Michelangelo's poems, with the best intentions, by their first
editor. Grotesque misconceptions, fostered by the same mistaken zeal,
are still widely prevalent.

When Michelangelo the younger arranged his grand-uncle's poems for the
press, he was perplexed by the first of the sonnets quoted by Varchi.
The last line, which runs in the Italian thus--

  Resto prigion d'un Cavalier armato,

has an obvious play of words upon Cavalieri's surname. This he altered
into

  Resto prigion d'un cor di virtù armato.

The reason was that, if it stood unaltered, "the ignorance of men
would have occasion to murmur." "Varchi," he adds, "did wrong in
printing it according to the text." "Remember well," he observes,
"that this sonnet, as well as the preceding number and some others,
are concerned, as is manifest, with a masculine love of the Platonic
species." Michelangelo the younger's anxiety for his granduncle's
memory induced him thus to corrupt the text of his poems. The same
anxiety has led their latest editor to explain away the obvious sense
of certain words. Signor Guasti approves of the first editor's pious
fraud, on the ground that morality has higher claims than art; but he
adds that the expedient was not necessary: "for these sonnets do not
refer to masculine love, nor yet do any others. In the first (xxxi.)
the lady is compared to an armed knight, because she carries the
weapons of her sex and beauty; and while I think on it, an example
occurs to my mind from Messer Cino in support of the argument. As
regards the second (lxii.), those who read these pages of mine will
possibly remember that Michelangelo, writing of the dead Vittoria
Colonna, called her _amico;_ and on reflection, this sounds better
than _amica,_ in the place where it occurs. Moreover, there are not
wanting in these poems instances of the term signore, or lord, applied
to the beloved lady; which is one of the many periphrastical
expressions used by the Romance poets to indicate their mistress." It
is true that Cino compares his lady in one sonnet to a knight who has
carried off the prize of beauty in the lists of love and grace by her
elegant dancing. But he never calls a lady by the name of _cavaliere._
It is also indubitable that the Tuscans occasionally addressed the
female or male object of their adoration under the title of _signore,_
lord of my heart and soul. But such instances weigh nothing against
the direct testimony of a contemporary like Varchi, into whose hands
Michelangelo's poems came at the time of their composition, and who
was well acquainted with the circumstances of their composition. There
is, moreover, a fact of singular importance bearing on this question,
to which Signor Guasti has not attached the value it deserves. In a
letter belonging to the year 1549, Michelangelo thanks Luca Martini
for a copy of Varchi's commentary on his sonnet, and begs him to
express his affectionate regards and hearty thanks to that eminent
scholar for the honour paid him. In a second letter addressed to G.F.
Fattucci, under date October 1549, he conveys "the thanks of Messer
Tomao de' Cavalieri to Varchi for a certain little book of his which
has been printed, and in which he speaks very honourably of himself,
and not less so of me." In neither of these letters does Michelangelo
take exception to Varchi's interpretation of Sonnet xxxi. Indeed, the
second proves that both he and Cavalieri were much pleased with it.
Michelangelo even proceeds to inform Fattucci that Cavalieri "has
given me a sonnet which I made for him in those same years, begging me
to send it on as a proof and witness that he really is the man
intended. This I will enclose in my present letter." Furthermore, we
possess an insolent letter of Pietro Aretino, which makes us imagine
that the "ignorance of the vulgar" had already begun to "murmur."
After complaining bitterly that Michelangelo refused to send him any
of his drawings, he goes on to remark that it would be better for the
artist if he did so, "inasmuch as such an act of courtesy would quiet
the insidious rumours which assert that only Gerards and Thomases can
dispose of them." We have seen from Vasari that Michelangelo executed
some famous designs for Tommaso Cavalieri. The same authority asserts
that he presented "Gherardo Perini, a Florentine gentleman, and his
very dear friend," with three splendid drawings in black chalk.
Tommaso Cavalieri and Gherardo Perini, were, therefore, the "Gerards
and Thomases" alluded to by Aretino.

Michelangelo the younger's and Cesare Guasti's method of defending
Buonarroti from a malevolence which was only too well justified by the
vicious manners of the time, seems to me so really injurious to his
character, that I feel bound to carry this investigation further.
First of all, we ought to bear in mind what Buonarroti admitted
concerning his own temperament. "You must know that I am, of all men
who were ever born, the most inclined to love persons. Whenever I
behold some one who possesses any talent or displays any dexterity of
mind, who can do or say something more appropriately than the rest of
the world, I am compelled to fall in love with him; and then I give
myself up to him so entirely that I am no longer my own property, but
wholly his." He mentions this as a reason for not going to dine with
Luigi del Riccio in company with Donate Giannotti and Antonio Petrejo.
"If I were to do so, as all of you are adorned with talents and
agreeable graces, each of you would take from me a portion of myself,
and so would the dancer, and so would the lute-player, if men with
distinguished gifts in those arts were present. Each person would
filch away a part of me, and instead of being refreshed and restored
to health and gladness, as you said, I should be utterly bewildered
and distraught, in such wise that for many days to come I should not
know in what world I was moving." This passage serves to explain the
extreme sensitiveness of the great artist to personal charm, grace,
accomplishments, and throws light upon the self-abandonment with which
he sometimes yielded to the attractions of delightful people.

We possess a series of Michelangelo's letters addressed to or
concerned with Tommaso Cavalieri, the tone of which is certainly
extravagant. His biographer, Aurelio Gotti, moved by the same anxiety
as Michelangelo the younger and Guasti, adopted the extraordinary
theory that they were really directed to Vittoria Colonna, and were
meant to be shown to her by the common friend of both, Cavalieri.
"There is an epistle to this young man," he says, "so studied in its
phrases, so devoid of all naturalness, that we cannot extract any
rational sense from it without supposing that Cavalieri was himself a
friend of the Marchioness, and that Michelangelo, while writing to
him, intended rather to address his words to the Colonna." Of this
letter, which bears the date of January 1, 1533, three drafts exist,
proving the great pains taken by Michelangelo in its composition.

"Without due consideration, Messer Tomao, my very dear lord, I was
moved to write to your lordship, not by way of answer to any letter
received from you, but being myself the first to make advances, as
though I felt bound to cross a little stream with dry feet, or a ford
made manifest by paucity of water. But now that I have left the shore,
instead of the trifling river I expected, the ocean with its towering
waves appears before me, so that, if it were possible, in order to
avoid drowning, I would gladly retrace my steps to the dry land whence
I started. Still, as I am here, I will e'en make of my heart a rock,
and proceed farther; and if I shall not display the art of sailing on
the sea of your powerful genius, that genius itself will excuse me,
nor will be disdainful of my inferiority in parts, nor desire from me
that which I do not possess, inasmuch as he who is unique in all
things can have peers in none. Therefore your lordship, the light of
our century without paragon upon this world, is unable to be satisfied
with the productions of other men, having no match or equal to
yourself. And if, peradventure, something of mine, such as I hope and
promise to perform, give pleasure to your mind, I shall esteem it more
fortunate than excellent; and should I be ever sure of pleasing your
lordship, as is said, in any particular, I will devote the present
time and all my future to your service; indeed, it will grieve me much
that I cannot regain the past, in order to devote a longer space to
you than the future only will allow, seeing I am now too old. I have
no more to say. Read the heart, and not the letter, because 'the pen
toils after man's good-will in vain.'

"I have to make excuses for expressing in my first letter a marvellous
astonishment at your rare genius; and thus I do so, having recognised
the error I was in; for it is much the same to wonder at God's working
miracles as to wonder at Rome producing divine men. Of this the
universe confirms us in our faith."

It is clear that Michelangelo alludes in this letter to the designs
which he is known to have made for Cavalieri, and the last paragraph
has no point except as an elaborate compliment addressed to a Roman
gentleman. It would be quite out of place if applied to Vittoria
Colonna. Gotti finds the language strained and unnatural. We cannot
deny that it differs greatly from the simple diction of the writer's
ordinary correspondence. But Michelangelo did sometimes seek to
heighten his style, when he felt that the occasion demanded a special
effort; and then he had recourse to the laboured images in vogue at
that period, employing them with something of the ceremonious
cumbrousness displayed in his poetry. The letters to Pietro Aretino,
Niccolo Martelli, Vittoria Colonna, Francis I., Luca Martini, and
Giorgio Vasari might be quoted as examples.

As a postscript to this letter, in the two drafts which were finally
rejected, the following enigmatical sentence is added:--"It would be
permissible to give the name of the things a man presents, to him who
receives them; but proper sense of what is fitting prevents it being
done in this letter."

Probably Michelangelo meant that he should have liked to call
Cavalieri his friend, since he had already given him friendship. The
next letter, July 28, 1533, begins thus:--"My dear Lord,--Had I not
believed that I had made you certain of the very great, nay,
measureless love I bear you, it would not have seemed strange to me
nor have roused astonishment to observe the great uneasiness you show
in your last letter, lest, through my not having written, I should
have forgotten you. Still it is nothing new or marvellous when so many
other things go counter, that this also should be topsy-turvy. For
what your lordship says to me, I could say to yourself: nevertheless,
you do this perhaps to try me, or to light a new and stronger flame,
if that indeed were possible: but be it as it wills: I know well that,
at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as the food by which
I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes
my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul,
filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither
weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you
to my mind. Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what
condition I should find myself."

This second letter has also been extremely laboured; for we have three
other turns given in its drafts to the image of food and memory. That
these two documents were really addressed to Cavalieri, without any
thought of Vittoria Colonna, is proved by three letters sent to
Michelangelo by the young man in question. One is dated August 2,
1533, another September 2, and the third bears no date. The two which
I have mentioned first belong to the summer of 1533; the third seems
to be the earliest. It was clearly written on some occasion when both
men were in Rome together, and at the very beginning of their
friendship. I will translate them in their order. The first undated
letter was sent to Michelangelo in Rome, in answer to some writing of
the illustrious sculptor which we do not possess:--

"I have received from you a letter, which is the more acceptable
because it was so wholly unexpected. I say unexpected, because I hold
myself unworthy of such condescension in a man of your eminence. With
regard to what Pierantonio spoke to you in my praise, and those things
of mine which you have seen, and which you say have aroused in you no
small affection for me, I answer that they were insufficient to impel
a man of such transcendent genius, without a second, not to speak of a
peer, upon this earth, to address a youth who was born but yesterday,
and therefore is as ignorant as it is possible to be. At the same time
I cannot call you a liar. I rather think then, nay, am certain, that
the love you bear me is due to this, that you being a man most
excellent in art, nay, art itself, are forced to love those who follow
it and love it, among whom am I; and in this, according to my
capacity, I yield to few. I promise you truly that you shall receive
from me for your kindness affection equal, and perhaps greater, in
exchange; for I never loved a man more than I do you, nor desired a
friendship more than I do yours. About this, though my judgment may
fail in other things, it is unerring; and you shall see the proof,
except only that fortune is adverse to me in that now, when I might
enjoy you, I am far from well. I hope, however, if she does not begin
to trouble me again, that within a few days I shall be cured, and
shall come to pay you my respects in person. Meanwhile I shall spend
at least two hours a day in studying two of your drawings, which
Pierantonio brought me: the more I look at them, the more they delight
me; and I shall soothe my complaint by cherishing the hope which
Pierantonio gave me, of letting me see other things of yours. In order
not to be troublesome, I will write no more. Only I beg you remember,
on occasion, to make use of me; and recommend myself in perpetuity to
you.--Your most affectionate servant.

                                     "Thomao Cavaliere."

The next letters were addressed to Michelangelo in Florence:--"Unique,
my Lord,--I have received from you a letter, very acceptable, from
which I gather that you are not a little saddened at my having written
to you about forgetting. I answer that I did not write this for either
of the following reasons: to wit, because you have not sent me
anything, or in order to fan the flame of your affection. I only wrote
to jest with you, as certainly I think I may do. Therefore, do not be
saddened, for I am quite sure you will not be able to forget me.
Regarding what you write to me about that young Nerli, he is much my
friend, and having to leave Rome, he came to ask whether I needed
anything from Florence. I said no, and he begged me to allow him to go
in my name to pay you my respects, merely on account of his own desire
to speak with you. I have nothing more to write, except that I beg you
to return quickly. When you come you will deliver me from prison,
because I wish to avoid bad companions; and having this desire, I
cannot converse with any one but you. I recommend myself to you a
thousand times.--Yours more than his own,

                                           "Thomao Cavaliere.
                                           "Rome, _August 2, 1533_."


It appears from the third letter, also sent to Florence, that during
the course of the month Michelangelo had despatched some of the
drawings he made expressly for his friend:--"Unique, my Lord,--Some
days ago I received a letter from you, which was very welcome, both
because I learned from it that you were well, and also because I can
now be sure that you will soon return. I was very sorry not to be able
to answer at once. However, it consoles me to think that, when you
know the cause, you will hold me excused. On the day your letter
reached me, I was attacked with vomiting and such high fever that I
was on the point of death; and certainly I should have died, if it
(i.e., the letter) had not somewhat revived me. Since then, thank God,
I have been always well. Messer Bartolommeo (Angelini) has now brought
me a sonnet sent by you, which has made me feel it my duty to write.
Some three days since I received my Phaëthon, which is exceedingly
well done. The Pope, the Cardinal de' Medici, and every one, have seen
it; I do not know what made them want to do so. The Cardinal expressed
a wish to inspect all your drawings, and they pleased him so much that
he said he should like to have the Tityos and Ganymede done in
crystal. I could not manage to prevent him from using the Tityos, and
it is now being executed by Maestro Giovanni. Hard I struggled to save
the Ganymede. The other day I went, as you requested, to Fra
Sebastiano. He sends a thousand messages, but only to pray you to come
back.--Your affectionate,

                          "Thomao Cavaliere.
                          "Rome, _September 6_."

All the drawings mentioned by Vasari as having been made for Cavalieri
are alluded to here, except the Bacchanal of Children. Of the Phaëthon
we have two splendid examples in existence, one at Windsor, the other
in the collection of M. Emile Galichon. They differ considerably in
details, but have the same almost mathematical exactitude of pyramidal
composition. That belonging to M. Galichon must have been made in
Rome, for it has this rough scrawl in Michelangelo's hand at the
bottom, "Tomao, se questo scizzo non vi piace, ditelo a Urbino." He
then promises to make another. Perhaps Cavalieri sent word back that
he did not like something in the sketch--possibly the women writhing
into trees--and that to this circumstance we owe the Windsor drawing,
which is purer in style. There is a fine Tityos with the vulture at
Windsor, so exquisitely finished and perfectly preserved that one can
scarcely believe it passed through the hands of Maestro Giovanni.
Windsor, too, possesses a very delicate Ganymede, which seems intended
for an intaglio. The subject is repeated in an unfinished pen-design
at the Uffizi, incorrectly attributed to Michelangelo, and is
represented by several old engravings. The Infant Bacchanals again
exist at Windsor, and fragmentary jottings upon the margin of other
sketches intended for the same theme survive.


VI

A correspondence between Bartolommeo Angelini in Rome and Michelangelo
in Florence during the summers of 1532 and 1533 throws some light upon
the latter's movements, and also upon his friendship for Tommaso
Cavalieri. The first letter of this series, written on the 21st of
August 1532, shows that Michelangelo was then expected in Rome. "Fra
Sebastiano says that you wish to dismount at your own house. Knowing
then that there is nothing but the walls, I hunted up a small amount
of furniture, which I have had sent thither, in order that you may be
able to sleep and sit down and enjoy some other conveniences. For
eating, you will be able to provide yourself to your own liking in the
neighbourhood." From the next letter (September 18, 1532) it appears
that Michelangelo was then in Rome. There ensues a gap in the
correspondence, which is not resumed until July 12, 1533. It now
appears that Buonarroti had recently left Rome at the close of another
of his visits. Angelini immediately begins to speak of Tommaso
Cavalieri. "I gave that soul you wrote of to M. Tommao, who sends you
his very best regards, and begs me to communicate any letters I may
receive from you to him. Your house is watched continually every
night, and I often go to visit it by day. The hens and master cock are
in fine feather, and the cats complain greatly over your absence,
albeit they have plenty to eat." Angelini never writes now without
mentioning Cavalieri. Since this name does not occur in the
correspondence before the date of July 12, 1533, it is possible that
Michelangelo made the acquaintance during his residence at Rome in the
preceding winter. His letters to Angelini must have conveyed frequent
expressions of anxiety concerning Cavalieri's affection; for the
replies invariably contain some reassuring words (July 26): "Yours
makes me understand how great is the love you bear him; and in truth,
so far as I have seen, he does not love you less than you love him."
Again (August 11, 1533): "I gave your letter to M. Thomao, who sends
you his kindest remembrances, and shows the very strongest desire for
your return, saying that when he is with you, then he is really happy,
because he possesses all that he wishes for upon this world. So then,
it seems to me that, while you are fretting to return, he is burning
with desire for you to do so. Why do you not begin in earnest to make
plans for leaving Florence? It would give peace to yourself and all of
us, if you were here. I have seen your soul, which is in good health
and under good guardianship. The body waits for your arrival."

This mysterious reference to the soul, which Angelini gave, at
Buonarroti's request, to young Cavalieri, and which he now describes
as prospering, throws some light upon the passionate phrases of the
following mutilated letter, addressed to Angelini by Michelangelo upon
the 11th of October. The writer, alluding to Messer Tommao, says that,
having given him his heart, he can hardly go on living in his absence:
"And so, if I yearn day and night without intermission to be in Rome,
it is only in order to return again to life, which I cannot enjoy
without the soul." This conceit is carried on for some time, and the
letter winds up with the following sentence: "My dear Bartolommeo,
although you may think that I am joking with you, this is not the
case. I am talking sober sense, for I have grown twenty years older
and twenty pounds lighter since I have been here." This epistle, as we
shall see in due course, was acknowledged. All Michelangelo's
intimates in Rome became acquainted with the details of this
friendship. Writing to Sebastiano from Florence in this year, he says:
"I beg you, if you see Messer T. Cavalieri, to recommend me to him
infinitely; and when you write, tell me something about him to keep
him in my memory; for if I were to lose him from my mind, I believe
that I should fall down dead straightway." In Sebastiano's letters
there is one allusion to Cavalieri, who had come to visit him in the
company of Bartolommeo Angelini, when he was ill.

It is not necessary to follow all the references to Tommaso Cavalieri
contained in Angelini's letters. They amount to little more than kind
messages and warm wishes for Michelangelo's return. Soon, however,
Michelangelo began to send poems, which Angelini acknowledges
(September 6): "I have received the very welcome letter you wrote me,
together with your graceful and beautiful sonnet, of which I kept a
copy, and then sent it on to M. Thomao. He was delighted to possess
it, being thereby assured that God has deigned to bestow upon him the
friendship of a man endowed with so many noble gifts as you are."
Again he writes (October 18): "Yours of the 12th is to hand, together
with M. Thomao's letter and the most beautiful sonnets. I have kept
copies, and sent them on to him for whom they were intended, because I
know with what affection he regards all things that pertain to you. He
promised to send an answer which shall be enclosed in this I now am
writing. He is counting not the days merely, but the hours, till you
return." In another letter, without date, Angelini says, "I gave your
messages to M. Thomao, who replied that your presence would be dearer
to him than your writing, and that if it seems to you a thousand
years, to him it seems ten thousand, till you come. I received your
gallant (galante) and beautiful sonnet; and though you said nothing
about it, I saw at once for whom it was intended, and gave it to him.
Like everything of yours, it delighted him. The tenor of the sonnet
shows that love keeps you perpetually restless. I do not think this
ought to be the effect of love, and so I send you one of my poor
performances to prove the contrary opinion." We may perhaps assume
that this sonnet was the famous No. xxxi., from the last line of which
every one could perceive that Michelangelo meant it for Tommaso
Cavalieri.


VII

It is significant that, while Michelangelo's affection for the young
Roman was thus acquiring force, another friendship, which must have
once been very dear to him, sprang up and then declined, but not
apparently through his own fault or coldness. We hear of Febo di
Poggio in the following autumn for the first and last time. Before
proceeding to speak of him, I will wind up what has to be said about
Tommaso Cavalieri. Not long after the date of the last letter quoted
above, Michelangelo returned to Rome, and settled there for the rest
of his life. He continued to the end of his days in close friendship
with Cavalieri, who helped to nurse him during his last illness, who
took charge of his effects after his death, and who carried on the
architectural work he had begun at the Capitol.

Their friendship seems to have been uninterrupted by any disagreement,
except on one occasion when Michelangelo gave way to his suspicious
irritability, quite at the close of his long life. This drew forth
from Cavalieri the following manly and touching letter:--

"Very magnificent, my Lord,--I have noticed during several days past
that you have some grievance--what, I do not know--against me.
Yesterday I became certain of it when I went to your house. As I
cannot imagine the cause, I have thought it best to write this, in
order that, if you like, you may inform me. I am more than positive
that I never offended you. But you lend easy credence to those whom
perhaps you ought least to trust; and some one has possibly told you
some lie, for fear I should one day reveal the many knaveries done
under your name, the which do you little honour; and if you desire to
know about them, you shall. Only I cannot, nor, if I could, should I
wish to force myself--but I tell you frankly that if you do not want
me for a friend, you can do as you like, but you cannot compel me not
to be a friend to you. I shall always try to do you service; and only
yesterday I came to show you a letter written by the Duke of Florence,
and to lighten your burdens, as I have ever done until now. Be sure
you have no better friend than me; but on this I will not dwell.
Still, if you think otherwise, I hope that in a short time you will
explain matters; and I know that you know I have always been your
friend without the least interest of my own. Now I will say no more,
lest I should seem to be excusing myself for something which does not
exist, and which I am utterly unable to imagine. I pray and conjure
you, by the love you bear to God, that you tell me what you have
against me, in order that I may disabuse you. Not having more to
write, I remain your servant,

                             "Thomao De' Cavalieri.
                             "From my house, November 15, 1561."

It is clear from this letter, and from the relations which subsisted
between Michelangelo and Cavalieri up to the day of his death, that
the latter was a gentleman of good repute and honour, whose affection
did credit to his friend. I am unable to see that anything but an
injury to both is done by explaining away the obvious meaning of the
letters and the sonnets I have quoted. The supposition that
Michelangelo intended the Cavalieri letters to reach Vittoria Colonna
through that friend's hands does not, indeed, deserve the complete
refutation which I have given it. I am glad, however, to be able to
adduce the opinion of a caustic Florentine scholar upon this topic,
which agrees with my own, and which was formed without access to the
original documents which I have been enabled to make use of. Fanfani
says: "I have searched, but in vain, for documentary proofs of the
passion which Michelangelo is supposed to have felt for Vittoria
Colonna, and which she returned with ardour according to the assertion
of some critics. My own belief, concurring with that of better judges
than myself, is that we have here to deal with one of the many
baseless stories told about him. Omitting the difficulties presented
by his advanced age, it is wholly contrary to all we know about the
Marchioness, and not a little damaging to her reputation for
austerity, to suppose that this admirable matron, who, after the death
of her husband, gave herself up to God, and abjured the commerce of
the world, should, later in life, have carried on an intrigue, as the
saying is, upon the sly, particularly when a third person is imposed
on our credulity, acting the part of go-between and cloak in the
transaction, as certain biographers of the great artist, and certain
commentators of his poetry, are pleased to assert, with how much
common-sense and what seriousness I will not ask."


VIII

The history of Luigi del Riccio's affection for a lad of Florence
called Cecchino dei Bracci, since this is interwoven with
Michelangelo's own biography and the criticism of his poems, may be
adduced in support of the argument I am developing. Cecchino was a
youth of singular promise and personal charm. His relative, the
Florentine merchant, Luigi del Riccio, one of Buonarroti's most
intimate friends and advisers, became devotedly attached to the boy.
Michelangelo, after his return to Rome in 1534, shared this friend
Luigi's admiration for Cecchino; and the close intimacy into which the
two elder men were drawn, at a somewhat later period of Buonarroti's
life, seems to have been cemented by their common interest in poetry
and their common feeling for a charming personality. We have a letter
of uncertain date, in which Michelangelo tells Del Riccio that he has
sent him a madrigal, begging him, if he thinks fit, to commit the
verses "to the fire--that is, to what consumes me." Then he asks him
to resolve a certain problem which has occurred to his mind during the
night, "for while I was saluting _our idol_ in a dream, it seemed to
me that he laughed, and in the same instant threatened me; and not
knowing which of these two moods I have to abide by, I beg you to find
out from him; and on Sunday, when we meet again, you will inform me."
Cecchino, who is probably alluded to in this letter, died at Rome on
the 8th of January 1542, and was buried in the Church of Araceli.
Luigi felt the blow acutely. Upon the 12th of January he wrote to his
friend Donate Giannotti, then at Vicenza, in the following words:--

"Alas, my friend Donato! Our Cecchino is dead. All Rome weeps.
Michelangelo is making for me the design of a decent sepulture in
marble; and I pray you to write me the epitaph, and to send it to me
with a consolatory letter, if time permits, for my grief has
distraught me. Patience! I live with a thousand and a thousand deaths
each hour. O God! How has Fortune changed her aspect!" Giannotti
replied, enclosing three fine sonnets, the second of which,
beginning--

  _Messer Luigi mio, di noi che fia
    Che sian restati senza il nostro sole?_

seems to have taken Michelangelo's fancy. Many good pens in Italy
poured forth laments on this occasion. We have verses written by
Giovanni Aldobrandini, Carlo Gondi, Fra Paolo del Rosso, and Anton
Francesco Grazzini, called Il Lasca. Not the least touching is Luigi's
own threnody, which starts upon this note:--

  _Idol mio, che la tua leggiadra spoglia
  Mi lasciasti anzi tempo._

Michelangelo, seeking to indulge his own grief and to soothe that of
his friend Luigi, composed no fewer than forty-two epigrams of four
lines each, in which he celebrated the beauty and rare personal
sweetness of Cecchino in laboured philosophical conceits. They rank
but low among his poems, having too much of scholastic trifling and
too little of the accent of strong feeling in them. Certainly these
pieces did not deserve the pains which Michelangelo the younger
bestowed, when he altered the text of a selection from them so as to
adapt their Platonic compliments to some female. Far superior is a
sonnet written to Del Riccio upon the death of the youth, showing how
recent had been Michelangelo's acquaintance with Cecchino, and
containing an unfulfilled promise to carve his portrait:--

  _Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes,
    Which to your living eyes were life and light,
    When, closed at last in death's injurious night,
    He opened them on God in Paradise.
  I know it, and I weep--too late made wise:
    Yet was the fault not mine; for death's fell spite
    Robbed my desire of that supreme delight
    Which in your better memory never dies.
  Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine
    To make unique Cecchino smile in stone
    For ever, now that earth hath made him dim,
  If the beloved within the lover shine,
    Since art without him cannot work alone,
    You must I carve to tell the world of him._

The strange blending of artificial conceits with spontaneous feeling
in these poetical effusions, the deep interest taken in a mere lad
like Cecchino by so many eminent personages, and the frank publicity
given to a friendship based apparently upon the beauty of its object,
strike us now as almost unintelligible. Yet we have the history of
Shakespeare's Sonnets, and the letters addressed by Languet to young
Sidney, in evidence that fashion at the end of the sixteenth century
differed widely from that which prevails at the close of the
nineteenth.


IX

Some further light may here be thrown upon Michelangelo's intimacy
with young men by two fragments extracted independently from the
Buonarroti Archives by Milanesi and Guasti. In the collection of the
letters we find the following sorrowful epistle, written in December
1533, upon the eve of Michelangelo's departure from Florence. It is
addressed to a certain Febo:--

"Febo,--Albeit you bear the greatest hatred toward my person--I know
not why--I scarcely believe, because of the love I cherish for you,
but probably through the words of others, to which you ought to give
no credence, having proved me--yet I cannot do otherwise than write to
you this letter. I am leaving Florence to-morrow, and am going to
Pescia to meet the Cardinal di Cesis and Messer Baldassare. I shall
journey with them to Pisa, and thence to Rome, and I shall never
return again to Florence. I wish you to understand that, so long as I
live, wherever I may be, I shall always remain at your service with
loyalty and love, in a measure unequalled by any other friend whom you
may have upon this world.

"I pray God to open your eyes from some other quarter, in order that
you may come to comprehend that he who desires your good more than his
own welfare, is able to love, not to hate like an enemy."

Milanesi prints no more of the manuscript in his edition of the
Letters. But Guasti, conscientiously collecting fragments of
Michelangelo's verses, gives six lines, which he found at the foot of
the epistle:--

  _Vo' sol del mie morir contento veggio:
    La terra piange, e'l ciel per me si muove;
    E vo' men pietà stringe ov' io sto peggio._
  _O sol che scaldi il mondo in ogni dove,
    O Febo, o luce eterna de' mortali,
  Perchè a me sol ti scuri e non altrove?

       *       *       *       *       *

  Naught comforts you, I see, unless I die:
    Earth weeps, the heavens for me are moved to woe;
    You feel of grief the less, the more grieve I.
  O sun that warms the world where'er you go,
    O Febo, light eterne for mortal eyes!
    Why dark to me alone, elsewhere not so?_

These verses seem to have been written as part of a long Capitolo
which Michelangelo himself, the elder, used indifferently in
addressing Febo and his abstract "donna." Who Febo was, we do not
know. But the sincere accent of the letter and the lyric cry of the
rough lines leave us to imagine that he was some one for whom
Michelangelo felt very tenderly in Florence.

Milanesi prints this letter to Febo with the following title, "_A Febo
(di Poggio)_." This proves that he at any rate knew it had been
answered by some one signing "Febo di Poggio." The autograph, in an
illiterate hand and badly spelt, is preserved among the Buonarroti
Archives, and bears date January 14, 1534. Febo excuses himself for
not having been able to call on Michelangelo the night before he left
Florence, and professes to have come the next day and found him
already gone. He adds that he is in want of money, both to buy clothes
and to go to see the games upon the Monte. He prays for a gratuity,
and winds up: "Vostro da figliuolo (yours like a son), Febo di
Poggio." I will add a full translation here:--

"Magnificent M. Michelangelo, to be honoured as a father,--I came back
yesterday from Pisa, whither I had gone to see my father. Immediately
upon my arrival, that friend of yours at the bank put a letter from
you into my hands, which I received with the greatest pleasure, having
heard of your well-being. God be praised, I may say the same about
myself. Afterwards I learned what you say about my being angry with
you. You know well I could not be angry with you, since I regard you
in the place of a father. Besides, your conduct toward me has not been
of the sort to cause in me any such effect. That evening when you left
Florence, in the morning I could not get away from M. Vincenzo, though
I had the greatest desire to speak with you. Next morning I came to
your house, and you were already gone, and great was my disappointment
at your leaving Florence without my seeing you.

"I am here in Florence; and when you left, you told me that if I
wanted anything, I might ask it of that friend of yours; and now that
M. Vincenzo is away, I am in want of money, both to clothe myself, and
also to go to the Monte, to see those people fighting, for M. Vincenzo
is there. Accordingly, I went to visit that friend at the bank, and he
told me that he had no commission whatsoever from you; but that a
messenger was starting to-night for Rome, and that an answer could
come back within five days. So then, if you give him orders, he will
not fail, I beseech you, then, to provide and assist me with any sum
you think fit, and do not fail to answer.

"I will not write more, except that with all my heart and power I
recommend myself to you, praying God to keep you from harm.--Yours in
the place of a son,

                      "Febo Di Poggio.
                      "Florence, _January 4, 154_."


X

In all the compositions I have quoted as illustrative of
Michelangelo's relations with young men, there is a singular humility
which gives umbrage to his editors. The one epistle to Gherardo
Perini, cited above, contains the following phrases: "I do not feel
myself of force enough to correspond to your kind letter;" "Your most
faithful and poor friend."

