Michelangelo

by Edward C. Strutt

THE ART OF MICHELANGELO

In the history of Art, Michelangelo stands isolated, a colossal figure looming terrible and majestic, a Titan towering far above the sons of men. Yet his was an age of giants. When Michelangelo came before the world the glorious tide of the Renaissance was still rising; sculpture and architecture had been brought to an unprecedented degree of excellence by such men as Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello and Brunelleschi, and following in Masaccio's footsteps, a host of great painters had successfully striven to renovate and perfect their art until it culminated in a Raphael. Leonardo da Vinci was already famous before Michelangelo had touched chisel or brush, but neither Leonardo's encyclopaedic achievements nor Raphael's meteorlike career can be regarded as the ultimate expression, the high-water mark of the Italian Renaissance.

In Michelangelo we behold the giant embodiment of the true spirit of that wonderful period, the synthesis of its various forms of beauty and perfection, the final manifestation of its aesthetic possibilities. When Art first shook off the trammels of mediaevalism, she was content to worship at the shrine of Truth; with Botticelli and Leonardo she passed into vague regions of poetry. Raphael touched a more human note, often soaring to sublime harmonies: with Michelangelo the Renaissance reached its fullest development, attaining to a spiritual height, an almost superhuman loftiness hitherto undreamt of. Other men had excelled in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture before him, but Michelangelo was the first to attain perfection in every branch of Art, and such was his strong creative individuality that he left nothing to which he applied himself at the same stage where he had found it, bringing every manifestation of Art to the highest degree of perfection of which it was capable, and crowning all with that glorious aureola of spiritual grandeur which is the most awe-inspiring characteristic of his works.

We have said that Michelangelo stands alone. Of other artists it is easy to trace the aesthetic derivation, but he is the product of no school, the result of no external influence. Michelangelo, the most perfect emanation of the Renaissance, came before an astonished world like Minerva leaping from the head of Jove, all armed and beautiful in her strength and wisdom.

Although he lived in an age when tradition was almost an artistic canon, and when the pupil felt in duty bound to follow his master's methods, even his early works reveal a singular originality and freedom from all imitative tendencies. Take for instance his Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae, which he carved when working under Bertoldo at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent: it has nothing in common with the school of Donatello, but is instinct with the spirit of antique art, showing that the young sculptor derived infinitely more profit from the close study of the antique masterpieces which Lorenzo had collected in the gardens of San Marco than from Bertoldo's precepts. That he succeeded in mastering the style and manner of the ancients to perfection is proved by such works as the Sleeping Cupid, now unfortunately lost, but which was bought by Cardinal Riario as an antique, and was the cause of Michelangelo's first coming to Rome; the Bacchus, hardly inferior to the Dancing Faun of the Capitol, and the beautiful statues of the Medicean tombs, which might easily be mistaken for the work of a Greek chisel.

It is certain that during the first years of his long sojourn in Rome he gave himself up enthusiastically to the study of its ancient monuments and works of art. When the famous group of the Laocoon was discovered in 1506, Michelangelo greeted it as a "miracle of art," affirming that the only statue worthy of being compared with it was the torso of Hercules, which he was never tired of drawing, and evidently had before his mind when painting the magnificent ignudi of the Sistine Chapel. In the Wicar Museum at Lille there are several copies by Michelangelo of various decorative motives in the Baths of Titus, showing how deeply he studied ancient art even in minor details. But he was far from being a servile imitator; indeed his powerful originality is never so strikingly manifest as in those of his masterpieces which appear to be conceived in a purely classical spirit.

Although deeply religious, even to the point of regarding his art, especially during the latter part of his life, more as a devotional exercise than as a stepping-stone to glory, Michelangelo had one essential point in common with Pagan artists, namely, a boundless and reverent cult for beauty in all its forms, and especially in its highest and most wonderful manifestation, the human frame. "He loved the beauty of the human body," says Condivi, "as one who best understands it, and likewise every beautiful thing—a beautiful horse, a beautiful dog, a beautiful country, a beautiful plant, and every place and thing beautiful and rare after its kind, admiring them all with a marvellous love; thus choosing beauty in nature as the bees gather honey from the flowers, and using it afterwards in his works." In one of his sonnets Michelangelo thus expressed his highest idea of beauty—man created in the image of God:

Nor hath God deigned to show Himself elsewhere
More clearly than in human forms sublime,
Which, since they image Him, alone I love.[[1]]

[[1]] J. A. Symonds, "The Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella," n. lvi. p. 90.

