Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

The artist was still at work on Moses. "This one statue is sufficient to be a worthy monument to Pope Julius," said the cardinal of Mantua. Paul III. refused to release Michael Angelo, and he began work on the Sistine Chapel.

The painting was not completed until nearly eight years had passed. There are three hundred figures and heads in this vast fresco. Says M. F. Sweetser, in his concise and excellent life of Michael Angelo, "About Christ are many renowned saints,—the Madonna, gazing mildly at the blessed and redeemed souls; Adam and Eve, curiously regarding the Judge; and a group of pleading apostles, bearing their emblems. These are surrounded by a vast throng of saints and martyrs, safe in Heaven, all of whom exemplify the saying that 'Michael Angelo nowhere admits, either into heaven or hell, any but the physically powerful.' Below the Judge are four angels blowing trumpets towards the four quarters of the universe, and four others holding the books by which the dead are to be judged. Under these the land and sea are giving up their dead.... As a work of art, the Last Judgment was one of the grandest productions of the famous art-century."

Biagio da Cesena, the pope's master of ceremonies, complained that so many naked figures made the painting more appropriate for bath-rooms and stables than for a chapel. What was the surprise of Biagio, when the painting was thrown open to the public, to find that the infernal judge Minos, with ass's ears, was his own portrait! He begged the pope to punish the artist; but Paul replied, "If the painter had placed thee in purgatory, I should have used every effort to help thee; but since he has put thee in hell, it is useless to have recourse to me, because ex infernis nulla est redemptio."

Paul IV. later complained that the figures were shamefully nude, and desired to have them covered. "Tell his Holiness," said Michael Angelo, "that this is a mere trifle, and can be easily done; let him mend the world, paintings are easily mended." Paul finally had the nude figures draped by Daniele da Volterra, who thereupon bore the nickname of "the breeches-maker."

While painting this picture, the artist fell from the scaffold and injured his leg seriously. He refused to allow anything to be done for him, but his friend, the surgeon Rontini, forced his way into the house, and cared for him until he recovered.

These eight years had been the happiest of Michael Angelo's life. Before this time he had been cold in manner, often melancholy, and sometimes overbearing; now he was gentle, cheerful, and affectionate. He had written home in early life, "I have no friends; I need none, and wish to have none." Now he had found, what every human being needs, a friend whose tastes and aspirations were like his own. At sixty, he met and loved Vittoria Colonna, a woman whose mind was henceforward to be his inspiration, and whose sweet nature was to be his rest and satisfaction forever. For such a mind as Michael Angelo's there are few kindred spirits. Fortunate was he that the blessed gift came, even though late in life.

Vittoria was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, and the widow of Marchese di Pescara, the two highest nobles and generals of her time. Tenderly reared and highly educated, she had married at nineteen, her husband soon after engaging in the wars of the time. He was wounded at Pavia, and died before his young wife could reach him. He was buried at Milan, but the body was afterwards removed to Naples with great magnificence.

Vittoria, childless, well-nigh heart-broken, turned to literature as her solace. She desired to enter a convent; but the bishop of Carpentros, afterwards a cardinal, and an intimate friend of Vittoria, hastened to Paul III., who forbade the abbess and nuns of San Silvestro, on pain of excommunication, to permit her to take the veil. Vittoria must not be lost to the world.

When her poems were published, says T. Adolphus Trollope, in his life of this charming woman, "copies were as eagerly sought for as the novel of the season at a nineteenth-century circulating library. Cardinals, bishops, poets, wits, diplomatists, passed them from one to another, made them the subject of their correspondence with each other and with the fair mourner."

Hallam says, "The rare virtues and consummate talents of this lady were the theme of all Italy in that brilliant age of her literature."