Excursions in Art and Letters

by William Wetmore Story

But whatever the interpretation to be given to these statues, in power, originality, and grandeur of character they have never been surpassed. It is easy to carp at their defects. Let them all be granted. They are contorted, uneasy, over-anatomical, untrue to nature. Viewed with the keen and searching eye of the critic, they are full of faults, e pur si muove. There is a lift of power, an energy of conception, a grandeur and boldness of treatment which redeems all defects. They are the work of a great mind, spurning the literal, daring almost the impossible, and using human form as a means of thought and expression. It may almost be said that in a certain sense they are great, not in despite of their faults, but by very virtue of these faults. In them is a spirit which was unknown to the Greeks and Romans. They sought the simple, the dignified, the natural; beauty was their aim and object. Their ideal was a quiet, passionless repose, with little action, little insistence of parts. Their treatment was large and noble, their attitude calm. No torments reach them, or if passion enter, it is subdued to beauty:—

“Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains.”

Their gods looked down upon earth through the noblest forms of Phidias with serenity, heedless of the violent struggles of humanity—like grand and peaceful presences. Even in the Laocoön, which stepped to the utmost permitted bounds of the antique sculpture, there is the restraint of beauty, and suffering is modified to grace. But here in these Titans of Michel Angelo there is a new spirit—better or worse, it is new. It represents humanity caught in the terrible net of Fate, storming the heavens, Prometheus-like, breaking forth from the bonds of convention, and terrible as grand. But noble as these works are, they afford no proper school for imitation, and his followers have, as has been fitly said, only caught the contortions without the inspiration of the sibyl. They lift the spirit, enlarge the mind, and energize the will of those who feel them and are willing only to feel them; but they are bad models for imitation. It is only such great and original minds as Michel Angelo who can force the grand and powerful out of the wrong and unnatural; and he himself only at rare intervals prevailed in doing this violence to nature.

Every man has a right to be judged by his best. It is not the number of his failures but the value of his successes which afford the just gauge of every man’s genius. Here in these great statues Michel Angelo succeeded, and they are the highest tide-mark of his power as a sculptor. The Moses, despite its elements of strength and power, is of a lower grade. The Pietà is the work of a young man who has not as yet grown to his full strength, and who is shackled by his age and his contemporaries. The David has high qualities of nobility, but it is constrained to the necessities of the marble in which it is wrought. The Christ in the Church of the Minerva is scarcely worthy of him. But in these impersonations of Day, Night, Twilight, and Dawn, his genius had full scope, and rose to its greatest height.

These statues were executed by Michel Angelo, with various and annoying interruptions, when he was more than fifty-five years of age, and while he was in ill-health and very much overworked. Indeed, such was his condition of health at this time that it gave great anxiety to his friends, and Giovanni Battista Mini, writing to his friend Bartolommeo Valori on the 29th of September, 1531, says: “Michel Angelo has fallen off in flesh, and the other day with Buggiardini and Antonio Mini we had a private talk about him, and we came to the conclusion that he will not live long unless things are remedied. He works very hard, eats little and that little is bad, sleeps not at all, and for a month past his sight has been weak, and he has pains in the head and vertigo, and, in fine, his head is affected and so is his heart, but there is a cure for each, for he is healthy.” He was so besieged on all sides with commissions, and particularly by the Duke of Urbino, that the Pope at last issued a brief, ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to do no work except on these monuments,—and thus he was enabled to command his time and to carry on these great works to the condition in which they now are, though he never was able completely to finish them.

