A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

790. THE ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST.

Michael Angelo (Florentine: 1475-1564).

Michelangelo (commonly anglicised as above) Buonarroti (which surname, however, is commonly dropped) is the Titan of Italian art. He was the rival of Raphael; and amongst the artists who were present at the unveiling of his great statue of David were Perugino, Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo da Vinci, and Filippino Lippi. He lived through the fall of Rome and Florence, and survived into the decadence of Italian art. In the many-sidedness of his genius he may be compared to Leonardo da Vinci. He was at once painter, sculptor, architect, and man of action. The greatness of his work was reflected in that of his character. He passed most of his life at Rome, amidst the petty intrigues of a debased Court; but he never placed his self-respect in jeopardy. Filial duty, too, was one of the mainsprings of his life. He lived most sparingly, and sent all the money he could save to support his father's family at Florence. "Whence they must pray God," he says in one of his letters, "that all his works may have good success." He was proud, and would brook no insult; and when Pope Julius left him with unpaid marbles and workmen on his hands, he mounted his horse and rode off to Florence. There are many stories, too, of the quiet sarcasm with which he would "reproach men for sin." "What does the raised hand denote?" Julius asked of a statue of himself. "You are advising the people of Bologna to be wise," was Michelangelo's reply. With all this, however, he was for the most part above the jealousy of other artists. When commissioned to paint the Sixtine Chapel, he urged that Raphael would be a more fit person to execute so great a work; and when he was appointed architect of St. Peter's he refused to permit any material alteration of Bramante's design, though Bramante had perpetually intrigued against him. Michelangelo was a poet also (his sonnets have been translated by J. A. Symonds), his poetry being partly inspired by Vittoria Colonna, widow of the Marquis of Pescara, to whom late in life he became attached, and whose friendship, until her death in 1547, was the solace of his lonely labours.

It is only in Florence and in Rome that the work of Michelangelo can be studied. Our Gallery is fortunate, however, in having two easel pictures, which, whether entirely from his own hand or not, are eminently characteristic of his style. The South Kensington Museum and the Royal Academy each possess one example of his sculpture. His drawings are to be seen in several English collections, especially in that of the University of Oxford. A concise chronological summary may here be useful to recall to the reader's recollection the chief works of the master. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed for three years to Domenico Ghirlandaio to whom our picture, No. 809, was formerly ascribed. He made rapid advance in the art of painting, and showed also aptitude for sculpture; so that in 1489, before his apprenticeship was out, Domenico recommended him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who had founded a school of sculpture in the garden of his villa. Here, in the society and service of Lorenzo, Michelangelo remained for four years. Lorenzo's unworthy successor Piero employed the young artist only on unworthy commissions, setting him on one occasion, it is said, to make a statue of snow; a tradition which inspires a noble passage in Ruskin's Political Economy of Art, as also in Mrs. Browning's Casa Guidi Windows. In 1493 Michelangelo removed to Bologna, returning in the next year to Florence, where he produced a "Sleeping Cupid," which was sold in Rome as a veritable antique. This induced him, in 1496, to try his fortune in the Papal capital. To this period belong his statue of "Cupid," now at South Kensington, the "Bacchus" in the Bargello at Florence, and the noble "Pietà" in St. Peter's at Rome. By these works he attained the position of the greatest sculptor in Italy, and on his return to Florence in 1501 he executed the colossal statue of "David," now in the Accademia. Works of about the same time are the round marble relief in the possession of the Royal Academy, and our picture No. 809. The circular "Madonna and Child," now in the Uffizi, belongs to 1504. In the same year he received a commission to paint one wall of the Palazzo Vecchio. The painting was never executed; but Michelangelo's cartoon for it,—known as the "Cartoon of Pisa"—excited great admiration for its treatment of the human figure. In 1505 began Michelangelo's stormy relations with the imperious Pope, Julius II. For two years he was employed on a great bronze statue of the Pontiff, which was afterwards cast as a cannon and used against the Pope by the Bolognese. In 1508, being then thirty-three, Michelangelo was commissioned by Julius to paint the ceiling of the Sixtine Chapel. In this great work, which was finished on November 1, 1512, the artist set forth, in the vehicle of the human form, his conception of the creation, and the early history of the world, with reference to man's final redemption and salvation. The frescoes have in our time been admirably photographed, and the figures of the Prophets and Sibyls, who sit enthroned in niches round the vault, are very widely known. The paintings caused Michelangelo to suspend his labour on the mausoleum of Julius—a work which gave him an infinity of labour and vexation, and which was never finished. The great figure of "Moses," now in S. Pietro in Vincoli, and the "Captives," in the Louvre, were designed for this monument. During the nine years' pontificate of Leo X. (1513-22), Michelangelo was mostly employed in the unworthy occupation of procuring marble from the quarries of Pietra Santa for the façade of the church of San Lorenzo at Florence. The short reign of Adrian VI. succeeded, and Michelangelo went on working for a time at the monument to Julius. He was also employed on the works of the Medici Chapel at Florence. In 1523 when Clement VII. succeeded, the artist was put to various architectural works. Stormy years followed, and Michelangelo quitted the Medici statues to defend his native city. He was appointed director of fortifications, and was entrusted also with diplomatic missions. When in 1530 Florence was treacherously yielded to the Medici, Michelangelo lay for some time in concealment. Clement, however, gave him his pardon, and ordered him to resume work on the Medici chapel in San Lorenzo. He worked, as he says, with "morbid haste" but saddened heart, and thus were completed his most impressive productions in sculpture—the four great recumbent figures for the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici. In 1534 Clement died. Michelangelo flung down his mallet, and set foot in Florence no more. But "a new Eurystheus arose for our Hercules." The artist hoped to complete the mausoleum of Julius. But the new Pope, Paul III., set him to work upon the fresco of the Last Judgment, on the altar wall of the Sixtine Chapel. In this mighty work, containing 314 figures, which occupied him from 1534 to 1542, the painter "devoted his terrible genius to a subject worthy of the times in which he lived." Since he had first listened, while a youth, to the prophecies of Savonarola, the woes announced in that apocalypse had all come true. To Michelangelo, Christ came as an avenger, vindictive and implacable, and the lost souls fall before his wrath in every contortion of nudity. After the painting of the "Last Judgment," one more great labour was reserved for Michelangelo. He was called upon to succeed Antonio da San Gallo as architect of St. Peter's, a post which he continued to hold under succeeding Popes until his death. "The dome of St. Peter's, as seen from Tivoli or the Alban hills, like a cloud upon the Campagna, is his; but he has no share in the façade which screens it from the Piazza." His last poem declared the vanity of the art which was his glory, and his dying words to his household were these; "In your passage through this life remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ." His body was taken, as he had desired, to Florence, and he lies in Santa Croce.

