VI

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

In the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a supreme genius it could hardly hope to escape from the common lot of all things in nature, and begin to decline. After Botticelli and Leonardo, the works of Andrea del Sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than Michelangelo was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than Raphael of rivalling them.

Vasari prefaces his life to Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531) with something more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "At length we have come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the truly excellent Andrea del Sarto, in whom art and nature combined to show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and invention unite in one and the same person. Had he possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. But there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages, would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous in those of many other masters.

"His figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste. His airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. His draperies are marvellously beautiful. His nudes are admirably executed, simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring—nay, they are truly divine."

And yet? Well, let us turn to Michelangelo.

"While the best and most industrious artists," says Vasari, "were labouring by the light of Giotto and his followers to give the world examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous of imitating the perfection of Nature by the excellence of Art, they were struggling to attain that high comprehension which many call intelligence, and were universally toiling, but for the most part in vain, the Ruler of Heaven was pleased to turn the eyes of his clemency towards earth, and perceiving the fruitlessness of so many labours, the ardent studies pursued without any result, and the presumptuous self-sufficiency of men which is farther from truth than is darkness from light, he resolved, by way of delivering us from such great errors, to send to the world a spirit endowed with universality of power in each art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone what is the perfection of art in the sketch, the outline, the shadows, or the lights; one who could give relief to painting and with an upright judgment could operate as perfectly in sculpture; nay, who was so highly accomplished in architecture also, that he was able to render our habitations secure and commodious, healthy and cheerful, well-proportioned, and enriched with the varied ornaments of art."

A more prosaic passage follows presently, occasioned by the innuendoes of Condivi as to Vasari's intimacy with Michelangelo and his knowledge of the facts of his life at first hand. Vasari meets this accusation by quoting the following document relating to the apprenticeship of Michelangelo to Domenico Ghirlandaio when fourteen years old. "1488. I acknowledge and record this first day of April that I, Lodovico di Buonarroti, have engaged Michelangelo my son to Domenico and David di Tommaso di Currado for the three years next to come, under the following conditions: That the said Michelangelo shall remain with the above named all the said time, to the end that they may teach him to paint and to exercise their vocation, and that the above named shall have full command over him paying him in the course of these three years twenty-four florins as wages...."

Besides this teaching in his earliest youth, it is considered probable that in 1494, when he visited Bologna, he came under influences which resulted in the execution at about that time of the unfinished Entombment and the Holy Family, which are two of our greatest treasures in the National Gallery. As he took to sculpture, however, before he was out of Ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any activity in painting until 1506, when he was engaged on the designs for the great battle-piece for the Council Hall at Florence. The one easel picture of which Vasari makes any mention, the tondo in the Uffizi, is the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist. "The Florentine citizen, Angelo Doni," Vasari says, "desired to have some work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore Michelangelo began a circular painting of Our Lady for him. She is kneeling, and presents the Divine Child to Joseph. Here the artist has finely expressed the delight with which the Mother regards the beauty of her Son, as is clearly manifest in the turn of her head and fixedness of her gaze; equally evident is her wish that this contentment shall be shared by that pious old man who receives the babe with infinite tenderness and reverence. Nor was this enough for Michelangelo, since the better to display his art he has grouped several undraped figures in the background, some upright, some half recumbent, and others seated. The whole work is executed with so much care and finish that of all his pictures, which indeed are but few, this is considered the best."

After relating the story of the artist's quarrel with his friend over the price of this masterpiece (for which he at first only asked sixty ducats), Vasari goes on to describe the now lost cartoons for the great fresco in the Council Hall at Florence, in substance as follows:—