Yet there was nothing extraordinary in Cavalieri, Cecchino, Febo, or
Perini, except their singularity of youth and grace, good parts and
beauty. The vulgar are offended when an illustrious man pays homage to
these qualities, forgetful of Shakespeare's self-abasement before Mr.
W.H. and of Languet's prostration at the feet of Sidney. In the case
of Michelangelo, we may find a solution of this problem, I think, in
one of his sonnets. He says, writing a poem belonging very probably to
the series which inspires Michelangelo the younger with alarm:--

  _As one who will re-seek her home of light,
    Thy form immortal to this prison-house
    Descended, like an angel-piteous,
    To heal all hearts and make the whole world bright,
  'Tis this that thralls my soul in love's delight,
    Not thy clear face of beauty glorious;
    For he who harbours virtue still will choose
    To love what neither years nor death can blight.
  So fares it ever with things high and rare
    Wrought in the sweat of nature; heaven above
    Showers on their birth the blessings of her prime:
  Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
    More clearly than in human forms sublime,
    Which, since they image Him, alone I love._

It was not, then, to this or that young man, to this or that woman,
that Michelangelo paid homage, but to the eternal beauty revealed in
the mortal image of divinity before his eyes. The attitude of the
mind, the quality of passion, implied in these poems, and conveyed
more clumsily through the prose of the letters, may be difficult to
comprehend. But until we have arrived at seizing them we shall fail to
understand the psychology of natures like Michelangelo. No language of
admiration is too strong, no self-humiliation too complete, for a soul
which has recognised deity made manifest in one of its main
attributes, beauty. In the sight of a philosopher, a poet, and an
artist, what are kings, popes, people of importance, compared with a
really perfect piece of God's handiwork?

  _From thy fair face I learn, O my loved lord,
    That which no mortal tongue can rightly say;
     The soul imprisoned in her house of clay,
    Holpen by thee, to God hath often soared.
  And though the vulgar, vain, malignant horde
    Attribute what their grosser wills obey,
    Yet shall this fervent homage that I pay,
    This love, this faith, pure joys for us afford.
  Lo, all the lovely things we find on earth,
    Resemble for the soul that rightly sees
    That source of bliss divine which gave us birth:
  Nor have we first-fruits or remembrances
    Of heaven elsewhere. Thus, loving loyally,
    I rise to God, and make death sweet by thee._

We know that, in some way or other, perhaps during those early years
at Florence among the members of the Platonic Academy, Michelangelo
absorbed the doctrines of the _Phoedrus_ and _Symposium_. His poems
abound in references to the contrast between Uranian and Pandemic,
celestial and vulgar, Eros. We have even one sonnet in which he
distinctly states the Greek opinion that the love of women is unworthy
of a soul bent upon high thoughts and virile actions. It reads like a
verse transcript from the main argument of the _Symposium_:--

  _Love is not always harsh and deadly sin,
    When love for boundless beauty makes us pine;
    The heart, by love left soft and infantine,
    Will let the shafts of God's grace enter in.
  Love wings and wakes the soul, stirs her to win
    Her flight aloft, nor e'er to earth decline;
    'Tis the first step that leads her to the shrine
    Of Him who slakes the thirst that burns within._

  _The love of that whereof I speak ascends:
    Woman is different far; the love of her
    But ill befits a heart manly and wise.
  The one love soars, the other earthward tends;
    The soul lights this, while that the senses stir;
    And still lust's arrow at base quarry flies._

The same exalted Platonism finds obscure but impassioned expression in
this fragment of a sonnet (No. lxxix.):----

  _For Love's fierce wound, and for the shafts that harm,
    True medicine 'twould have been to pierce my heart;
    But my soul's Lord owns only one strong charm,
    Which makes life grow where grows life's mortal smart.
  My Lord dealt death, when with his-powerful arm
    He bent Love's bow. Winged with that shaft, from Love
    An angel flew, cried, "Love, nay Burn! Who dies,
    Hath but Love's plumes whereby to soar above!
  Lo, I am He who from thine earliest years
    Toward, heaven-born Beauty raised thy faltering eyes.
    Beauty alone lifts live man to heaven's spheres."_

Feeling like this, Michelangelo would have been justly indignant with
officious relatives and critics, who turned his _amici_ into _animi_,
redirected his Cavalieri letters to the address of Vittoria Colonna,
discovered Florence in Febo di Poggio, and ascribed all his emotional
poems to some woman.

There is no doubt that both the actions and the writings of
contemporaries justified a considerable amount of scepticism regarding
the purity of Platonic affections. The words and lives of many
illustrious persons gave colour to what Segni stated in his History of
Florence, and what Savonarola found it necessary to urge upon the
people from his pulpit.

But we have every reason to feel certain that, in a malicious age,
surrounded by jealous rivals, with the fierce light of his
transcendent glory beating round his throne, Buonarroti suffered from
no scandalous reports, and maintained an untarnished character for
sobriety of conduct and purity of morals.

The general opinion regarding him may be gathered from Scipione
Ammirati's History (under the year 1564). This annalist records the
fact that "Buonarotti having lived for ninety years, there was never
found through all that length of time, and with all that liberty to
sin, any one who could with right and justice impute to him a stain or
any ugliness of manners."

How he appeared to one who lived and worked with him for a long period
of intimacy, could not be better set forth than in the warm and
ingenuous words of Condivi: "He has loved the beauty of the human body
with particular devotion, as is natural with one who knows that beauty
so completely; and has loved it in such wise that certain carnally
minded men, who do not comprehend the love of beauty, except it be
lascivious and indecorous, have been led thereby to think and to speak
evil of him: just as though Alcibiades, that comeliest young man, had
not been loved in all purity by Socrates, from whose side, when they
reposed together, he was wont to say that he arose not otherwise than
from the side of his own father. Oftentimes have I heard Michelangelo
discoursing and expounding on the theme of love, and have afterwards
gathered from those who were present upon these occasions that he
spoke precisely as Plato wrote, and as we may read in Plato's works
upon this subject. I, for myself, do not know what Plato says; but I
know full well that, having so long and so intimately conversed with
Michelangelo, I never once heard issue from that mouth words that were
not of the truest honesty, and such as had virtue to extinguish in the
heart of youth any disordered and uncurbed desire which might assail
it. I am sure, too, that no vile thoughts were born in him, by this
token, that he loved not only the beauty of human beings, but in
general all fair things, as a beautiful horse, a beautiful dog, a
beautiful piece of country, a beautiful plant, a beautiful mountain, a
beautiful wood, and every site or thing in its kind fair and rare,
admiring them with marvellous affection. This was his way; to choose
what is beautiful from nature, as bees collect the honey from flowers,
and use it for their purpose in their workings: which indeed was
always the method of those masters who have acquired any fame in
painting. That old Greek artist, when he wanted to depict a Venus, was
not satisfied with the sight of one maiden only. On the contrary, he
sought to study many; and culling from each the particular in which
she was most perfect, to make use of these details in his Venus. Of a
truth, he who imagines to arrive at any excellence without following
this system (which is the source of a true theory in the arts), shoots
very wide indeed of his mark."

Condivi perhaps exaggerated the influence of lovely nature, horses,
dogs, flowers, hills, woods, &c., on Michelangelo's genius. His work,
as we know, is singularly deficient in motives drawn from any province
but human beauty; and his poems and letters contain hardly a trace of
sympathy with the external world. Yet, in the main contention, Condivi
told the truth. Michelangelo's poems and letters, and the whole series
of his works in fresco and marble, suggest no single detail which is
sensuous, seductive, enfeebling to the moral principles. Their tone
may be passionate; it is indeed often red-hot with a passion like that
of Lucretius and Beethoven; but the genius of the man transports the
mind to spiritual altitudes, where the lust of the eye and the
longings of the flesh are left behind us in a lower region. Only a
soul attuned to the same chord of intellectual rapture can breathe in
that fiery atmosphere and feel the vibrations of its electricity.


XI

I have used Michelangelo's poems freely throughout this work as
documents illustrative of his opinions and sentiments, and also in
their bearing on the events of his life. I have made them reveal the
man in his personal relations to Pope Julius II., to Vittoria Colonna,
to Tommaso dei Cavalieri, to Luigi del Riccio, to Febo di Poggio. I
have let them tell their own tale, when sorrow came upon him in the
death of his father and Urbino, and when old age shook his lofty
spirit with the thought of approaching death. I have appealed to them
for lighter incidents: matters of courtesy, the completion of the
Sistine vault, the statue of Night at S. Lorenzo, the subjection of
Florence to the Medici, his heart-felt admiration for Dante's genius.
Examples of his poetic work, so far as these can be applied to the
explanation of his psychology, his theory of art, his sympathies, his
feeling under several moods of passion, will consequently be found
scattered up and down by volumes. Translation, indeed, is difficult to
the writer, and unsatisfactory to the reader. But I have been at pains
to direct an honest student to the original sources, so that he may,
if he wishes, compare my versions with the text. Therefore I do not
think it necessary to load this chapter with voluminous citations.
Still, there remains something to be said about Michelangelo as poet,
and about the place he occupies as poet in Italian literature.

The value of Michelangelo's poetry is rather psychological than purely
literary. He never claimed to be more than an amateur, writing to
amuse himself. His style is obscure, crabbed, ungrammatical.
Expression only finds a smooth and flowing outlet when the man's
nature is profoundly stirred by some powerful emotion, as in the
sonnets to Cavalieri, or the sonnets on the deaths of Vittoria Colonna
and Urbino, or the sonnets on the thought of his own death. For the
most part, it is clear that he found great difficulty in mastering his
thoughts and images. This we discover from the innumerable variants of
the same madrigal or sonnet which he made, and his habit of returning
to them at intervals long after their composition. A good fourth of
the Codex Vaticanus consists of repetitions and _rifacimenti_. He was
also wont to submit what he wrote to the judgment of his friends,
requesting them to alter and improve. He often had recourse to Luigi
del Riccio's assistance in such matters. I may here adduce an inedited
letter from two friends in Rome, Giovanni Francesco Bini and Giovanni
Francesco Stella, who returned a poem they had handled in this manner:
"We have done our best to alter some things in your sonnet, but not to
set it all to rights, since there was not much wanting. Now that it is
changed or put in order, according as the kindness of your nature
wished, the result will be more due to your own judgment than to ours,
since you have the true conception of the subject in your mind. We
shall be greatly pleased if you find yourself as well served as we
earnestly desire that you should command us." It was the custom of
amateur poets to have recourse to literary craftsmen before they
ventured to circulate their compositions. An amusing instance of this
will be found in Professor Biagi's monograph upon Tullia d'Aragona,
all of whose verses passed through the crucible of Benedetto Varchi's
revision.

The thoughts and images out of which Michelangelo's poetry is woven
are characteristically abstract and arid. He borrows no illustrations
from external nature. The beauty of the world and all that lives in it
might have been non-existent so far as he was concerned. Nor do his
octave stanzas in praise of rural life form an exception to this
statement; for these are imitated from Poliziano, so far as they
attempt pictures of the country, and their chief poetical feature is
the masque of vices belonging to human nature in the city. His
stock-in-trade consists of a few Platonic notions and a few Petrarchan
antitheses. In the very large number of compositions which are devoted
to love, this one idea predominates: that physical beauty is a direct
beam sent from the eternal source of all reality, in order to elevate
the lover's soul and lead him on the upward path toward heaven. Carnal
passion he regards with the aversion of an ascetic. It is impossible
to say for certain to whom these mystical love-poems were addressed.
Whether a man or a woman is in the case (for both were probably the
objects of his aesthetical admiration), the tone of feeling, the
language, and the philosophy do not vary. He uses the same imagery,
the same conceits, the same abstract ideas for both sexes, and adapts
the leading motive which he had invented for a person of one sex to a
person of the other when it suits his purpose. In our absolute
incapacity to fix any amative connection upon Michelangelo, or to link
his name with that of any contemporary beauty, we arrive at the
conclusion, strange as this may be, that the greater part of his
love-poetry is a scholastic exercise upon emotions transmuted into
metaphysical and mystical conceptions. Only two pieces in the long
series break this monotony by a touch of realism. They are divided by
a period of more than thirty years. The first seems to date from an
early epoch of his life:--

  _What joy hath yon glad wreath of flowers that is
    Around her golden hair so deftly twined,
    Each blossom pressing forward from behind,
    As though to be the first her brows to kiss!
  The livelong day her dress hath perfect bliss,
    That now reveals her breast, now seems to bind:
    And that fair woven net of gold refined
    Rests on her cheek and throat in happiness!
  Yet still more blissful seems to me the band,
    Gilt at the tips, so sweetly doth it ring,
    And clasp the bosom that it serves to lace:
  Yea, and the belt, to such as understand,
    Bound round her waist, saith: Here I'd ever cling!
    What would my arms do in that girdle's place?_

The second can be ascribed with probability to the year 1534 or 1535.
It is written upon the back of a rather singular letter addressed to
him by a certain Pierantonio, when both men were in Rome together:--

  _Kind to the world, but to itself unkind,
    A worm is born, that, dying noiselessly,
    Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be
    In its true worth alone by death divined.
  Would I might die for my dear lord to find
    Raiment in my outworn mortality;
    That, changing like the snake, I might be free
    To cast the slough wherein I dwell confined!
  Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays,
    Woven and wrought into a vestment fair,
    Around yon breast so beauteous in such bliss!
  All through the day thou'd have me! Would I were
    The shoes that bear that burden! when the ways
    Were wet with rain, thy feet I then should kiss!_

I have already alluded to the fact that we can trace two widely
different styles of writing in Michelangelo's poetry. Some of his
sonnets, like the two just quoted, and those we can refer with
certainty to the Cavalieri series, together with occasional
compositions upon the deaths of Cecchino and Urbino, seem to come
straight from the heart, and their manuscripts offer few variants to
the editor. Others, of a different quality, where he is dealing with
Platonic subtleties or Petrarchan conceits, have been twisted into so
many forms, and tortured by such frequent re-handlings, that it is
difficult now to settle a final text. The Codex Vaticanus is
peculiarly rich in examples of these compositions. Madrigal lvii. and
Sonnet lx., for example, recur with wearisome reiteration. These
laboured and scholastic exercises, unlike the more spontaneous
utterances of his feelings, are worked up into different forms, and
the same conceits are not seldom used for various persons and on
divers occasions.

One of the great difficulties under which a critic labours in
discussing these personal poems is that their chronology cannot be
ascertained in the majority of instances. Another is that we are
continually hampered by the false traditions invented by Michelangelo
the younger. Books like Lannan Rolland's "Michel-Ange et Vittoria
Colonna" have no value whatsoever, because they are based upon that
unlucky grand-nephew's deliberately corrupted text. Even Wadsworth's
translations, fine as they are, have lost a large portion of their
interest since the publication of the autographs by Cesare Guasti in
1863. It is certain that the younger Michelangelo meant well to his
illustrious ancestor. He was anxious to give his rugged compositions
the elegance and suavity of academical versification. He wished also
to defend his character from the imputation of immorality. Therefore
he rearranged the order of stanzas in the longer poems, pieced
fragments together, changed whole lines, ideas, images, amplified and
mutilated, altered phrases which seemed to him suspicious. Only one
who has examined the manuscripts of the Buonarroti Archives knows what
pains he bestowed upon this ungrateful and disastrous task. But the
net result of his meddlesome benevolence is that now for nearly three
centuries the greatest genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn a
mask concealing the real nature of his emotion, and that a false
legend concerning his relations to Vittoria Colonna has become
inextricably interwoven with the story of his life.

The extraordinary importance attached by Michelangelo in old age to
the passions of his youth is almost sufficient to justify those
psychological investigators who regard him as the subject of a nervous
disorder. It does not seem to be accounted for by anything known to us
regarding his stern and solitary life, his aloofness from the vulgar,
and his self-dedication to study. In addition to the splendid
devotional sonnets addressed to Vasari, which will appear in their
proper place, I may corroborate these remarks by the translation of a
set of three madrigals bearing on the topic.

  _Ah me, ah me! how have I been betrayed
  By my swift-flitting years, and by the glass,
  Which yet tells truth to those who firmly gaze!
  Thus happens it when one too long delays,
  As I have done, nor feels time fleet and, fade:--
  One morn he finds himself grown old, alas!
  To gird my loins, repent, my path repass,
  Sound counsel take, I cannot, now death's near;
  Foe to myself, each tear,
  Each sigh, is idly to the light wind sent,
  For there's no loss to equal time ill-spent.

  Ah me, ah me! I wander telling o'er
  Past years, and yet in all I cannot view
  One day that might be rightly reckoned mine.
  Delusive hopes and vain desires entwine
  My soul that loves, weeps, burns, and sighs full sore.
  Too well I know and prove that this is true,
  Since of man's passions none to me are new.
  Far from the truth my steps have gone astray,
  In peril now I stay,
  For, lo! the brief span of my life is o'er.
  Yet, were it lengthened, I should love once more.

  Ah me! I wander tired, and know not whither:
  I fear to sight my goal, the years gone by
  Point it too plain; nor will closed eyes avail.
  Now Time hath changed and gnawed this mortal veil,
  Death and the soul in conflict strive together
  About my future fate that looms so nigh.
  Unless my judgment greatly goes awry,
  Which God in mercy grant, I can but see
  Eternal penalty
  Waiting my wasted will, my misused mind,
  And know not, Lord, where health and hope to find._

After reading these lamentations, it is well to remember that
Michelangelo at times indulged a sense of humour. As examples of his
lighter vein, we might allude to the sonnet on the Sistine and the
capitolo in answer to Francesco Berni, written in the name of Fra
Sebastiano. Sometimes his satire becomes malignant, as in the sonnet
against the people of Pistoja, which breathes the spirit of Dantesque
invective. Sometimes the fierceness of it is turned against himself,
as in the capitolo upon old age and its infirmities. The grotesqueness
of this lurid descant on senility and death is marked by something
rather Teutonic than Italian, a "Danse Macabre" intensity of loathing;
and it winds up with the bitter reflections, peculiar to him in his
latest years, upon the vanity of art. "My much-prized art, on which I
relied and which brought me fame, has now reduced me to this. I am
poor and old, the slave of others. To the dogs I must go, unless I die
quickly."

A proper conclusion to this chapter may be borrowed from the
peroration of Varchi's discourse upon the philosophical love-poetry of
Michelangelo. This time he chooses for his text the second of those
sonnets (No. lii.) which caused the poet's grand-nephew so much
perplexity, inducing him to alter the word _amici_ in the last line
into _animi_. It runs as follows:--

  _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.
  Nay, things that die cannot assuage the thirst
    Of souls undying; nor Eternity
    Serves Time, where all must fade that flourisheth
  _Sense is not love, but lawlessness accurst:
    This kills the soul; while our love lifts on high
    Our friends on earth--higher in heaven through death._

"From this sonnet," says Varchi, "I think that any man possessed of
judgment will be able to discern to what extent this angel, or rather
archangel, in addition to his three first and most noble professions
of architecture, sculpture, and painting, wherein without dispute he
not only eclipses all the moderns, but even surpasses the ancients,
proves himself also excellent, nay singular, in poetry, and in the
true art of loving; the which art is neither less fair nor less
difficult, albeit it be more necessary and more profitable than the
other four. Whereof no one ought to wonder: for this reason; that,
over and above what is manifest to everybody, namely that nature,
desirous of exhibiting her utmost power, chose to fashion a complete
man, and (as the Latins say) one furnished in all proper parts; he, in
addition to the gifts of nature, of such sort and so liberally
scattered, added such study and a diligence so great that, even had he
been by birth most rugged, he might through these means have become
consummate in all virtue: and supposing he were born, I do not say in
Florence and of a very noble family, in the time too of Lorenzo the
Magnificent, who recognised, willed, knew, and had the power to
elevate so vast a genius; but in Scythia, of any stock or stem you
like, under some commonplace barbarian chief, a fellow not disdainful
merely, but furiously hostile to all intellectual ability; still, in
all circumstances, under any star, he would have been Michelangelo,
that is to say, the unique painter, the singular sculptor, the most
perfect architect, the most excellent poet, and a lover of the most
divinest. For the which reasons I (it is now many years ago), holding
his name not only in admiration, but also in veneration, before I knew
that he was architect already, made a sonnet; with which (although it
be as much below the supreme greatness of his worth as it is unworthy
of your most refined and chastened ears) I mean to close this present
conference; reserving the discussion on the arts (in obedience to our
Consul's orders) for another lecture.

  _Illustrious sculptor, 'twas enough and more,
    Not with the chisel-and bruised bronze alone,
    But also with brush, colour, pencil, tone,
    To rival, nay, surpass that fame of yore.
  But now, transcending what those laurels bore
    Of pride and beauty for our age and zone.
    You climb of poetry the third high throne,
    Singing love's strife and-peace, love's sweet and sore.
  O wise, and dear to God, old man well born,
    Who in so many, so fair ways, make fair
    This world, how shall your dues be dully paid?
  Doomed by eternal charters to adorn
    Nature and art, yourself their mirror are,
    None, first before, nor second after, made."_

In the above translation of Varchi's peroration I have endeavoured to
sustain those long-winded periods of which he was so perfect and
professed a master. We must remember that he actually read this
dissertation before the Florentine Academy on the second Sunday in
Lent, in the year 1546, when Michelangelo was still alive and hearty.
He afterwards sent it to the press; and the studied trumpet-tones of
eulogy, conferring upon Michelangelo the quintuple crown of
pre-eminence in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and loving,
sounded from Venice down to Naples. The style of the oration may
strike us as _rococo_ now, but the accent of praise and appreciation
is surely genuine. Varchi's enthusiastic comment on the sonnets xxx,
xxxi, and lii, published to men of letters, taste, and learning in
Florence and all Italy, is the strongest vindication of their
innocence against editors and scholars who in various ways have
attempted to disfigure or to misconstrue them.



CHAPTER XIII


I

The correspondence which I used in the eleventh chapter, while
describing Michelangelo's difficulties regarding the final contract
with the Duke of Urbino, proves that he had not begun to paint the
frescoes of the Cappella Paolina in October 1542. They were carried on
with interruptions during the next seven years. These pictures, the
last on which his talents were employed, are two large subjects: the
Conversion of S. Paul, and the Martyrdom of S. Peter. They have
suffered from smoke and other injuries of time even more than the
frescoes of the Sistine, and can now be scarcely appreciated owing to
discoloration. Nevertheless, at no period, even when fresh from the
master's hand, can they have been typical of his style. It is true
that contemporaries were not of this opinion. Condivi calls both of
them "stupendous not only in the general exposition of the histories
but also in the details of each figure." It is also true that the
technical finish of these large compositions shows a perfect mastery
of painting, and that the great designer has not lost his power of
dealing at will with the human body. But the frigidity of old age had
fallen on his feeling and imagination. The faces of his saints and
angels here are more inexpressive than those of the Last Judgment. The
type of form has become still more rigidly schematic. All those
figures in violent attitudes have been invented in the artist's brain
without reference to nature; and the activity of movement which he
means to suggest, is frozen, petrified, suspended. The suppleness, the
elasticity, the sympathy with which Michelangelo handled the nude,
when he began to paint in the Sistine Chapel, have disappeared. We
cannot refrain from regretting that seven years of his energetic old
age should have been devoted to work so obviously indicative of
decaying faculties.

The Cappella Paolina ran a risk of destruction by fire during the
course of his operations there. Michelangelo wrote to Del Riccio in
1545, reminding him that part of the roof had been consumed, and that
it would be necessary to cover it in roughly at once, since the rain
was damaging the frescoes and weakening the walls. When they were
finished, Paul III. appointed an official guardian with a fixed
salary, whose sole business it should be "to clean the frescoes well
and keep them in a state of cleanliness, free from dust and other
impurities, as also from the smoke of candles lighted in both chapels
during divine service." This man had charge of the Sistine as well as
the Pauline Chapel; but his office does not seem to have been
continued after the death of the Farnese. The first guardian nominated
was Buonarroti's favourite servant Urbino.

Vasari, after describing these frescoes in some detail, but without
his customary enthusiasm, goes on to observe: "Michelangelo attended
only, as I have elsewhere said, to the perfection of art. There are no
landscapes, nor trees, nor houses; nor again do we find in his work
that variety of movement and prettiness which may be noticed in the
pictures of other men. He always neglected such decoration, being
unwilling to lower his lofty genius to these details." This is indeed
true of the arid desert of the Pauline frescoes. Then he adds: "They
were his last productions in painting. He was seventy-five years old
when he carried them to completion; and, as he informed me, he did so
with great effort and fatigue--painting, after a certain age, and
especially fresco-painting, not being in truth fit work for old men."

The first of two acute illnesses, which showed that Michelangelo's
constitution was beginning to give way, happened in the summer of
1544. On this occasion Luigi del Riccio took him into his own
apartments at the Casa Strozzi; and here he nursed him with such
personal devotion that the old man afterwards regarded Del Riccio as
the saviour of his life. We learn this from the following pathetic
sonnet:--

  _It happens that the sweet unfathomed sea
    Of seeming courtesy sometimes doth hide
    Offence to life and honour. This descried,
    I hold less dear the health restored to me.
  He who lends wings of hope, while secretly
    He spreads a traitorous snare by the wayside,
    Hath dulled the flame of love, and mortified
    Friendship where friendship burns most fervently.
  Keep then, my dear Luigi, clear and fare,
    That ancient love to which my life I owe,
    That neither wind nor storm its calm may mar.
  For wrath and pain our gratitude obscure;
    And if the truest truth of love I know,
    One pang outweighs a thousand pleasures far._

Ruberto Strozzi, who was then in France, wrote anxiously inquiring
after his health. In reply, Michelangelo sent Strozzi a singular
message by Luigi del Riccio, to the effect that "if the king of France
restored Florence to liberty, he was ready to make his statue on
horseback out of bronze at his own cost, and set it up in the Piazza."
This throws some light upon a passage in a letter addressed
subsequently to Lionardo Buonarroti, when the tyrannous law, termed
"La Polverina," enacted against malcontents by the Duke Cosimo de'
Medici, was disturbing the minds of Florentine citizens. Michelangelo
then wrote as follows: "I am glad that you gave me news of the edict;
because, if I have been careful up to this date in my conversation
with exiles, I shall take more precautions for the future. As to my
having been laid up with an illness in the house of the Strozzi, I do
not hold that I was in their house, but in the apartment of Messer
Luigi del Riccio, who was my intimate friend; and after the death of
Bartolommeo Angelini, I found no one better able to transact my
affairs, or more faithfully, than he did. When he died, I ceased to
frequent the house, as all Rome can bear me witness; as they can also
with regard to the general tenor of my life, inasmuch as I am always
alone, go little around, and talk to no one, least of all to
Florentines. When I am saluted on the open street, I cannot do less
than respond with fair words and pass upon my way. Had I knowledge of
the exiles, who they are, I would not reply to them in any manner. As
I have said, I shall henceforward protect myself with diligence, the
more that I have so much else to think about that I find it difficult
to live."

This letter of 1548, taken in connection with the circumstances of
Michelangelo's illness in 1544, his exchange of messages with Ruberto
degli Strozzi, his gift of the two Captives to that gentleman, and his
presence in the house of the Strozzi during his recovery, shows the
delicacy of the political situation at Florence under Cosimo's rule.
Slight indications of a reactionary spirit in the aged artist exposed
his family to peril. Living in Rome, Michelangelo risked nothing with
the Florentine government. But "La Polverina" attacked the heirs of
exiles in their property and persons. It was therefore of importance
to establish his non-complicity in revolutionary intrigues. Luckily
for himself and his nephew, he could make out a good case and defend
his conduct. Though Buonarroti's sympathies and sentiments inclined
him to prefer a republic in his native city, and though he threw his
weight into that scale at the crisis of the siege, he did not forget
his early obligations to the House of Medici. Clement VII. accepted
his allegiance when the siege was over, and set him immediately to
work at the tasks he wished him to perform. What is more, the Pope
took pains and trouble to settle the differences between him and the
Duke of Urbino. The man had been no conspirator. The architect and
sculptor was coveted by every pope and prince in Italy. Still there
remained a discord between his political instincts, however prudently
and privately indulged, and his sense of personal loyalty to the
family at whose board he sat in youth, and to whom he owed his
advancement in life. Accordingly, we shall find that, though the Duke
of Tuscany made advances to win him back to Florence, Michelangelo
always preferred to live and die on neutral ground in Rome. Like the
wise man that he was, he seems to have felt through these troublous
times that his own duty, the service laid on him by God and nature,
was to keep his force and mental faculties for art; obliging old
patrons in all kindly offices, suppressing republican aspirations--in
one word, "sticking to his last," and steering clear of shoals on
which the main raft of his life might founder.

From this digression, which was needful to explain his attitude toward
Florence and part of his psychology, I return to the incidents of
Michelangelo's illness at Rome in 1544. Lionardo, having news of his
uncle's danger, came post-haste to Rome. This was his simple duty, as
a loving relative. But the old man, rendered suspicious by previous
transactions with his family, did not take the action in its proper
light. We have a letter, indorsed by Lionardo in Rome as received upon
the 11th of July, to this effect: "Lionardo, I have been ill; and you,
at the instance of Ser Giovan Francesco (probably Fattucci), have come
to make me dead, and to see what I have left. Is there not enough of
mine at Florence to content you? You cannot deny that you are the
image of your father, who turned me out of my own house in Florence.
Know that I have made a will of such tenor that you need not trouble
your head about what I possess at Rome. Go then with God, and do not
present yourself before me; and do not write to me again, and act like
the priest in the fable."

The correspondence between uncle and nephew during the next months
proves that this furious letter wrought no diminution of mutual regard
and affection. Before the end of the year he must have recovered, for
we find him writing to Del Riccio: "I am well again now, and hope to
live yet some years, seeing that God has placed my health under the
care of Maestro Baccio Rontini and the trebbian wine of the Ulivieri."
This letter is referred to January 1545, and on the 9th of that month
he dictated a letter to his friend Del Riccio, in which he tells
Lionardo Buonarroti: "I do not feel well, and cannot write.
Nevertheless I have recovered from my illness, and suffer no pain
now." We have reason to think that Michelangelo fell gravely ill again
toward the close of 1545. News came to Florence that he was dying; and
Lionardo, not intimidated by his experience on the last occasion, set
out to visit him. His _ricordo_ of the journey was as follows: "I note
how on the 15th of January 1545 (Flor. style, _i.e._ 1546) I went to
Rome by post to see Michelangelo, who was ill, and returned to-day,
the 26th."

It is not quite easy to separate the records of these two acute
illnesses of Michelangelo, falling between the summer of 1544 and the
early spring of 1546. Still, there is no doubt that they signalised
his passage from robust old age into a period of physical decline.
Much of life survived in the hero yet; he had still to mould S.
Peter's after his own mind, and to invent the cupola. Intellectually
he suffered no diminution, but he became subject to a chronic disease
of the bladder, and adopted habits suited to decaying faculty.


II

We have seen that Michelangelo regarded Luigi del Riccio as his most
trusty friend and adviser. The letters which he wrote to him during
these years turn mainly upon business or poetical compositions. Some,
however, throw light upon the private life of both men, and on the
nature of their intimacy. I will select a few for special comment
here. The following has no date; but it is interesting, because we may
connect the feeling expressed in it with one of Michelangelo's
familiar sonnets. "Dear Messer Luigi, since I know you are as great a
master of ceremonies as I am unfit for that trade, I beg you to help
me in a little matter. Monsignor di Todi (Federigo Cesi, afterwards
Cardinal of S. Pancrazio) has made me a present, which Urbino will
describe to you. I think you are a friend of his lordship: will you
then thank him in my name, when you find a suitable occasion, and do
so with those compliments which come easily to you, and to me are very
hard? Make me too your debtor for some tartlet."

The sonnet is No. ix of Signor Guasti's edition. I have translated it
thus:--

  _The sugar, candles, and the saddled mule,
    Together with your cask of malvoisie,
    So far exceed all my necessity
    That Michael and not I my debt must rule.
  In such a glassy calm the breezes fool
    My sinking sails, so that amid the sea
    My bark hath missed her way, and seems to be
    A wisp of straw whirled on a weltering pool.
  To yield thee gift for gift and grace for grace,
    For food and drink and carriage to and fro,
    For all my need in every time and place,
  O my dear lord, matched with the much I owe,
    All that I am were no real recompense:
    Paying a debt is not munificence._

In the chapter upon Michelangelo's poetry I dwelt at length upon Luigi
del Riccio's passionate affection for his cousin, Cecchino dei Bracci.
This youth died at the age of sixteen, on January 8, 1545.
Michelangelo undertook to design "the modest sepulchre of marble"
erected to his memory by Del Riccio in the church of Araceli. He also
began to write sonnets, madrigals, and epitaphs, which were sent from
day to day. One of his letters gives an explanation of the eighth
epitaph: "Our dead friend speaks and says: if the heavens robbed all
beauty from all other men on earth to make me only, as indeed they
made me, beautiful; and if by the divine decree I must return at
doomsday to the shape I bore in life, it follows that I cannot give
back the beauty robbed from others and bestowed on me, but that I must
remain for ever more beautiful than the rest, and they be ugly. This
is just the opposite of the conceit you expressed to me yesterday; the
one is a fable, the other is the truth."