It is certain that he studied anatomy far more deeply than any of his contemporaries, not excluding Leonardo da Vinci, and devoted so much time to dissecting that "it turned his stomach so that he could neither eat nor drink with benefit. Nevertheless," adds Condivi, "he did not give up until he was so learned and rich in such knowledge that he intended to write a treatise on the movements of the human body, its aspect, and concerning the bones, with an ingenious theory of his own, devised after long practice."

Michelangelo has been accused by some critics, not wholly without reason, of having somewhat ostentatiously availed himself of his anatomical knowledge. In some figures of his Last Judgment, for instance, the muscular masses, the bones and tendons and other anatomical details are hardly concealed by the skin, as if he had painted from the subject on the dissecting-table rather than from the living model. The result is undoubtedly striking and terrible, and we may even hazard the conjecture that the master purposely exaggerated his efforts in a picture representing the final resuscitation of the flesh, the awesome reconstruction and starting back into life of bodies long since reduced to dust. This "stupendous defect," if such it may be called, is far more apparent in Michelangelo's frescoes than in his works of sculpture.

Having taken the human frame as the highest possible standard of beauty, Michelangelo made use of it in all his works not only as the principal theme, but as a decorative element. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, with its magnificent nude Athletes and allegorical figures, is the apotheosis of the human frame as the noblest means of decoration. By introducing nude figures in his tondo of the Holy Family and by his powerful but utterly unconventional treatment of the angels and saints in the Last Judgment, Michelangelo once more affirmed his faith in the beauty and purity of the "human form divine" as a decorative element of religious art. He went even further, for in a letter to Cardinal Ridolfo da Carpi, which he wrote when engaged on the construction of St. Peter's, Michelangelo hazards the strange theory that the study of the human figure is indispensable not only to sculptors and painters, but to architects as well: "For it is very certain that the members of architecture depend upon the members of man. Who is not a good master of the figure, and especially of anatomy, cannot understand it."

Michelangelo's system of working was as powerful and original as his art. Before he began a statue he could already discern the finished masterpiece lurking within the rough-hewn block of marble, which he would attack with reckless assurance, great splinters flying in all directions as he feverishly cut away the waste stone, and saw the figure spring slowly into life under his magic chisel. A contemporary, writing in 1550, when Michelangelo, then seventy-five years of age, was carving the Pietà which he intended for his tomb, thus describes the master at his work: "I have seen him, although over seventy years of age and no longer strong, cut away more splinters from a block of very hard marble in fifteen minutes than three young men could have done in a couple of hours, and with such fierce recklessness that I thought the whole work must fall to pieces. For he knocked off splinters the size of a hand, following the line of his figures so closely, that the slightest mistake would have irreparably spoilt the whole group."

In one of his finest sonnets Michelangelo mentions this wonderful gift of the true artist to penetrate dull marble and to perceive, as through a veil, the perfect work of art within:

Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
Ch' un marmo solo in se' non circoscriva
Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
La mano che ubbidisce all' intelletto.

Even such colossal works as the David were carved by Michelangelo directly from the marble, without previously modelling a full-size clay figure. In none of his finished masterpieces, however, is it possible to observe Michelangelo's methods better than in the unfinished statue of Saint Matthew, now in the Academy, Florence, which, although little more than a rough-hewn block of marble, already reveals all the power and beauty of the perfect work of art. When quarrying marble at Carrara for the façade of San Lorenzo, he could tell to a nicety the exact measurements of the blocks required, although he had not yet prepared a model or even accurate drawings to guide him in his work. The whole monument was already complete, even to its minor details, in his mind.

Michelangelo followed the same strenuous methods in painting. We have seen that the first part of his most colossal work, the vault of the Sistine Chapel, comprising three hundred and ninety-four figures, the majority ten feet high, was begun on May 10th, 1508, and finished on November 1st, 1509. Indeed, as Michelangelo may be said to have only commenced work in earnest about the beginning of January 1509, after dismissing his incapable assistants, it is far more probable that the stupendous fresco was painted in two hundred and thirty-four days, at the rate of more than one figure a day. The artist could only paint on the plaster while it was wet, so that it is easy to tell in how many days he finished the larger figures by observing the divisions of the separate days' plasterings. For instance, Sir C. Holroyd, whose judgment is thoroughly to be depended upon, maintains that "one of the largest and most prominent figures, as well as one of the finest and most finished, the Adam in the Creation of Man, was painted in three sittings only. The lines of the junctions of the plaster may be seen in a photograph; one is along the collar bone, and one across the junction of the body and the thighs. There is also a division all round the figure, an inch or so from the outline, so we know that the beautiful and highly finished head and neck were painted in one day; the stupendous torso and arms in another; and the huge legs, finished in every detail, in a third. Such power of work and of finish is utterly inconceivable to any artist of to-day."