To the artistic genius of Michelangelo, a few out of innumerable tributes may here be mentioned. Raphael "thanked God that he was born in the days of Michelangelo," and Sir Joshua Reynolds says, in his Discourses, that "to kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man." His knowledge of the human body and his power of representing it were supreme. "If a combination of the most exquisite finish in drawing and modelling which allows the work to bear the closest inspection in its details, with the utmost simplicity, breadth, and clearness of effect in a distant view, constitute, as I believe they do, the elements of perfect work, I must assert positively," says Sir Edward Poynter, "that Michelangelo is the most perfect of workmen." This workmanship was employed with consummate dramatic effect. "He considered figures the highest means of telling a story; he concentrated his powers on the single important point of expression, so that he had no need of accessories to help him out with his story" (Lectures on Art). But above all the work of Michelangelo was the expression of "a vast imaginative gift, the stormy poetry of his mind." His works, says Ruskin, "have borne and in themselves retain and exercise the same inexplicable power—inexplicable because proceeding from an imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes whither we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows out of the invisible, and holds on his God home" (Modern Painters, vol. ii. "Of Imagination Penetrative"). "About the qualities of his genius," says Symonds, "opinions may and 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 thought 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" (Life of Michelangelo, ii. 373). On his successors the influence of Michelangelo was not happy. They could imitate his mannerisms, but not his manner. They had not his imagination, but they could copy the violent attitudes in which he clothed his Titanic thoughts. The anatomical studies which with him were the groundwork for his imagination to build upon became in their hands the final object of their art. (Among those who have been alternately fascinated and repelled by Michelangelo was Ruskin. His case against Michelangelo is contained in the pamphlet entitled The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret. But some of Ruskin's critics forget that the pamphlet was meant to be read in conjunction with his own earlier praise in Modern Painters, and with Mr. Tyrwhitt's appreciation in Christian Art and Symbolism. "These lectures," said Ruskin, in his preface to that book, "show throughout the most beautiful and just reverence for Michael Angelo, and are of especial value in their account of him; while the last lecture on sculpture, which I gave at Oxford, is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which his genius itself failed, and perverted that of other men. But Michael Angelo is great enough to make praise and blame alike necessary, and alike inadequate").

One of the many unfinished works, which, as Vasari tells us, Michelangelo left behind him in painting as in sculpture. Its history is interesting. It was formerly in the gallery of Cardinal Fesch, which was sold and dispersed after his death. From its unfinished state and neglected condition it attracted little attention, and was bought literally "dirt cheap" by Mr. Macpherson, an English gentleman established as a photographer in Rome. After the dirt upon its face had been removed, it was submitted to competent judges, who unhesitatingly pronounced it to be the work of Michelangelo. The discovery caused a great sensation. A law-suit was instituted against Mr. Macpherson for the recovery of the picture, which was sequestrated pending the decision of the Roman courts. After some years he obtained a judgment in his favour, removed the picture to England, and sold it to the National Gallery for £2000. Peter von Cornelius, the eminent German painter, in evidence in the law-suit declared it to be "una cosa preziosa—un vero originale di Michelangelo."[183]

However this may be, the picture is entirely characteristic of the school of Michelangelo. What we notice in it most is not the features of the Maries, but the rendering of the corpse, in all its flaccid limbs and muscles:—

"Take the heads from a painting of Angelico,—very little but drapery will be left;—drapery made redundant in quantity and rigid in fold, that it may conceal the forms, and give a proud or ascetic reserve to the actions of the bodily frame. Bellini and his school, indeed, rejected at once the false theory and the easy mannerism of such religious design, and painted the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination, honourable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are by them always first thought of, and no action is given to it merely to show its beauty. Whereas the great culminating masters, and chiefly of these, Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, delight in the body for its own sake, and cast it into every conceivable attitude, often in violation of all natural probability, that they may exhibit the action of its skeleton and the contours of its flesh. Correggio and Tintoret learn the body from the living body, and delight in its breath, colour, and motion. Michael Angelo learned it essentially from the corpse, and had great pride in showing that he knew all its mechanism. The simplicity of the old religious art was rejected not because it was false, but because it was easy; and the dead Christ was thought of only as an available subject for the display of anatomy" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. iv.; Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret, passim).

The ideal of the painter has in fact changed. The picture is in its essence not a devotional work: it is a study in the dead nude.