THE RAPE OF DEIANEIRA AND THE BATTLE OF THE CENTAURS
CASA BUONARROTI, FLORENCE
(By permission of the Fratelli Alinari. Florence)
By good fortune, Michael Angelo attracted the notice of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as Condivi has related;[65] and thus at the age of fifteen years he entered the most cultured house in Italy and there acquired that distinction of style that he kept all through his life, both in his art and his manner. In these halcyon days at this hospitable table Michael Angelo met such men as Massilio Ficino, the interpreter of Plato; Pico della Mirandola, the phoenix of erudition; Luigi Pulci and Angelo Poliziano—the latter is supposed to have incited Michael Angelo to carve the bas-relief[66] now in the Casa Buonarroti, [pg 103]called by Condivi "The rape of Deianeira and the battle of the Centaurs." This is the earliest work that we know from the master's hand to which we can give a date; it already shows his double love for the Hellenistic and for the Tuscan styles. The degree of relief is alto-rilievo, like those on the Roman sarcophagi and the pulpits of the Pisani; in shape it is almost as high as it is long; this unusual proportion is similar to some of the divisions of the bronze reliefs in the Donatello pulpits at San Lorenzo. The struggling figures, Centaurs, and Lapithæ, already exhibit Michael Angelo's power over rhythm of line in a crowded composition as in the later groups of "Moses raising the Serpent in the Wilderness," and "The Last Judgment," both in the Sistine Chapel. The method is extraordinarily free for so young a sculptor; he evidently thinks out his work as it proceeds; his delight in the beauty of the male human form is shown in every figure. Some critics have been unable to distinguish the figure of Deianeira, as her form has been so little differentiated or emphasised by the master. She is towards the left of the [pg 104]composition; a man holds her by the hair of her head. The centre figures and the two at the lower corners remind us forcibly of the pulpits of San Lorenzo.
THE ANGEL AT THE SHRINE OF SAINT DOMINIC
BOLOGNA
(By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence)
Vasari mentions another bas-relief executed at this period, a seated Madonna with the Infant Jesus, in the manner of Donatello; the inferior bas-relief, now in the Casa Buonarroti, is said to be this work. If the club-shaped feet and thick hands of the Madonna are compared with the beautiful long feet and graceful hands of the angel holding a candlestick, at San Domenico, in Bologna, certainly by Michael Angelo, it cannot be supposed that these two works were either executed or even designed by the same artist. The pose of the Holy Child in the Madonna bas-relief has been arranged by some one who has seen "The Day" on the tomb of Giuliano at San Lorenzo; in the background are children on a stairway, somewhat in the style of Donatello, but they are more like imitations of the later works of Michael Angelo. The folds of the draperies are like the folds of some silken material, whereas the folds of the robe of the angel at San Domenico are large, like the folds of a blanket, a characteristic of all the draperies designed by the master. This bas-relief, now in the Casa Buonarroti, was presented to Cosimo dè Medici, first Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Michael Angelo's nephew Leonardo,[67] as a work by his uncle, but we do not know that Leonardo was a good judge of his uncle's works, and this bas-relief was supposed to have been executed more than fifty years before its presentation; afterwards it came back into the possession of the Buonarroti family, and was presented by [pg 105]them to the city of Florence along with the house in Via Ghibellina.