Some time in 1545 Luigi went to Lyons on a visit to Ruberto Strozzi
and Giuliano de' Medici. This seems to have happened toward the end of
the year; for we possess a letter indorsed by him, "sent to Lyons, and
returned upon the 22nd of December." This document contains several
interesting details. "All your friends are extremely grieved to hear
about your illness, the more so that we cannot help you; especially
Messer Donato (Giannotti) and myself. However, we hope that it may
turn out to be no serious affair, God willing. In another letter I
told you that, if you stayed away long, I meant to come to see you.
This I repeat; for now that I have lost the Piacenza ferry, and cannot
live at Rome without income, I would rather spend the little that I
have in hostelries, than crawl about here, cramped up like a penniless
cripple. So, if nothing happens, I have a mind to go to S. James of
Compostella after Easter; and if you have not returned, I should like
to travel through any place where I shall hear that you are staying.
Urbino has spoken to Messer Aurelio, and will speak again. From what
he tells me, I think that you will get the site you wanted for the
tomb of Cecchino. It is nearly finished, and will turn out handsome."

Michelangelo's project of going upon pilgrimage to Galicia shows that
his health was then good. But we know that he soon afterwards had
another serious illness; and the scheme was abandoned.

This long and close friendship with Luigi comes to a sudden
termination in one of those stormy outbursts of petulant rage which
form a special feature of Michelangelo's psychology. Some angry words
passed between them about an engraving, possibly of the Last Judgment,
which Buonarroti wanted to destroy, while Del Riccio refused to
obliterate the plate:--

"Messer Luigi,--You seem to think I shall reply according to your
wishes, when the case is quite the contrary. You give me what I have
refused, and refuse me what I begged. And it is not ignorance which
makes you send it me through Ercole, when you are ashamed to give it
me yourself. One who saved my life has certainly the power to
disgrace me; but I do not know which is the heavier to bear, disgrace
or death. Therefore I beg and entreat you, by the true friendship
which exists between us, to spoil that print (_stampa_), and to burn
the copies that are already printed off. And if you choose to buy and
sell me, do not so to others. If you hack me into a thousand pieces, I
will do the same, not indeed to yourself, but to what belongs to you.

                                 "Michelangelo Buonarroti.

"Not painter, nor sculptor, nor architect, but what you will, but not
a drunkard, as you said at your house."

Unfortunately, this is the last of the Del Riccio's letters. It is
very probable that the irascible artist speedily recovered his usual
tone, and returned to amity with his old friend. But Del Riccio
departed this life toward the close of this year, 1546.

Before resuming the narrative of Michelangelo's art-work at this
period, I must refer to the correspondence which passed between him
and King Francis I. The King wrote an epistle in the spring of 1546,
requesting some fine monument from the illustrious master's hand.
Michelangelo replied upon the 26th of April, in language of simple and
respectful dignity, fine, as coming from an aged artist to a monarch
on the eve of death:--

"Sacred Majesty,--I know not which is greater, the favour, or the
astonishment it stirs in me, that your Majesty should have deigned to
write to a man of my sort, and still more to ask him for things of his
which are all unworthy of the name of your Majesty. But be they what
they may, I beg your Majesty to know that for a long while since I
have desired to serve you; but not having had an opportunity, owing to
your not being in Italy, I have been unable to do so. Now I am old,
and have been occupied these many months with the affairs of Pope
Paul. But if some space of time is still granted to me after these
engagements, I will do my utmost to fulfil the desire which, as I have
said above, has long inspired me: that is, to make for your Majesty
one work in marble, one in bronze, and one in painting. And if death
prevents my carrying out this wish, should it be possible to make
statues or pictures in the other world, I shall not fail to do so
there, where there is no more growing old. And I pray God that He
grant your Majesty a long and a happy life."

Francis died in 1547; and we do not know that any of Michelangelo's
works passed directly into his hands, with the exception of the Leda,
purchased through the agency of Luigi Alamanni, and the two Captives,
presented by Ruberto Strozzi.


III

The absorbing tasks imposed upon Buonarroti's energies by Paul III.,
which are mentioned in this epistle to the French king, were not
merely the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina, but also various
architectural and engineering schemes of some importance. It is clear,
I think, that at this period of his hale old age, Michelangelo
preferred to use what still survived in him of vigour and creative
genius for things requiring calculation, or the exercise of meditative
fancy. The time had gone by when he could wield the brush and chisel
with effective force. He was tired of expressing his sense of beauty
and the deep thoughts of his brain in sculptured marble or on frescoed
surfaces. He had exhausted the human form as a symbol of artistic
utterance. But the extraordinary richness of his vein enabled him
still to deal with abstract mathematical proportions in the art of
building, and with rhythms in the art of writing. His best work, both
as architect and poet, belongs to the period when he had lost power as
sculptor and painter. This fact is psychologically interesting. Up to
the age of seventy, he had been working in the plastic and the
concrete. The language he had learned, and used with overwhelming
mastery, was man: physical mankind, converted into spiritual vehicle
by art. His grasp upon this region failed him now. Perhaps there was
not the old sympathy with lovely shapes. Perhaps he knew that he had
played on every gamut of that lyre. Emerging from the sphere of the
sensuous, where ideas take plastic embodiment, he grappled in this
final stage of his career with harmonical ratios and direct verbal
expression, where ideas are disengaged from figurative form. The men
and women, loved by him so long, so wonderfully wrought into
imperishable shapes, "nurslings of immortality," recede. In their room
arise, above the horizon of his intellect, the cupola of S. Peter's
and a few imperishable poems, which will live as long as Italian
claims a place among the languages. There is no comparison to be
instituted between his actual achievements as a builder and a
versifier. The whole tenor of his life made him more competent to deal
with architecture than with literature. Nevertheless, it is
significant that the versatile genius of the man was henceforth
restricted to these two channels of expression, and that in both of
them his last twenty years of existence produced bloom and fruit of
unexpected rarity.

After writing this paragraph, and before I engage in the narrative of
what is certainly the final manifestation of Michelangelo's genius as
a creative artist, I ought perhaps to pause, and to give some account
of those survivals from his plastic impulse, which occupied the old
man's energies for several years. They were entirely the outcome of
religious feeling; and it is curious to notice that he never
approached so nearly to true Christian sentiment as in the fragmentary
designs which we may still abundantly collect from this late autumn of
his artist's life. There are countless drawings for some great picture
of the Crucifixion, which was never finished: exquisite in delicacy of
touch, sublime in conception, dignified in breadth and grand repose of
style. Condivi tells us that some of these were made for the
Marchioness of Pescara. But Michelangelo must have gone on producing
them long after her death. With these phantoms of stupendous works to
be, the Museums of Europe abound. We cannot bring them together, or
condense them into a single centralised conception. Their interest
consists in their divergence and variety, showing the continuous
poring of the master's mind upon a theme he could not definitely
grasp. For those who love his work, and are in sympathy with his
manner, these drawings, mostly in chalk, and very finely handled, have
a supreme interest. They show him, in one sense, at his highest and
his best, not only as a man of tender feeling, but also as a mighty
draughtsman. Their incompleteness testifies to something pathetic--the
humility of the imperious man before a theme he found to be beyond the
reach of human faculty.

The tone, the _Stimmung_, of these designs corresponds so exactly to
the sonnets of the same late period, that I feel impelled at this
point to make his poetry take up the tale. But, as I cannot bring the
cloud of witnesses of all those drawings into this small book, so am I
unwilling to load its pages with poems which may be found elsewhere.
Those who care to learn the heart of Michelangelo, when he felt near
to God and face to face with death, will easily find access to the
originals.

Concerning the Deposition from the Cross, which now stands behind the
high altar of the Florentine Duomo, Condivi writes as follows: "At the
present time he has in hand a work in marble, which he carries on for
his pleasure, as being one who, teeming with conceptions, must needs
give birth each day to some of them. It is a group of four figures
larger than life. A Christ taken from the cross, sustained in death by
his Mother, who is represented in an attitude of marvellous pathos,
leaning up against the corpse with breast, with arms, and lifted knee.
Nicodemus from above assists her, standing erect and firmly planted,
propping the dead Christ with a sturdy effort; while one of the
Maries, on the left side, though plunged in sorrow, does all she can
to assist the afflicted Mother, failing under the attempt to raise her
Son. It would be quite impossible to describe the beauty of style
displayed in this group, or the sublime emotions expressed in those
woe-stricken countenances. I am confident that the Pietà is one of his
rarest and most difficult masterpieces; particularly because the
figures are kept apart distinctly, nor does the drapery of the one
intermingle with that of the others."

This panegyric is by no means pitched too high. Justice has hardly
been done in recent times to the noble conception, the intense
feeling, and the broad manner of this Deposition. That may be due in
part to the dull twilight in which the group is plunged, depriving all
its lines of salience and relief. It is also true that in certain
respects the composition is fairly open to adverse criticism. The
torso of Christ overweighs the total scheme; and his legs are
unnaturally attenuated. The kneeling woman on the left side is
slender, and appears too small in proportion to the other figures;
though, if she stood erect, it is probable that her height would be
sufficient.

The best way to study Michelangelo's last work in marble is to take
the admirable photograph produced under artificial illumination by
Alinari. No sympathetic mind will fail to feel that we are in
immediate contact with the sculptor's very soul, at the close of his
life, when all his thoughts were weaned from earthly beauty, and he
cried--

  Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
  My soul, that turns to his great love on high,
  Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.

As a French critic has observed: "It is the most intimately personal
and the most pathetic of his works. The idea of penitence exhales from
it. The marble preaches the sufferings of the Passion; it makes us
listen to an act of bitter contrition and an act of sorrowing love."

Michelangelo is said to have designed the Pietà for his own monument.
In the person of Nicodemus, it is he who sustains his dead Lord in the
gloom of the sombre Duomo. His old sad face, surrounded by the heavy
cowl, looks down for ever with a tenderness beyond expression,
repeating mutely through the years how much of anguish and of blood
divine the redemption of man's soul hath cost.

The history of this great poem in marble, abandoned by its maker in
some mood of deep dejection, is not without interest. We are told that
the stone selected was a capital from one of the eight huge columns of
the Temple of Peace. Besides being hard and difficult to handle, the
material betrayed flaws in working. This circumstance annoyed the
master; also, as he informed Vasari, Urbino kept continually urging
him to finish it. One of his reasons for attacking the block had been
to keep himself in health by exercise. Accordingly he hewed away with
fury, and bit so deep into the marble that he injured one of the
Madonna's elbows. When this happened, it was his invariable practice
to abandon the piece he had begun upon, feeling that an incomplete
performance was preferable to a lame conclusion. In his old age he
suffered from sleeplessness; and it was his habit to rise from bed and
work upon the Pietà, wearing a thick paper cap, in which he placed a
lighted candle made of goat's tallow. This method of chiselling by the
light of one candle must have complicated the technical difficulties
of his labour. But what we may perhaps surmise to have been his final
motive for the rejection of the work, was a sense of his inability,
with diminished powers of execution, and a still more vivid sense of
the importance of the motive, to accomplish what the brain conceived.
The hand failed. The imagination of the subject grew more intimate and
energetic. Losing patience then at last, he took a hammer and began to
break the group up. Indeed, the right arm of the Mary shows a
fracture. The left arm of the Christ is mutilated in several places.
One of the nipples has been repaired, and the hand of the Madonna
resting on the breast above it is cracked across. It would have been
difficult to reduce the whole huge block to fragments; and when the
work of destruction had advanced so far, Michelangelo's servant
Antonio, the successor to Urbino, begged the remnants from his master.
Tiberio Calcagni was a good friend of Buonarroti's at this time. He
heard that Francesco Bandini, a Florentine settled in exile at Rome,
earnestly desired some relic of the master's work. Accordingly,
Calgagni, with Michelangelo's consent, bought the broken marble from
Antonio for 200 crowns, pieced it together, and began to mend it.
Fortunately, he does not seem to have elaborated the surface in any
important particular; for both the finished and unfinished parts bear
indubitable marks of Michelangelo's own handling. After the death of
Calcagni and Bandini, the Pietà remained for some time in the garden
of Antonio, Bandini's heir, at Montecavallo. It was transferred to
Florence, and placed among the marbles used in erecting the new
Medicean Chapel, until at last, in 1722, the Grand Duke Cosimo III.
finally set it up behind the altar of the Duomo.

Vasari adds that Michelangelo began another Pietà in marble on a much
smaller scale. It is possible that this may have been the unfinished
group of two figures (a dead Christ sustained by a bending man), of
which there is a cast in the Accademia at Florence. In some respects
the composition of this fragment bears a strong resemblance to the
puzzling Deposition from the Cross in our National Gallery. The
trailing languor of the dead Christ's limbs is almost identical in the
marble and the painting.

While speaking of these several Pietàs, I must not forget the
medallion in high relief of the Madonna clasping her dead Son, which
adorns the Albergo dei Poveri at Genoa. It is ascribed to
Michelangelo, was early believed to be his, and is still accepted
without hesitation by competent judges. In spite of its strongly
marked Michelangelesque mannerism, both as regards feeling, facial
type, and design, I cannot regard the bas-relief, in its present
condition at least, as a genuine work, but rather as the production of
some imitator, or the _rifacimento_ of a restorer. A similar
impression may here be recorded regarding the noble portrait-bust in
marble of Pope Paul III. at Naples. This too has been attributed to
Michelangelo. But there is no external evidence to support the
tradition, while the internal evidence from style and technical
manipulation weighs strongly against it. The medallions introduced
upon the heavily embroidered cope are not in his style. The treatment
of the adolescent female form in particular indicates a different
temperament. Were the ascription made to Benvenuto Cellini, we might
have more easily accepted it. But Cellini would certainly have
enlarged upon so important a piece of sculpture in his Memoirs. If
then we are left to mere conjecture, it would be convenient to suggest
Guglielmo della Porta, who executed the Farnese monument in S.
Peter's.


IV

While still a Cardinal, Paul III. began to rebuild the old palace of
the Farnesi on the Tiber shore. It closes one end of the great open
space called the Campo di Fiore, and stands opposite to the Villa
Farnesina, on the right bank of the river. Antonio da Sangallo was the
architect employed upon this work, which advanced slowly until
Alessandro Farnese's elevation to the Papacy. He then determined to
push the building forward, and to complete it on a scale of
magnificence befitting the supreme Pontiff. Sangallo had carried the
walls up to the second story. The third remained to be accomplished,
and the cornice had to be constructed. Paul was not satisfied with
Sangallo's design, and referred it to Michelangelo for criticism
--possibly in 1544. The result was a report, which we still
possess, in which Buonarroti, basing his opinion on principles derived
from Vitruvius, severely blames Sangallo's plan under six separate
heads. He does not leave a single merit, as regards either harmony of
proportion, or purity of style, or elegance of composition, or
practical convenience, or decorative beauty, or distribution of parts.
He calls the cornice barbarous, confused, bastard in style, discordant
with the rest of the building, and so ill suited to the palace as, if
carried out, to threaten the walls with destruction. This document has
considerable interest, partly as illustrating Michelangelo's views on
architecture in general, and displaying a pedantry of which he was
never elsewhere guilty, partly as explaining the bitter hostility
aroused against him in Sangallo and the whole tribe of that great
architect's adherents. We do not, unfortunately, possess the design
upon which the report was made. But, even granting that it must have
been defective, Michelangelo, who professed that architecture was not
his art, might, one thinks, have spared his rival such extremity of
adverse criticism. It exposed him to the taunts of rivals and
ill-wishers; justified them in calling him presumptuous, and gave them
a plausible excuse when they accused him of jealousy. What made it
worse was, that his own large building, the Laurentian Library,
glaringly exhibits all the defects he discovered in Sangallo's
cornice.

I find it difficult to resist the impression that Michelangelo was
responsible, to a large extent, for the ill-will of those artists whom
Vasari calls "la setta Sangallesca." His life became embittered by
their animosity, and his industry as Papal architect continued to be
hampered for many years by their intrigues. But he alone was to blame
at the beginning, not so much for expressing an honest opinion, as for
doing so with insulting severity.

That Michelangelo may have been right in his condemnation of
Sangallo's cornice is of course possible. Paul himself was
dissatisfied, and eventually threw that portion of the building open
to competition. Perino del Vaga, Sebastiano del Piombo, and the young
Giorgio Vasari are said to have furnished designs. Michelangelo did so
also; and his plan was not only accepted, but eventually carried out.
Nevertheless Sangallo, one of the most illustrious professional
architects then alive, could not but have felt deeply wounded by the
treatment he received. It was natural for his followers to exclaim
that Buonarroti had contrived to oust their aged master, and to get a
valuable commission into his own grasp, by the discourteous exercise
of his commanding prestige in the world of art.

In order to be just to Michelangelo, we must remember that he was
always singularly modest in regard to his own performances, and severe
in self-criticism. Neither in his letters nor in his poems does a
single word of self-complacency escape his pen. He sincerely felt
himself to be an unprofitable servant: that was part of his
constitutional depression. We know, too, that he allowed strong
temporary feelings to control his utterance. The cruel criticism of
Sangallo may therefore have been quite devoid of malice; and if it was
as well founded as the criticism of that builder's plan for S.
Peter's, then Michelangelo stands acquitted. Sangallo's model exists;
it is so large that you can walk inside it, and compare your own
impressions with the following judgment:--

"It cannot be denied that Bramante's talent as an architect was equal
to that of any one from the times of the ancients until now. He laid
the first plan of S. Peter, not confused, but clear and simple, full
of light and detached from surrounding buildings, so that it
interfered with no part of the palace. It was considered a very fine
design, and indeed any one can see now that it is so. All the
architects who departed from Bramante's scheme, as Sangallo has done,
have departed from the truth; and those who have unprejudiced eyes can
observe this in his model. Sangallo's ring of chapels takes light from
the interior as Bramante planned it; and not only this, but he has
provided no other means of lighting, and there are so many
hiding-places, above and below, all dark, which lend themselves to
innumerable knaveries, that the church would become a secret den for
harbouring bandits, false coiners, for debauching nuns, and doing all
sorts of rascality; and when it was shut up at night, twenty-five men
would be needed to search the building for rogues hidden there, and it
would be difficult enough to find them. There is, besides, another
inconvenience: the interior circle of buildings added to Bramante's
plan would necessitate the destruction of the Paoline Chapel, the
offices of the Piombo and the Ruota, and more besides. I do not think
that even the Sistine would escape."

After this Michelangelo adds that to remove the out-works and
foundations begun upon Sangallo's plan would not cost 100,000 crowns,
as the sect alleged, but only 16,000, The material would be infinitely
useful, the foundations important for the building, and the whole
fabric would profit in something like 200,000 crowns and 300 years of
time. "This is my dispassionate opinion; and I say this in truth, for
to gain a victory here would be my own incalculable loss."
Michelangelo means that, at the time when he wrote the letter in
question, it was still in doubt whether Sangallo's design should be
carried out or his own adopted; and, as usual, he looked forward with
dread to undertaking a colossal architectural task.


V

Returning to the Palazzo Farnese, it only remains to be said that
Michelangelo lived to complete the edifice. His genius was responsible
for the inharmonious window above the main entrance. According to
Vasari, he not only finished the exterior from the second story
upwards, but designed the whole of the central courtyard above the
first story, "making it the finest thing of its sort in Europe." The
interior, with the halls painted by Annibale Caracci, owed its
disposition into chambers and galleries to his invention. The cornice
has always been reckoned among his indubitable successes, combining as
it does salience and audacity with a grand heroic air of grace. It has
been criticised for disproportionate projection; and Michelangelo
seems to have felt uneasy on this score, since he caused a wooden
model of the right size to be made and placed upon the wall, in order
to judge of its effect.

Taken as a whole, the Palazzo Farnese remains the most splendid of the
noble Roman houses, surpassing all the rest in pomp and pride, though
falling short of Peruzzi's Palazzo Massimo in beauty.

The catastrophe of 1527, when Rome was taken by assault on the side of
the Borgo without effective resistance being possible, rendered the
fortification of the city absolutely necessary. Paul III determined to
secure a position of such vital importance to the Vatican by bastions.
Accordingly he convened a diet of notables, including his
architect-in-chief, Antonio da Sangallo. He also wished to profit by
Michelangelo's experience, remembering the stout resistance offered to
the Prince of Orange by his outworks at S. Miniato. Vasari tells an
anecdote regarding this meeting which illustrates the mutual bad
feeling of the two illustrious artists. "After much discussion, the
opinion of Buonarroti was requested. He had conceived views widely
differing on those of Sangallo and several others, and these he
expressed frankly. Whereupon Sangallo told him that sculpture and
painting were his trade, not fortification. He replied that about them
he knew but little, whereas the anxious thought he had given to city
defences, the time he had spent, and the experience he had practically
gained in constructing them, made him superior in that art to Sangallo
and all the masters of his family. He proceeded to point out before
all present numerous errors in the works. Heated words passed on both
sides, and the Pope had to reduce the men to silence. Before long he
brought a plan for the fortification of the whole Borgo, which opened
the eyes of those in power to the scheme which was finally adopted.
Owing to changes he suggested, the great gate of Santo Spirito,
designed by Sangallo and nearly finished, was left incomplete."

It is not clear what changes were introduced into Sangallo's scheme.
They certainly involved drawing the line of defence much closer to the
city than he intended. This approved itself to Pier Luigi Farnese,
then Duke of Castro, who presided over the meetings of the military
committee. It was customary in carrying out the works of fortification
to associate a practical engineer with the architect who provided
designs; and one of these men, Gian Francesco Montemellino, a trusted
servant of the Farnesi, strongly supported the alteration. That
Michelangelo agreed with Montemellino, and felt that they could work
together, appears from a letter addressed to the Castellano of S.
Angelo. It seems to have been written soon after the dispute recorded
by Vasari. In it he states, that although he differs in many respects
from the persons who had hitherto controlled the works, yet he thinks
it better not to abandon them altogether, but to correct them, alter
the superintendence, and put Montemellino at the head of the
direction. This would prevent the Pope from becoming disgusted with
such frequent changes. "If affairs took the course he indicated, he
was ready to offer his assistance, not in the capacity of colleague,
but as a servant to command in all things." Nothing is here said
openly about Sangallo, who remained architect-in-chief until his
death. Still the covert wish expressed that the superintendence might
be altered, shows a spirit of hostility against him; and a new plan
for the lines must soon have been adopted. A despatch written to the
Duke of Parma in September 1545 informs him that the old works were
being abandoned, with the exception of the grand Doric gateway of S.
Spirito. This is described at some length in another despatch of
January 1546. Later on, in 1557, we find Michelangelo working as
architect-in-chief with Jacopo Meleghino under his direction, but the
fortifications were eventually carried through by a more competent
engineer, one Jacopo Fusto Castriotto of Urbino.


VI

Antonio da Sangallo died on October 3, 1546, at Terni, while engaged
in engineering works intended to drain the Lake Velino. Michelangelo
immediately succeeded to the offices and employments he had held at
Rome. Of these, the most important was the post of architect-in-chief
at S. Peter's. Paul III. conferred it upon him for life by a brief
dated January 1, 1547. He is there named "commissary, prefect,
surveyor of the works, and architect, with full authority to change
the model, form, and structure of the church at pleasure, and to
dismiss and remove the working-men and foremen employed upon the
same." The Pope intended to attach a special stipend to the onerous
charge, but Michelangelo declined this honorarium, declaring that he
meant to labour without recompense, for the love of God and the
reverence he felt for the Prince of the Apostles. Although he might
have had money for the asking, and sums were actually sent as presents
by his Papal master, he persisted in this resolution, working steadily
at S. Peter's without pay, until death gave him rest.

Michelangelo's career as servant to a Pope began with the design of
that tomb which led Julius II. to destroy the old S. Peter's. He was
now entering, after forty-two years, upon the last stage of his long
life. Before the end came, he gave final form to the main features of
the great basilica, raising the dome which dominates the Roman
landscape like a stationary cloud upon the sky-line. What had happened
to the edifice in the interval between 1505 and 1547 must be briefly
narrated, although it is not within the scope of this work to give a
complete history of the building.

Bramante's original design had been to construct the church in the
form of a Greek cross, with four large semi-circular apses. The four
angles made by the projecting arms of the cross were to be filled in
with a complex but well-ordered scheme of shrines and chapels, so that
externally the edifice would have presented the aspect of a square.
The central piers, at the point of junction between the arms of the
cross, supported a broad shallow dome, modelled upon that of the
Pantheon. Similar domes of lesser dimensions crowned the
out-buildings. He began by erecting the piers which were intended to
support the central dome; but working hastily and without due regard
to solid strength, Bramante made these piers too weak to sustain the
ponderous mass they had to carry. How he would have rectified this
error cannot be conjectured. Death cut his labours short in 1514, and
only a small portion of his work remains embedded at the present day
within the mightier masses raised beneath Buonarroti's cupola.

Leo X. commissioned Raffaello da Urbino to continue his kinsman's
work, and appointed Antonio da Sangallo to assist him in the month of
January 1517. Whether it was judged impossible to carry out Bramante's
project of the central dome, or for some other reason unknown to us,
Raffaello altered the plan so essentially as to design a basilica upon
the conventional ground-plan of such churches. He abandoned the Greek
cross, and adopted the Latin form by adding an elongated nave. The
central piers were left in their places; the three terminal apses of
the choir and transepts were strengthened, simplified, reduced to
commonplace. Bramante's ground-plan is lucid, luminous, and
exquisitely ordered in its intricacy. The true creation of a
builder-poet's brain, it illustrates Leo Battista Alberti's definition
of the charm of architecture, _tutta quella musica_, that melody and
music of a graceful edifice. We are able to understand what
Michelangelo meant when he remarked that all subsequent designers, by
departing from it, had gone wrong. Raffaello's plan, if carried out,
would have been monotonous and tame inside and out.

After the death of Raffaello in 1520, Baldassare Peruzzi was appointed
to be Sangallo's colleague. This genial architect, in whose style all
the graces were combined with dignity and strength, prepared a new
design at Leo's request. Vasari, referring to this period of Peruzzi's
life, says: "The Pope, thinking Bramante's scheme too large and not
likely to be in keeping, obtained a new model from Baldassare;
magnificent and truly full of fine invention, also so wisely
constructed that certain portions have been adopted by subsequent
builders." He reverted to Bramante's main conception of the Greek
cross, but altered the details in so many important points, both by
thickening the piers and walls, and also by complicating the internal
disposition of the chapels, that the effect would have been quite
different. The ground-plan, which is all I know of Peruzzi's project,
has always seemed to me by far the most beautiful and interesting of
those laid down for S. Peter's. It is richer, more imaginative and
suggestive, than Bramante's. The style of Bramante, in spite of its
serene simplicity, had something which might be described as shallow
clearness. In comparison with Peruzzi's style, it is what Gluck's
melody is to Mozart's. The course of public events prevented this
scheme from being carried out. First came the pontificate of Adrian
VI., so sluggish in art-industry; then the pontificate of Clement
VII., so disastrous for Italy and Rome. Many years elapsed before art
and literature recovered from the terror and the torpor of 1527.
Peruzzi indeed returned to his office at S. Peter's in 1535, but his
death followed in 1537, when Antonio da Sangallo remained master of
the situation.

Sangallo had the good sense to preserve many of Peruzzi's constructive
features, especially in the apses of the choir and transepts; but he
added a vast vestibule, which gave the church a length equal to that
of Raffaello's plan. Externally, he designed a lofty central cupola
and two flanking spires, curiously combining the Gothic spirit with
Classical elements of style. In order to fill in the huge spaces of
this edifice, he superimposed tiers of orders one above the other.
Church, cupola, and spires are built up by a succession of Vitruvian
temples, ascending from the ground into the air. The total impression
produced by the mass, as we behold it now in the great wooden model at
S. Peter's, is one of bewildering complexity. Of architectural repose
it possesses little, except what belongs to a very original and vast
conception on a colossal scale. The extent of the structure is
frittered by its multiplicity of parts. Internally, as Michelangelo
pointed out, the church would have been dark, inconvenient, and
dangerous to public morals.


VII

Whatever we may think of Michelangelo's failings as an architect,
there is no doubt that at this period of his life he aimed at
something broad and heroic in style. He sought to attain grandeur by
greatness in the masses and by economy of the constituent parts. His
method of securing amplitude was exactly opposite to that of Sangallo,
who relied upon the multiplication rather than the simplification of
details. A kind of organic unity was what Michelangelo desired. For
this reason, he employed in the construction of S. Peter's those
stupendous orders which out-soar the columns of Baalbec, and those
grandiose curves which make the cupola majestic. A letter written to
the Cardinal Ridolfo Pio of Carpi contains this explanation of his
principles. The last two sentences are highly significant:--

"Most Reverend Monsignor,--If a plan has divers parts, those which are
of one type in respect to quality and quantity have to be decorated in
the same way and the same fashion. The like is true of their
counterparts. But when the plan changes form entirely, it is not only
allowable, but necessary, to change the decorative appurtenances, as
also with their counterparts. The intermediate parts are always free,
left to their own bent. The nose, which stands in the middle of the
forehead, is not bound to correspond with either of the eyes; but one
hand must balance the other, and one eye be like its fellow. Therefore
it may be assumed as certain that the members of an architectural
structure follow the laws exemplified in the human body. He who has
not been or is not a good master of the nude, and especially of
anatomy, cannot understand the principles of architecture."

It followed that Michelangelo's first object, when he became Papal
architect-in-chief, was to introduce order into the anarchy of
previous plans, and to return, so far as this was now possible, to
Bramante's simpler scheme. He adopted the Greek cross, and substituted
a stately portico for the long vestibule invented by Sangallo. It was
not, however, in his nature, nor did the changed taste of the times
permit him to reproduce Bramante's manner. So far as S. Peter's bears
the mark of Michelangelo at all, it represents his own peculiar
genius. "The Pope," says Vasari, "approved his model, which reduced
the cathedral to smaller dimensions, but also to a more essential
greatness. He discovered that four principal piers, erected by
Bramante and left standing by Antonio da Sangallo, which had to bear
the weight of the tribune, were feeble. These he fortified in part,
constructing two winding staircases at the side, with gently sloping
steps, up which beasts of burden ascend with building material, and
one can ride on horseback to the level above the arches. He carried
the first cornice, made of travertine, round the arches: a wonderful
piece of work, full of grace, and very different from the others; nor
could anything be better done in its kind. He began the two great
apses of the transept; and whereas Bramante Raffaello, and Peruzzi had
designed eight tabernacles toward the Campo Santo, which arrangement
Sangallo adhered to, he reduced them to three, with three chapels
inside. Suffice it to say that he began at once to work with diligence
and accuracy at all points where the edifice required alteration; to
the end that its main features might be fixed, and that no one might
be able to change what he had planned." Vasari adds that this was the
provision of a wise and prudent mind. So it was; but it did not
prevent Michelangelo's successors from defeating his intentions in
almost every detail, except the general effect of the cupola. This
will appear in the sequel.

Antonio da Sangallo had controlled the building of S. Peter's for
nearly thirty years before Michelangelo succeeded to his office.
During that long space of time he formed a body of architects and
workmen who were attached to his person and interested in the
execution of his plans. There is good reason to believe that in
Sangallo's days, as earlier in Bramante's, much money of the Church
had been misappropriated by a gang of fraudulent and mutually
indulgent craftsmen. It was not to be expected that these people
should tamely submit to the intruder who put their master's cherished
model on the shelf, and set about, in his high-handed way, to
refashion the whole building from the bottom to the top. During
Sangallo's lifetime no love had been lost between him and Buonarroti,
and after his death it is probable that the latter dealt severely with
the creatures of his predecessor. The Pope had given him unlimited
powers of appointing and dismissing subordinates, controlling
operations, and regulating expenditure. He was a man who abhorred jobs
and corruption. A letter written near the close of his life, when he
was dealing only with persons nominated by himself, proves this. He
addressed the Superintendents of the Fabric of S. Peter's as follows:
"You know that I told Balduccio not to send his lime unless it were
good. He has sent bad quality, and does not seem to think he will be
forced to take it back; which proves that he is in collusion with the
person who accepted it. This gives great encouragement to the men I
have dismissed for similar transactions. One who accepts bad goods
needed for the fabric, when I have forbidden them, is doing nothing
else but making friends of people whom I have turned into enemies
against myself. I believe there will be a new conspiracy. Promises,
fees, presents, corrupt justice. Therefore I beg you from this time
forward, by the authority I hold from the Pope, not to accept anything
which is not suitable, even though it comes to you from heaven. I must
not be made to appear, what I am not, partial in my dealings." This
fiery despatch, indicating not only Michelangelo's probity, but also
his attention to minute details at the advanced age of eighty-six,
makes it evident that he must have been a stern overseer in the first
years of his office, terrible to the "sect of Sangallo," who were
bent, on their part, to discredit him.