Michelangelo rightly attributed his capacity for rapid and finished work to the great pains he had taken in thoroughly mastering the difficult art of drawing. There is a sketch in the British Museum with the following piece of advice in Michelangelo's own hand, to his pupil, Antonio Mini:

Disegna Antonio, disegna Antonio, disegna, e non perder tempo.
Draw Antonio, draw Antonio, draw, and do not lose time.

CENTRAL GROUP OF THE LAST JUDGEMENT.

Like Donatello, he used to say to his pupils: "I give you the whole art of sculpture when I tell you—draw!"

Although it would be difficult to decide whether he excelled most in painting or in sculpture, Michelangelo, with singular modesty, persisted in regarding himself as exclusively a sculptor. Even when engaged on his greatest pictorial works, such as the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, he invariably signed his letters with the words: Michelangelo, Scultore. It is, therefore, not surprising that his paintings, and more especially his earlier works, were conceived in a purely sculptorial spirit, and carried out according to the methods of his favourite art. The Holy Family, now in the Uffizi, for instance, differs but little in treatment and composition, from the two marble tondi in the Bargello, and in the Royal Academy, and from what we know of the famous Cartoon of Pisa, it is evident that Michelangelo, when composing that famous masterpiece, was influenced by the antique bas-reliefs, representing battle scenes, which he had seen and admired during his first visit to Rome.

That he did not consider himself a painter is further shown by his utter disregard for colour, so apparent in his earlier paintings, such as the Holy Family. But in the Sistine Chapel he ceases to regard perfection of form as all sufficient, and the sculptor suddenly becomes the greatest colour-painter of any age. For in these stupendous frescoes, remarkable for their imposing, yet extremely simple colour scheme, Michelangelo has succeeded in making colour serve a higher purpose than that of merely clothing his inspiration with beautiful tints. Colour is no longer an accessory, but an integral factor as important as the mighty figures, the inner meaning of which it helps to bear out, and the result of as much thought and care. In no other work of art has such perfect harmony of form and colour ever been attained.

Michelangelo was so entirely absorbed in his art, to the exclusion of every other thought or passion, that it is possible to trace in his works not only the gradual development of his genius, but also the vicissitudes of his long and stormy career. Of his youthful works only two, the bas-relief of the Madonna and Child in the Buonarroti Collection and the St. John in the Berlin Museum, bear evident traces of Donatello's influence; in the Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae the young artist already asserts his powerful individuality, and the Bacchus shows how thoroughly he had become imbued with the spirit of antique art. It was not until he carved the deeply religious group of the Pietà that he revealed his spiritual personality, while in the David we are first confronted with that terribilita which is the most striking characteristic of his subsequent works. All Michelangelo's masterpieces, whether of sculpture or painting, are instinct with power and strength, like combatants in some fierce, mysterious battle; but whereas the youthful David appears to breathe forth a triumphant defiance, his later conceptions, such as the brooding athletes of the Sistine Chapel, the Louvre captives writhing in their bonds, the sombre giants of the Medicean tombs, and the terror-stricken figures of the Last Judgment, appear to be weighed down and overshadowed by the consciousness of inevitable doom. What was formerly a brave, fearless fight becomes a hopeless struggle of Titans against Fate.

Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner are the elements of Michelangelo's style. As painter, as sculptor, as architect he attempted—and above any other man succeeded—to unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts with the utmost simplicity and breadth.

His line is uniformly grand; character and beauty are admitted only as far as they can be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, even meanness and deformity, are by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rises from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generations; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants. In that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which exhibits the origin, the progress and the final dispensations of theocracy, he may be regarded as the inventor of Epic painting.

Among the glorious titles which have borne the name of Michelangelo to so high a pitch of celebrity, the least popular is that derived from the composition of his poetical works. The best judges, however, regard these productions with profound esteem. For Michelangelo lived during the "golden age" of the Lingua Toscana, and among the poets who filled the interval between the publication of the Orlando and that of the Aminta—first, in order of date, of the poems of Torquato Tasso—not one has raised himself above, nor, perhaps, to the level of Michelangelo.

Michelangelo's architectural works reveal the same characteristics which excite our admiration when contemplating his paintings or his marbles, namely, simplicity and grandeur. Although he always protested that architecture, like painting, was not his profession, he stood head and shoulders above Bramante or any other architect of his time, and the majestic cupola of the greatest temple in Christendom is a sufficient proof of his genius.

Although Michelangelo left no school in the narrower sense of the word, his influence upon art, and, what is even more important, on the minds of men, has undoubtedly been greater than that of any other master, and successive generations will agree with an illustrious contemporary, Ariosto, in proclaiming him

Michel, più che mortal, Angel divino.