Of the same race with them are the wonderful frescoes of the sibyls and prophets and Biblical figures and Titans that live on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And these are as amazing as, perhaps even more amazing in their way than, the sculpture of the Medicean Chapel. He was but thirty-four years of age when, at the instigation of Bramante, he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II. to decorate the ceiling. It is unpleasant to think that Bramante, in urging this step upon the Pope, was animated with little good-will to Michel Angelo. From all accounts it would seem he was jealous of his growing fame, and deemed that in undertaking this colossal work failure would be inevitable. Michel Angelo had indeed worked in his youth under Ghirlandajo, but had soon abandoned his studio and devoted himself to sculpture; and though he had painted some few labored pictures and produced the famous designs for the great hall of the municipality at Florence, in competition with his famous rival Leonardo da Vinci, yet these cartoons had never been executed by him, and his fame was chiefly, if not solely, as a sculptor. Michel Angelo himself, though strongly urged to this undertaking by the Pope, was extremely averse to it, and at first refused, declaring that “painting was not his profession.” The Pope, however, was persistent, and Michel was forced at last to yield, and to accept the commission. He then immediately began to prepare his cartoons, and, ignorant and doubtful of his own powers, summoned to his assistance several artists in Florence, to learn more properly from them the method of painting in fresco. Not satisfied with their work on the ceiling, he suddenly closed the doors upon them, sent them away, and, shutting himself up alone in the chapel, erased what they had done and began alone with his own hand. It was only about six weeks after his arrival in Rome that he thus began, and in this short space of time he had completed his designs, framed and erected the scaffolds, laid on the rough casting preparatory to the finishing layer, and commenced his frescoes. This alone is an immense labor, and shows a wonderful mastery of all his powers. The design is entirely original, not only in the composition and character of the figures themselves, but in the architectural divisions and combinations in which they are placed. There are no less than 343 figures, of great variety of movements, grandiose proportions, and many of them of colossal size; and to the sketches he first designed he seems to have absolutely adhered. Of course, within such a time he could not have made the large cartoons in which the figures were developed in their full proportions, but he seems only to have enlarged them from his figures as first sketched. With indomitable energy, and a persistence of labor which has scarcely a parallel, alone and without encouragement he prosecuted his task, despite the irritations and annoyances which he was forced to endure, the constant delays of payment, the fretful complaints of the impatient Pope, the accidents and disappointments incident to an art in which he had previously had no practice, and the many and worrying troubles from home by which he was constantly pursued. At last the Pope’s impatience became imperious; and when the vault was only one half completed, he forced Michel Angelo, under threats of his severe displeasure, to throw down the scaffolding and exhibit it to the world. The chapel was accordingly opened on All Saints’ Day in November, 1508. The public flocked to see it, and a universal cry of admiration was raised. In the crowd which then assembled was Raffaelle, and the impression he received is plain from the fact that his style was at once so strongly modified by it. Bramante, too, was there, expecting to see the failure which he had anticipated, and to rejoice in the downfall of his great rival. But he was destined to be disappointed, and, as is recounted, but as one is unwilling to believe, he used his utmost efforts to induce the Pope to discharge Michel Angelo and commission Raffaelle to complete the ceiling. It is even added that Raffaelle himself joined in this intrigue, but there is no proof of this, and let us disbelieve it. Certain it is that in the presence of the Pope, when Michel Angelo broke forth in fierce language against Bramante for this injurious proposal, and denounced him for his ignorance and incapacity, he did not involve Raffaelle in the same denunciation. Still there seems to be little doubt that the party and friends of Raffaelle exerted their utmost influence to induce the Pope to substitute him for Michel Angelo. They did not, however, succeed. The Pope was steadfast, and again the doors were closed, and he was ordered to complete the work.

When again he began to paint there is no record. Winter is unfavorable to fresco-painting, and when a frost sets in, it cannot be carried on. In the autumn of 1510 we know that he applied to the Pope for permission to visit his friends in Florence, and for an advance of money; that the Pope replied by demanding when his work would be completed, and that the artist replied, “As soon as I shall be able;” on which the Pope, repeating his words, struck him with his cane. Michel Angelo was not a man to brook this, and he instantly abandoned his work and went to Florence. The Pope, however, sent his page Accursio after him with pacific words, praying him to return, and with a purse of fifty crowns to pay his expenses; and after some delay he did return.