The sect began to plot and form conspiracies, feeling the violent old
man's bit and bridle on their mouths, and seeing the firm seat he took
upon the saddle. For some reason, which is not apparent, they had the
Superintendents of the Fabric (a committee, including cardinals,
appointed by the Pope) on their side. Probably these officials,
accustomed to Sangallo and the previous course of things, disliked to
be stirred up and sent about their business by the masterful
new-comer. Michelangelo's support lay, as we shall see, in the four
Popes who followed Paul III. They, with the doubtful exception of
Marcellus II., accepted him on trust as a thoroughly honest servant,
and the only artist capable of conducting the great work to its
conclusion. In the last resort, when he was driven to bay, he offered
to resign, and was invariably coaxed back by the final arbiter. The
disinterested spirit in which he fulfilled his duties, accepting no
pay while he gave his time and energy to their performance, stood him
in good stead. Nothing speaks better for his perfect probity than that
his enemies were unable to bring the slightest charge of peculation or
of partiality against him. Michelangelo's conduct of affairs at S.
Peter's reflects a splendid light upon the tenor of his life, and
confutes those detractors who have accused him of avarice.

The duel between Michelangelo and the sect opened in 1547. A letter
written by a friend in Florence on the 14th of May proves that his
antagonists had then good hopes of crushing him. Giovan Francesco Ughi
begins by saying that he has been silent because he had nothing
special to report. "But now Jacopo del Conte has come here with the
wife of Nanni di Baccio Bigio, alleging that he has brought her
because Nanni is so occupied at S. Peter's. Among other things, he
says that Nanni means to make a model for the building which will
knock yours to nothing. He declares that what you are about is mad and
babyish. He means to fling it all down, since he has quite as much
credit with the Pope as you have. You throw oceans of money away and
work by night, so that nobody may see what you are doing. You follow
in the footsteps of a Spaniard, having no knowledge of your own about
the art of building, and he less than nothing. Nanni stays there in
your despite: you did everything to get him removed; but the Pope
keeps him, being convinced that nothing good can be done without him."
After this Ughi goes on to relate how Michelangelo's enemies are
spreading all kinds of reports against his honour and good fame,
criticising the cornice of the Palazzo Farnese, and hoping that its
weight will drag the walls down. At the end he adds, that although he
knows one ought not to write about such matters, yet the man's
"insolence and blackguardly shamelessness of speech" compel him to put
his friend on his guard against such calumnies.

After the receipt of this letter, Michelangelo sent it to one of the
Superintendents of the Fabric, on whose sympathy he could reckon, with
the following indorsement in his own handwriting: "Messer Bartolommeo
(Ferrantino), please read this letter, and take thought who the two
rascals are who, lying thus about what I did at the Palazzo Farnese,
are now lying in the matter of the information they are laying before
the deputies of S. Peter's. It comes upon me in return for the
kindness I have shown them. But what else can one expect from a couple
of the basest scoundrelly villains?"

Nanni di Baccio Bigio had, as it seems, good friends at court in Rome.
He was an open enemy of Michelangelo, who, nevertheless, found it
difficult to shake him off. In the history of S. Peter's the man's
name will frequently occur.

Three years elapsed. Paul III. died, and Michelangelo wrote to his
nephew Lionardo on the occasion: "It is true that I have suffered
great sorrow, and not less loss, by the Pope's death. I received
benefits from his Holiness, and hoped for more and better. God willed
it so, and we must have patience. His passage from this life was
beautiful, in full possession of his faculties up to the last word.
God have mercy on his soul." The Cardinal Giovan Maria Ciocchi, of
Monte San Savino, was elected to succeed Paul, and took the title of
Julius III. This change of masters was duly noted by Michelangelo in a
letter to his "dearest friend," Giovan Francesco Fattucci at Florence.
It breathes so pleasant and comradely a spirit, that I will translate
more than bears immediately on the present topic: "Dear friend,
although we have not exchanged letters for many months past, still our
long and excellent friendship has not been forgotten. I wish you well,
as I have always done, and love you with all my heart, for your own
sake, and for the numberless pleasant things in life you have afforded
me. As regards old age, which weighs upon us both alike, I should be
glad to know how yours affects you; mine, I must say, does not make me
very happy. I beg you, then, to write me something about this. You
know, doubtless, that we have a new Pope, and who he is. All Rome is
delighted, God be thanked; and everybody expects the greatest good
from his reign, especially for the poor, his generosity being so
notorious."

Michelangelo had good reason to rejoice over this event, for Julius
III. felt a real attachment to his person, and thoroughly appreciated
both his character and his genius. Nevertheless, the enemies he had in
Rome now made a strong effort to dislodge Buonarroti from his official
position at S. Peter's. It was probably about this time that the
Superintendents of the Fabric drew up a memorial expressive of their
grievances against him. We possess a document in Latin setting forth a
statement of accounts in rough. "From the year 1540, when expenditures
began to be made regularly and in order, from the very commencement as
it were, up to the year 1547, when Michelangelo, at his own will and
pleasure, undertook partly to build and partly to destroy, 162,624
ducats were expended. Since the latter date on to the present, during
which time the deputies have served like the pipe at the organ,
knowing nothing, nor what, nor how moneys were spent, but only at the
orders of the said Michelangelo, such being the will of Paul III. of
blessed memory, and also of the reigning Pontiff, 136,881 ducats have
been paid out, as can be seen from our books. With regard to the
edifice, what it is going to be, the deputies can make no statement,
all things being hidden from them, as though they were outsiders. They
have only been able to protest at several times, and do now again
protest, for the easement of their conscience, that they do not like
the ways used by Michelangelo, especially in what he keeps on pulling
down. The demolition has been, and to-day is so great, that all who
witness it are moved to an extremity of pity. Nevertheless, if his
Holiness be satisfied, we, his deputies, shall have no reason to
complain." It is clear that Michelangelo was carrying on with a high
hand at S. Peter's. Although the date of this document is uncertain, I
think it may be taken in connection with a general meeting called by
Julius III., the incidents of which are recorded by Vasari.
Michelangelo must have demonstrated his integrity, for he came out of
the affair victorious, and obtained from the Pope a brief confirming
him in his office of architect-in-chief, with even fuller powers than
had been granted by Paul III.


VIII

Vasari at this epoch becomes one of our most reliable authorities
regarding the life of Michelangelo. He corresponded and conversed with
him continuously, and enjoyed the master's confidence. We may
therefore accept the following narrative as accurate: "It was some
little while before the beginning of 1551, when Vasari, on his return
from Florence to Rome, found that the sect of Sangallo were plotting
against Michelangelo; they induced the Pope to hold a meeting in S.
Peter's, where all the overseers and workmen connected with the
building should attend, and his Holiness should be persuaded by false
insinuations that Michelangelo had spoiled the fabric. He had already
walled in the apse of the King where the three chapels are, and
carried out the three upper windows. But it was not known what he
meant to do with the vault. They then, misled by their shallow
judgment, made Cardinal Salviati the elder, and Marcello Cervini, who
was afterwards Pope, believe that S. Peter's would be badly lighted.
When all were assembled, the Pope told Michelangelo that the deputies
were of opinion the apse would have but little light. He answered: 'I
should like to hear these deputies speak.' The Cardinal Marcello
rejoined: 'Here we are.' Michelangelo then remarked: 'My lord, above
these three windows there will be other three in the vault, which is
to be built of travertine.' 'You never told us anything about this,'
said the Cardinal. Michelangelo responded: 'I am not, nor do I mean to
be obliged to tell your lordship or anybody what I ought or wish to
do. It is your business to provide money, and to see that it is not
stolen. As regards the plans of the building, you have to leave those
to me.' Then he turned to the Pope and said: 'Holy Father, behold what
gains are mine! Unless the hardships I endure prove beneficial to my
soul, I am losing time and labour.' The Pope, who loved him, laid his
hands upon his shoulders and exclaimed: 'You are gaining both for soul
and body, have no fear!' Michelangelo's spirited self-defence
increased the Pope's love, and he ordered him to repair next day with
Vasari to the Vigna Giulia, where they held long discourses upon art."
It is here that Vasari relates how Julius III. was in the habit of
seating Michelangelo by his side while they talked together.

Julius then maintained the cause of Michelangelo against the deputies.
It was during his pontificate that a piece of engineering work
committed to Buonarroti's charge by Paul III. fell into the hands of
Nanni di Baccio Bigio. The old bridge of Santa Maria had long shown
signs of giving way, and materials had been collected for rebuilding
it. Nanni's friends managed to transfer the execution of this work to
him from Michelangelo. The man laid bad foundations, and Buonarroti
riding over the new bridge one day with Vasari, cried out: "George,
the bridge is quivering beneath us; let us spur on, before it gives
way with us upon it." Eventually, the bridge did fall to pieces, at
the time of a great inundation. Its ruins have long been known as the
Ponte Rotto.

On the death of Julius III. in 1555, Cardinal Cervini was made Pope,
with the title of Marcellus II. This event revived the hopes of the
sect, who once more began to machinate against Michelangelo. The Duke
of Tuscany at this time was exceedingly anxious that he should take up
his final abode at Florence; and Buonarroti, feeling he had now no
strong support in Rome, seems to have entertained these proposals with
alacrity. The death of Marcellus after a few weeks, and the election
of Paul IV., who besought the great architect not to desert S.
Peter's, made him change his mind. Several letters written to Vasari
and the Grand Duke in this and the next two years show that his heart
was set on finishing S. Peter's, however much he wished to please his
friends and longed to end his days in peace at home. "I was set to
work upon S. Peter's against my will, and I have served now eight
years gratis, and with the utmost injury and discomfort to myself. Now
that the fabric has been pushed forward and there is money to spend,
and I am just upon the point of vaulting in the cupola, my departure
from Rome would be the ruin of the edifice, and for me a great
disgrace throughout all Christendom, and to my soul a grievous sin.
Pray ask his lordship to give me leave of absence till S. Peter's has
reached a point at which it cannot be altered in its main features.
Should I leave Rome earlier, I should be the cause of a great ruin, a
great disgrace, and a great sin." To the Duke he writes in 1557 that
his special reasons for not wishing to abandon S. Peter's were, first,
that the work would fall into the hands of thieves and rogues;
secondly, that it might probably be suspended altogether; thirdly,
that he owned property in Rome to the amount of several thousand
crowns, which, if he left without permission, would be lost; fourthly,
that he was suffering from several ailments. He also observed that the
work had just reached its most critical stage (i.e., the erection of
the cupola), and that to desert it at the present moment would be a
great disgrace.

The vaulting of the cupola had now indeed become the main
preoccupation of Michelangelo's life. Early in 1557 a serious illness
threatened his health, and several friends, including the Cardinal of
Carpi, Donato Giannotti, Tommaso Cavalieri, Francesco Bandini, and
Lottino, persuaded him that he ought to construct a large model, so
that the execution of this most important feature of the edifice might
not be impeded in the event of his death. It appears certain that up
to this date no models of his on anything like a large intelligible
scale had been provided for S. Peter's; and the only extant model
attributable to Michelangelo's own period is that of the cupola. This
may help to account for the fact that, while the cupola was finished
much as he intended, the rest of his scheme suffered a thorough and
injurious remodelling.

He wrote to his nephew Lionardo on the 13th of February 1557 about the
impossibility of meeting the Grand Duke's wishes and leaving Rome. "I
told his Lordship that I was obliged to attend to S. Peter's until I
could leave the work there at such a point that my plans would not be
subsequently altered. This point has not been reached; and in
addition, I am now obliged to construct a large wooden model for the
cupola and lantern, in order that I may secure its being finished as
it was meant to be. The whole of Rome, and especially the Cardinal of
Carpi, puts great pressure on me to do this. Accordingly, I reckon
that I shall have to remain here not less than a year; and so much
time I beg the Duke to allow me for the love of Christ and S. Peter,
so that I may not come home to Florence with a pricking conscience,
but a mind easy about Rome." The model took about a year to make. It
was executed by a French master named Jean.

All this while Michelangelo's enemies, headed by Nanni di Baccio
Bigio, continued to calumniate and backbite. In the end they poisoned
the mind of his old friend the Cardinal of Carpi. We gather this from
a haughty letter written on the 13th of February 1560: "Messer
Francesco Bandini informed me yesterday that your most illustrious and
reverend lordship told him that the building of S. Peter's could not
possibly go on worse than it is doing. This has grieved me deeply,
partly because you have not been informed of the truth, and also
because I, as my duty is, desire more than all men living that it
should proceed well. Unless I am much deceived, I think I can assure
you that it could not possibly go on better than it now is doing. It
may, however, happen that my own interests and old age expose me to
self-deception, and consequently expose the fabric of S. Peter's to
harm or injury against my will. I therefore intend to ask permission
on the first occasion from his Holiness to resign my office. Or
rather, to save time, I wish to request your most illustrious and
reverend lordship by these present to relieve me of the annoyance to
which I have been subject seventeen years, at the orders of the Popes,
working without remuneration. It is easy enough to see what has been
accomplished by my industry during this period. I conclude by
repeating my request that you will accept my resignation. You could
not confer on me a more distinguished favour."

Giovanni Angelo Medici, of an obscure Milanese family, had succeeded
to Paul IV. in 1559. Pius IV. felt a true admiration for Michelangelo.
He confirmed the aged artist in his office by a brief which granted
him the fullest authority in life, and strictly forbade any departure
from his designs for S. Peter's after death. Notwithstanding this
powerful support, Nanni di Baccio Bigio kept trying to eject him from
his post. He wrote to the Grand Duke in 1562, arguing that Buonarroti
was in his dotage, and begging Cosimo to use his influence to obtain
the place for himself. In reply the Grand Duke told Nanni that he
could not think of doing such a thing during Michelangelo's lifetime,
but that after his death he would render what aid was in his power. An
incident happened in 1563 which enabled Nanni to give his enemy some
real annoyance. Michelangelo was now so old that he felt obliged to
leave the personal superintendence of the operations at S. Peter's to
a clerk of the works. The man employed at this time was a certain
Cesare da Castel Durante, who was murdered in August under the
following circumstances, communicated by Tiberio Calcagni to Lionardo
Buonarroti on the 14th of that month: "I have only further to speak
about the death of Cesare, clerk of the works, who was found by the
cook of the Bishop of Forli with his wife. The man gave Cesare
thirteen stabs with his poignard, and four to his wife. The old man
(i.e., Michelangelo) is in much distress, seeing that he wished to
give the post to that Pier Luigi, and has been unable to do so owing
to the refusal of the deputies." This Pier Luigi, surnamed Gaeta, had
been working since November 1561 as subordinate to Cesare; and we have
a letter from Michelangelo to the deputies recommending him very
warmly in that capacity. He was also the house-servant and personal
attendant of the old master, running errands for him and transacting
ordinary business, like Pietro Urbano and Stefano in former years. The
deputies would not consent to nominate Pier Luigi as clerk of the
works. They judged him to be too young, and were, moreover, persuaded
that Michelangelo's men injured the work at S. Peter's. Accordingly
they appointed Nanni di Baccio Bigio, and sent in a report, inspired
by him, which severely blamed Buonarroti. Pius IV., after the receipt
of this report, had an interview with Michelangelo, which ended in his
sending his own relative, Gabrio Serbelloni, to inspect the works at
S. Peter's. It was decided that Nanni had been calumniating the great
old man. Accordingly he was dismissed with indignity. Immediately
after the death of Michelangelo, however, Nanni renewed his
applications to the Grand Duke. He claimed nothing less than the post
of architect-in-chief. His petition was sent to Florence under cover
of a despatch from the Duke's envoy, Averardo Serristori. The
ambassador related the events of Michelangelo's death, and supported
Nanni as "a worthy man, your vassal and true servant."


IX

Down to the last days of his life, Michelangelo was thus worried with
the jealousies excited by his superintendence of the building at S.
Peter's; and when he passed to the majority, he had not secured his
heart's desire, to wit, that the fabric should be forced to retain the
form he had designed for it. This was his own fault. Popes might issue
briefs to the effect that his plans should be followed; but when it
was discovered that, during his lifetime, he kept the builders in
ignorance of his intentions, and that he left no working models fit
for use, except in the case of the cupola, a free course was opened
for every kind of innovation. So it came to pass that subsequent
architects changed the essential features of his design by adding what
might be called a nave, or, in other words, by substituting the Latin
for the Greek cross in the ground-plan. He intended to front the mass
of the edifice with a majestic colonnade, giving externally to one
limb of the Greek cross a rectangular salience corresponding to its
three semicircular apses. From this decastyle colonnade projected a
tetrastyle portico, which introduced the people ascending from a
flight of steps to a gigantic portal. The portal opened on the church,
and all the glory of the dome was visible when they approached the
sanctuary. Externally, according to his conception, the cupola
dominated and crowned the edifice when viewed from a moderate or a
greater distance. The cupola was the integral and vital feature of the
structure. By producing one limb of the cross into a nave, destroying
the colonnade and portico, and erecting a huge façade of _barocco_
design, his followers threw the interior effect of the cupola into a
subordinate position, and externally crushed it out of view, except at
a great distance. In like manner they dealt with every particular of
his plan. As an old writer has remarked: "The cross which Michelangelo
made Greek is now Latin; and if it be thus with the essential form,
judge ye of the details!" It was not exactly their fault, but rather
that of the master, who chose to work by drawings and small clay
models, from which no accurate conception of his thought could be
derived by lesser craftsmen.

We cannot, therefore, regard S. Peter's in its present state as the
creation of Buonarroti's genius. As a building, it is open to
criticism at every point. In spite of its richness and overwhelming
size, no architect of merit gives it approbation. It is vast without
being really great, magnificent without touching the heart, proudly
but not harmoniously ordered. The one redeeming feature in the
structure is the cupola; and that is the one thing which Michelangelo
bequeathed to the intelligence of his successors. The curve which it
describes finds no phrase of language to express its grace. It is
neither ellipse nor parabola nor section of the circle, but an
inspiration of creative fancy. It outsoars in vital force, in elegance
of form, the dome of the Pantheon and the dome of Brunelleschi, upon
which it was actually modelled. As a French architect, adverse to
Michelangelo, has remarked: "This portion is simple, noble, grand. It
is an unparalleled idea, and the author of this marvellous cupola had
the right to be proud of the thought which controlled his pencil when
he traced it." An English critic, no less adverse to the Italian
style, is forced to admit that architecture "has seldom produced a
more magnificent object" than the cupola, "if its bad connection with
the building is overlooked." He also adds that, internally, "the
sublime concave" of this immense dome is the one redeeming feature of
S. Peter's.

Michelangelo's reputation, not only as an imaginative builder, but
also as a practical engineer in architecture, depends in a very large
measure upon the cupola of S. Peter's. It is, therefore, of great
importance to ascertain exactly how far the dome in its present form
belongs to his conception. Fortunately for his reputation, we still
possess the wooden model constructed under his inspection by a man
called Giovanni Franzese. It shows that subsequent architects,
especially Giacomo della Porta, upon whom the task fell of raising the
vaults and lantern from the point where Michelangelo left the
building, that is, from the summit of the drum, departed in no
essential particular from his design. Della Porta omitted one feature,
however, of Michelangelo's plan, which would have added greatly to the
dignity and elegance of the exterior. The model shows that the
entablature of the drum broke into projections above each of the
buttresses. Upon these projections or consoles Buonarroti intended to
place statues of saints. He also connected their pedestals with the
spring of the vault by a series of inverted curves sweeping upwards
along the height of the shallow attic. The omission of these details
not only weakened the support given to the arches of the dome, but it
also lent a stilted effect to the cupola by abruptly separating the
perpendicular lines of the drum and attic from the segment of the
vaulting. This is an error which could even now be repaired, if any
enterprising Pope undertook to complete the plan of the model. It may,
indeed, be questioned whether the omission was not due to the
difficulty of getting so many colossal statues adequately finished at
a period when the fabric still remained imperfect in more essential
parts.

Vasari, who lived in close intimacy with Michelangelo, and undoubtedly
was familiar with the model, gives a confused but very minute
description of the building. It is clear from this that the dome was
designed with two shells, both of which were to be made of carefully
selected bricks, the space between them being applied to the purpose
of an interior staircase. The dormer windows in the outer sheath not
only broke the surface of the vault, but also served to light this
passage to the lantern. Vasari's description squares with the model,
now preserved in a chamber of the Vatican basilica, and also with the
present fabric.

It would not have been necessary to dwell at greater length upon the
vaulting here but for difficulties which still surround the criticism
of this salient feature of S. Peter's. Gotti published two plans of
the cupola, which were made for him, he says, from accurate
measurements of the model taken by Cavaliere Cesare Castelli,
Lieut.-Col. of Engineers. The section drawing shows three shells
instead of two, the innermost or lowest being flattened out like the
vault of the Pantheon. Professor Josef Durm, in his essay upon the
Domes of Florence and S. Peter's, gives a minute description of the
model for the latter, and prints a carefully executed copperplate
engraving of its section. It is clear from this work that at some time
or other a third semi-spherical vault, corresponding to that of the
Pantheon, had been contemplated. This would have been structurally of
no value, and would have masked the two upper shells, which at present
crown the edifice. The model shows that the dome itself was from the
first intended to be composed of two solid vaults of masonry, in the
space between which ran the staircase leading to the lantern. The
lower and flatter shell, which appears also in the model, had no
connection with the substantial portions of the edifice. It was an
addition, perhaps an afterthought, designed possibly to serve as a
ground for surface-decoration, or to provide an alternative scheme for
the completion of the dome. Had Michelangelo really planned this
innermost sheath, we could not credit him with the soaring sweep
upwards of the mighty dome, its height and lightness, luminosity and
space. The roof that met the eye internally would have been
considerably lower and tamer, superfluous in the construction of the
church, and bearing no right relation to the external curves of the
vaulting. There would, moreover, have been a long dark funnel leading
to the lantern. Heath Wilson would then have been justified in certain
critical conclusions which may here be stated in his own words.
"According to Michelangelo's idea, the cupola was formed of three
vaults over each other. Apparently the inner one was intended to
repeat the curves of the Pantheon, whilst the outer one was destined
to give height and majesty to the building externally. The central
vault, more pyramidal in form, was constructed to bear the weight of
the lantern, and approached in form the dome of the Cathedral at
Florence by Brunelleschi. Judging by the model, he meant the outer
dome to be of wood, thus anticipating the construction of Sir
Christopher Wren." Farther on, he adds that the architects who carried
out the work "omitted entirely the inner lower vault, evidently to
give height internally, and made the external cupola of brick as well
as the internal; and, to prevent it expanding, had recourse to
encircling chains of iron, which bind it at the weakest parts of the
curve." These chains, it may be mentioned parenthetically, were
strengthened by Poleni, after the lapse of some years, when the second
of the two shells showed some signs of cracking.

From Dr. Durm's minute description of the cupola, there seems to be no
doubt about the existence of this third vault in Michelangelo's wooden
model. He says that the two outer shells are carved out of one piece
of wood, while the third or innermost is made of another piece, which
has been inserted. The sunk or hollow compartments, which form the
laquear of this depressed vault, differ considerably in shape and
arrangement from those which were adopted when it was finally
rejected. The question now remains, whether the semi-spherical shell
was abandoned during Michelangelo's lifetime and with his approval.
There is good reason to believe that this may have been the case:
first, because the tambour, which he executed, differs from the model
in the arching of its windows; secondly, because Fontana and other
early writers on the cupola insist strongly on the fact that
Michelangelo's own plans were strictly followed, although they never
allude to the third or innermost vault. It is almost incredible that
if Della Porta departed in so vital a point from Michelangelo's
design, no notice should have been taken of the fact. On the other
hand, the tradition that Della Porta improved the curve of the cupola
by making the spring upward from the attic more abrupt, is due
probably to the discrepancy between the internal aspects of the model
and the dome itself. The actual truth is that the cupola in its curve
and its dimensions corresponds accurately to the proportions of the
double outer vaulting of the model.

Taking, then, Vasari's statement in conjunction with the silence of
Fontana, Poleni, and other early writers, and duly observing the care
with which the proportions of the dome have been preserved, I think we
may safely conclude that Michelangelo himself abandoned the third or
semi-spherical vault, and that the cupola, as it exists, ought to be
ascribed entirely to his conception. It is, in fact, the only portion
of the basilica which remains as he designed it.



CHAPTER XIV


I

There is great difficulty in dealing chronologically with the last
twenty years of Michelangelo's life. This is due in some measure to
the multiplicity of his engagements, but more to the tardy rate at
which his work, now almost wholly architectural, advanced. I therefore
judged it best to carry the history of his doings at S. Peter's down
to the latest date; and I shall take the same course now with regard
to the lesser schemes which occupied his mind between 1545 and 1564,
reserving for the last the treatment of his private life during this
period.

A society of gentlemen and artists, to which Buonarroti belonged,
conceived the plan of erecting buildings of suitable size and grandeur
on the Campidoglio. This hill had always been dear to the Romans, as
the central point of urban life since the foundation of their city,
through the days of the Republic and the Empire, down to the latest
Middle Ages. But it was distinguished only by its ancient name and
fame. No splendid edifices and majestic squares reminded the spectator
that here once stood the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus, to which
conquering generals rode in triumph with the spoils and captives of
the habitable world behind their laurelled chariots. Paul III.
approved of the design, and Michelangelo, who had received the
citizenship of Rome on March 20, 1546, undertook to provide a scheme
for its accomplishment. We are justified in believing that the
disposition of the parts which now compose the Capitol is due to his
conception: the long steep flight of steps leading up from the Piazza
Araceli; the irregular open square, flanked on the left hand by the
Museum of Sculpture, on the right by the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and
closed at its farther end by the Palazzo del Senatore. He also placed
the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus on its noble
pedestal, and suggested the introduction of other antique specimens of
sculpture into various portions of the architectural plan. The
splendid double staircase leading to the entrance hall of the Palazzo
del Senatore, and part of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, were completed
during Michelangelo's lifetime. When Vasari wrote in 1568, the dead
sculptor's friend, Tommaso dei Cavalieri, was proceeding with the
work. There is every reason, therefore, to assume that the latter
building, at any rate, fairly corresponds to his intention. Vignola
and Giacomo della Porta, both of them excellent architects, carried
out the scheme, which must have been nearly finished in the
pontificate of Innocent X. (1644-1655).

Like the cupola of S. Peter's, the Campidoglio has always been
regarded as one of Michelangelo's most meritorious performances in
architecture. His severe critic, M. Charles Garnier, says of the
Capitol: "The general composition of the edifice is certainly worthy
of Buonarroti's powerful conception. The balustrade which crowns the
façade is indeed bad and vulgar; the great pilasters are very poor in
invention, and the windows of the first story are extremely mediocre
in style. Nevertheless, there is a great simplicity of lines in these
palaces; and the porticoes of the ground-floor might be selected for
the beauty of their leading motive. The opposition of the great
pilasters to the little columns is an idea at once felicitous and
original. The whole has a fine effect; and though I hold the
proportions of the ground-floor too low in relation to the first
story, I consider this façade of the Capitol not only one of
Michelangelo's best works, but also one of the best specimens of the
building of that period. Deduction must, of course, be made for
heaviness and improprieties of taste, which are not rare."

Next to these designs for the Capitol, the most important
architectural work of Michelangelo's old age was the plan he made of a
new church to be erected by the Florentines in Rome to the honour of
their patron, S. Giovanni. We find him writing to his nephew on the
15th of July 1559: "The Florentines are minded to erect a great
edifice--that is to say, their church; and all of them with one accord
put pressure on me to attend to this. I have answered that I am living
here by the Duke's permission for the fabric of S. Peter's, and that
unless he gives me leave, they can get nothing from me." The consul
and counsellors of the Florentine nation in Rome wrote upon this to
the Duke, who entered with enthusiasm into their scheme, not only
sending a favourable reply, but also communicating personally upon the
subject with Buonarroti. Three of Michelangelo's letters on the
subject to the Duke have been preserved. After giving a short history
of the project, and alluding to the fact that Leo X. began the church,
he says that the Florentines had appointed a building committee of
five men, at whose request he made several designs. One of these they
selected, and according to his own opinion it was the best. "This I
will have copied and drawn out more clearly than I have been able to
do it, on account of old age, and will send it to your Most
Illustrious Lordship." The drawings were executed and carried to
Florence by the hand of Tiberio Calcagni. Vasari, who has given a long
account of this design, says that Calcagni not only drew the plans,
but that he also completed a clay model of the whole church within the
space of two days, from which the Florentines caused a larger wooden
model to be constructed. Michelangelo must have been satisfied with
his conception, for he told the building-committee that "if they
carried it out, neither the Romans nor the Greeks ever erected so fine
an edifice in any of their temples. Words the like of which neither
before nor afterwards issued from his lips; for he was exceedingly
modest." Vasari, who had good opportunities for studying the model,
pronounced it to be "superior in beauty, richness and variety of
invention to any temple which was ever seen." The building was begun,
and 5000 crowns were spent upon it. Then money or will failed. The
model and drawings perished. Nothing remains for certain to show what
Michelangelo's intentions were. The present church of S. Giovanni dei
Fiorentini in Strada Giulia is the work of Giacomo della Porta, with a
façade by Alessandro Galilei.

Of Tiberio Calcagni, the young Florentine sculptor and architect, who
acted like a kind of secretary or clerk to Michelangelo, something may
here be said. The correspondence of this artist with Lionardo
Buonarroti shows him to have been what Vasari calls him, "of gentle
manners and discreet behaviour." He felt both veneration and
attachment for the aged master, and was one of the small group of
intimate friends who cheered his last years. We have seen that
Michelangelo consigned the shattered Pietà to his care; and Vasari
tells us that he also wished him to complete the bust of Brutus, which
had been begun, at Donato Giannotti's request, for the Cardinal
Ridolfi. This bust is said to have been modelled from an ancient
cornelian in the possession of a certain Giuliano Ceserino.
Michelangelo not only blocked the marble out, but brought it nearly to
completion, working the surface with very fine-toothed chisels. The
sweetness of Tiberio Calcagni's nature is proved by the fact that he
would not set his own hand to this masterpiece of sculpture. As in the
case of the Pietà, he left Buonarroti's work untouched, where mere
repairs were not required. Accordingly we still can trace the
fine-toothed marks of the chisel alluded to by Vasari, hatched and
cross-hatched with right and left handed strokes in the style peculiar
to Michelangelo. The Brutus remains one of the finest specimens of his
creative genius. It must have been conceived and executed in the
plenitude of his vigour, probably at the time when Florence fell
beneath the yoke of Alessandro de' Medici, or rather when his murderer
Lorenzino gained the name of Brutus from the exiles (1539). Though
Vasari may be right in saying that a Roman intaglio suggested the
stamp of face and feature, yet we must regard this Brutus as an ideal
portrait, intended to express the artist's conception of resolution
and uncompromising energy in a patriot eager to sacrifice personal
feelings and to dare the utmost for his country's welfare. Nothing can
exceed the spirit with which a violent temperament, habitually
repressed, but capable of leaping forth like sudden lightning, has
been rendered. We must be grateful to Calcagni for leaving it in its
suggestively unfinished state.


II

During these same years Michelangelo carried on a correspondence with
Ammanati and Vasari about the completion of the Laurentian Library.
His letters illustrate what I have more than once observed regarding
his unpractical method of commencing great works, without more than
the roughest sketches, intelligible to himself alone, and useless to
an ordinary craftsman. The Florentine artists employed upon the fabric
wanted very much to know how he meant to introduce the grand staircase
into the vestibule. Michelangelo had forgotten all about it. "With
regard to the staircase of the library, about which so much has been
said to me, you may believe that if I could remember how I had
arranged it, I should not need to be begged and prayed for
information. There comes into my mind, as in a dream, the image of a
certain staircase; but I do not think this can be the one I then
designed, for it seems so stupid. However, I will describe it." Later
on he sends a little clay model of a staircase, just enough to
indicate his general conception, but not to determine details. He
suggests that the work would look better if carried out in walnut. We
have every reason to suppose that the present stone flight of steps is
far from being representative of his idea.

