The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 09

by Unknown

But he who bears the palm from all [says Vasari with an enthusiasm which all posterity has echoed], whether of the living or the dead; he who transcends and eclipses every other, is the divine Michelangelo Buonarotti, who takes the first place, not in one of these arts only, but in all three. This master surpasses and excels not only all those artists who have well-nigh surpassed nature herself, but even all the most famous masters of antiquity, who did, beyond all doubt, vanquish her most gloriously; he alone has triumphed over the later as over the earlier, and even over Nature herself, which one could scarcely imagine to be capable of exhibiting anything, however extraordinary, however difficult, that he would not, by the force of his most divine genius, and by the power of his art, design, judgment, diligence, and grace, very far surpass and excel; nor does this remark apply to painting and the use of colours only, wherein are, nevertheless, compromised all corporeal forms, all bodies, direct or curved, palpable or impalpable, visible or invisible, but to the exceeding roundness and relief of his statues also. Fostered by the power of his art, and cultivated by his labours, the beautiful and fruitful plant has already put forth many and most noble branches, which have not only filled the world with the most delicious fruits, in unwonted profusion, but have also brought three noble arts to so admirable a degree of perfection, that we may safely affirm the statues of this master to be, in all their parts, more beautiful than the antique. If the heads, hands, arms, or feet of the one be placed in comparison with those of the other, there will be found in those of the modern a more exact rectitude of principle, a grace more entirely graceful, a much more absolute perfection, in short, there is also in the manner, a certain facility in the conquering of difficulties, than which it is impossible even to imagine anything better; and what is here said applies equally to his paintings, for if it were possible to place these face to face with those of the most famous Greeks and Romans, thus brought into comparison, they would still further increase in value, and be esteemed to surpass those of the ancients in as great a degree as his sculptures excel all the antique.[d]

Painting, sculpture, and architecture, with fortification, theology, and poetry, employed by turns the universal genius of the great Florentine. Born of a distinguished family, who reluctantly gave way to his inclination, he was first instructed in painting: and for his study of this art as well as of sculpture, the antiques in Florence and Rome, and the anatomy of the human body, were actively laid under contribution. Indeed, his profound anatomical knowledge gave at once the most prominent feature to his style of design, and the most dangerous of the examples which he furnished to his indiscriminating imitators; and among his grandest figures some are exact reproductions of the Torso of the Belvedere. The influence which this extraordinary man exercised over every department of art, was as great in painting as in any of his other pursuits; but his predilection for sculpture, assisted perhaps by other motives, diverted him from the use of the pencil, and his works were consequently few.

He despised oil-painting, and it is doubtful whether there exists a single genuine picture of his executed in that way. Florence contains a doubtful piece in oils representing the Fates, and a composition of a Holy Family in distemper, which is acknowledged to be that which he produced for Angelo Doni. But several masterpieces, still extant, are believed to have been painted after his designs. Rome contains two of these,—Daniele da Volterra’s Deposition from the Cross, in the church of the Trinità de’ Monti, and an Annunciation by Marco Venusti, in the sacristy of the Lateran. The finest, however, of all the works in which his assistance has been traced, is the oil-painting of the Raising of Lazarus, executed by the Venetian Fra Sebastiano del Piombo, who, after acquiring great excellence in his native school, went to Rome and studied design under Buonarroti. He was prompted to attempt the Lazarus by his master, who desired to eclipse, by a union of Florentine drawing with Venetian colour, the great picture of the Transfiguration, on which Raphael was then engaged. Michelangelo unquestionably designed the principal group in Sebastiano’s piece; and the strength of expression, the grandeur of composition and style, and the anatomical knowledge, favour the belief that he actually painted a great part of it. The figure of Lazarus, seated on his coffin, assisting in disengaging himself from the grave-clothes, and gazing up at the Saviour in the first return of consciousness, amazed, grateful, and adoring, is in every respect inspired by the patriarchal sublimity and powerful expression which belong to the master.

But Buonarroti’s genius shone forth unclouded in his immense series of paintings in fresco, which still adorn Rome in the Sistine chapel of the Vatican. Their history is as characteristic as the works themselves. Before leaving Florence he had begun, and he afterwards at intervals finished, a work which, now lost, is described as having more than any other evinced his anatomical skill and power of expression. This was the famous cartoon of Pisa, figuring the Florentine soldiers bathing in the Arno and called to arms on a sudden attack by the Pisans. In 1504 Julius II invited him to Rome and employed him as a sculptor; but some years later the same pontiff ordered him to paint in fresco the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Dissatisfied with his assistants he executed the whole of the immense ceiling with his own hands, in the space of twenty months, finishing it in 1512 or 1513. The universal admiration excited by this stupendous work did not tempt the artist to prosecute painting further; and his next great undertaking, the Last Judgment, which fills the end of the same chapel, was not commenced till the pontificate of Paul III, and was completed, after eight years’ labour, in 1541. His last frescoes, the Crucifixion of Saint Peter and the Conversion of Saint Paul, both in the Pauline chapel of the Vatican, were the offspring of old age, and bodily, though not mental, exhaustion.

The frescoes of the Sistine chapel represent, from the pages of the Bible, the outlines of the religious history of man. The spirit which animates them is the stern awfulness of the Hebrew prophets; the milder graces of the new covenant glimmer faintly and unfrequently through; the beauty and repose of classicism are all but utterly banished. The master’s idea of godhead is that of superhuman strength in action, and the divinity which he thus conceives he imparts to all his figures of the human race. The work, as a whole, is one which no other mind must venture to imitate; but of those very qualities which make it dangerous as a model in art, none could be removed without injuring its severe sublimity.

Raphael

(1483-1520)

The ceiling is divided into numerous compartments, each of which contains a scene selected from the Old Testament:—the Creator forming the elements, the earth, the first man;—the creation of Eve, and the fall of man, in which feminine grace for a moment visits the fancy of the artist;—the expulsion from Eden;—the deluge, and the subsequent history of Noah;—the brazen serpent, the triumphs of David and of Judith, and the symbolical history of Jonah. The absorbed greatness which animates the principal figures of these groups, is repeated in the ornamental divisions of the ceiling, where are the Sibyls, and those unparalleled figures of the prophets, which are the highest proofs of the painter’s religious grandeur.

The Last Judgment, a colossal composition, sixty feet in height by thirty in breadth, and embracing an almost countless number of figures, is a more ambitious and also a more celebrated work, but is far from being so completely successful. No artist but Michelangelo could have made it what it is; but it might have been made much greater by him,—the painter of the Eve, the Delphic Sibyl, the Lazarus, and the Prophets. Its faults are many;—an entire absence of beauty and of repose;—vagueness and monotony of character, which is increased by the general nudity of the figures;—ostentatious display of academic attitudes and anatomy;—and, in some prominent personages, especially the Judge, an absolute meanness and grossness of conception. The merits of this wonderful monument of genius are less easily enumerated. Its heaven is not the heaven either of art or of religion; but its hell is more terribly sublime than anything which imagination ever framed. Vast as the piece is, its composition is simple and admirable, and nothing ever approached to its perfect unity of sentiment. Every thought and emotion are swallowed up in one idea,—the presence of the righteous Judge: with the exception of a single unobtrusive group composed by a reunited wife and husband, every one in the crowd of the awakened dead stands solitary, waiting for his doom.