All extremes touch each other: languid praise and frigid censure belong to the paths of mediocrity, but he who enlarges the circle of knowledge, passes from the realm of talents to that of genius, leaps on an undiscovered or long-lost shore, and stamps it with his name, commands indiscriminate homage, and provokes irreconcilable censure. He who reflects on the "Più che Uman, Angelo divino" of Ariosto, the "via terribile" of Agostino Carracci, and for centuries on the general homage of a nation allowed to legislate in art, will not be easily persuaded that these epithets, this prerogative, were granted to an artist merely for correctness of design or anatomic discrimination, or that he exclusively obtained them for uniting sculpture, painting, and architecture in himself; three branches of one stem, and diverging only in mechanism and application, they have been more than once eminently united by others, and were seldom altogether separated before the time of Carlo Maratta. And yet this is all on which the eminence of Michael Angelo has been hitherto supposed to rest, all that can be gathered from the astrologic nonsense and the Tuscan loquacity of his blind adorer, Vasari—and what he found not, it would be time idly lost to search for in his contemporaries and successors, down to Reynolds, who, though chiefly smitten with the breadth of Michael Angelo, knew him better than all the copyists of his school.
The art preceded Michael Angelo as a craft; more or less practice alone distinguishes Pietro Perugino from Cimabue: whilst copy and imitation remain synonymes, there can be no choice in art; instead of the real nature it will copy the accidents of objects, and substitute the model for the man.
Michael Angelo appeared and soon felt that the candidate of legitimate fame is to build his works, not on the imbecile forms of a degenerate race, disorganized by clime, country, education, laws, and society; not on the transient refinements of fashion or local sentiment, unintelligible beyond their circle and century to the rest of mankind; but to graft them on Nature's everlasting forms and those general feelings of humanity, which no time can efface, no mode of society obliterate;—and in consequence of these reflections discovered the epic part of painting: that basis, that indestructibility of forms and thoughts, that simplicity of machinery on which Homer defied the ravages of time, which sooner or later must sweep to oblivion every work propped by baser materials and factitious refinements.
The subject of the Sistine Chapel is Theocracy and Religion, the Origin and the first Duty of Man. All minute discrimination of character is alien to the primeval simplicity of the moment—God and Man alone appear. The veil of Eternity is rent; Time, Space, and Matter teem; life darts from God, and adoration from the creature; deviation from this principle is the origin of Evil; the economy of Justice and Grace commences; Prophets and Sibyls in awful synod are the heralds of the Redeemer, and the host of patriarchs the pedigree of the Son of Man. The brazen Serpent and the fall of Haman, the Giant subdued by the Stripling, and the Conqueror destroyed by female weakness, are types of His mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces Him immortal, and the magnificence of the Last Judgement sums up the whole and re-unites the Founder and the race.
Michael Angelo, in his Last Judgement, with a few exceptions, has wound up the life of man, considered as the subject of religion, faithful or rebellious; and in a generic manner has distributed happiness and misery.
The more finished a character, the more, discriminated by his actions and turn of thought from his contemporaries, he pursues paths of his own, so much the more he attracts, so much the more he repels; the ardour of the one is equal to the violence of the other: he is not merely disliked, he is detested by all who have no sense for him; whilst by those who enter his train of thought, or sympathise with him, he is adored. Indifference has no share in what relates to him, it is a softer word for antipathy—it resembles the indifference of a female wooed; her indifference, her apathy, is a refusal without a verbal repulse. Where yes or no must decide, the mouth that can form neither, rejects. The principles, the style of Michael Angelo, are of that so closely-connected magnitude, that they are either all true or all false: pretended gold is either gold or not—the purer, the simpler a substance, the less it can coalesce with another; a pretended diamond of the size of a fist, is either of inestimable value or of none. If Michael Angelo did not establish art on a solid basis, he subverted it; he can claim only the heresies of paradox and receive their reward—disgust.
What Armenini relates as a proof of his nearly intuitive power of conception and execution, may be repeated as a much stronger instance of his deference and gratitude for the most humble claims. "Meeting one day, behind S. Pietro, with a young Ferrarese, a potter who had baked some model of his, M. Angelo thanked him for his care, and in return offered him any service in his power: the young man, emboldened by his condescension, fetched a sheet of paper, and requested him to draw the figure of a standing Hercules: M. Angelo took the paper, and retiring to a small shed near by, put his right foot on a bench, and with his elbow on the raised knee and his face on his hand stood meditating a little while, then began to draw the figure, and having finished it in a short time, beckoned to the youth, who stood waiting at a small distance, to approach, gave it him, and went away toward Belvedere. That design, as far as I was then able to judge, in precision of outline, shadow, and finish, no miniature could excel; it afforded matter of astonishment to see accomplished in a few minutes what might have been reasonably supposed to have taken up the labour of a month."
After the demise of Raffaello, legislation in Art was no longer disputed with M. Angelo; he not only became the oracle of youth, but appears to have inherited all the popularity of his great rival. A signal, though little known proof of this, is told by Bellori, in the Life of Federigo Barrocci, who, he says, used to tell, that when, drawing one day in company with Taddeo Zuccari a frieze of Polidoro, Michael Angelo, as usual, passed by on his little mule on his way to the palace, all the youths rose and ran to meet him with their drawings in their hands; Federigo alone remained bashfully behind in his place, which when Taddeo saw, he took his little portfolio to Michael Angelo, who attentively examined the designs, among which was a careful copy of his Moses; he praised it, and desiring to see the lad who had drawn that figure, animated him to pursue the method of study which he had begun.
The deference which he paid to the unassuming and the humble, he amply redeemed by the full assumption of his rights, and conscious assertion of superiority, when provoked to the contest by those who considered themselves as his equals, entered into competition with him, or attempted to share in his labours. Thus he repaid the sarcasms of Pietro Perugino, by calling him publicly a dunce in art; and when Pietro smarting, impatient of the ridicule, summoned him to the Tribunal of the Eight, he made good his charge, and saw him dismissed with contempt. Thus he rejected all partnership with Jacopo Sansovino, in the execution of the Facciata of San Lorenzo at Florence, though Leone X. appears to have intended it, by sending both together to Pietra Santa to provide the marbles necessary for that purpose, and examining both their models.
When Paolo III. had resolved on the fortifications of the Borgo, and, in order to ascertain the best mode of doing it, had assembled many persons of rank, with Antonio da Sangallo, Michael Angelo, as architect of the fortifications of S. Miniato at Florence, was likewise invited to join the assembly, and, after much contest, his opinion asked; he freely told it, though contrary to that of Sangallo and others present; and when the architect bade him to be content with the prerogatives of sculpture and painting without pretending to skill in fortification, he replied, that of the former two he knew little, but that of fortification, considering the time his mind had dwelt on it, and the proofs he had given of the solidity of his theory, he did not hesitate to claim more knowledge than what came to the share of Sangallo and all his relatives; and then proceeded, in the presence of all, to point out the many errors which Antonio had committed.