He was now too old to do more than furnish drawings when asked to
design some monument. Accordingly, when Pius IV. resolved to erect a
tomb in Milan Cathedral to the memory of his brother, Giangiacomo de'
Medici, Marquis of Marignano, commonly called Il Medeghino, he
requested Michelangelo to supply the bronze-sculptor Leone Leoni of
Menaggio with a design. This must have been insufficient for the
sculptor's purpose--a mere hand-sketch not drawn to scale. The
monument, though imposing in general effect, is very defective in its
details and proportions. The architectural scheme has not been
comprehended by the sculptor, who enriched it with a great variety of
figures, excellently wrought in bronze, and faintly suggesting
Michelangelo's manner.

The grotesque _barocco_ style of the Porta Pia, strong in its total
outline, but whimsical and weak in decorative detail, may probably be
ascribed to the same cause. It was sketched out by Michelangelo during
the pontificate of Pius IV., and can hardly have been erected under
his personal supervision. Vasari says: "He made three sketches,
extravagant in style and most beautiful, of which the Pope selected
the least costly; this was executed much to his credit, as may now be
seen." To what extent he was responsible for the other
sixteenth-century gates of Rome, including the Porta del Popolo, which
is commonly ascribed to him, cannot be determined; though Vasari
asserts that Michelangelo supplied the Pope with "many other models"
for the restoration of the gates. Indeed it may be said of all his
later work that we are dealing with uncertain material, the original
idea emanating perhaps from Buonarroti's mind, but the execution
having devolved upon journeymen.

Pius IV. charged Michelangelo with another great undertaking, which
was the restoration of the Baths of Diocletian in the form of a
Christian church. Criticism is reduced to silence upon his work in
this place, because S. Maria degli Angeli underwent a complete
remodelling by the architect Vanvitelli in 1749. This man altered the
ground-plan from the Latin to the Greek type, and adopted the
decorative style in vogue at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
All that appears certain is that Michelangelo had very considerable
remains of the Roman building to make use of. We may also perhaps
credit tradition, when it tells us that the vast Carthusian cloister
belongs to him, and that the three great cypress-trees were planted by
his hand.

Henri the Second's death occurred in 1559; and his widow, Catherine
de' Medici, resolved to erect an equestrian statue to his memory. She
bethought her of the aged sculptor, who had been bred in the palace of
her great-grandfather, who had served two Pontiffs of her family, and
who had placed the mournful image of her father on the tomb at San
Lorenzo. Accordingly she wrote a letter on the 14th of November in
that year, informing Michelangelo of her intention, and begging him to
supply at least a design upon which the best masters in the realm of
France might work. The statue was destined for the courtyard of the
royal château at Blois, and was to be in bronze. Ruberto degli
Strozzi, the Queen's cousin, happened about this time to visit Rome.
Michelangelo having agreed to furnish a sketch, it was decided between
them that the execution should be assigned to Daniele da Volterra.
After nearly a year's interval, Catherine wrote again, informing
Michelangelo that she had deposited a sum of 6000 golden crowns at the
bank of Gianbattista Gondi for the work, adding: "Consequently, since
on my side nothing remains to be done, I entreat you by the affection
you have always shown to my family, to our Florence, and lastly to
art, that you will use all diligence and assiduity, so far as your
years permit, in pushing forward this noble work, and making it a
living likeness of my lord, as well as worthy of your own unrivalled
genius. It is true that this will add nothing to the fame you now
enjoy; yet it will at least augment your reputation for most
acceptable and affectionate devotion toward myself and my ancestors,
and prolong through centuries the memory of my lawful and sole love;
for the which I shall be eager and liberal to reward you." It is
probable that by this time (October 30, 1560) Michelangelo had
forwarded his sketch to France, for the Queen criticised some details
relating to the portrait of her husband. She may have remembered with
what idealistic freedom the statues of the Dukes of Nemours and Urbino
had been treated in the Medicean Sacristy. Anyhow, she sent a picture,
and made her agent, Baccio del Bene, write a postscript to her letter,
ordering Michelangelo to model the King's head without curls, and to
adopt the rich modern style for his armour and the trappings of his
charger. She particularly insisted upon the likeness being carefully
brought out.

Michelangelo died before the equestrian statue of Henri II. was
finished. Cellini, in his Memoirs, relates that Daniele da Volterra
worked slowly, and caused much annoyance to the Queen-mother of
France. In 1562 her agent, Baccio del Bene, came to Florence on
financial business with the Duke. He then proposed that Cellini should
return to Paris and undertake the ornamental details of the tomb. The
Duke would not consent, and Catherine de' Medici did not choose to
quarrel with her cousin about an artist. So this arrangement, which
might have secured the completion of the statue on a splendid scale,
fell through. When Daniele died in 1566, only the horse was cast; and
this part served finally for Biard's statue of Louis XIII.


III

The sculptor Leone Leoni, who was employed upon the statue of
Giangiacomo de' Medici in Milan, wrote frequently to Michelangelo,
showing by his letters that a warm friendship subsisted between them,
which was also shared by Tommaso Cavalieri. In the year 1560,
according to Vasari, Leoni modelled a profile portrait of the great
master, which he afterwards cast in medal form. This is almost the
most interesting, and it is probably the most genuine contemporary
record which we possess regarding Michelangelo's appearance in the
body. I may therefore take it as my basis for inquiring into the
relative value of the many portraits said to have been modelled,
painted, or sketched from the hero in his lifetime. So far as I am
hitherto aware, no claim has been put in for the authenticity of any
likeness, except Bonasoni's engraving, anterior to the date we have
arrived at. While making this statement, I pass over the prostrate old
man in the Victory, and the Nicodemus of the Florentine Pietà, both of
which, with more or less reason, have been accepted as efforts after
self-portraiture.

After making due allowance for Vasari's too notorious inaccuracies,
deliberate misstatements, and random jumpings at conclusions, we have
the right to accept him here as a first-rate authority. He was living
at this time in close intimacy with Buonarroti, enjoyed his
confidence, plumed himself upon their friendship, and had no reason to
distort truth, which must have been accessible to one in his position.
He says, then: "At this time the Cavaliere Leoni made a very lively
portrait of Michelangelo upon a medal, and to meet his wishes,
modelled on the reverse a blind man led by a dog, with this legend
round the rim: DOCEBO INIQUOS VIAS TUAS, ET IMPII AD TE CONVERTENTUR.
It pleased Michelangelo so much that he gave him a wax model of a
Hercules throttling Antaeus, by his own hand, together with some
drawings. Of Michelangelo there exist no other portraits, except two
in painting--one by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte; and one
in bronze, in full relief, made by Daniele da Volterra: these, and
Leoni's medal, from which (in the plural) many copies have been made,
and a great number of them have been seen by me in several parts of
Italy and abroad."

Leoni's medal, on the obverse, shows the old artist's head in profile,
with strong lines of drapery rising to the neck and gathering around
the shoulders. It carries this legend: MICHELANGELUS BUONARROTUS, FLO.
R.A.E.T.S. ANN. 88, and is signed LEO. Leoni then assumed that
Michelangelo was eighty-eight years of age when he cast the die. But
if this was done in 1560, the age he had then attained was
eighty-five. We possess a letter from Leoni in Milan to Buonarroti in
Rome, dated March 14, 1561. In it he says: "I am sending to your
lordship, by the favour of Lord Carlo Visconti, a great man in this
city, and beloved by his Holiness, four medals of your portrait: two
in silver, and two in bronze. I should have done so earlier but for my
occupation with the monument (of Medeghino), and for the certainty I
feel that you will excuse my tardiness, if not a sin of ingratitude in
me. The one enclosed within the little box has been worked up to the
finest polish. I beg you to accept and keep this for the love of me.
With the other three you will do as you think best. I say this because
ambition has prompted me to send copies into Spain and Flanders, as I
have also done to Rome and other places. I call it ambition, forasmuch
as I have gained an overplus of benefits by acquiring the good-will of
your lordship, whom I esteem so highly. Have I not received in little
less than three months two letters written to me by you, divine man;
and couched not in terms fit for a servant of good heart and will, but
for one beloved as a son? I pray you to go on loving me, and when
occasion serves, to favour me; and to Signer Tomao dei Cavalieri say
that I shall never be unmindful of him."

It is clear, then, I think, that Leoni's model was made at Rome in
1560, cast at Milan, and sent early in the spring of 1561 to
Michelangelo. The wide distribution of the medals, two of which exist
still in silver, while several in bronze may be found in different
collections, is accounted for by what Leoni says about his having
given them away to various parts of Europe. We are bound to suppose
that AET. 88 in the legend on the obverse is due to a misconception
concerning Michelangelo's age. Old men are often ignorant or careless
about the exact tale of years they have performed.

There is reason to believe that Leoni's original model of the profile,
the likeness he shaped from life, and which he afterwards used for the
medallion, is extant and in excellent preservation. Mr. C. Drury E.
Fortnum (to whose monographs upon Michelangelo's portraits, kindly
communicated by himself, I am deeply indebted at this portion of my
work), tells us how he came into possession of an exquisite cameo, in
flesh-coloured wax upon a black oval ground. This fragile work of art
is framed in gilt metal and glazed, carrying upon its back an Italian
inscription, which may be translated: "Portrait of Michelangelo
Buonarroti, taken from the life, by Leone Aretino, his friend."
Comparing the relief in wax with the medal, we cannot doubt that both
represent the same man; and only cavillers will raise the question
whether both were fashioned by one hand. Such discrepancies as occur
between them are just what we should expect in the work of a craftsman
who sought first to obtain an accurate likeness of his subject, and
then treated the same subject on the lines of numismatic art. The wax
shows a lean and subtly moulded face--the face of a delicate old man,
wiry and worn with years of deep experience. The hair on head and
beard is singularly natural; one feels it to be characteristic of the
person. Transferring this portrait to bronze necessitated a general
broadening of the masses, with a coarsening of outline to obtain bold
relief. Something of the purest truth has been sacrificed to plastic
effect by thickening the shrunken throat; and this induced a
corresponding enlargement of the occiput for balance. Writing with
photographs of these two models before me, I feel convinced that in
the wax we have a portrait from the life of the aged Buonarroti as
Leoni knew him, and in the bronze a handling of that portrait as the
craftsman felt his art of metal-work required its execution. There was
a grand manner of medallion-portraiture in Italy, deriving from the
times of Pisanello; and Leoni's bronze is worthy of that excellent
tradition. He preserved the salient features of Buonarroti in old age.
But having to send down to posterity a monumental record of the man,
he added, insensibly or wilfully, both bulk and mass to the head he
had so keenly studied. What confirms me in the opinion that Mr.
Fornum's cameo is the most veracious portrait we possess of
Michelangelo in old age, is that its fragility of structure, the
tenuity of life vigorous but infinitely refined, reappears in the weak
drawing made by Francesco d'Olanda of Buonarroti in hat and mantle.
This is a comparatively poor and dreamy sketch. Yet it has an air of
veracity; and what the Flemish painter seized in the divine man he so
much admired, was a certain slender grace and dignity of
person--exactly the quality which Mr. Fortnum's cameo possesses.

Before leaving this interesting subject, I ought to add that the blind
man on the reverse of Leoni's medal is clearly a rough and ready
sketch of Michelangelo, not treated like a portrait, but with
indications sufficient to connect the figure with the highly wrought
profile on the obverse.

Returning now to the passage cited from Vasari, we find that he
reckons only two authentic portraits in painting of Michelangelo, one
by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte. He has neglected to
mention two which are undoubtedly attempts to reproduce the features
of the master by scholars he had formed. Probably Vasari overlooked
them, because they did not exist as easel-pictures, but were
introduced into great compositions as subordinate adjuncts. One of
them is the head painted by Daniele da Volterra in his picture of the
Assumption at the church of the Trinità de' Monti in Rome. It belongs
to an apostle, draped in red, stretching arms aloft, close to a
column, on the right hand of the painting as we look at it. This must
be reckoned among the genuine likenesses of the great man by one who
lived with him and knew him intimately. The other is a portrait placed
by Marcello Venusti in the left-hand corner of his copy of the Last
Judgment, executed, under Michelangelo's direction, for the Cardinal
Farnese. It has value for the same reasons as those which make us
dwell upon Daniele da Volterra's picture. Moreover, it connects itself
with a series of easel-paintings. One of these, ascribed to Venusti,
is preserved in the Museo Buonarroti at Florence; another at the
Capitol in Rome. Several repetitions of this type exist: they look
like studies taken by the pupil from his master, and reproduced to
order when death closed the scene, making friends wish for mementoes
of the genius who had passed away. The critique of such works will
always remain obscure.

What has become of the portrait of Del Conte mentioned by Vasari
cannot now be ascertained. We have no external evidence to guide us.

On the other hand, certain peculiarities about the portrait in the
Uffizi, especially the exaggeration of one eye, lend some colouring to
the belief that we here possess the picture ascribed by Vasari to
Bugiardini.

Michelangelo's type of face was well accentuated, and all the more or
less contemporary portraits of him reproduce it. Time is wasted in the
effort to assign to little men their special part in the creation of a
prevalent tradition. It seems to me, therefore, the function of sane
criticism not to be particular about the easel-pictures ascribed to
Venusti, Del Conte, and Bugiardini.

The case is different with a superb engraving by Giulio Bonasoni, a
profile in a circle, dated 1546, and giving Buonarroti's age as
seventy-two. This shows the man in fuller vigour than the portraits we
have hitherto been dealing with. From other prints which bear the
signature of Bonasoni, we see that he was interested in faithfully
reproducing Michelangelo's work. What the relations between the two
men were remains uncertain, but Bonasoni may have had opportunities of
studying the master's person. At any rate, as a product of the burin,
this profile is comparable for fidelity and veracity with Leoni's
model, and is executed in the same medallion spirit.

So far, then, as I have yet pursued the analysis of Michelangelo's
portraits, I take Bonasoni's engraving to be decisive for
Michelangelo's appearance at the age of seventy; Leoni's model as of
equal or of greater value at the age of eighty; Venusti's and Da
Volterra's paintings as of some importance for this later period;
while I leave the attribution of minor easel-pictures to Del Conte or
to Bugiardini open.

It remains to speak of that "full relief in bronze made by Daniele da
Volterra," which Vasari mentions among the four genuine portraits of
Buonarroti. From the context we should gather that this head was
executed during the lifetime of Michelangelo, and the conclusion is
supported by the fact that only a few pages later on Vasari mentions
two other busts modelled after his death. Describing the catafalque
erected to his honour in S. Lorenzo, he says that the pyramid which
crowned the structure exhibited within two ovals (one turned toward
the chief door, and the other toward the high altar) "the head of
Michelangelo in relief, taken from nature, and very excellently
carried out by Santi Buglioni." The words _ritratta dal naturale_ do
not, I think, necessarily imply that it was modelled from the life.
Owing to the circumstances under which Michelangelo's obsequies were
prepared, there was not time to finish it in bronze of stone; it may
therefore have been one of those Florentine terra-cotta effigies which
artists elaborated from a cast taken after death. That there existed
such a cast is proved by what we know about the monument designed by
Vasari in S. Croce. "One of the statues was assigned to Battista
Lorenzi, an able sculptor, together with the head of Michelangelo." We
learn from another source that this bust in marble "was taken from the
mask cast after his death."

The custom of taking plaster casts from the faces of the illustrious
dead, in order to perpetuate their features, was so universal in
Italy, that it could hardly have been omitted in the case of
Michelangelo. The question now arises whether the bronze head ascribed
by Vasari to Daniele da Volterra was executed during Michelangelo's
lifetime or after his decease, and whether we possess it. There are
eight heads of this species known to students of Michelangelo, which
correspond so nicely in their measurements and general features as to
force the conclusion that they were all derived from an original
moulded by one masterly hand. Three of these heads are unmounted,
namely, those at Milan, Oxford, and M. Piot's house in Paris. One,
that of the Capitoline Museum, is fixed upon a bust of _bigio morato_
marble. The remaining four examples are executed throughout in bronze
as busts, agreeing in the main as to the head, but differing in minor
details of drapery. They exist respectively in the Museo Buonarroti,
the Accademia, and the Bargello at Florence, and in the private
collection of M. Cottier of Paris. It is clear, then, that we are
dealing with bronze heads cast from a common mould, worked up
afterwards according to the fancy of the artist. That this original
head was the portrait ascribed to Daniele da Volterra will be conceded
by all who care to trace the history of the bust; but whether he
modelled it after Michelangelo's death cannot be decided. Professional
critics are of the opinion that a mask was followed by the master; and
this may have been the case. Michelangelo died upon the 17th of
February 1564. His face was probably cast in the usual course of
things, and copies may have been distributed among his friends in Rome
and Florence. Lionardo Buonarroti showed at once a great anxiety to
obtain his uncle's bust from Daniele da Volterra. Possibly he ordered
it while resident in Rome, engaged in winding up Michelangelo's
affairs. At any rate, Daniele wrote on June 11 to this effect: "As
regards the portraits in metal, I have already completed a model in
wax, and the work is going on as fast as circumstances permit; you may
rely upon its being completed with due despatch and all the care I can
bestow upon it." Nearly four months had elapsed since Michelangelo's
decease, and this was quite enough time for the wax model to be made.
The work of casting was begun, but Daniele's health at this time
became so wretched that he found it impossible to work steadily at any
of his undertakings. He sank slowly, and expired in the early spring
of 1566.

What happened to the bronze heads in the interval between June 1564
and April 1566 may be partly understood from Diomede Leoni's
correspondence. This man, a native of San Quirico, was Daniele's
scholar, and an intimate friend of the Buonarroti family. On the 9th
of September 1564 he wrote to Lionardo: "Your two heads of that
sainted man are coming to a good result, and I am sure you will be
satisfied with them." It appears, then, that Lionardo had ordered two
copies from Daniele. On the 21st of April 1565 Diomede writes again:
"I delivered your messages to Messer Daniele, who replies that you are
always in his mind, as also the two heads of your lamented uncle. They
will soon be cast, as also will my copy, which I mean to keep by me
for my honour." The casting must have taken place in the summer of
1565, for Diomede writes upon the 6th of October: "I will remind him
(Daniele) of your two heads; and he will find mine well finished,
which will make him wish to have yours chased without further delay."
The three heads had then been cast; Diomede was polishing his up with
the file; Daniele had not yet begun to do this for Lionardo's. We hear
nothing more until the death of Daniele da Volterra. After this event
occurred, Lionardo Buonarroti received a letter from Jacopo del Duca,
a Sicilian bronze-caster of high merit, who had enjoyed Michelangelo's
confidence and friendship. He was at present employed upon the
metal-work for Buonarroti's monument in the Church of the SS. Apostoli
in Rome, and on the 18th of April he sent important information
respecting the two heads left by Daniele. "Messer Danielo had cast
them, but they are in such a state as to require working over afresh
with chisels and files. I am not sure, then, whether they will suit
your purpose; but that is your affair. I, for my part, should have
liked you to have the portrait from the hand of the lamented master
himself, and not from any other. Your lordship must decide: appeal to
some one who can inform you better than I do. I know that I am
speaking from the love I bear you; and perhaps, if Danielo had been
alive, he would have had them brought to proper finish. As for those
men of his, I do not know what they will do." On the same day, a
certain Michele Alberti wrote as follows: "Messer Jacopo, your gossip,
has told me that your lordship wished to know in what condition are
the heads of the late lamented Michelangelo. I inform you that they
are cast, and will be chased within the space of a month, or rather
more. So your lordship will be able to have them; and you may rest
assured that you will be well and quickly served." Alberti, we may
conjecture, was one of Daniele's men alluded to by Jacopo del Duca. It
is probable that just at this time they were making several _replicas_
from their deceased master's model, in order to dispose of them at an
advantage while Michelangelo's memory was still fresh. Lionardo grew
more and more impatient. He appealed again to Diomede Leoni, who
replied from San Quirico upon the 4th of June: "The two heads were in
existence when I left Rome, but not finished up. I imagine you have
given orders to have them delivered over to yourself. As for the work
of chasing them, if you can wait till my return, we might intrust them
to a man who succeeded very well with my own copy." Three years later,
on September 17, 1569, Diomede wrote once again about his copy of Da
Volterra's model: "I enjoy the continual contemplation of his effigy
in bronze, which is now perfectly finished and set up in my garden,
where you will see it, if good fortune favours me with a visit from
you."

The net result of this correspondence seems to be that certainly three
bronze heads, and probably more, remained unfinished in Daniele da
Volterra's workshop after his death, and that these were gradually
cleaned and polished by different craftsmen, according to the pleasure
of their purchasers. The strong resemblance of the eight bronze heads
at present known to us, in combination with their different states of
surface-finish, correspond entirely to this conclusion. Mr. Fortnum,
in his classification, describes four as being not chased, one as
"rudely and broadly chased," three as "more or less chased."

Of these variants upon the model common to them all, we can only trace
one with relative certainty. It is the bust at present in the Bargello
Palace, whither it came from the Grand Ducal villa of Poggio
Imperiale. By the marriage of the heiress of the ducal house of Della
Rovere with a Duke of Tuscany, this work of art passed, with other art
treasures, notably with a statuette of Michelangelo's Moses, into the
possession of the Medici. A letter written in 1570 to the Duke of
Urbino by Buonarroti's house-servant, Antonio del Franzese of Castel
Durante, throws light upon the matter. He begins by saying that he is
glad to hear the Duke will accept the little Moses, though the object
is too slight in value to deserve his notice. Then he adds: "The head
of which your Excellency spoke in the very kind letter addressed to me
at your command is the true likeness of Michelangelo Buonarroti, my
old master; and it is of bronze, designed by himself. I keep it here
in Rome, and now present it to your Excellency." Antonio then, in all
probability, obtained one of the Daniele da Volterra bronzes; for it
is wholly incredible that what he writes about its having been made by
Michelangelo should be the truth. Had Michelangelo really modelled his
own portrait and cast it in bronze, we must have heard of this from
other sources. Moreover, the Medicean bust of Michelangelo which is
now placed in the Bargello, and which we believe to have come from
Urbino, belongs indubitably to the series of portraits made from
Daniele da Volterra's model.

To sum up this question of Michelangelo's authentic portraits: I
repeat that Bonasoni's engraving represents him at the age of seventy;
Leoni's wax model and medallions at eighty; the eight bronze heads,
derived from Daniele's model, at the epoch of his death. In painting,
Marco Venusti and Daniele da Volterra helped to establish a
traditional type by two episodical likenesses, the one worked into
Venusti's copy of the Last Judgment (at Naples), the other into
Volterra's original picture of the Assumption (at Trinità de' Monti,
Rome). For the rest, the easel-pictures, which abound, can hardly now
be distributed, by any sane method of criticism, between Bugiardini,
Jacopo del Conte, and Venusti. They must be taken _en masse_, as
contributions to the study of his personality; and, as I have already
said, the oil-painting of the Uffizi may perhaps be ascribed with some
show of probability to Bugiardini.


IV

Michelangelo's correspondence with his nephew Lionardo gives us ample
details concerning his private life and interests in old age. It turns
mainly upon the following topics: investment of money in land near
Florence, the purchase of a mansion in the city, Lionardo's marriage,
his own illnesses, the Duke's invitation, and the project of making a
will, which was never carried out. Much as Michelangelo loved his
nephew, he took frequent occasions of snubbing him. For instance, news
reached Rome that the landed property of a certain Francesco Corboli
was going to be sold. Michelangelo sent to Lionardo requesting him to
make inquiries; and because the latter showed some alacrity in doing
so, his uncle wrote him the following querulous epistle: "You have
been very hasty in sending me information regarding the estates of the
Corboli. I did not think you were yet in Florence. Are you afraid lest
I should change my mind, as some one may perhaps have put it into your
head? I tell you that I want to go slowly in this affair, because the
money I must pay has been gained here with toil and trouble
unintelligible to one who was born clothed and shod as you were. About
your coming post-haste to Rome, I do not know that you came in such a
hurry when I was a pauper and lacked bread. Enough for you to throw
away the money that you did not earn. The fear of losing what you
might inherit on my death impelled you. You say it was your duty to
come, by reason of the love you bear me. The love of a woodworm! If
you really loved me, you would have written now: 'Michelangelo, spend
those 3000 ducats there upon yourself, for you have given us enough
already: your life is dearer to us than your money.' You have all of
you lived forty years upon me, and I have never had from you so much
as one good word. 'Tis true that last year I scolded and rebuked you
so that for very shame you sent me a load of trebbiano. I almost wish
you hadn't! I do not write this because I am unwilling to buy. Indeed
I have a mind to do so, in order to obtain an income for myself, now
that I cannot work more. But I want to buy at leisure, so as not to
purchase some annoyance. Therefore do not hurry."

Lionardo was careless about his handwriting, and this annoyed the old
man terribly.

"Do not write to me again. Each time I get one of your letters, a
fever takes me with the trouble I have in reading it. I do not know
where you learned to write. I think that if you were writing to the
greatest donkey in the world you would do it with more care. Therefore
do not add to the annoyances I have, for I have already quite enough
of them."

He returns to the subject over and over again, and once declares that
he has flung a letter of Lionardo's into the fire unread, and so is
incapable of answering it. This did not prevent a brisk interchange of
friendly communications between the uncle and nephew.

Lionardo was now living in the Buonarroti house in Via Ghibellina.
Michelangelo thought it advisable that he should remove into a more
commodious mansion, and one not subject to inundations of the
basement. He desired, however, not to go beyond the quarter of S.
Croce, where the family had been for centuries established. The matter
became urgent, for Lionardo wished to marry, and could not marry until
he was provided with a residence. Eventually, after rejecting many
plans and proffers of houses, they decided to enlarge and improve the
original Buonarroti mansion in Via Ghibellina. This house continued to
be their town-mansion until the year 1852, when it passed by
testamentary devise to the city of Florence. It is now the Museo
Buonarroti.

Lionardo was at this time thirty, and was the sole hope of the family,
since Michelangelo and his two surviving brothers had no expectation
of offspring. His uncle kept reminding the young man that, if he did
not marry and get children, the whole property of the Buonarroti would
go to the Hospital or to S. Martino. This made his marriage
imperative; and Michelangelo's letters between March 5, 1547, and May
16, 1553, when the desired event took place, are full of the subject.
He gives his nephew excellent advice as to the choice of a wife. She
ought to be ten years younger than himself, of noble birth, but not of
a very rich or powerful family; Lionardo must not expect her to be too
handsome, since he is no miracle of manly beauty; the great thing is
to obtain a good, useful, and obedient helpmate, who will not try to
get the upper hand in the house, and who will be grateful for an
honourable settlement in life. The following passages may be selected,
as specimens of Michelangelo's advice: "You ought not to look for a
dower, but only to consider whether the girl is well brought up,
healthy, of good character and noble blood. You are not yourself of
such parts and person as to be worthy of the first beauty of
Florence." "You have need of a wife who would stay with you, and whom
you could command, and who would not want to live in grand style or to
gad about every day to marriages and banquets. Where a court is, it is
easy to become a woman of loose life; especially for one who has no
relatives."

Numerous young ladies were introduced by friends or matrimonial
agents. Six years, however, elapsed before the suitable person
presented herself in the shape of Cassandra, daughter of Donato
Ridolfi. Meanwhile, in 1548, Michelangelo lost the elder of his
surviving brothers. Giovan Simone died upon the 9th of January; and
though he had given but little satisfaction in his lifetime, his death
was felt acutely by the venerable artist. "I received news in your
last of Giovan Simone's death. It has caused me the greatest sorrow;
for though I am old, I had yet hoped to see him before he died, and
before I died. God has willed it so. Patience! I should be glad to
hear circumstantially what kind of end he made, and whether he
confessed and communicated with all the sacraments of the Church. If
he did so, and I am informed of it, I shall suffer less." A few days
after the date of this letter, Michelangelo writes again, blaming
Lionardo pretty severely for negligence in giving particulars of his
uncle's death and affairs. Later on, it seems that he was satisfied
regarding Giovan Simone's manner of departure from this world. A
grudge remained against Lionardo because he had omitted to inform him
about the property. "I heard the details from other persons before you
sent them, which angered me exceedingly."


V

The year 1549 is marked by an exchange of civilities between
Michelangelo and Benedetto Varchi. The learned man of letters and
minute historiographer of Florence probably enjoyed our great
sculptor's society in former years: recently they had been brought
into closer relations at Rome. Varchi, who was interested in critical
and academical problems, started the question whether sculpture or
painting could justly claim a priority in the plastic arts. He
conceived the very modern idea of collecting opinions from practical
craftsmen, instituting, in fact, what would now be called a
"Symposium" upon the subject. A good number of the answers to his
query have been preserved, and among them is a letter from
Michelangelo. It contains the following passage, which proves in how
deep a sense Buonarroti was by temperament and predilection a
sculptor: "My opinion is that all painting is the better the nearer it
approaches to relief, and relief is the worse in proportion as it
inclines to painting. And so I have been wont to think that sculpture
is the lamp of painting, and that the difference between them might be
likened to the difference between the sun and moon. Now that I have
read your essay, in which you maintain that, philosophically speaking,
things which fulfil the same purpose are essentially the same, I have
altered my view. Therefore I say that, if greater judgment and
difficulty, impediment and labour, in the handling of material do not
constitute higher nobility, then painting and sculpture form one art.
This being granted, it follows that no painter should underrate
sculpture, and no sculptor should make light of painting. By sculpture
I understand an art which operates by taking away superfluous
material; by painting, one that attains its result by laying on. It is
enough that both emanate from the same human intelligence, and
consequently sculpture and painting ought to live in amity together,
without these lengthy disputations. More time is wasted in talking
about the problem than would go to the making of figures in both
species. The man who wrote that painting was superior to sculpture, if
he understood the other things he says no better, might be called a
writer below the level of my maid-servant. There are infinite points
not yet expressed which might be brought out regarding these arts;
but, as I have said, they want too much time; and of time I have but
little, being not only old, but almost numbered with the dead.
Therefore, I pray you to have me excused. I recommend myself to you,
and thank you to the best of my ability for the too great honour you
have done me, which is more than I deserve."

Varchi printed this letter in a volume which he published at Florence
in 1549, and reissued through another firm in 1590. It contained the
treatise alluded to above, and also a commentary upon one of
Michelangelo's sonnets, "Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto." The
book was duly sent to Michelangelo by the favour of a noble Florentine
gentleman, Luca Martini. He responded to the present in a letter which
deserves here to be recited. It is an eminent example of the urbanity
observed by him in the interchange of these and similar courtesies:--

"I have received your letter, together with a little book containing a
commentary on a sonnet of mine. The sonnet does indeed proceed from
me, but the commentary comes from heaven. In truth it is a marvellous
production; and I say this not on my own judgment only, but on that of
able men, especially of Messer Donato Giannotti, who is never tired of
reading it. He begs to be remembered to you. About the sonnet, I know
very well what that is worth. Yet be it what it may, I cannot refrain
from piquing myself a little on having been the cause of so beautiful
and learned a commentary. The author of it, by his words and praises,
shows clearly that he thinks me to be other than I am; so I beg you to
express me to him in terms corresponding to so much love, affection,
and courtesy. I entreat you to do this, because I feel myself
inadequate, and one who has gained golden opinions ought not to tempt
fortune; it is better to keep silence than to fall from that height. I
am old, and death has robbed me of the thoughts of my youth. He who
knows not what old age is, let him wait till it arrives: he cannot
know beforehand. Remember me, as I said, to Varchi, with deep
affection for his fine qualities, and as his servant wherever I may
be."

Three other letters belonging to the same year show how deeply
Michelangelo was touched and gratified by the distinguished honour
Varchi paid him. In an earlier chapter of this book I have already
pointed out how this correspondence bears upon the question of his
friendship with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and also upon an untenable
hypothesis advanced by recent Florentine students of his biography.
The incident is notable in other ways because Buonarroti was now
adopted as a poet by the Florentine Academy. With a width of sympathy
rare in such bodies, they condoned the ruggedness of his style and the
uncouthness of his versification in their admiration for the high
quality of his meditative inspiration. To the triple crown of
sculptor, painter, architect, he now added the laurels of the bard;
and this public recognition of his genius as a writer gave him
well-merited pleasure in his declining years.

