Edward C. Strutt

“ But in the Sistine Chapel he ceases to regard perfection of form as all sufficient, and the sculptor suddenly becomes the greatest colour-painter of any age. For in these stupendous frescoes, remarkable for their imposing, yet extremely simple colour scheme, Michelangelo has succeeded in making colour serve a higher purpose than that of merely clothing his inspiration with beautiful tints. Colour is no longer an accessory, but an integral factor as important as the mighty figures, the inner meaning of which it helps to bear out, and the result of as much thought and care. ”

“ Resting heavily on the curved surface of the globe, his powerful limbs and finely modelled flesh clearly outlined against the indigo blue of the sky and the solemn lines of the landscape, Adam gives one the impression of a huge primeval being instinct with strength which he is as yet unable to understand or to use, and just awaking into life, a divine spark of which he receives from the Deity. Michelangelo's conception of God the Father, as an old but powerful and majestic figure, has ever since remained the only possible pictorial symbol of so lofty a subject. ”

“ So splendid is their action that nothing survives of ancient or of modern art which touches the same lofty point of excellence; and, as I have already said, the design of the great Leonardo was itself most admirably beautiful. These two cartoons stood, one in the Palace of the Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope. So long as they remained intact they were the school of the world. Though the divine Michelangelo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope Julius, he never rose halfway to the same pitch of power; his genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies. ”

“ What most surprises the modern artist when studying not only this, but all Michelangelo's colossal works, both in painting and in sculpture, is the perfect finish of every detail. The fearless eyes, the shapely ear, the firm set mouth, the powerful hand nervously grasping the death-dealing missile, could not have been more carefully modelled in a statuette, and casts of each individual limb are still set before students to copy and admire in every studio of the world. ”

“ Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner are the elements of Michelangelo's style. As painter, as sculptor, as architect he attempted—and above any other man succeeded—to unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts with the utmost simplicity and breadth.
His line is uniformly grand; character and beauty are admitted only as far as they can be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, even meanness and deformity, are by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rises from his hand the patriarch of poverty ”

“ Michelangelo's system of working was as powerful and original as his art. Before he began a statue he could already discern the finished masterpiece lurking within the rough-hewn block of marble, which he would attack with reckless assurance, great splinters flying in all directions as he feverishly cut away the waste stone, and saw the figure spring slowly into life under his magic chisel. ”

“ Other men had excelled in painting, in sculpture, or in architecture before him, but Michelangelo was the first to attain perfection in every branch of Art, and such was his strong creative individuality that he left nothing to which he applied himself at the same stage where he had found it, bringing every manifestation of Art to the highest degree of perfection of which it was capable, and crowning all with that glorious aureola of spiritual grandeur which is the most awe-inspiring characteristic of his works. ”

“ Raphael touched a more human note, often soaring to sublime harmonies: with Michelangelo the Renaissance reached its fullest development, attaining to a spiritual height, an almost superhuman loftiness hitherto undreamt of. ”

“ In the Medicean tombs Michelangelo may be said to have equalled if not surpassed the masterpieces of ancient sculpture. We have selected the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici for our illustration, as the statues which adorn it, symbolizing Evening and Dawn, although conceived in the same spirit of profound melancholy, are, if possible, even more beautiful than the Day and Night of Giuliano's tomb. Evening is represented by an old man, brooding and dejected, but hardly less powerful and muscular than the giant Day. ”

“ The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, with its magnificent nude Athletes and allegorical figures, is the apotheosis of the human frame as the noblest means of decoration. By introducing nude figures in his tondo of the Holy Family and by his powerful but utterly unconventional treatment of the angels and saints in the Last Judgment, Michelangelo once more affirmed his faith in the beauty and purity of the "human form divine" as a decorative element of religious art. ”

“ Nestling timorously close to her Son, half sitting, half crouching, with head averted, as if to avoid seeing the coming wrath, and arms crossed on her bosom, is the Mother of God, a wonderfully sweet and pathetic figure, full of pity and sorrow for the condemned souls, and contrasting strangely with the inexorable Judge rising in his stern majesty to pronounce sentence on the frightened, shuddering mass of humanity. ”

