he laments the loss of his former creative power, and says that he has already felt the pangs of one death, while another is fast approaching. Nothing could be more pathetic than the spectacle of this strong creative spirit, already imprisoned in the iron embrace of death, yet struggling, like a Laocoon, against inevitable dissolution. Although nearly ninety years of age, Michelangelo would still walk abroad in all weathers, taking no precaution whatever. On February 14th, 1564, a friend of the master, Tiberio Calcagni, met him in the street on foot. It was raining hard, and Calcagni affectionately upbraided the old man for going about in such weather: "Leave me alone," cried Michelangelo fiercely, "I am ill, and cannot find rest anywhere."
He spent the next four days in an armchair near the fire, not complaining of any particular suffering, "quite composed and fully conscious," as Diomede Leoni wrote to Leonardo, "but oppressed with continual drowsiness." In order to shake it off, the brave old man tried to mount his horse and go for a ride, but he was too weak. Without a word he sat down again in his armchair, and on the afternoon of February 18th, 1564, a little before five o'clock, Michelangelo peacefully breathed his last. "He made his will in three words," says Vasari, "committing his soul into the hands of God, his body to the earth, and his goods to his nearest relatives."
Leonardo arrived in Rome three days after his uncle's death. He had some difficulty in fulfilling Michelangelo's wish to be buried in his native town, as the Romans, who had conferred the citizenship on the artist, would not allow his body to be removed. At last the remains were smuggled out of Rome in a bale of merchandise and conveyed to Florence, where they were buried with great pomp and solemnity in the church of Santa Croce. For some unaccountable reason the group of the Pietà which Michelangelo had intended for his monument, was not placed over his tomb. The present very ugly monument was designed by Vasari at Leonardo's request. It bears the following inscription:
D. O. M.
Michaeli Angelo BONAROTIO
Vetusta . Simoniorum . Familia
Sculptori . Pictori . et . Architecto
Fama . Omnibus . notissimo
Leonardus . patruo . Amantiss . et . de . se . optime . merito
Translatis . Roma . ejus . ossibus . atque . in . hoc . templo
Majorum . suorum . sepulcro . conditis
Cohortante. Seren. Cosmo. Med. Magno. Etrur. Duce. p. c.
Ann. Sal. M. D. LXX
Vixit. Ann. LXXXVIII. M. XI. D. XV.
Other monuments to Michelangelo exist in the church of the Santissimi Apostoli at Rome, and on the hill of San Miniato, overlooking Florence, which he so bravely defended. But the noblest monument of Michelangelo the artist are his undying works, and the highest praise of Michelangelo the man and the Christian is contained in these simple words of a contemporary, Scipione Ammirato, "During the ninety years of his life, and in spite of numberless temptations, Michelangelo never did or said anything that was not pure and great."
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.