THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH THE CHILD SAINT JOHN
THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE
(By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence)
The Florentine love of bas-relief explains to some extent their extreme devotion to the tondo, or circular shape, in paintings and in sculptures. According to Vasari, it was at this time that Michael Angelo carved two tondi: one for Bartolommeo Pitti, now in the Bargello at Florence, and the other for Taddeo Taddei, now at Burlington House, in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy, London. It was acquired by Sir George Beaumont, and is the most valuable work the Academy possesses. If it were in an out-of-the-way palace in Florence many of us would see it more frequently than we do now, although we have only to climb a few steps to visit this glorious work any day we are in Piccadilly. Both of these reliefs represent the Madonna and Child, with the child St. John. The one in the Bargello appears to be the earlier; the composition is very beautiful and simple, and fills the circular space admirably. The Madonna is seated facing the spectator, and looks out full towards him with an enigmatical expression on her proud features; the Child stands beside her, His elbow on her knee, as in the Bruges Madonna. The St. John is only roughly cut, but the movement and forms are so well realised under the marble that one does [pg 122]not wish for any further finish. In the Royal Academy tondo the Madonna is seated more to the side of the circle, and is in profile; the Child reclines upon her knee, clinging to her arm, startled but interested by the little bird St. John has brought to show Him (a favourite motive with Italian artists). The head and shoulders of the Madonna and the torso of the Child Jesus are the only parts that are near completion, yet the whole group is so much there that we do not ask for another touch; in fact, the works of Michael Angelo were finished from the very first strokes. The rough charcoal drawing upon the block of marble, could we see it, would have been complete to us, only Michael Angelo could add anything to it; and so it is with every fragment of stone or other piece of work by his hand, from the lightest charcoal drawing to the great marble fragments in the grotto of the Boboli Gardens. They are complete to us; the thing he thought is there, and the art is there, and we are satisfied.
THE HOLY FAMILY
THE UFFIZI, FLORENCE
(Reproduced by permission from a photograph by Sig. D. Anderson, Rome)
Another tondo executed about this time is the painting now in the Uffizi, the only easel picture known with certainty to be by the hand of Michael Angelo. This Holy Family, with naked shepherds in the background, was painted for Angelo Doni, the same man whose portrait was painted by Raphael. Vasari says that Michael Angelo asked seventy ducats for the work, but that Doni only offered forty when the picture was delivered. Michael Angelo sent word that he must pay a hundred or send back the picture. Doni offered the original seventy; but Michael Angelo replied that if he was bent on bargaining, he should not pay less than one hundred and forty. In this composition the Madonna is seated upon the ground, forming a pyramid, of which the heads of Joseph and the [pg 123]Child form the apex; her lithe and strong form has a Greek loveliness as she turns quickly and receives the beautiful Child on to her shoulder from the arms of Joseph. Never in any painting have the drawing and modelling of the human figure been so perfectly executed as in the figure of this Child and the arms of the Madonna; the hands and feet are modelled with the delicacy of a Flemish miniature, and at the same time have a beauty and suavity of modelling and a magnificent choice of line altogether Italian. On either side of the central triangle the spaces between it and the circumference of the tondo are filled by the introduction of the infant St. John and some nude shepherds; the landscape background is austere as the mountain tops of some primeval world where such titanic beings as these of Michael Angelo's alone could dwell. The old painters loved to decorate their Madonna pictures with all the most beautiful things they could think of, or most loved. The Florentines with fair and pleasant gardens; the Umbrians with spacious colonnades, distant landscapes, and rare skies; the Venetians with fruits and garlands of foliage and fruit, and even vegetables, if they had a particular regard for them, as Crivelli had for the cucumber. One painter only before this time decorated his pictures with nude human figures, Luca Signorelli. Michael Angelo may have seen a Madonna of his, with two nude figures in the background, executed for Lorenzo de' Medici, and now hung in the Gallery of the Uffizi. Michael Angelo, who knew the beauty of the human form better than any one, would never be content to decorate his tondo with any less beautiful offering after seeing this picture by Signorelli. The tondo form was a favourite one with Signorelli. His [pg 124]two pictures of this shape in Florence perhaps helped Michael Angelo in the three compositions we have been considering; and this is the only debt Michael Angelo owes to the Umbrian painter. Their way of looking at the nude and their ideals of its beauty are so absolutely different, the one from the other, that possibly the Florentine could hardly bear to look at the work of the Umbrian.
