[137] He was very partial to this poet; whose flights of fancy he embodied in pen-drawings in a book, which, unfortunately for the art, has perished; and to whose memory he wished to sculpture a magnificent monument, as appears from a petition to Leo X. In it the Medicean Academy requests the bones of the divine poet; and among the subscribers we read the name of Michelangiolo, and also his offer. Gori Illustraz. alla vita del Condivi, p. 112.
[138] He projected a tract on "All the movements of the human body, on its external appearances, and on the bones, with an ingenious theory, the fruit of his long study." Condivi, p. 117.
[139] "Zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id amplius et augustius ratus; atque ut existimant Homerum secutus, cui validissima quæque forma etiam in fœminis placet." Inst. Orat. lib. xii. c. 10.
[140] None however of these great men presumed to despise Michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of Christ, in the Minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the Arte di Vedere. Mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. Juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (See Satire iii. v. 100.)
——"rides? majore cachinno Concutitur; flet si lacrymam conspexit amici, Nee dolet: igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas Accipit endromidem; si dixeris: æstuo, sudat."
[141] Bottari confesses "that he shews somewhat of mannerism, but concealed with such skill that it is not perceptible;" an art which very few of his imitators possess.
[142] See Winckelmann in his "Gems of Baron Stochs," where he records and comments upon the text of the historian, p. 316.
"Duo Dossi e quel che a par sculpe e colora Michel più che mortal Angiol divino." Orl. Fur. Cant. xxxiii. 2.
[144] Raffaello came to Florence towards the end of 1504. (Lett. Pitt. tom. i. p. 2.) In this year Michelangiolo was called to Rome, and left his cartoon imperfect. Having afterwards fled from Rome, through dread of Julius II., he completed it in three months, in the year 1506. Compare the Brief of Julius, in which he recals Michelangiolo (Lett. Pitt. tom. iii. p. 320), with the relation of Vasari (tom. vi. Ed. Fiorent. p. 191). During the time that Michelangiolo laboured at this work, "he was unwilling to shew it to any person (p. 182); and when it was finished it was carried to the hall of the Pope," and was there studied (p. 184). Raffaello had then returned to Florence, and this work might open the way to his new style, which, as a learned Englishman expresses it, is intermediate between that of Michelangiolo and of Perugino.