"The study on the reverse of the leaf is more lightly executed; it represents a man of powerful frame, carrying a hog or boar in his arms before him, the upper part of his body thrown back to balance the weight, his head hidden by that of the animal, which rests on the man's right shoulder.
"The power displayed in every line and touch of these drawings is inimitable—the head was in truth one of the 'teste divine,' and the hand which executed it the 'mano terribile,' so enthusiastically alluded to by Vasari."
234. Passing, for the moment, by No. 10, a "young woman of majestic character, marked by a certain expression of brooding melancholy," and "wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban;"—by No. 11, a bearded man, "wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open," and his expression "obstreperously animated;"—and by No. 12, "a middle-aged or old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair," we will go on to the fairer examples of Divine heads in No. 32.
"This splendid sheet of studies is probably one of the 'carte stupendissime di teste divine,' which Vasari says (Vita, p. 272) Michel Angelo executed, as presents or lessons for his artistic friends. Not improbably it is actually one of those made for his friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who, when young, was desirous of learning to draw."
But it is one of the chief misfortunes affecting Michael Angelo's reputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has a natural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. And this sheet of Vasari's "teste divine" contains, in fact, not a single drawing of high quality—only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricatured heads, one of a satyr with hair like the fur of animals, and one of a monstrous and sensual face, such as could only have occurred to the sculptor in a fatigued dream, and which in my own notes I have classed with the vile face in No. 45.
235. Returning, however, to the divine heads above it, I wish you to note "the most conspicuous and important of all," a study for one of the Genii behind the Sibylla Libyca. This Genius, like the young woman of a majestic character, and the man with his mouth open, wears a cap, or turban; opposite to him in the sheet, is a female in profile, "wearing a hood of massive drapery." And, when once your attention is directed to this point, you will perhaps be surprised to find how many of Michael Angelo's figures, intended to be sublime, have their heads bandaged. If you have been a student of Michael Angelo chiefly, you may easily have vitiated your taste to the extent of thinking that this is a dignified costume; but if you study Greek work, instead, you will find that nothing is more important in the system of it than a finished disposition of the hair; and as soon as you acquaint yourself with the execution of carved marbles generally, you will perceive these massy fillets to be merely a cheap means of getting over a difficulty too great for Michael Angelo's patience, and too exigent for his invention. They are not sublime arrangements, but economies of labor, and reliefs from the necessity of design; and if you had proposed to the sculptor of the Venus of Melos, or of the Jupiter of Olympia, to bind the ambrosial locks up in towels, you would most likely have been instantly bound, yourself; and sent to the nearest temple of Æsculapius.
236. I need not, surely, tell you,—I need only remind,—how in all these points, the Venetians and Correggio reverse Michael Angelo's evil, and vanquish him in good; how they refuse caricature, rejoice in beauty, and thirst for opportunity of toil. The waves of hair in a single figure of Tintoret's (the Mary Magdalen of the Paradise) contain more intellectual design in themselves alone than all the folds of unseemly linen in the Sistine chapel put together.
In the fourth and last place, as Tintoret does not sacrifice, except as he is forced by the exigencies of display, the face for the body, so also he does not sacrifice happiness for pain. The chief reason why we all know the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, and not the "Paradise" of Tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the Inferno of Dante, and not his Paradise; and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence is due to the fact that Michael Angelo has invested all his figures with picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while Tintoret has only made them lovely in themselves and has been content that they should deserve, not demand, your attention.
237. You are accustomed to think the figures of Michael Angelo sublime—because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and mysterious—because in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like specters, but never like human beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what I told you long since—man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. He cannot raise his form into anything better than God made it, by giving it either the flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or heaping it into multitude. Your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in a straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus; an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air; and the much-denounced pre-Raphaelite faith that a saint cannot look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than Michael Angelo's, that a Sybil cannot look Sibylline unless she has thick ones.
238. All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. Light is, in reality, more awful than darkness—modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of Antæus, or thunder-clouds of Ætna.