“ Leonardo da Vinci was already famous before Michelangelo had touched chisel or brush, but neither Leonardo's encyclopaedic achievements nor Raphael's meteorlike career can be regarded as the ultimate expression, the high-water mark of the Italian Renaissance.
In Michelangelo we behold the giant embodiment of the true spirit of that wonderful period, the synthesis of its various forms of beauty and perfection, the final manifestation of its aesthetic possibilities. When Art first shook off the trammels of mediaevalism, she was content to worship at the shrine of Truth ”

“ Her beautiful face is not contracted with grief, but wears an expression of sublime peace and resignation, and the graceful head reclines slightly on her right shoulder, as if pitying Heaven had sent sleep to temper the extremity of her grief, and sweet dreams of the past, when the Virgin Mother fondled her Infant Son, had mercifully cancelled the horrible vision of the Redeemer's lifeless body now lying on her lap. ”

“ The virgin Dawn is perhaps the most beautiful female figure of modern or of ancient art. She is represented as only half awake and almost unable to rise from her couch, while there is a suggestion of ineffable bitterness in the expression of the face with its half-closed eyes wearily greeting another day of sorrow. ”

“ The removal of the Buonarroti family to Settignano, the little village almost exclusively inhabited by stonemasons and workers in marble, exercised a most decisive influence on the child's future career. Indeed, Michelangelo himself used to say half jestingly, that as he had been given out to nurse to a stonemason's wife, the mania for sculpture must have entered his blood together with the milk which he had sucked as a babe. ”

“ In no other work of art has such perfect harmony of form and colour ever been attained.
Michelangelo was so entirely absorbed in his art, to the exclusion of every other thought or passion, that it is possible to trace in his works not only the gradual development of his genius, but also the vicissitudes of his long and stormy career. Of his youthful works only two, the bas-relief of the Madonna and Child in the Buonarroti Collection and the St. John in the Berlin Museum, bear evident traces of Donatello's influence ”

“ Peter's, Michelangelo hazards the strange theory that the study of the human figure is indispensable not only to sculptors and painters, but to architects as well: "For it is very certain that the members of architecture depend upon the members of man. Who is not a good master of the figure, and especially of anatomy, cannot understand it." ”

“ No other sculptor has ever succeeded in giving marble the absolute abandon of death quite so pathetically as Michelangelo has done in this Dead Christ. Here it was that his profound knowledge of anatomy, and the long hours spent over the dissecting table at Santo Spirito, first stood him in good stead. In the Albertina Gallery at Vienna there is a magnificent study of a subject placed in almost exactly the same position as the Dead Christ, which the sculptor evidently transferred to The Pietà, if indeed he did not make the sketch expressly for this group. ”

“ Although Michelangelo always professed to be a sculptor and nothing else, he shows all a true painter's sensitive appreciation of light and shade in this work, having so arranged the graceful, but somewhat complicated folds of the Madonna's draperies, as to form a comparatively dark background which enhances the whiteness of the lifeless body lying on her lap. ”

“ By a strange irony of fate, the magnificent patron of art and letters was succeeded by a pious and simple-minded Dutch prelate, who regarded statues as pagan idols, and said that the Sistine Chapel was "nothing but a room full of naked people." ”

“ Michelangelo's architectural works reveal the same characteristics which excite our admiration when contemplating his paintings or his marbles, namely, simplicity and grandeur. Although he always protested that architecture, like painting, was not his profession, he stood head and shoulders above Bramante or any other architect of his time, and the majestic cupola of the greatest temple in Christendom is a sufficient proof of his genius. ”

“ Lorenzo suggested that Michelangelo should make it look as if it had been buried under the earth for many centuries, so that the statue, being taken for a genuine antique, would sell much better, and the artist, more out of professional pride than in hopes of gain, followed his friend's suggestion. The Sleeping Cupid was sent to Rome, where Raffaelo Riario, Cardinal di San Giorgio, bought it as an antique for two hundred ducats, an evidence not so much of the Cardinal's ignorance as of Michelangelo's careful study of classical art. ”

“ Indeed, Vasari tells us that Michelangelo painted this strikingly original tondo merely "to show his skill," and the magnificent modelling and foreshortening of the Madonna's arms, the masterful composition, and the wonderfully accurate drawing more than achieve his object. As to the colouring, he entirely disregarded it in his sculptor's pride. He might as well have carved this remarkable work in marble. ”