While gathering up these scattered fragments of Buonarroti's later
life, I may here introduce a letter addressed to Benvenuto Cellini,
which illustrates his glad acceptance of all good work in
fellow-craftsmen:--

"My Benvenuto,--I have known you all these years as the greatest
goldsmith of whom the world ever heard, and now I am to know you for a
sculptor of the same quality. Messer Bindo Altoviti took me to see his
portrait bust in bronze, and told me it was by your hand. I admired it
much, but was sorry to see that it has been placed in a bad light. If
it had a proper illumination, it would show itself to be the fine work
it is."


VI

Lionardo Buonarroti was at last married to Cassandra, the daughter of
Donato Ridolfi, upon the 16th of May 1553. One of the dearest wishes
which had occupied his uncle's mind so long, came thus to its
accomplishment. His letters are full of kindly thoughts for the young
couple, and of prudent advice to the husband, who had not arranged all
matters connected with the settlements to his own satisfaction.
Michelangelo congratulated Lionardo heartily upon his happiness, and
told him that he was minded to send the bride a handsome present, in
token of his esteem. "I have not been able to do so yet, because
Urbino was away. Now that he has returned, I shall give expression to
my sentiments. They tell me that a fine pearl necklace of some value
would be very proper. I have sent a goldsmith, Urbino's friend, in
search of such an ornament, and hope to find it; but say nothing to
her, and if you would like me to choose another article, please let me
know." This letter winds up with a strange admonition: "Look to
living, reflect and weigh things well; for the number of widows in the
world is always larger than that of the widowers." Ultimately he
decided upon two rings, one a diamond, the other a ruby. He tells
Lionardo to have the stones valued in case he has been cheated,
because he does not understand such things; and is glad to hear in due
course that the jewels are genuine. After the proper interval,
Cassandra expected her confinement, and Michelangelo corresponded with
his nephew as to the child's name in case it was a boy. "I shall be
very pleased if the name of Buonarroto does not die out of our family,
it having lasted three hundred years with us." The child was born upon
the 16th of May 1544, turned out a boy, and received the name of
Buonarroto. Though Lionardo had seven other children, including
Michelangelo the younger (born November 4, 1568), this Buonarroto
alone continued the male line of the family. The old man in Rome
remarked resignedly during his later years, when he heard the news of
a baby born and dead, that "I am not surprised; there was never in our
family more than one at a time to keep it going."

Buonarroto was christened with some pomp, and Vasari wrote to
Michelangelo describing the festivities. In the year 1554, Cosimo de'
Medici had thrown his net round Siena. The Marquis of Marignano
reduced the city first to extremities by famine, and finally to
enslavement by capitulation. These facts account for the tone of
Michelangelo's answer to Vasari's letter: "Yours has given me the
greatest pleasure, because it assures me that you remember the poor
old man; and more perhaps because you were present at the triumph you
narrate, of seeing another Buonarroto reborn. I thank you heartily for
the information. But I must say that I am displeased with so much pomp
and show. Man ought not to laugh when the whole world weeps. So I
think that Lionardo has not displayed great judgment, particularly in
celebrating a nativity with all that joy and gladness which ought to
be reserved for the decease of one who has lived well." There is what
may be called an Elizabethan note--something like the lyrical
interbreathings of our dramatists--in this blending of jubilation and
sorrow, discontent and satisfaction, birth and death thoughts.

We have seen that Vasari worked for a short time as pupil under
Michelangelo, and that during the pontificate of Paul III. they were
brought into frequent contact at Rome. With years their friendship
deepened into intimacy, and after the date 1550 their correspondence
forms one of our most important sources of information. Michelangelo's
letters begin upon the 1st of August in that year. Vasari was then
living and working for the Duke at Florence; but he had designed a
chapel for S. Pietro a Montorio in Rome, where Julius III. wished to
erect tombs to the memory of his ancestors; and the work had been
allotted to Bartolommeo Ammanati under Michelangelo's direction.

This business, otherwise of no importance in his biography,
necessitated the writing of despatches, one of which is interesting,
since it acknowledges the receipt of Vasari's celebrated book:--

"Referring to your three letters which I have received, my pen refuses
to reply to such high compliments. I should indeed be happy if I were
in some degree what you make me out to be, but I should not care for
this except that then you would have a servant worth something.
However, I am not surprised that you, who resuscitate the dead, should
prolong the life of the living, or that you should steal the half-dead
from death for an endless period."

It seems that on this occasion he also sent Vasari the sonnet composed
upon his Lives of the Painters. Though it cannot be called one of his
poetical masterpieces, the personal interest attaching to the verses
justifies their introduction here:--

  _With pencil and with palette hitherto
  You made your art high Nature's paragon;
  Nay more, from Nature her own prize you won,
  Making what she made fair more fair to view_.

  _Now that your learned hand with labour new
  Of pen and ink a worthier work hath done,
  What erst you lacked, what still remained her own,
  The power of giving life, is gained for you_.

  _If men in any age with Nature vied
  In beauteous workmanship, they had to yield
  When to the fated end years brought their name_.

  _You, re-illuming memories that died,
  In spite of Time and Nature have revealed
  For them and for yourself eternal fame_.

Vasari's official position at the ducal court of Florence brought him
into frequent and personal relations with Cosimo de' Medici. The Duke
had long been anxious to lure the most gifted of his subjects back to
Florence; but Michelangelo, though he remained a loyal servant to the
Medicean family, could not approve of Cosimo's despotic rule.
Moreover, he was now engaged by every tie of honour, interest, and
artistic ambition to superintend the fabric of S. Peter's. He showed
great tact, through delicate negotiations carried on for many years,
in avoiding the Duke's overtures without sacrificing his friendship.
Wishing to found his family in Florence and to fund the earnings of
his life there, he naturally assumed a courteous attitude. A letter
written by the Bishop Tornabuoni to Giovanni Francesco Lottini in Rome
shows that these overtures began as early as 1546. The prelate says
the Duke is so anxious to regain "Michelangelo, the divine sculptor,"
that he promises "to make him a member of the forty-eight senators,
and to give him any office he may ask for." The affair was dropped for
some years, but in 1552 Cosimo renewed his attempts, and now began to
employ Vasari and Cellini as ambassadors. Soon after finishing his
Perseus, Benvenuto begged for leave to go to Rome; and before
starting, he showed the Duke Michelangelo's friendly letter on the
bust of Bindo Altoviti. "He read it with much kindly interest, and
said to me: 'Benvenuto, if you write to him, and can persuade him to
return to Florence, I will make him a member of the Forty-eight.'
Accordingly I wrote a letter full of warmth, and offered in the Duke's
name a hundred times more than my commission carried; but not wanting
to make any mistake, I showed this to the Duke before I sealed it,
saying to his most illustrious Excellency: 'Prince, perhaps I have
made him too many promises.' He replied: 'Michel Agnolo deserves more
than you have promised, and I will bestow on him still greater
favours.' To this letter he sent no answer, and I could see that the
Duke was much offended with him."

While in Rome, Cellini went to visit Michelangelo, and renewed his
offers in the Duke's name. What passed in that interview is so
graphically told, introducing the rustic personality of Urbino on the
stage, and giving a hint of Michelangelo's reasons for not returning
in person to Florence, that the whole passage may be transcribed as
opening a little window on the details of our hero's domestic life:--

"Then I went to visit Michel Agnolo Buonarroti, and repeated what I
had written from Florence to him in the Duke's name. He replied that
he was engaged upon the fabric of S. Peter's, and that this would
prevent him from leaving Rome. I rejoined that, as he had decided on
the model of that building, he could leave its execution to his man
Urbino, who would carry out his orders to the letter. I added much
about future favours, in the form of a message from the Duke. Upon
this he looked me hard in the face, and said with a sarcastic smile:
'And you! to what extent are you satisfied with him?' Although I
replied that I was extremely contented and was very well treated by
his Excellency, he showed that he was acquainted with the greater part
of my annoyances, and gave as his final answer that it would be
difficult for him to leave Rome. To this I added that he could not do
better than to return to his own land, which was governed by a prince
renowned for justice, and the greatest lover of the arts and sciences
who ever saw the light of this world. As I have remarked above, he had
with him a servant of his who came from Urbino, and had lived many
years in his employment, rather as valet and housekeeper than anything
else; this indeed was obvious, because he had acquired no skill in the
arts. Consequently, while I was pressing Michel Agnolo with arguments
he could not answer, he turned round sharply to Urbino, as though to
ask him his opinion. The fellow began to bawl out in his rustic way:
'I will never leave my master Michel Agnolo's side till I shall have
flayed him or he shall have flayed me.' These stupid words forced me
to laugh, and without saying farewell, I lowered my shoulders and
retired."

This was in 1552. The Duke was loth to take a refusal, and for the
next eight years he continued to ply Michelangelo with invitations,
writing letters by his own hand, employing his agents in Rome and
Florence, and working through Vasari. The letters to Vasari during
this period are full of the subject. Michelangelo remains firm in his
intention to remain at Rome and not abandon S. Peter's. As years went
on, infirmities increased, and the solicitations of the Duke became
more and more irksome to the old man. His discomfort at last elicited
what may be called a real cry of pain in a letter to his nephew:--

"As regards my condition, I am ill with all the troubles which are
wont to afflict old men. The stone prevents me passing water. My loins
and back are so stiff that I often cannot climb upstairs. What makes
matters worse is that my mind is much worried with anxieties. If I
leave the conveniences I have here for my health, I can hardly live
three days. Yet I do not want to lose the favour of the Duke, nor
should I like to fail in my work at S. Peter's, nor in my duty to
myself. I pray God to help and counsel me; and if I were taken ill by
some dangerous fever, I would send for you at once."

Meanwhile, in spite of his resistance to the Duke's wishes,
Michelangelo did not lose the favour of the Medicean family. The
delicacy of behaviour by means of which he contrived to preserve and
strengthen it, is indeed one of the strongest evidences of his
sincerity, sagacity, and prudence. The Cardinal Giovanni, son of
Cosimo, travelled to Rome in March 1560, in order to be invested with
the purple by the Pope's hands. On this occasion Vasari, who rode in
the young prince's train, wrote despatches to Florence which contain
some interesting passages about Buonarroti. In one of them (March 29)
he says: "My friend Michelangelo is so old that I do not hope to
obtain much from him." Beside the reiterated overtures regarding a
return to Florence, the Church of the Florentines was now in progress,
and Cosimo also required Buonarroti's advice upon the decoration of
the Great Hall in the Palazzo della Signoria. In a second letter
(April 8) Vasari tells the Duke: "I reached Rome, and immediately
after the most reverend and illustrious Medici had made his entrance
and received the hat from our lord's hands, a ceremony which I wished
to see with a view to the frescoes in the Palace, I went to visit my
friend, the mighty Michelangelo. He had not expected me, and the
tenderness of his reception was such as old men show when lost sons
unexpectedly return to them. He fell upon my neck with a thousand
kisses, weeping for joy. He was so glad to see me, and I him, that I
have had no greater pleasure since I entered the service of your
Excellency, albeit I enjoy so many through your kindness. We talked
about the greatness and the wonders which our God in heaven has
wrought for you, and he lamented that he could not serve you with his
body, as he is ready to do with his talents at the least sign of your
will. He also expressed his sorrow at being unable to wait upon the
Cardinal, because he now can move about but little, and is grown so
old that he gets small rest, and is so low in health I fear he will
not last long, unless the goodness of God preserves him for the
building of S. Peter's." After some further particulars, Vasari adds
that he hopes "to spend Monday and Tuesday discussing the model of the
Great Hall with Michelangelo, as well as the composition of the
several frescoes. I have all that is necessary with me, and will do my
utmost, while remaining in his company, to extract useful information
and suggestions." We know from Vasari's Life of Michelangelo that the
plans for decorating the Palace were settled to his own and the Duke's
satisfaction during these colloquies at Rome.

Later on in the year, Cosimo came in person to Rome, attended by the
Duchess Eleonora. Michelangelo immediately waited on their Highnesses,
and was received with special marks of courtesy by the Duke, who bade
him to be seated at his side, and discoursed at length about his own
designs for Florence and certain discoveries he had made in the method
of working porphyry. These interviews, says Vasari, were repeated
several times during Cosimo's sojourn in Rome; and when the
Crown-Prince of Florence, Don Francesco, arrived, this young nobleman
showed his high respect for the great man by conversing with him cap
in hand.

The project of bringing Buonarroti back to Florence was finally
abandoned; but he had the satisfaction of feeling that, after the
lapse of more than seventy years, his long connection with the House
of Medici remained as firm and cordial as it had ever been. It was
also consolatory to know that the relations established between
himself and the reigning dynasty in Florence would prove of service to
Lionardo, upon whom he now had concentrated the whole of his strong
family affection.

In estimating Michelangelo as man, independent of his eminence as
artist, the most singular point which strikes us is this persistent
preoccupation with the ancient house he desired so earnestly to
rehabilitate. He treated Lionardo with the greatest brutality. Nothing
that this nephew did, or did not do, was right. Yet Lionardo was the
sole hope of the Buonarroti-Simoni stock. When he married and got
children, the old man purred with satisfaction over him, but only as a
breeder of the race; and he did all in his power to establish Lionardo
in a secure position.


VII

Returning to the history of Michelangelo's domestic life, we have to
relate two sad events which happened to him at the end of 1555. On the
28th of September he wrote to Lionardo: "The bad news about Gismondo
afflicts me deeply. I am not without my own troubles of health, and
have many annoyances besides. In addition to all this, Urbino has been
ill in bed with me three months, and is so still, which causes me much
trouble and anxiety." Gismondo, who had been declining all the summer,
died upon the 13th of November. His brother in Rome was too much taken
up with the mortal sickness of his old friend and servant Urbino to
express great sorrow. "Your letter informs me of my brother Gismondo's
death, which is the cause to me of serious grief. We must have
patience; and inasmuch as he died sound of mind and with all the
sacraments of the Church, let God be praised. I am in great affliction
here. Urbino is still in bed, and very seriously ill. I do not know
what will come of it. I feel this trouble as though he were my own
son, because he has lived in my service twenty-five years, and has
been very faithful. Being old, I have no time to form another servant
to my purpose; and so I am sad exceedingly. If then, you know of some
devout person, I beg you to have prayers offered up to God for his
recovery."

The next letter gives a short account of his death:--

"I inform you that yesterday, the 3rd of December, at four o'clock,
Francesco called Urbino passed from this life, to my very great
sorrow. He has left me sorely stricken and afflicted; nay, it would
have been sweeter to have died with him, such is the love I bore him.
Less than this love he did not deserve; for he had grown to be a
worthy man, full of faith and loyalty. So, then, I feel as though his
death had left me without life, and I cannot find heart's ease. I
should be glad to see you, therefore; only I cannot think how you can
leave Florence because of your wife."

To Vasari he wrote still more passionately upon this occasion:--

"I cannot write well; yet, in answer to your letter, I will say a few
words. You know that Urbino is dead. I owe the greatest thanks to God,
at the same time that my own loss is heavy and my sorrow infinite. The
grace He gave me is that, while Urbino kept me alive in life, his
death taught me to die without displeasure, rather with a deep and
real desire. I had him with me twenty-six years, and found him above
measure faithful and sincere. Now that I had made him rich, and
thought to keep him as the staff and rest of my old age, he has
vanished from my sight; nor have I hope left but that of seeing him
again in Paradise. God has given us good foundation for this hope in
the exceedingly happy ending of his life. Even more than dying, it
grieved him to leave me alive in this treacherous world, with so many
troubles; and yet the better part of me is gone with him, nor is there
left to me aught but infinite distress. I recommend myself to you, and
beg you, if it be not irksome, to make my excuses to Messer Benvenuto
(Cellini) for omitting to answer his letter. The trouble of soul I
suffer in thought about these things prevents me from writing.
Remember me to him, and take my best respects to yourself."

How tenderly Michelangelo's thought dwelt upon Urbino appears from
this sonnet, addressed in 1556 to Monsignor Lodovico Beccadelli:--

  _God's grace, the cross, our troubles multiplied,
    Will make us meet in heaven, full well I know:
    Yet ere we yield, our breath on earth below,
    Why need a little solace be denied?
  Though seas and mountains and rough ways divide
    Our feet asunder, neither frost nor snow
    Can make the soul her ancient love; or ego;
    Nor chains nor bonds the wings of thought have tied.
  Borne by these wings, with thee I dwell for aye,
    And weep, and of my dead Urbino talk,
    Who, were he living, now perchance would be--
  For so 'twas planned--thy guest as well as I.
    Warned by his death, another way I walk
    To meet him where he waits to live with me._

By his will, dated November 24, 1555, Urbino, whose real name was
Francesco degli Amadori of Castel Durante, appointed his old friend
and master one of his executors and the chief guardian of his widow
and children. A certain Roso de Rosis and Pietro Filippo Vandini, both
of Castel Durante, are named in the trust; and they managed the
estate. Yet Michelangelo was evidently the principal authority. A
voluminous correspondence preserved in the Buonarroti Archives proves
this; for it consists of numerous letters addressed by Urbino's
executors and family from Castel Durante and elsewhere to the old
sculptor in Rome. Urbino had married a woman of fine character and
high intelligence, named Cornelia Colonnelli. Two of her letters are
printed by Gotti, and deserve to be studied for the power of their
style and the elevation of their sentiments. He has not made use,
however, of the other documents, all of which have some interest as
giving a pretty complete view of a private family and its vexations,
while they illustrate the conscientious fidelity with which
Michelangelo discharged his duties as trustee. Urbino had a brother,
also resident at Castel Durante, Raffaello's celebrated pupil in
fresco-painting, Il Fattorino. This man and Vandini, together with
Cornelia and her parents and her second husband, Giulio Brunelli, all
wrote letters to Rome about the welfare of the children and the
financial affairs of the estate. The coexecutor Roso de Rosis did not
write; it appears from one of Cornelia's despatches that he took no
active interest in the trust, while Brunelli even complains that he
withheld moneys which were legally due to the heirs. One of
Michelangelo's first duties was to take care that Cornelia got a
proper man for her second husband. Her parents were eager to see her
married, being themselves old, and not liking to leave a comparatively
young widow alone in the world with so many children to look after.
Their choice fell first upon a very undesirable person called
Santagnolo, a young man of dissolute habits, ruined constitution, bad
character, and no estate. She refused, with spirit, to sign the
marriage contract; and a few months later wrote again to inform her
guardian that a suitable match had been found in the person of Giulio
Brunelli of Gubbio, a young doctor of laws, then resident at Castel
Durante in the quality of podestà. Michelangelo's suspicions must have
been aroused by the unworthy conduct of her parents in the matter of
Santagnolo; for we infer that he at first refused to sanction this
second match. Cornelia and the parents wrote once more, assuring him
that Brunelli was an excellent man, and entreating him not to open his
ears to malignant gossip. On the 15th of June Brunelli himself appears
upon the scene, announcing his marriage with Cornelia, introducing
himself in terms of becoming modesty to Michelangelo, and assuring him
that Urbino's children have found a second father. He writes again
upon the 29th of July, this time to announce the fact that Il
Fattorino has spread about false rumours to the effect that Cornelia
and himself intend to leave Castel Durante and desert the children.
Their guardian must not credit such idle gossip, for they are both
sincerely attached to the children, and intend to do the best they can
for them. Family dissensions began to trouble their peace. In the
course of the next few months Brunelli discovers that he cannot act
with the Fattorino or with Vandini; Cornelia's dowry is not paid; Roso
refuses to refund money due to the heirs; Michelangelo alone can
decide what ought to be done for the estate and his wards. The
Fattorino writes that Vandini has renounced the trust, and that all
Brunelli's and his own entreaties cannot make him resume it. For
himself, he is resolved not to bear the burden alone. He has his own
shop to look after, and will not let himself be bothered. Unluckily,
none of Michelangelo's answers have been preserved. We possess only
one of his letters to Cornelia, which shows that she wished to place
her son and his godson, Michelangelo, under his care at Rome. He
replied that he did not feel himself in a position to accept the
responsibility. "It would not do to send Michelangelo, seeing that I
have nobody to manage the house and no female servants; the boy is
still of tender age, and things might happen which would cause me the
utmost annoyance. Moreover, the Duke of Florence has during the last
month been making me the greatest offers, and putting strong pressure
upon me to return home. I have begged for time to arrange my affairs
here and leave S. Peter's in good order. So I expect to remain in Rome
all the summer; and when I have settled my business, and yours with
the Monte della Fede, I shall probably remove to Florence this winter
and take up my abode there for good. I am old now, and have not the
time to return to Rome. I will travel by way of Urbino; and if you
like to give me Michelangelo, I will bring him to Florence, with more
love than the sons of my nephew Lionardo, and will teach him all the
things which I know that his father desired that he should learn."


VIII

The year 1556 was marked by an excursion which took Michelangelo into
the mountain district of Spoleto. Paul IV.'s anti-Spanish policy had
forced the Viceroy of Naples to make a formidable military
demonstration. Accordingly the Duke of Alva, at the head of a powerful
force, left Naples on the 1st of September and invaded the Campagna.
The Romans dreaded a second siege and sack; not without reason,
although the real intention of the expedition was to cow the fiery
Pope into submission. It is impossible, when we remember
Michelangelo's liability to panics, not to connect his autumn journey
with a wish to escape from trouble in Rome. On the 31st of October he
wrote to Lionardo that he had undertaken a pilgrimage to Loreto, but
feeling tired, had stopped to rest at Spoleto. While he was there, a
messenger arrived post-haste from Rome, commanding his immediate
return. He is now once more at home there, and as well as the
troublous circumstances of the times permit.

Later on he told Vasari: "I have recently enjoyed a great pleasure,
though purchased at the cost of great discomfort and expense, among
the mountains of Spoleto, on a visit to those hermits. Consequently, I
have come back less than half myself to Rome; for of a truth there is
no peace to be found except among the woods." This is the only passage
in the whole of Michelangelo's correspondence which betrays the least
feeling for wild nature. We cannot pretend, even here, to detect an
interest in landscape or a true appreciation of country life. Compared
with Rome and the Duke of Alva, those hermitages of the hills among
their chestnut groves seemed to him haunts of ancient peace. That is
all; but when dealing with a man so sternly insensible to the charm of
the external world, we have to be contented with a little.

In connection with this brief sojourn at Spoleto I will introduce two
letters written to Michelangelo by the Archbishop of Ragusa from his
See. The first is dated March 28, 1557. and was sent to Spoleto,
probably under the impression that Buonarroti had not yet returned to
Rome. After lamenting the unsettled state of public affairs, the
Archbishop adds: "Keep well in your bodily health; as for that of your
soul, I am sure you cannot be ill, knowing what prudence and piety
keep you in perpetual companionship." The second followed at the
interval of a year, April 6, 1558. and gave a pathetic picture of the
meek old prelate's discomfort in his Dalmatian bishopric. He calls
Ragusa "this exceedingly ill-cultivated vineyard of mine. Oftentimes
does the carnal man in me revolt and yearn for Italy, for relatives
and friends; but the spirit keeps desire in check, and compels it to
be satisfied with that which is the pleasure of our Lord." Though the
biographical importance of these extracts is but slight, I am glad,
while recording the outlines of Buonarroti's character, to cast a
side-light on his amiable qualities, and to show how highly valued he
was by persons of the purest life.


IX

There was nothing peculiarly severe about the infirmities of
Michelangelo's old age. We first hear of the dysuria from which he
suffered, in 1548. He writes to Lionardo thanking him for pears: "I
duly received the little barrel of pears you sent me. There were
eighty-six. Thirty-three of them I sent to the Pope, who praised them
as fine, and who enjoyed them. I have lately been in great difficulty
from dysuria. However, I am better now. And thus I write to you,
chiefly lest some chatterbox should scribble a thousand lies to make
you jump." In the spring of 1549 he says that the doctors believe he
is suffering from calculus: "The pain is great, and prevents me from
sleeping. They propose that I should try the mineral waters of
Viterbo; but I cannot go before the beginning of May. For the rest, as
concerns my bodily condition, I am much the same as I was at thirty.
This mischief has crept upon me through the great hardships of my life
and heedlessness." A few days later he writes that a certain water he
is taking, whether mineral or medicine, has been making a beneficial
change. The following letters are very cheerful, and at length he is
able to write: "With regard to my disease, I am greatly improved in
health, and have hope, much to the surprise of many; for people
thought me a lost man, and so I believed. I have had a good doctor,
but I put more faith in prayers than I do in medicines." His physician
was a very famous man, Realdo Colombo. In the summer of the same year
he tells Lionardo that he has been drinking for the last two months
water from a fountain forty miles distant from Rome. "I have to lay in
a stock of it, and to drink nothing else, and also to use it in
cooking, and to observe rules of living to which I am not used."

Although the immediate danger from the calculus passed away,
Michelangelo grew feebler yearly. We have already seen how he wrote to
Lionardo while Cosimo de' Medici was urging him to come to Florence in
1557. Passages in his correspondence with Lionardo like the following
are frequent: "Writing is the greatest annoyance to my hand, my sight,
my brains. So works old age!" "I go on enduring old age as well as I
am able, with all the evils and discomforts it brings in its train;
and I recommend myself to Him who can assist me." It was natural,
after he had passed the ordinary term of life and was attacked with a
disease so serious as the stone, that his thoughts should take a
serious tone. Thus he writes to Lionardo: "This illness has made me
think of setting the affairs of my soul and body more in order than I
should have done. Accordingly, I have drawn up a rough sketch of a
will, which I will send you by the next courier if I am able, and you
can tell me what you think." The will provided that Gismondo and
Lionardo Buonarroti should be his joint-heirs, without the power of
dividing the property. This practically left Lionardo his sole heir
after Gismondo's life-tenancy of a moiety. It does not, however, seem
to have been executed, for Michelangelo died intestate. Probably, he
judged it simplest to allow Lionardo to become his heir-general by the
mere course of events. At the same time, he now displayed more than
his usual munificence in charity. Lionardo was frequently instructed
to seek out a poor and gentle family, who were living in decent
distress, _poveri vergognosi_, as the Italians called such persons.
Money was to be bestowed upon them with the utmost secrecy; and the
way which Michelangelo proposed, was to dower a daughter or to pay for
her entrance into a convent. It has been suggested that this method of
seeking to benefit the deserving poor denoted a morbid tendency in
Michelangelo's nature; but any one who is acquainted with Italian
customs in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance must be aware that
nothing was commoner than to dower poor girls or to establish them in
nunneries by way of charity. Urbino, for example, by his will bound
his executors to provide for the marriage of two honest girls with a
dowry of twenty florins apiece within the space of four years from his
death.

The religious sonnets, which are certainly among the finest of
Michelangelo's compositions, belong to this period. Writing to Vasari
on the 10th of September 1554, he begins: "You will probably say that
I am old and mad to think of writing sonnets; yet since many persons
pretend that I am in my second childhood, I have thought it well to
act accordingly." Then follows this magnificent piece of verse, in
which the sincerest feelings of the pious heart are expressed with a
sublime dignity:--

  _Now hath my life across a stormy sea,
      Like a frail bark, reached that wide fort where all
      Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall
      Of good and evil for eternity.
  Now know I well how that fond phantasy
      Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall
      Of earthly art is vain; how criminal
      Is that which all men seek unwillingly.
  Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed,
      What are they when the double death is nigh?
      The one I know for sure, the other dread.
  Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
      My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
      Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread._

A second sonnet, enclosed in a letter to Vasari, runs as follows:--

  _The fables of the world have filched away
      The time I had for thinking upon God;
      His grace lies buried 'neath oblivion's sod,
      Whence springs an evil crop of sins alway._

  _What makes another wise, leads me astray,
    Slow to discern the bad path I have trod:
    Hope fades, but still desire ascends that God
    May free me from self-love, my sure decay.
  Shorten half-way my road to heaven from earth!
    Dear Lord, I cannot even half-way rise
    Unless Thou help me on this pilgrimage.
  Teach me to hate the world so little worth,
    And, all the lovely things I clasp and prize,
    That endless life, ere death, may be my wage._

While still in his seventieth year, Michelangelo had educated himself
to meditate upon the thought of death as a prophylactic against vain
distractions and the passion of love. "I may remind you that a man who
would fain return unto and enjoy his own self ought not to indulge so
much in merrymakings and festivities, but to think on death. This
thought is the only one which makes us know our proper selves, which
holds us together in the bond of our own nature, which prevents us
from being stolen away by kinsmen, friends, great men of genius,
ambition, avarice, and those other sins and vices which filch the man
from himself, keep him distraught and dispersed, without ever
permitting him to return unto himself and reunite his scattered parts.
Marvellous is the operation of this thought of death, which, albeit
death, by his nature, destroys all things, preserves and supports
those who think on death, and defends them from all human passions."
He supports this position by reciting a madrigal he had composed, to
show how the thought of death is the greatest foe to love:--

  _Not death indeed, but the dread thought of death
    Saveth and severeth
    Me from the heartless fair who doth me slay:
    And should, perchance, some day_
  _The fire consuming blaze o'er measure bright,
  I find for my sad plight
  No help but from death's form fixed in my heart;
  Since, where death reigneth, love must dwell apart._

In some way or another, then, Michelangelo used the thought of death
as the mystagogue of his spirit into the temple of eternal
things--[Greek: ta aidia], _die bleibenden Verhältnisse_--and as the
means of maintaining self-control and self-coherence amid the
ever-shifting illusions of human life. This explains why in his
love-sonnets he rarely speaks of carnal beauty except as the
manifestation of the divine idea, which will be clearer to the soul
after death than in the body.

When his life was drawing toward its close, Michelangelo's friends
were not unnaturally anxious about his condition. Though he had a
fairly good servant in Antonio del Franzese, and was surrounded by
well-wishers like Tommaso Cavalieri, Daniele da Volterra, and Tiberio
Calcagni, yet he led a very solitary life, and they felt he ought to
be protected. Vasari tells us that he communicated privately with
Averardo Serristori, the Duke's ambassador in Rome, recommending that
some proper housekeeper should be appointed, and that due control
should be instituted over the persons who frequented his house. It was
very desirable, in case of a sudden accident, that his drawings and
works of art should not be dispersed, but that what belonged to S.
Peter's, to the Laurentian Library, and to the Sacristy should be duly
assigned. Lionardo Buonarroti must have received similar advice from
Rome, for a furious letter is extant, in which Michelangelo, impatient
to the last of interference, literally rages at him:--

"I gather from your letter that you lend credence to certain envious
and scoundrelly persons, who, since they cannot manage me or rob me,
write you a lot of lies. They are a set of sharpers, and you are so
silly as to believe what they say about my affairs, as though I were a
baby. Get rid of them, the scandalous, envious, ill-lived rascals. As
for my suffering the mismanagement you write about, I tell you that I
could not be better off, or more faithfully served and attended to in
all things. As for my being robbed, to which I think you allude, I
assure you that I have people in my house whom I can trust and repose
on. Therefore, look to your own life, and do not think about my
affairs, because I know how to take care of myself if it is needful,
and am not a baby. Keep well."

This is the last letter to Lionardo. It is singular that
Michelangelo's correspondence with his father, with Luigi del Riccio,
with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and with his nephew, all of whom he
sincerely loved, should close upon a note of petulance and wrath. The
fact is no doubt accidental. But it is strange.


X

We have frequently had occasion to notice the extreme pain caused to
Michelangelo's friends by his unreasonable irritability and readiness
to credit injurious reports about them. These defects of temper
justified to some extent his reputation for savagery, and they must be
reckoned among the most salient features of his personality. I shall
therefore add three other instances of the same kind which fell under
my observation while studying the inedited documents of the Buonarroti
Archives. Giovanni Francesco Fattucci was, as we well know, his most
intimate friend and trusted counsellor during long and difficult
years, when the negotiations with the heirs of Pope Julius were being
carried on; yet there exists one letter of unaffected sorrow from this
excellent man, under date October 14, 1545, which shows that for some
unaccountable reason Michelangelo had suddenly chosen to mistrust him.
Fattucci begins by declaring that he is wholly guiltless of things
which his friend too credulously believed upon the strength of gossip.
He expresses the deepest grief at this unjust and suspicious
treatment. The letter shows him to have been more hurt than resentful.
Another document signed by Francesco Sangallo (the son of his old
friend Giuliano), bearing no date, but obviously written when they
were both in Florence, and therefore before the year 1535, carries the
same burden of complaint. The details are sufficiently picturesque to
warrant the translation of a passage. After expressing astonishment at
Michelangelo's habit of avoiding his society, he proceeds: "And now,
this morning, not thinking that I should annoy you, I came up and
spoke to you, and you received me with a very surly countenance. That
evening, too, when I met you on the threshold with Granacci, and you
left me by the shop of Pietro Osaio, and the other forenoon at S.
Spirito, and to-day, it struck me as extremely strange, especially in
the presence of Piloto and so many others. I cannot help thinking that
you must have some grudge against me; but I marvel that you do not
open out your mind to me, because it may be something which is wholly
false." The letter winds up with an earnest protest that he has always
been a true and faithful friend. He begs to be allowed to come and
clear the matter up in conversation, adding that he would rather lose
the good-will of the whole world than Michelangelo's.

