[81] The whole of the gallery of Luxemburg by Rubens is but a branch of its magnificence: general as the elements, universal and permanent as the affections of human nature, allegory breaks the fetters of time, it unites with boundless sway mythologic, feodal, local incongruities, fleeting modes of society and fugitive fashions: thus, in the picture of Rubens, Minerva, who instructs, the Graces that surround the royal maiden at the poetic fount, are not what they are in Homer, the real tutress of Telemachus, the real dressers of Venus, they are the symbols only of the education which the princess received. In that sublime design of Michael Agnolo, where a figure is roused by a descending genius from his repose on a globe, on which he yet reclines, and with surprise discovers the phantoms of the passions which he courted, unmasked in wild confusion flitting round him, M. Agnolo was less ambitious to express the nature of a dream, or to bespeak our attention to its picturesque effect and powerful contrasts, than to impress us with the lesson, that all is vanity and life a farce, unless engaged by virtue and the pursuits of mind.
[82] L'Aurora Sonnacchiosa.
[83] Speaking of the figure of Christ by Raphael in the Madonna del Spasimo, he calls it "Una Figura d'un Carattere fra quel di Giove, e quello d'Apollo; quale effettivamente deve esser quello, che corrisponde a Cristo, aggiungendovi soltanto l'espressione accidentale della passione, in cui si rappresenta." Opere 11. 83.
[84] It is engraved by Villamena.
[85] The composition, and in some degree the lines, but neither its tone nor effect, may be found among the etchings, of Le Fevre.
[86] I cannot quit this picture without observing, that it presents the most incontrovertible evidence of the incongruities arising from the jarring coalition of the grand and ornamental styles. The group of Lazarus may be said to contain the most valuable relic of the classic time of modern, and perhaps the only specimen left of M. Agnolo's oil-painting; an opinion which will scarcely be disputed by him who has examined the manner of the Sistine Chapel, and in his mind compared it with the group of the Lazarus, and that with the style and treatment of the other parts.
[87] In a picture which he painted at Rome for Bindo Altoviti, it represented "Un Cristo quanto il vivo, levato di croce, e posto in terra a' piedi della Madre; e nell' aria Febo, che oscura la faccia del sole, e Diana quella della Luna. Nel paese poi, oscurato da queste Tenebre, si veggiono spezzarsi alcuni monti di pietra, mossi dal terremoto, e certi corpi morti di santi risorgendo, uscire de sepolcri in vari modi; il quale quadro, finito che fu, per sua grazia non dispiacque al maggior pittore, scultore, e architetto, che sia stato a' tempi nostri passati?"
The compliment was not paid to M. Agnolo himself, for the word "passati" tells that he was no more, but it levied a tribute on posterity.
Vita di Giorgio Vasari.