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.