The third letter is somewhat different in tone, and not so personally
interesting. Still it illustrates the nervousness and apprehension
under which Michelangelo's acquaintances continually lived. The
painter commonly known as Rosso Fiorentino was on a visit to Rome,
where he studied the Sistine frescoes. They do not appear to have
altogether pleased him, and he uttered his opinion somewhat too freely
in public. Now he pens a long elaborate epistle, full of adulation, to
purge himself of having depreciated Michelangelo's works. People said
that "when I reached Rome, and entered the chapel painted by your
hand, I exclaimed that I was not going to adopt that manner." One of
Buonarroti's pupils had been particularly offended. Rosso protests
that he rather likes the man for his loyalty; but he wishes to remove
any impression which Michelangelo may have received of his own
irreverence or want of admiration. The one thing he is most solicitous
about is not to lose the great man's good-will.

It must be added, at the close of this investigation, that however hot
and hasty Michelangelo may have been, and however readily he lent his
ear to rumours, he contrived to renew the broken threads of friendship
with the persons he had hurt by his irritability.



CHAPTER XV


I

During the winter of 1563-64 Michelangelo's friends in Rome became
extremely anxious about his health, and kept Lionardo Buonarroti from
time to time informed of his proceedings. After New Year it was clear
that he could not long maintain his former ways of life. Though within
a few months of ninety, he persisted in going abroad in all weathers,
and refused to surround himself with the comforts befitting a man of
his eminence and venerable age. On the 14th of February he seems to
have had a kind of seizure. Tiberio Calcagni, writing that day to
Lionardo, gives expression to his grave anxiety: "Walking through Rome
to-day, I heard from many persons that Messer Michelangelo was ill.
Accordingly I went at once to visit him, and although it was raining I
found him out of doors on foot. When I saw him, I said that I did not
think it right and seemly for him to be going about in such weather
'What do you want?' he answered; 'I am ill, and cannot find rest
anywhere.' The uncertainty of his speech, together with the look and
colour of his face, made me feel extremely uneasy about his life. The
end may not be just now, but I fear greatly that it cannot be far
off." Michelangelo did not leave the house again, but spent the next
four days partly reclining in an arm-chair, partly in bed. Upon the
15th following, Diomede Leoni wrote to Lionardo, enclosing a letter by
the hand of Daniele da Volterra, which Michelangelo had signed. The
old man felt his end approaching, and wished to see his nephew. "You
will learn from the enclosure how ill he is, and that he wants you to
come to Rome. He was taken ill yesterday. I therefore exhort you to
come at once, but do so with sufficient prudence. The roads are bad
now, and you are not used to travel by post. This being so, you would
run some risk if you came post-haste. Taking your own time upon the
way, you may feel at ease when you remember that Messer Tommaso dei
Cavalieri, Messer Daniele, and I are here to render every possible
assistance in your absence. Beside us, Antonio, the old and faithful
servant of your uncle, will be helpful in any service that may be
expected from him." Diomede reiterates his advice that Lionardo should
run no risks by travelling too fast. "If the illness portends
mischief, which God forbid, you could not with the utmost haste arrive
in time.... I left him just now, a little after 8 P.M., in full
possession of his faculties and quiet in his mind, but oppressed with
a continued sleepiness. This has annoyed him so much that, between
three and four this afternoon, he tried to go out riding, as his wont
is every evening in good weather. The coldness of the weather and the
weakness of his head and legs prevented him; so he returned to the
fire-side, and settled down into an easy chair, which he greatly
prefers to the bed." No improvement gave a ray of hope to
Michelangelo's friends, and two days later, on the 17th, Tiberio
Calcagni took up the correspondence with Lionardo: "This is to beg you
to hasten your coming as much as possible, even though the weather be
unfavourable. It is certain now that our dear Messer Michelangelo must
leave us for good and all, and he ought to have the consolation of
seeing you." Next day, on the 18th, Diomede Leoni wrote again: "He
died without making a will, but in the attitude of a perfect
Christian, this evening, about the Ave Maria. I was present, together
with Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Messer Daniele da Volterra, and
we put everything in such order that you may rest with a tranquil
mind. Yesterday Michelangelo sent for our friend Messer Daniele, and
besought him to take up his abode in the house until such time as you
arrive, and this he will do."

It was at a little before five o'clock on the afternoon of February
18, 1564, that Michelangelo breathed his last. The physicians who
attended him to the end were Federigo Donati, and Gherardo
Fidelissimi, of Pistoja. It is reported by Vasari that, during his
last moments, "he made his will in three sentences, committing his
soul into the hands of God, his body to the earth, and his substance
to his nearest relatives; enjoining upon these last, when their hour
came, to think upon the sufferings of Jesus Christ."

On the following day, February 19, Averardo Serristori, the Florentine
envoy in Rome, sent a despatch to the Duke, informing him of
Michelangelo's decease: "This morning, according to an arrangement I
had made, the Governor sent to take an inventory of all the articles
found in his house. These were few, and very few drawings. However,
what was there they duly registered. The most important object was a
box sealed with several seals, which the Governor ordered to be opened
in the presence of Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Maestro Daniele da
Volterra, who had been sent for by Michelangelo before his death. Some
seven or eight thousand crowns were found in it, which have now been
deposited with the Ubaldini bankers. This was the command issued by
the Governor, and those whom it concerns will have to go there to get
the money. The people of the house will be examined as to whether
anything has been carried away from it. This is not supposed to have
been the case. As far as drawings are concerned, they say that he
burned what he had by him before he died. What there is shall be
handed over to his nephew when he comes, and this your Excellency can
inform him."

The objects of art discovered in Michelangelo's house were a
blocked-out statue of S. Peter, an unfinished Christ with another
figure, and a statuette of Christ with the cross, resembling the
Cristo Risorto of S. Maria Sopra Minerva. Ten original drawings were
also catalogued, one of which (a Pietà) belonged to Tommaso dei
Cavalieri; another (an Epiphany) was given to the notary, while the
rest came into the possession of Lionardo Buonarroti. The cash-box,
which had been sealed by Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Diomede Leoni, was
handed over to the Ubaldini, and from them it passed to Lionardo
Buonarroti at the end of February.


II

Lionardo travelled by post to Rome, but did not arrive until three
days after his uncle's death. He began at once to take measures for
the transport of Michelangelo's remains to Florence, according to the
wish of the old man, frequently expressed and solemnly repeated two
days before his death. The corpse had been deposited in the Church of
the SS. Apostoli, where the funeral was celebrated with becoming pomp
by all the Florentines in Rome, and by artists of every degree. The
Romans had come to regard Buonarroti as one of themselves, and, when
the report went abroad that he had expressed a wish to be buried in
Florence, they refused to believe it, and began to project a decent
monument to his memory in the Church of the SS. Apostoli. In order to
secure his object, Lionardo was obliged to steal the body away, and to
despatch it under the guise of mercantile goods to the custom-house of
Florence. Vasari wrote to him from that city upon the 10th of March,
informing him that the packing-case had duly arrived, and had been
left under seals until his, Lionardo's, arrival at the custom-house.

About this time two plans were set on foot for erecting monuments to
Michelangelo's memory. The scheme started by the Romans immediately
after his death took its course, and the result is that tomb at the
SS. Apostoli, which undoubtedly was meant to be a statue-portrait of
the man. Vasari received from Lionardo Buonarroti commission to erect
the tomb in S. Croce. The correspondence of the latter, both with
Vasari and with Jacopo del Duca, who superintended the Roman monument,
turns for some time upon these tombs. It is much to Vasari's credit
that he wanted to place the Pietà which Michelangelo had broken, above
the S. Croce sepulchre. He writes upon the subject in these words:
"When I reflect that Michelangelo asserted, as is well known also to
Daniele, Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and many other of his friends,
that he was making the Pietà of five figures, which he broke, to serve
for his own tomb, I think that his heir ought to inquire how it came
into the possession of Bandini. Besides, there is an old man in the
group who represents the person of the sculptor. I entreat you,
therefore, to take measures for regaining this Pietà, and I will make
use of it in my design. Pierantonio Bandini is very courteous, and
will probably consent. In this way you will gain several points. You
will assign to your uncle's sepulchre the group he planned to place
there, and you will be able to hand over the statues in Via Mozza to
his Excellency, receiving in return enough money to complete the
monument." Of the marbles in the Via Mozza at Florence, where
Michelangelo's workshop stood, I have seen no catalogue, but they
certainly comprised the Victory, probably also the Adonis and the
Apollino. There had been some thought of adapting the Victory to the
tomb in S. Croce. Vasari, however, doubted whether this group could be
applied in any forcible sense allegorically to Buonarroti as man or as
artist.

Eventually, as we know, the very mediocre monument designed by Vasari,
which still exists at S. Croce, was erected at Lionardo Buonarroti's
expense, the Duke supplying a sufficiency of marble.


III

It ought here to be mentioned that, in the spring of 1563, Cosimo
founded an Academy of Fine Arts, under the title of "Arte del
Disegno." It embraced all the painters, architects, and sculptors of
Florence in a kind of guild, with privileges, grades, honours, and
officers. The Duke condescended to be the first president of this
academy. Next to him, Michelangelo was elected unanimously by all the
members as their uncontested principal and leader, "inasmuch as this
city, and peradventure the whole world, hath not a master more
excellent in the three arts." The first great work upon which the Duke
hoped to employ the guild was the completion of the sacristy at S.
Lorenzo. Vasari's letter to Michelangelo shows that up to this date
none of the statues had been erected in their proper places, and that
it was intended to add a great number of figures, as well as to adorn
blank spaces in the walls with frescoes. All the best artists of the
time, including Gian Bologna, Cellini, Bronzino, Tribolo, Montelupo,
Ammanati, offered their willing assistance, "forasmuch as there is not
one of us but hath learned in this sacristy, or rather in this our
school, whatever excellence he possesses in the arts of design." We
know already only too well that the scheme was never carried out,
probably in part because Michelangelo's rapidly declining strength
prevented him from furnishing these eager artists with the necessary
working drawings. Cosimo's anxiety to gain possession of any sketches
left in Rome after Buonarroti's death may be ascribed to this project
for completing the works begun at S. Lorenzo.

Well then, upon the news of Michelangelo's death, the academicians
were summoned by their lieutenant, Don Vincenzo Borghini, to
deliberate upon the best way of paying him honour, and celebrating his
obsequies with befitting pomp. It was decided that all the leading
artists should contribute something, each in his own line, to the
erection of a splendid catafalque, and a sub-committee of four men was
elected to superintend its execution. These were Angelo Bronzino and
Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini and Ammanati, friends of the deceased, and
men of highest mark in the two fields of painting and sculpture. The
church selected for the ceremony was S. Lorenzo; the orator appointed
was Benedetto Varchi. Borghini, in his capacity of lieutenant or
official representative, obtained the Duke's assent to the plan, which
was subsequently carried out, as we shall see in due course.

Notwithstanding what Vasari wrote to Lionardo about his uncle's coffin
having been left at the Dogana, it seems that it was removed upon the
very day of its arrival, March II, to the Oratory of the Assunta,
underneath the church of S. Pietro Maggiore. On the following day the
painters, sculptors, and architects of the newly founded academy met
together at this place, intending to transfer the body secretly to S.
Croce. They only brought a single pall of velvet, embroidered with
gold, and a crucifix, to place upon the bier. When night fell, the
elder men lighted torches, while the younger crowded together, vying
one with another for the privilege of carrying the coffin. Meantime
the Florentines, suspecting that something unusual was going forward
at S. Pietro, gathered round, and soon the news spread through the
city that Michelangelo was being borne to S. Croce. A vast concourse
of people in this way came unexpectedly together, following the
artists through the streets, and doing pathetic honour to the memory
of the illustrious dead. The spacious church of S. Croce was crowded
in all its length and breadth, so that the pall-bearers had
considerable difficulty in reaching the sacristy with their precious
burden. In that place Don Vincenzo Borghini, who was lieutenant of the
academy, ordered that the coffin should be opened. "He thought he
should be doing what was pleasing to many of those present; and, as he
afterwards admitted, he was personally anxious to behold in death one
whom he had never seen in life, or at any rate so long ago as to have
quite forgotten the occasion. All of us who stood by expected to find
the corpse already defaced by the outrage of the sepulchre, inasmuch
as twenty-five days had elapsed since Michelangelo's death, and
twenty-one since his consignment to the coffin; but, to our great
surprise, the dead man lay before us perfect in all his parts, and
without the evil odours of the grave; indeed, one might have thought
that he was resting in a sweet and very tranquil slumber. Not only did
the features of his countenance bear exactly the same aspect as in
life, except for some inevitable pallor, but none of his limbs were
injured, or repulsive to the sight. The head and cheeks, to the touch,
felt just as though he had breathed his last but a few hours since."
As soon as the eagerness of the multitude calmed down a little, the
bier was carried into the church again, and the coffin was deposited
in a proper place behind the altar of the Cavalcanti.

When the academicians decreed a catafalque for Michelangelo's solemn
obsequies in S. Lorenzo, they did not aim so much at worldly splendour
or gorgeous trappings as at an impressive monument, combining the
several arts which he had practised in his lifetime. Being made of
stucco, woodwork, plaster, and such perishable materials, it was
unfortunately destined to decay. But Florence had always been liberal,
nay, lavish, of her genius in triumphs, masques, magnificent street
architecture, evoked to celebrate some ephemeral event. A worthier
occasion would not occur again; and we have every reason to believe
that the superb structure, which was finally exposed to view upon the
14th of July, displayed all that was left at Florence of the grand
style in the arts of modelling and painting. They were decadent
indeed; during the eighty-nine years of Buonarroti's life upon earth
they had expanded, flourished, and flowered with infinite variety in
rapid evolution. He lived to watch their decline; yet the sunset of
that long day was still splendid to the eyes and senses.

The four deputies appointed by the academy held frequent sittings
before the plan was fixed, and the several parts had been assigned to
individual craftsmen. Ill health prevented Cellini from attending, but
he sent a letter to the lieutenant, which throws some interesting
light upon the project in its earlier stages. A minute description of
the monument was published soon after the event. Another may be read
in the pages of Vasari. Varchi committed his oration to the press, and
two other panegyrical discourses were issued, under the names of
Leonardo Salviati and Giovan Maria Tarsia. Poems composed on the
occasion were collected into one volume, and distributed by the
Florentine firm of Sermatelli. To load these pages with the details of
allegorical statues and pictures which have long passed out of
existence, and to cite passages from funeral speeches, seems to me
useless. It is enough to have directed the inquisitive to sources
where their curiosity may be gratified.


IV

It would be impossible to take leave of Michelangelo without some
general survey of his character and qualities. With this object in
view I do not think I can do better than to follow what Condivi says
at the close of his biography, omitting those passages which have been
already used in the body of this book, and supplementing his summary
with illustrative anecdotes from Vasari. Both of these men knew him
intimately during the last years of his life; and if it is desirable
to learn how a man strikes his contemporaries, we obtain from them a
lively and veracious, though perhaps a slightly flattered, picture of
the great master whom they studied with love and admiration from
somewhat different points of view. This will introduce a critical
examination of the analysis to which the psychology; of Michelangelo
has recently been subjected.

Condivi opens his peroration with the following paragraphs:--

"Now, to conclude this gossiping discourse of mine, I say that it is
my opinion that in painting and sculpture nature bestowed all her
riches with a full hand upon Michelangelo. I do not fear reproach or
contradiction when I repeat that his statues are, as it were,
inimitable. Nor do I think that I have suffered myself to exceed the
bounds of truth while making this assertion. In the first place, he is
the only artist who has handled both brush and mallet with equal
excellence. Then we have no relics left of antique paintings to
compare with his; and though many classical works in statuary survive,
to whom among the ancients does he yield the palm in sculpture? In the
judgment of experts and practical artists, he certainly yields to
none; and were, we to consult the vulgar, who admire antiquity without
criticism, through a kind of jealousy toward the talents and the
industry of their own times, even here we shall find none who say the
contrary; to such a height has this great man soared above the scope
of envy. Raffaello of Urbino, though he chose to strive in rivalry
with Michelangelo, was wont to say that he thanked God for having been
born in his days, since he learned from him a manner very different
from that which his father, who was a painter, and his master,
Perugino, taught him. Then, too, what proof of his singular excellence
could be wished for, more convincing and more valid, than the
eagerness with which the sovereigns of the world contended for him?
Beside four pontiffs, Julius, Leo, Clement, and Paul, the Grand Turk,
father of the present Sultan, sent certain Franciscans with letters
begging him to come and reside at his court. By orders on the bank of
the Gondi at Florence, he provided that whatever sums were asked for
should be disbursed to pay the expenses of his journey; and when he
should have reached Cossa, a town near Ragusa, one of the greatest
nobles of the realm was told off to conduct him in most honourable
fashion to Constantinople. Francis of Valois, King of France, tried to
get him by many devices, giving instructions that, whenever he chose
to travel, 3000 crowns should be told out to him in Rome. The Signory
of Venice sent Bruciolo to Rome with an invitation to their city,
offering a pension of 600 crowns if he would settle there. They
attached no conditions to this offer, only desiring that he should
honour the republic with his presence, and stipulating that whatever
he might do in their service should be paid as though he were not in
receipt of a fixed income. These are not ordinary occurrences, or such
as happen every day, but strange and out of common usage; nor are they
wont to befall any but men of singular and transcendent ability, as
was Homer, for whom many cities strove in rivalry, each desirous of
acquiring him and making him its own.

"The reigning Pope, Julius III., holds him in no less esteem than the
princes I have mentioned. This sovereign, distinguished for rare taste
and judgment, loves and promotes all arts and sciences, but is most
particularly devoted to painting, sculpture, and architecture, as may
be clearly seen in the buildings which his Holiness has erected in the
Vatican and the Belvedere, and is now raising at his Villa Giulia (a
monument worthy of a lofty and generous nature, as indeed his own is),
where he has gathered together so many ancient and modern statues,
such a variety of the finest pictures, precious columns, works in
stucco, wall-painting, and every kind of decoration, of the which I
must reserve a more extended account for some future occasion, since
it deserves a particular study, and has not yet reached completion.
This Pope has not used the services of Michelangelo for any active
work, out of regard for his advanced age. He is fully alive to his
greatness, and appreciates it, but refrains from adding burdens beyond
those which Michelangelo himself desires; and this regard, in my
opinion, confers more honour on him than any of the great
under-takings which former pontiffs exacted from his genius. It is
true that his Holiness almost always consults him on works of painting
or of architecture he may have in progress, and very often sends the
artists to confer with him at his own house. I regret, and his
Holiness also regrets, that a certain natural shyness, or shall I say
respect or reverence, which some folk call pride, prevents him from
having recourse to the benevolence, goodness, and liberality of such a
pontiff, and one so much his friend. For the Pope, as I first heard
from the Most Rev. Monsignor of Forli, his Master of the Chamber, has
often observed that, were this possible, he, would gladly give some of
his own years and his own blood to add to Michelangelo's life, to the
end that the world should not so soon be robbed of such a man. And
this, when I had access to his Holiness, I heard with my own ears from
his mouth. Moreover, if he happens to survive him, as seems reasonable
in the course of nature, he has a mind to embalm him and keep him ever
near to his own person, so that his body in death shall be as
everlasting as his works. This he said to Michelangelo himself at the
commencement of his reign, in the presence of many persons. I know not
what could be more honourable to Michelangelo than such words, or a
greater proof of the high account in which he is held by his Holiness.

"So then Michelangelo, while he was yet a youth, devoted himself not
only to sculpture and painting, but also to all those other arts which
to them are allied or subservient, and this he did with such absorbing
energy that for a time he almost entirely cut himself off from human
society, conversing with but very few intimate friends. On this
account some folk thought him proud, others eccentric and capricious,
although he was tainted with none of these defects; but, as hath
happened to many men of great abilities, the love of study and the
perpetual practice of his art rendered him solitary, being so taken up
with the pleasure and delight of these things that society not only
afforded him no solace, but even caused him annoyance by diverting him
from meditation, being (as the great Scipio used to say) never less
alone than when he was alone. Nevertheless, he very willingly embraced
the friendship of those whose learned and cultivated conversation
could be of profit to his mind, and in whom some beams of genius shone
forth: as, for example, the most reverend and illustrious Monsignor
Pole, for his rare virtues and singular goodness; and likewise the
most reverend, my patron, Cardinal Crispo, in whom he discovered,
beside his many excellent qualities, a distinguished gift of acute
judgment; he was also warmly attached to the Cardinal of S. Croce, a
man of the utmost gravity and wisdom, whom I have often heard him name
in the highest terms; and to the most reverend Maffei, whose goodness
and learning he has always praised: indeed, he loves and honours all
the dependants of the house of Farnese, owing to the lively memory he
cherishes of Pope Paul, whom he invariably mentions with the deepest
reverence as a good and holy old man; and in like manner the most
reverend Patriarch of Jerusalem, sometime Bishop of Cesena, has lived
for some time in close intimacy with him, finding peculiar pleasure in
so open and generous a nature. He was also on most friendly terms with
my very reverend patron the Cardinal Ridolfi, of blessed memory, that
refuge of all men of parts and talent. There are several others whom I
omit for fear of being prolix, as Monsignor Claudio Tolomei, Messer
Lorenzo Ridolfi, Messer Donato Giannotti, Messer Lionardo Malespini,
Lottino, Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and other honoured gentlemen.
Of late years he has become deeply attached to Annibale Caro, of whom
he told me that it grieves him not to have come to know him earlier,
seeing that he finds him much to his taste."

"In like manner as he enjoyed the converse of learned men, so also did
he take pleasure in the study of eminent writers, whether of prose or
verse. Among these he particularly admired Dante, whose marvellous
poems he hath almost all by heart. Nevertheless, the same might
perhaps be said about his love for Petrarch. These poets he not only
delighted in studying, but he also was wont to compose from time to
time upon his own account. There are certain sonnets among those he
wrote which give a very good notion of his great inventive power and
judgment. Some of them have furnished Varchi with the subject of
Discourses. It must be remembered, however, that he practised poetry
for his amusement, and not as a profession, always depreciating his
own talent, and appealing to his ignorance in these matters. Just in
the same way he has perused the Holy Scriptures with great care and
industry, studying not merely the Old Testament, but also the New,
together with their commentators, as, for example, the writings of
Savonarola, for whom he always retained a deep affection, since the
accents of the preacher's living voice rang in his memory.

"He has given away many of his works, the which, if he had chosen to
sell them, would have brought him vast sums of money. A single
instance of this generosity will suffice--namely, the two statues
which he presented to his dearest friend, Messer Ruberto Strozzi. Nor
was it only of his handiwork that he has been liberal. He opened his
purse readily to poor men of talent in literature or art, as I can
testify, having myself been the recipient of his bounty. He never
showed an envious spirit toward the labours of other masters in the
crafts he practised, and this was due rather to the goodness of his
nature than to any sense of his own superiority. Indeed, he always
praised all men of excellence without exception, even Raffaello of
Urbino, between whom and himself there was of old time some rivalry in
painting. I have only heard him say that Raffaello did not derive his
mastery in that art so much from nature as from prolonged study. Nor
is it true, as many persons assert to his discredit, that he has been
unwilling to impart instruction. On the contrary, he did so readily,
as I know by personal experience, for to me he unlocked all the
secrets of the arts he had acquired. Ill-luck, however, willed that he
should meet either with subjects ill adapted to such studies, or else
with men of little perseverance, who, when they had been working a few
months under his direction, began to think themselves past-masters.
Moreover, although he was willing to teach, he did not like it to be
known that he did so, caring more to do good than to seem to do it. I
may add that he always attempted to communicate the arts to men of
gentle birth, as did the ancients, and not to plebeians."


V

To this passage about Michelangelo's pupils we may add the following
observation by Vasari: "He loved his workmen, and conversed with them
on friendly terms. Among these I will mention Jacopo Sansovino, Rosso,
Pontormo, Daniele da Volterra, and Giorgio Vasari. To the last of
these men he showed unbounded kindness, and caused him to study
architecture, with the view of employing his services in that art. He
exchanged thoughts readily with him, and discoursed upon artistic
topics. Those are in the wrong who assert that he refused to
communicate his stores of knowledge. He always did so to his personal
friends, and to all who sought his advice. It ought, however, to be
mentioned that he was not lucky in the craftsmen who lived with him,
since chance brought him into contact with people unfitted to profit
by his example. Pietro Urbano of Pistoja was a man of talent but no
industry. Antonio Mini had the will but not the brains, and hard wax
takes a bad impression. Ascanio dalla Ripa Transone (_i.e._, Condivi)
took great pains, but brought nothing to perfection either in finished
work or in design. He laboured many years upon a picture for which
Michelangelo supplied the drawing. At last the expectations based upon
this effort vanished into smoke. I remember that Michelangelo felt
pity for his trouble, and helped him with his own hand. Nothing,
however, came of it. He often told me that if he had found a proper
subject he should have liked, old as he was, to have recommended
anatomy, and to have written on it for the use of his workmen.
However, he distrusted his own powers of expressing what he wanted in
writing, albeit his letters show that he could easily put forth his
thoughts in a few brief words."

About Michelangelo's kindness to his pupils and servants there is no
doubt. We have only to remember his treatment of Pietro Urbano and
Antonio Mini, Urbino and Condivi, Tiberio Calcagni and Antonio del
Franzese. A curious letter from Michelangelo to Andrea Quarantesi,
which I have quoted in another connection, shows that people were
eager to get their sons placed under his charge. The inedited
correspondence in the Buonarroti Archives abounds in instances
illustrating the reputation he had gained for goodness. We have two
grateful letters from a certain Pietro Bettino in Castel Durante
speaking very warmly of Michelangelo's attention to his son Cesare.
Two to the same effect from Amilcare Anguissola in Cremona acknowledge
services rendered to his daughter Sofonisba, who was studying design
in Rome. Pietro Urbano wrote twenty letters between the years 1517 and
1525, addressing him in terms like "carissimo quanto padre." After
recovering from his illness at Pistoja, he expresses the hope that he
will soon be back again at Florence (September 18, 1519): "Dearest to
me like the most revered of fathers, I send you salutations,
announcing that I am a little better, but not yet wholly cured of that
flux; still I hope before many days are over to find myself at
Florence." A certain Silvio Falcone, who had been in his service, and
who had probably been sent away because of some misconduct, addressed
a letter from Rome to him in Florence, which shows both penitence and
warm affection. "I am and shall always be a good servant to you in
every place where I may be. Do not remember my stupidity in those past
concerns, which I know that, being a prudent man, you will not impute
to malice. If you were to do so, this would cause me the greatest
sorrow; for I desire nothing but to remain in your good grace, and if
I had only this in the world, it would suffice me." He begs to be
remembered to Pietro Urbano, and requests his pardon if he has
offended him. Another set of letters, composed in the same tone by a
man who signs himself Silvio di Giovanni da Cepparello, was written by
a sculptor honourably mentioned in Vasari's Life of Andrea da Fiesole
for his work at S. Lorenzo, in Genoa, and elsewhere. They show how
highly the fame of having been in Michelangelo's employ was valued. He
says that he is now working for Andrea Doria, Prince of Melfi, at
Genoa. Still he should like to return, if this were possible, to his
old master's service: "For if I lost all I had in the world, and found
myself with you, I should think myself the first of men." A year later
Silvio was still at work for Prince Doria and the Fieschi, but he
again begs earnestly to be taken back by Michelangelo. "I feel what
obligations I am under for all the kindness received from you in past
times. When I remember the love you bore me while I was in your
service, I do not know how I could repay it; and I tell you that only
through having been in your service, wherever I may happen now to be,
honour and courtesy are paid me; and that is wholly due to your
excellent renown, and not to any merit of my own."

The only letter from Ascanio Condivi extant in the Buonarroti Archives
may here be translated in full, since its tone does honour both to
master and servant:--

"Unique lord and my most to be observed patron,--I have already
written you two letters, but almost think you cannot have received
them, since I have heard no news of you. This I write merely to beg
that you will remember to command me, and to make use not of me alone,
but of all my household, since we are all your servants. Indeed, my
most honoured and revered master, I entreat you deign to dispose of me
and do with me as one is wont to do with the least of servants. You
have the right to do so, since I owe more to you than to my own
father, and I will prove my desire to repay your kindness by my deeds.
I will now end this letter, in order not to be irksome, recommending
myself humbly, and praying you to let me have the comfort of knowing
that you are well: for a greater I could not receive. Farewell."

It cannot be denied that Michelangelo sometimes treated his pupils and
servants with the same irritability, suspicion, and waywardness of
temper as he showed to his relatives and friends. It is only necessary
to recall his indignation against Lapo and Lodovico at Bologna,
Stefano at Florence, Sandro at Serravalle, all his female drudges, and
the anonymous boy whom his father sent from Rome. That he was a man
"gey ill to live with" seems indisputable. This may in part account
for the fact that, unlike other great Italian masters, he formed no
school. The _frescanti_ who came from Florence to assist him in the
Sistine Chapel were dismissed with abruptness, perhaps even with
brutality. Montelupo and Montorsoli, among sculptors, Marcello Venusti
and Pontormo, Daniele da Volterra and Sebastiano del Piombo, among
painters, felt his direct influence. But they did not stand in the
same relation to him as Raffaello's pupils to their master. The work
of Giulio Romano, Giovanni da Udine, Francesco Penni, Perino del Vaga,
Primaticcio, at Rome, at Mantua, and elsewhere, is a genial
continuation of Raffaello's spirit and manner after his decease.
Nothing of the sort can be maintained about the statues and the
paintings which display a study of the style of Michelangelo. And this
holds good in like manner of his imitators in architecture. For worse
rather than for better, he powerfully and permanently affected Italian
art; but he did not create a body of intelligent craftsmen, capable of
carrying on his inspiration, as Giulio Romano expanded the Loggie of
the Vatican into the Palazzo del Te. I have already expressed my
opinions regarding the specific quality of the Michelangelo tradition
in a passage which I may perhaps be here permitted to resume:--

"Michelangelo formed no school in the strict sense of the word; yet
his influence was not the less felt on that account, nor less powerful
than Raffaello's. During his manhood a few painters endeavoured to add
the charm of oil-colouring to his designs, and long before his death
the seduction of his mighty mannerism began to exercise a fatal charm
for all the schools of Italy. Painters incapable of fathoming his
intention, unsympathetic to his rare type of intellect, and gifted
with less than a tithe of his native force, set themselves to
reproduce whatever may be justly censured in his works. To heighten
and enlarge their style was reckoned a chief duty of aspiring
craftsmen, and it was thought that recipes for attaining to this final
perfection of the modern arts might be extracted without trouble from
Michelangelo's masterpieces. Unluckily, in proportion as his fame
increased, his peculiarities became with the advance of age more
manneristic and defined, so that his imitators fixed precisely upon
that which sober critics now regard as a deduction from his greatness.
They failed to perceive that he owed his grandeur to his personality,
and that the audacities which fascinated them became mere whimsical
extravagances when severed from his _terribilità_ and sombre
simplicity of impassioned thought. His power and his spirit were alike
unique and incommunicable, while the admiration of his youthful
worshippers betrayed them into imitating the externals of a style that
was rapidly losing spontaneity. Therefore they fancied they were
treading in his footsteps and using the grand manner when they covered
church-roofs and canvases with sprawling figures in distorted
attitudes. Instead of studying nature, they studied Michelangelo's
cartoons, exaggerating by their unintelligent discipleship his
willfulness and arbitrary choice of form.