Vasari and Condivi both assert that the vault of the Sistine Chapel was painted by Michel Angelo “alone and unaided, even by any one to grind his colors, in twenty months.” But this cannot be true. He certainly had assistance not only for all the laying of the plaster and the merely mechanical work, but also in the painting of the architecture, and even of portions of the figures; and it now seems to be pretty clear that the chapel was not completed until 1512. But this in itself, considering all the breaks and intervals when the work was necessarily interrupted, is stupendous.

The extraordinary rapidity with which he worked is clearly proved by the close examination which the erection of scaffolding has recently enabled Mr. Charles Heath Wilson and others to make. Fresco-painting can only be done while the plaster is fresh (hence its name); and as the plaster laid on one day will not serve for the next, it must be removed unless the painting on it is completed. The junction of the new plaster leaves a slight line of division when closely examined, and thus it is easy to detect how much has been accomplished each day. It scarcely seems credible, though there can be no doubt of the fact, that many of the nude figures above life-size were painted in two days. The noble reclining figure of Adam occupied him only three days; and the colossal figures of the sibyls and prophets, which, if standing, would be eighteen feet in height, occupied him only from three to four days each. When one considers the size of these figures, the difficulty of painting anything overhead where the artist is constrained to work in a reclining position and often lying flat on his back, and the beauty, tenderness, and careful finish which has been given to all parts, and especially to the heads, this rapidity of execution seems almost marvelous.

Seen from below, these figures are solemn and striking; but seen near by, their grandeur of character is vastly more impressive, and their beauty and refinement, which are less apparent when seen from a distance, are quite as remarkable as their power and energy. Great as Michel Angelo was as a sculptor, he seems even greater as a painter. Not only is the design broader and larger, but there is a freedom of attitude, a strength and loftiness of conception, and a beauty of treatment, which are beyond what he reached, or perhaps strove for, in his statues. The figure of Adam, for instance, is not more wonderful for its novelty and power of design than for its truth to nature. The figure of the Deity, encompassed by angelic forms, is whirling down upon him like a tempest. His mighty arm is outstretched, and from his extended fingers an electric flash of life seems to strike into the uplifted hand of Adam, whose reclining figure, issuing from the constraint of death, and quivering with this new thrill of animated being, stirs into action, and rises half to meet his Creator. Nothing could be more grand than this conception, more certain than its expression, or more simple than its treatment. Nothing, too, has ever been accomplished in art more powerful, varied, and original than the colossal figures of the sibyls and the prophets. The Ezekiel, listening to the voice of inspiration; the Jeremiah, surcharged with meditative thought, and weighed down with it as a lowering cloud with rain; the youthful Daniel, writing on his book, which an angel supports; Esaias, in the fullness of his manhood, leaning his elbow on his book and holding his hand suspended while turning he listens to the angel whose tidings he is to record; and the aged Zacharias, with his long beard, swathed in heavy draperies, and intently reading,—these are the prophets; and alternating with them on the span of the arch are the sibyls,—the noble Erythrean, seated almost in profile, with crossed legs, and turning the leaves of her book with one hand while the other drops at her side, grand in the still serenity of her beauty; the aged Persian sibyl, turning sideway to peruse the book which she holds close to her eyes, while above her recline two beautiful naked youths, and below her sleeps a madonna with the child Christ; the Libyan, holding high behind her with extended arms her open scroll, and looking down over her shoulder; the Cumæan, old, weird, Dantesque in her profile, with a napkin folded on her head, reading in self-absorption, while two angels gaze at her; and last, the Delphic, sweet, calm, and beautiful in the perfectness of womanhood, who looks serenely down over her shoulder to charm us with a peaceful prophecy. All the faces and heads o£ these figures are evidently drawn from noble and characteristic models,—if, indeed, any models at all are used; and some of them, especially those of the Delphic and Erythrean, are full of beauty as well as power. All are painted with great care and feeling, and a lofty inspiration has guided a loving hand. There is nothing vague, feeble, or flimsy in them. They are ideal in the true sense—the strong embodiment of great ideas.