"Vasari's and Cellini's criticisms of a master they both honestly
revered may suffice to illustrate the false method adopted by these
mimics of Michelangelo's ideal. To charge him with faults proceeding
from the weakness and blindness of the Decadence--the faults of men
too blind to read his art aright, too weak to stand on their own feet
without him--would be either stupid or malicious. If at the close of
the sixteenth century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance
the world by empty exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and
by a braggadocio display of meaningless effects--crowding their
compositions with studies from the nude, and painting agitated groups
without a discernible cause for agitation--the crime surely lay with
the patrons who liked such decoration, and with the journeymen who
provided it. Michelangelo himself always made his manner serve his
thought. We may fail to appreciate his manner and may be incapable of
comprehending his thought, but only insincere or conceited critics
will venture to gauge the latter by what they feel to be displeasing
in the former. What seems lawless in him follows the law of a profound
and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like it or not, we must
reckon. His imitators were devoid of thought, and too indifferent to
question whether there was any law to be obeyed. Like the jackass in
the fable, they assumed the dead lion's skin, and brayed beneath it,
thinking they could roar."


VI

Continuing these scattered observations upon Michelangelo's character
and habits, we may collect what Vasari records about his social
intercourse with brother-artists. Being himself of a saturnine humour,
he took great delight in the society of persons little better than
buffoons. Writing the Life of Jacopo surnamed L'Indaco, a Florentine
painter of some merit, Vasari observes: "He lived on very familiar
terms of intimacy with Michelangelo; for that great artist, great
above all who ever were, when he wished to refresh his mind, fatigued
by studies and incessant labours of the body and the intellect, found
no one more to his liking and more congenial to his humour than was
Indaco." Nothing is recorded concerning their friendship, except that
Buonarroti frequently invited Indaco to meals; and one day, growing
tired of the man's incessant chatter, sent him out to buy figs, and
then locked the house-door, so that he could not enter when he had
discharged his errand. A boon-companion of the same type was
Menighella, whom Vasari describes as "a mediocre and stupid painter of
Valdarno, but extremely amusing." He used to frequent Michelangelo's
house, "and he, who could with difficulty be induced to work for
kings, would lay aside all other occupations in order to make drawings
for this fellow." What Menighella wanted was some simple design or
other of S. Rocco, S. Antonio, or S. Francesco, to be coloured for one
of his peasant patrons. Vasari says that Michelangelo modelled a very
beautiful Christ for this humble friend, from which Menighella made a
cast, and repeated it in papier-mâché, selling these crucifixes
through the country-side. What would not the world give for one of
them, even though Michelangelo is said to have burst his sides with
laughing at the man's stupidity! Another familiar of the same sort was
a certain stone-cutter called Domenico Fancelli, and nicknamed
Topolino. From a letter addressed to him by Buonarroti in 1523 it
appears that he was regarded as a "very dear friend." According to
Vasari, Topolino thought himself an able sculptor, but was in reality
extremely feeble. He blocked out a marble Mercury, and begged the
great master to pronounce a candid opinion on its merits. "You are a
madman, Topolino," replied Michelangelo, "to attempt this art of
statuary. Do you not see that your Mercury is too short by more than a
third of a cubit from the knees to the feet? You have made him a
dwarf, and spoiled the whole figure." "Oh, that is nothing! If there
is no other fault, I can easily put that to rights. Leave the matter
to me." Michelangelo laughed at the man's simplicity, and went upon
his way. Then Topolino took a piece of marble, and cut off the legs of
his Mercury below the knees. Next he fashioned a pair of buskins of
the right height, and joined these on to the truncated limbs in such
wise that the tops of the boots concealed the lines of juncture. When
Buonarroti saw the finished statue, he remarked that fools were gifted
with the instinct for rectifying errors by expedients which a wise man
would not have hit upon.

Another of Michelangelo's buffoon friends was a Florentine celebrity,
Piloto, the goldsmith. We know that he took this man with him when he
went to Venice in 1530; but Vasari tells no characteristic stories
concerning their friendship. It may be remarked that Il Lasca
describes Piloto as a "most entertaining and facetious fellow,"
assigning him the principal part in one of his indecent novels. The
painter Giuliano Bugiardini ought to be added to the same list. Messer
Ottaviano de' Medici begged him to make a portrait of Michelangelo,
who gave him a sitting without hesitation, being extremely partial to
the man's company. At the end of two hours Giuliano exclaimed:
"Michelangelo, if you want to see yourself, stand up; I have caught
the likeness." Michelangelo did as he was bidden, and when he had
examined the portrait, he laughed and said: "What the devil have you
been about? You have painted me with one of my eyes up in the temple."
Giuliano stood some time comparing the drawing with his model's face,
and then remarked: "I do not think so; but take your seat again, and I
shall be able to judge better when I have you in the proper pose."
Michelangelo, who knew well where the fault lay, and how little
judgment belonged to his friend Bugiardini, resumed his seat,
grinning. After some time of careful contemplation, Giuliano rose to
his feet and cried: "It seems to me that I have drawn it right, and
that the life compels me to do so." "So then," replied Buonarroti,
"the defect is nature's, and see you spare neither the brush nor art."

Both Sebastiano del Piombo and Giorgio Vasari were appreciated by
Michelangelo for their lively parts and genial humour. The latter has
told an anecdote which illustrates the old man's eccentricity. He was
wont to wear a cardboard hat at night, into which he stuck a candle,
and then worked by its light upon his statue of the Pietà. Vasari
observing this habit, wished to do him a kindness by sending him 40
lbs. of candles made of goat's fat, knowing that they gutter less than
ordinary dips of tallow. His servant carried them politely to the
house two hours after nightfall, and presented them to Michelangelo.
He refused, and said he did not want them. The man answered, "Sir,
they have almost broken my arms carrying them all this long way from
the bridge, nor will I take them home again. There is a heap of mud
opposite your door, thick and firm enough to hold them upright. Here
then will I set them all up, and light them." When Michelangelo heard
this, he gave way: "Lay them down; I do not mean you to play pranks at
my house-door." Varsari tells another anecdote about the Pietà. Pope
Julius III. sent him late one evening to Michelangelo's house for some
drawing. The old man came down with a lantern, and hearing what was
wanted, told Urbino to look for the cartoon. Meanwhile, Vasari turned
his attention to one of the legs of Christ, which Michelangelo had
been trying to alter. In order to prevent his seeing, Michelangelo let
the lamp fall, and they remained in darkness. He then called for a
light, and stepped forth from the enclosure of planks behind which he
worked. As he did so, he remarked, "I am so old that Death oftentimes
plucks me by the cape to go with him, and one day this body of mine
will fall like the lantern, and the light of life will be put out." Of
death he used to say, that "if life gives us pleasure, we ought not to
expect displeasure from death, seeing as it is made by the hand of the
same master."

Among stories relating to craftsmen, these are perhaps worth gleaning.
While he was working on the termini for the tomb of Julius, he gave
directions to a certain stone-cutter: "Remove such and such parts here
to-day, smooth out in this place, and polish up in that." In the
course of time, without being aware of it, the man found that he had
produced a statue, and stared astonished at his own performance.
Michelangelo asked, "What do you think of it?" "I think it very good,"
he answered, "and I owe you a deep debt of gratitude." "Why do you say
that?" "Because you have caused me to discover in myself a talent
which I did not know that I possessed."--A certain citizen, who wanted
a mortar, went to a sculptor and asked him to make one. The fellow,
suspecting some practical joke, pointed out Buonarroti's house, and
said that if he wanted mortars, a man lived there whose trade it was
to make them. The customer accordingly addressed himself to
Michelangelo, who, in his turn suspecting a trick, asked who had sent
him. When he knew the sculptor's name, he promised to carve the
mortar, on the condition that it should be paid for at the sculptor's
valuation. This was settled, and the mortar turned out a miracle of
arabesques and masks and grotesque inventions, wonderfully wrought and
polished. In due course of time the mortar was taken to the envious
and suspicious sculptor, who stood dumbfounded before it, and told the
customer that there was nothing left but to carry this masterpiece of
carving back to him who fashioned it, and order a plain article for
himself.--At Modena he inspected the terra-cotta groups by Antonio
Begarelli, enthusiastically crying out, "If this clay could become
marble, woe to antique statuary."--A Florentine citizen once saw him
gazing at Donatello's statue of S. Mark upon the outer wall of
Orsanmichele. On being asked what he thought of it, Michelangelo
replied, "I never saw a figure which so thoroughly represents a man of
probity; if S. Mark was really like that, we have every reason to
believe everything which he has said." To the S. George in the same
place he is reported to have given the word of command, "March!"--Some
one showed him a set of medals by Alessandro Cesari, upon which he
exclaimed, "The death hour of art has struck; nothing more perfect can
be seen than these."--Before Titian's portrait of Duke Alfonso di
Ferrara he observed that he had not thought art could perform so much,
adding that Titian alone deserved the name of painter.--He was wont to
call Cronaca's church of S. Francesco al Monte "his lovely peasant
girl," and Ghiberti's doors in the Florentine Baptistery "the Gates of
Paradise."--Somebody showed him a boy's drawings, and excused their
imperfection by pleading that he had only just begun to study: "That
is obvious," he answered. A similar reply is said to have been made to
Vasari, when he excused his own frescoes in the Cancelleria at Rome by
saying they had been painted in a few days.--An artist showed him a
Pietà which he had finished: "Yes, it is indeed a _pietà_ (pitiful
object) to see."--Ugo da Carpi signed one of his pictures with a
legend declaring he had not used a brush on it: "It would have been
better had he done so."--Sebastiano del Piombo was ordered to paint a
friar in a chapel at S. Pietro a Montorio. Michelangelo observed, "He
will spoil the chapel." Asked why, he answered, "When the friars have
spoiled the world, which is so large, it surely is an easy thing for
them to spoil such a tiny chapel."--A sculptor put together a number
of figures imitated from the antique, and thought he had surpassed his
models. Michelangelo remarked, "One who walks after another man, never
goes in front of him; and one who is not able to do well by his own
wit, will not be able to profit by the works of others."--A painter
produced some notably poor picture, in which only an ox was vigorously
drawn: "Every artist draws his own portrait best," said
Michelangelo.--He went to see a statue which was in the sculptor's
studio, waiting to be exposed before the public. The man bustled about
altering the lights, in order to show his work off to the best
advantage: "Do not take this trouble; what really matters will be the
light of the piazza;" meaning that the people in the long-run decide
what is good or bad in art.--Accused of want of spirit in his rivalry
with Nanni di Baccio Bigio, he retorted, "Men who fight with folk of
little worth win nothing."--A priest who was a friend of his said, "It
is a pity that you never married, for you might have had many
children, and would have left them all the profit and honour of your
labours." Michelangelo answered, "I have only too much of a wife in
this art of mine. She has always kept me struggling on. My children
will be the works I leave behind me. Even though they are worth
naught, yet I shall live awhile in them. Woe to Lorenzo Ghiberti if he
had not made the gates of S. Giovanni! His children and grandchildren
have sold and squandered the substance that he left. The gates are
still in their places."


VII

This would be an appropriate place to estimate Michelangelo's
professional gains in detail, to describe the properties he acquired
in lands and houses, and to give an account of his total fortune. We
are, however, not in the position to do this accurately. We only know
the prices paid for a few of his minor works. He received, for
instance, thirty ducats for the Sleeping Cupid, and 450 ducats for the
Pietà of S. Peter's. He contracted with Cardinal Piccolomini to
furnish fifteen statues for 500 ducats. In all of these cases the
costs of marble, workmen, workshop, fell on him. He contracted with
Florence to execute the David in two years, at a salary of six golden
florins per month, together with a further sum when the work was
finished. It appears that 400 florins in all (including salary) were
finally adjudged to him. In these cases all incidental expenses had
been paid by his employers. He contracted with the Operai del Duomo to
make twelve statues in as many years, receiving two florins a month,
and as much as the Operai thought fit to pay him when the whole was
done. Here too he was relieved from incidental expenses. For the
statue of Christ at S. Maria sopra Minerva he was paid 200 crowns.

These are a few of the most trustworthy items we possess, and they are
rendered very worthless by the impossibility of reducing ducats,
florins, and crowns to current values. With regard to the bronze
statue of Julius II. at Bologna, Michelangelo tells us that he
received in advance 1000 ducats, and when he ended his work there
remained only 4-1/2 ducats to the good. In this case, as in most of
his great operations, he entered at the commencement into a contract
with his patron, sending in an estimate of what he thought it would be
worth his while to do the work for. The Italian is "pigliare a
cottimo;" and in all of his dealings with successive Popes
Michelangelo evidently preferred this method. It must have sometimes
enabled the artist to make large profits; but the nature of the
contract prevents his biographer from forming even a vague estimate of
their amount. According to Condivi, he received 3000 ducats for the
Sistine vault, working at his own costs. According to his own
statement, several hundred ducats were owing at the end of the affair.
It seems certain that Julius II. died in Michelangelo's debt, and that
the various contracts for his tomb were a source of loss rather than
of gain.

Such large undertakings as the sacristy and library of S. Lorenzo were
probably agreed for on the contract system. But although there exist
plenty of memoranda recording Michelangelo's disbursements at various
times for various portions of these works, we can strike no balance
showing an approximate calculation of his profits. What renders the
matter still more perplexing is, that very few of Michelangelo's
contracts were fulfilled according to the original intention of the
parties. For one reason or another they had to be altered and
accommodated to circumstances.

It is clear that, later on in life, he received money for drawings,
for architectural work, and for models, the execution of which he
bound himself to superintend. Cardinal Grimani wrote saying he would
pay the artist's own price for a design he had requested. Vasari
observes that the sketches he gave away were worth thousands of
crowns. We know that he was offered a handsome salary for the
superintendence of S. Peter's, which he magnanimously and piously
declined to touch. But what we cannot arrive at is even a rough
valuation of the sums he earned in these branches of employment.

Again, we know that he was promised a yearly salary from Clement VII.,
and one more handsome from Paul III. But the former was paid
irregularly, and half of the latter depended on the profits of a
ferry, which eventually failed him altogether. In each of these cases,
then, the same circumstances of vagueness and uncertainty throw doubt
on all investigation, and render a conjectural estimate impossible.
Moreover, there remain no documents to prove what he may have gained,
directly or indirectly, from succeeding Pontiffs. That he felt the
loss of Paul III., as a generous patron, is proved by a letter written
on the occasion of his death; and Vasari hints that the Pope had been
munificent in largesses bestowed upon him. But of these occasional
presents and emoluments we have no accurate information; and we are
unable to state what he derived from Pius IV., who was certainly one
of his best friends and greatest admirers.

At his death in Rome he left cash amounting to something under 9000
crowns. But, since he died intestate, we have no will to guide us as
to the extent and nature of his whole estate. Nor, so far as I am
aware, has the return of his property, which Lionardo Buonarroti may
possibly have furnished to the state of Florence, been yet brought to
light.

That he inherited some landed property at Settignano from his father
is certain; and he added several plots of ground to the paternal
acres. He also is said to have bought a farm in Valdichiana
(doubtful), and other pieces of land in Tuscany. He owned a house at
Rome, a house and workshop in the Via Mozza at Florence, and he
purchased the Casa Buonarroti in Via Ghibellina. But we have no means
of determining the total value of these real assets.

In these circumstances I feel unable to offer any probable opinion
regarding the amount of Michelangelo's professional earnings, or the
exact way in which they were acquired. That he died possessed of a
considerable fortune, and that he was able during his lifetime to
assist his family with large donations, cannot be disputed. But how he
came to command so much money does not appear. His frugality,
bordering upon penuriousness, impressed contemporaries. This,
considering the length of his life, may account for not contemptible
accumulations.


VIII

We have seen that Michelangelo's contemporaries found fault with
several supposed frailties of his nature. These may be briefly
catalogued under the following heads: A passionate violence of temper
(_terribilità_), expressing itself in hasty acts and words; extreme
suspiciousness and irritability; solitary habits, amounting to
misanthropy or churlishness; eccentricity and melancholy bordering on
madness; personal timidity and avarice; a want of generosity in
imparting knowledge, and an undue partiality for handsome persons of
his own sex. His biographers, Condivi and Vasari, thought these
charges worthy of serious refutation, which proves that they were
current. They had no difficulty in showing that his alleged
misanthropy, melancholy, and madness were only signs of a studious
nature absorbed in profound meditations. They easily refuted the
charges of avarice and want of generosity in helping on young artists.
But there remained a great deal in the popular conception which could
not be dismissed, and which has recently been corroborated by the
publication of his correspondence. The opinion that Michelangelo was a
man of peculiar, and in some respects not altogether healthy nervous
temperament, will force itself upon all those who have fairly weighed
the evidence of the letters in connection with the events of his life.
It has been developed in a somewhat exaggerated form, of late years,
by several psychologists of the new school (Parlagreco and Lombroso in
Italy, Nisbet in England), who attempt to prove that Michelangelo was
the subject of neurotic disorder. The most important and serious essay
in this direction is a little book of great interest and almost
hypercritical acumen published recently at Naples. Signor Parlagreco
lays great stress upon Michelangelo's insensibility to women, his
"strange and contradictory feeling about feminine beauty." He seeks to
show, what is indeed, I think, capable of demonstration, that the
man's intense devotion to art and study, his solitary habits and
constitutional melancholy, caused him to absorb the ordinary instincts
and passions of a young man into his aesthetic temperament; and that
when, in later life, he began to devote his attention to poetry, he
treated love from the point of view of mystical philosophy. In support
of this argument Parlagreco naturally insists upon the famous
friendship with Vittoria Colonna, and quotes the Platonising poems
commonly attributed to this emotion. He has omitted to mention, what
certainly bears upon the point of Michelangelo's frigidity, that only
one out of the five Buonarroti brothers, sons of Lodovico, married.
Nor does he take into account the fact that Raffaello da Urbino, who
was no less devoted and industrious in art and study, retained the
liveliest sensibility to female charms. In other words, the critic
appears to neglect that common-sense solution of the problem, which is
found in a cold and physically sterile constitution as opposed to one
of greater warmth and sensuous activity.

Parlagreco attributes much value to what he calls the religious
terrors and remorse of Michelangelo's old age; says that "his fancy
became haunted with doubts and fears; every day discovering fresh sins
in the past, inveighing against the very art which made him famous
among men, and seeking to propitiate Paradise for his soul by acts of
charity to dowerless maidens." The sonnets to Vasari and some others
are quoted in support of this view. But the question remains, whether
it is not exaggerated to regard pious aspirations, and a sense of
human life's inadequacy at its close, as the signs of nervous malady.
The following passage sums up Parlagreco's theory in a succession of
pregnant sentences. "An accurate study, based upon his correspondence
in connection with the events of the artist's life and the history of
his works, has enabled me to detect in his character a persistent
oscillation. Continual contradictions between great and generous ideas
upon the one side, and puerile ideas upon the other; between the will
and the word, thought and action; an excessive irritability and the
highest degree of susceptibility; constant love for others, great
activity in doing good, sudden sympathies, great outbursts of
enthusiasm, great fears; at times an unconsciousness with respect to
his own actions; a marvellous modesty in the field of art, an
unreasonable vanity regarding external appearances:--these are the
diverse manifestations of psychical energy in Buonarroti's life; all
which makes me believe that the mighty artist was affected by a degree
of neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease." He proceeds
to support this general view by several considerations, among which
the most remarkable are Michelangelo's asseverations to friends: "You
will say that I am old and mad to make sonnets, but if people assert
that I am on the verge of dotage, I have wished to act up to my
character:" "You will say that I am old and mad; but I answer that
there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety, than by
being mad:" "As regards the madness they ascribe to me, it does harm
to nobody but myself:" "I enjoyed last evening, because it drew me out
of my melancholy and mad humour."

Reviewing Parlagreco's argument in general, I think it may be justly
remarked that if the qualities rehearsed above constitute hysterical
neuropathy, then every testy, sensitive, impulsive, and benevolent
person is neuropathically hysterical. In particular we may demur to
the terms "puerile ideas," "unreasonable vanity regarding external
appearances." It would be difficult to discover puerility in any of
Buonarroti's utterances; and his only vanity was a certain pride in
the supposed descent of his house from that of Canossa. The frequent
allusions to melancholy and madness do not constitute a confession of
these qualities. They express Michelangelo's irritation at being
always twitted with unsociability and eccentricity. In the
conversations recorded by Francesco d'Olanda he quietly and
philosophically exculpates men of the artistic temperament from such
charges, which were undoubtedly brought against him, and which the
recluse manner of his life to some extent accounted for.

It may be well here to resume the main points of the indictment
brought against Michelangelo's sanity by the neo-psychologists. In the
first place, he admired male more than female beauty, and preferred
the society of men to that of women. But this peculiarity, in an age
and climate which gave larger licence to immoderate passions, exposed
him to no serious malignancy of rumour. Such predilections were not
uncommon in Italy. They caused scandal when they degenerated into
vice, and rarely failed in that case to obscure the good fame of
persons subject to them. Yet Michelangelo, surrounded by jealous
rivals, was only very lightly touched by the breath of calumny in his
lifetime. Aretino's malicious insinuation and Condivi's cautious
vindication do not suffice to sully his memory with any dark
suspicion. He lived with an almost culpable penuriousness in what
concerned his personal expenditure. But he was generous towards his
family, bountiful to his dependants, and liberal in charity. He
suffered from constitutional depression, preferred solitude to crowds,
and could not brook the interference of fashionable idlers with his
studious leisure. But, as he sensibly urged in self-defence, these
eccentricities, so frequent with men of genius, ought to have been
ascribed to the severe demands made upon an artist's faculties by the
problems with which he was continually engaged; the planning of a
Pope's mausoleum, the distribution of a score of histories and several
hundreds of human figures on a chapel-vaulting, the raising of S.
Peter's cupola in air: none of which tasks can be either lightly
undertaken or carried out with ease. At worst, Michelangelo's
melancholy might be ascribed to that _morbus eruditorum_ of which
Burton speaks. It never assumed the form of hypochondria,
hallucination, misogyny, or misanthropy. He was irritable, suspicious,
and frequently unjust both to his friends and relatives on slight
occasions. But his relatives gave him good reason to be fretful by
their greediness, ingratitude, and stupidity; and when he lost his
temper he recovered it with singular ease. It is also noticeable that
these paroxysms of crossness on which so much stress has been laid,
came upon him mostly when he was old, worn out with perpetual mental
and physical fatigue, and troubled by a painful disease of the
bladder. There is nothing in their nature, frequency, or violence to
justify the hypothesis of more than a hyper-sensitive nervous
temperament; and without a temperament of this sort how could an
artist of Michelangelo's calibre and intensity perform his life-work?
In old age he dwelt upon the thought of death, meditated in a
repentant spirit on the errors of his younger years, indulged a pious
spirit, and clung to the cross of Christ. But when a man has passed
the period allotted for the average of his race, ought not these
preoccupations to be reckoned to him rather as appropriate and
meritorious? We must not forget that he was born and lived as a
believing Christian, in an age of immorality indeed, but one which had
not yet been penetrated with scientific conceptions and materialism.
There is nothing hysterical or unduly ascetic in the religion of his
closing years. It did not prevent him from taking the keenest interest
in his family, devoting his mind to business and the purchase of
property, carrying on the Herculean labour of building the
mother-church of Latin Christendom. He was subject, all through his
career, to sudden panics, and suffered from a constitutional dread of
assassination. We can only explain his flight from Rome, his escape
from Florence, the anxiety he expressed about his own and his family's
relations to the Medici, by supposing that his nerves were sensitive
upon this point. But, considering the times in which he lived, the
nature of the men around him, the despotic temper of the Medicean
princes, was there anything morbid in this timidity? A student of
Cellini's Memoirs, of Florentine history, and of the dark stories in
which the private annals of the age abound, will be forced to admit
that imaginative men of acute nervous susceptibility, who loved a
quiet life and wished to keep their mental forces unimpaired for art
and thought, were justified in feeling an habitual sense of uneasiness
in Italy of the Renaissance period. Michelangelo's timidity, real as
it was, did not prevent him from being bold upon occasion, speaking
the truth to popes and princes, and making his personality respected.
He was even accused of being too "terrible," too little of a courtier
and time-server.

When the whole subject of Michelangelo's temperament has been calmly
investigated, the truth seems to be that he did not possess a nervous
temperament so evenly balanced as some phlegmatic men of average
ability can boast of. But who could expect the creator of the Sistine,
the sculptor of the Medicean tombs, the architect of the cupola, the
writer of the sonnets, to be an absolutely normal individual? To
identify genius with insanity is a pernicious paradox. To recognise
that it cannot exist without some inequalities of nervous energy, some
perturbations of nervous function, is reasonable. In other words, it
is an axiom of physiology that the abnormal development of any organ
or any faculty is balanced by some deficiency or abnormality elsewhere
in the individual. This is only another way of saying that the man of
genius is not a mediocre and ordinary personality: in other words, it
is a truism, the statement of which appears superfluous. Rather ought
we, in Michelangelo's case, to dwell upon the remarkable sobriety of
his life, his sustained industry under very trying circumstances, his
prolonged intellectual activity into extreme old age, the toughness of
his constitution, and the elasticity of that nerve-fibre which
continued to be sound and sane under the enormous and varied pressure
put upon it over a period of seventy-five laborious years.

If we dared attempt a synthesis or reconstitution of this unique man's
personality, upon the data furnished by his poems, letters, and
occasional utterances, all of which have been set forth in their
proper places in this work, I think we must construct him as a being
gifted, above all his other qualities and talents, with a burning
sense of abstract beauty and an eager desire to express this through
several forms of art--design, sculpture, fresco-painting,
architecture, poetry. The second point forced in upon our mind is that
the same man vibrated acutely to the political agitation of his
troubled age, to mental influences of various kinds, and finally to a
persistent nervous susceptibility, which made him exquisitely
sensitive to human charm. This quality rendered him irritable in his
dealings with his fellow-men, like an instrument of music, finely
strung, and jangled on a slight occasion. In the third place we
discover that, while accepting the mental influences and submitting to
the personal attractions I have indicated, he strove, by indulging
solitary tastes, to maintain his central energies intact for
art--joining in no rebellious conspiracies against the powers that be,
bending his neck in silence to the storm, avoiding pastimes and social
diversions which might have called into activity the latent
sensuousness of his nature. For the same reason, partly by
predilection, and partly by a deliberate wish to curb his irritable
tendencies, he lived as much alone as possible, and poorly. At the
close of his career, when he condescended to unburden his mind in
verse and friendly dialogue, it is clear that he had formed the habit
of recurring to religion for tranquillity, and of combating dominant
desire by dwelling on the thought of inevitable death. Platonic
speculations upon the eternal value of beauty displayed in mortal
creatures helped him always in his warfare with the flesh and roving
inclination. Self-control seems to have been the main object of his
conscious striving, not for its own sake, but as the condition
necessary to his highest spiritual activity. Self-coherence,
self-concentration, not for any mean or self-indulgent end, but for
the best attainment of his intellectual ideal, was what he sought for
by the seclusion and the renunciations of a lifetime.

The total result of this singular attitude toward human life, which
cannot be rightly described as either ascetic or mystical, but seems
rather to have been based upon some self-preservative instinct,
bidding him sacrifice lower and keener impulses to what he regarded as
the higher and finer purpose of his being, is a certain clash and
conflict of emotions, a certain sense of failure to attain the end
proposed, which excuses, though I do not think it justifies, the
psychologists, when they classify him among morbid subjects. Had he
yielded at any period of his career to the ordinary customs of his
easy-going age, he would have presented no problem to the scientific
mind. After consuming the fuel of the passions, he might have subsided
into common calm, or have blunted the edge of inspiration, or have
finished in some phase of madness or ascetical repentance. Such are
the common categories of extinct volcanic temperaments. But the
essential point about Michelangelo is that he never burned out, and
never lost his manly independence, in spite of numerous nervous
disadvantages. That makes him the unparalleled personality he is, as
now revealed to us by the impartial study of the documents at our
disposal.


IX

It is the plain duty of criticism in this age to search and probe the
characters of world-important individuals under as many aspects as
possible, neglecting no analytical methods, shrinking from no tests,
omitting no slight details or faint shadows that may help to round a
picture. Yet, after all our labour, we are bound to confess that the
man himself eludes our insight. "The abysmal deeps of personality"
have never yet been sounded by mere human plummets. The most that
microscope and scalpel can perform is to lay bare tissue and direct
attention to peculiarities of structure. In the long-run we find that
the current opinion formed by successive generations remains true in
its grand outlines. That large collective portrait of the hero, slowly
emerging from sympathies and censures, from judgments and panegyrics,
seems dim indeed and visionary, when compared with some sharply
indented description by a brilliant literary craftsman. It has the
vagueness of a photograph produced by superimposing many negatives of
the same face one upon the other. It lacks the pungent piquancy of an
etching. Yet this is what we must abide by; for this is spiritually
and generically veracious.

At the end, then, a sound critic returns to think of Michelangelo, not
as Parlagreco and Lombroso show him, nor even as the minute
examination of letters and of poems proves him to have been, but as
tradition and the total tenor of his life display him to our
admiration. Incalculable, incomprehensible, incommensurable: yes, all
souls, the least and greatest, attack them as we will, are that. But
definite in solitary sublimity, like a supreme mountain seen from a
vast distance, soaring over shadowy hills and misty plains into the
clear ether of immortal fame.

Viewed thus, he lives for ever as the type and symbol of a man,
much-suffering, continually labouring, gifted with keen but rarely
indulged passions, whose energies from boyhood to extreme old age were
dedicated with unswerving purpose to the service of one master,
plastic art. On his death-bed he may have felt, like Browning, in that
sweetest of his poems, "other heights in other lives, God willing."
But, for this earthly pilgrimage, he was contented to leave the
ensample of a noble nature made perfect and completed in itself by
addiction to one commanding impulse. We cannot cite another hero of
the modern world who more fully and with greater intensity realised
the main end of human life, which is self-effectuation,
self-realisation, self-manifestation in one of the many lines of
labour to which men may be called and chosen. Had we more of such
individualities, the symphony of civilisation would be infinitely
glorious; for nothing is more certain than that God and the world
cannot be better served than by each specific self pushing forward to
its own perfection, sacrificing the superfluous or hindering elements
in its structure, regardless of side issues and collateral
considerations.

Michelangelo, then, as Carlyle might have put it, is the Hero as
Artist. When we have admitted this, all dregs and sediments of the
analytical alembic sink to the bottom, leaving a clear crystalline
elixir of the spirit. About the quality of his genius opinions may,
will, and ought to differ. It is so pronounced, so peculiar, so
repulsive to one man, so attractive to another, that, like his own
dread statue of Lorenzo de' Medici, "it fascinates and is
intolerable." There are few, I take it, who can feel at home with him
in all the length and breadth and dark depths of the regions that he
traversed. The world of thoughts and forms in which he lived
habitually is too arid, like an extinct planet, tenanted by mighty
elemental beings with little human left to them but visionary
Titan-shapes, too vast and void for common minds to dwell in
pleasurably. The sweetness that emerges from his strength, the beauty
which blooms rarely, strangely, in unhomely wise, upon the awful crowd
of his conceptions, are only to be apprehended by some innate sympathy
or by long incubation of the brooding intellect. It is probable,
therefore, that the deathless artist through long centuries of glory
will abide as solitary as the simple old man did in his poor house at
Rome. But no one, not the dullest, not the weakest, not the laziest
and lustfullest, not the most indifferent to ideas or the most
tolerant of platitudes and paradoxes, can pass him by without being
arrested, quickened, stung, purged, stirred to uneasy self-examination
by so strange a personality expressed in prophecies of art so pungent.

Each supreme artist whom God hath sent into the world with inspiration
and a particle of the imperishable fire, is a law to himself, an
universe, a revelation of the divine life under one of its innumerable
attributes. We cannot therefore classify Michelangelo with any of his
peers throughout the long procession of the ages. Of each and all of
them it must be said in Ariosto's words, "Nature made him, and then
broke the mould." Yet, if we seek Michelangelo's affinities, we find
them in Lucretius and Beethoven, not in Sophocles and Mozart. He
belongs to the genus of deep, violent, colossal, passionately striving
natures; not, like Raffaello, to the smooth, serene, broad,
exquisitely finished, calmly perfect tribe. To God be the praise, who
bestows upon the human race artists thus differing in type and
personal quality, each one of whom incarnates some specific portion of
the spirit of past ages, perpetuating the traditions of man's soul,
interpreting century to century by everlasting hieroglyphics, mute
witnesses to history and splendid illustrations of her pages.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.