“ Domenico, nothing loth to get rid of his two most ambitious apprentices, selected Francesco Granacci and Michelangelo, and it was thus that the latter came under the influence of Donatello's school. Of Bertoldo, who must be considered Michelangelo's first instructor in the art of sculpture, and who doubtless had a great share in shaping his genius, very little is known beyond Vasari's statement that "although he was old and could not work, he was none the less an able and highly reputed artist." ”

“ The fierce frown, the expression of strenuous force victoriously struggling against overwhelming odds, all those characteristics, in short, which have been summed up in the word terribilità by his contemporaries, would have been replaced by the sombre majesty of the Moses, or the despairing expression of conquered, impotent strength which is the key-note to such works as the Medicean Tombs, the Louvre Captives, and the Last Judgment. ”

“ Apart from its great artistic merit, a pathetic interest attaches to the statue of Moses because it represents the last act of that tragedy of the tomb which darkened the greater part of Michelangelo's life, and influenced his art more than any other circumstance of his eventful career. ”

“ The leader and law-giver of the Hebrews is seated in an attitude of thought and wisdom, holding under his right arm the tables of the law, and supporting his chin with his left hand, like one tired and full of cares. ”

“ In the following year Michelangelo finished the new sacristy of San Lorenzo, and immediately set to work on the Medicean tombs. But he was constantly worried and interrupted by new commissions from the Pope, who wanted him, among other things, to build a library in which to place the famous collection of books and manuscripts begun by Cosimo de' Medici: "I cannot work at one thing with my hands and at another with my brain!" exclaimed the artist in despair. ”

“ Hunter saw Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings and their descriptions, preserved in the library of George III., he discovered with astonishment that the artist had been a deep student, "and was at that time the best anatomist in the world." Michelangelo, as Vasari tells us, "dissected many dead bodies, zealously studying anatomy," whereas Cortesius, professor of anatomy at Bologna, who wrote a century later, complains that he was prevented finishing a treatise on "Practical Anatomy" in consequence of having only been able twice to dissect a human body in the course of twenty-four years. ”

“ A mallet and a chisel and bits of marble were the only toys that the infant Michelangelo cared for, and it is recorded of him that when he grew up to be a sturdy boy of ten he could use his tools almost as skilfully as his foster-father himself. ”

“ On the expiration of his term of office as Podestà of Caprese, which extended little over a year, Messer Lodovico returned with his family to Settignano, the picturesque little village built on a vine-clad slope overlooking Florence, where, in an old-fashioned mansion nestling among olive trees and surrounded by a well-cultivated podere, many generations of the Buonarroti had lived and died. ”

“ His father heard of it, and wrote a letter, dated December 19th, 1500, in which these passages occur: "Economy is good, but above all do not be penurious; live moderately and do not stint yourself, and avoid hardships, because in your art, if you fall ill (which God forbid) , you are a lost man. Above all things, never wash; have yourself rubbed down, but never wash!"
When Michelangelo returned to Florence in the spring of 1501, the fame of the great works which he had accomplished in Rome had already preceded him, and he was generally admitted to be the first sculptor of the day. ”

“ For two such men to live together in uninterrupted peace and goodwill would have been a sheer impossibility.
After some months of hesitation, Julius II. finally decided upon the best way of employing Michelangelo's talents. He resolved to have a magnificent monument erected during his lifetime, and confided the task to the young sculptor. In an incredibly short time Michelangelo prepared his great design, which pleased the Pope so much that he at once sent him to Carrara to quarry the necessary marble. ”

“ It has been rightly observed that nothing closes the fifteenth century so fitly as the magnificent marble group of The Pietà, which, although carved by Michelangelo in 1498, already prophesied the power of sixteenth-century art. ”

“ Had he been left in peace, Michelangelo would certainly have finished the monument to Pope Julius in its modified form in half the time which he wasted quarrying marble from Carrara and Pietrasanta for the façade of San Lorenzo. For over two years Michelangelo was engaged in the tedious work of roadmaking and quarrying. In August, 1518, he wrote: "I must be very patient until the mountains are tamed and the men are mastered. Then we shall get on more quickly. ”

“ Michelangelo was getting old, and even his Titanic frame could not withstand the insidious attacks of time. He was seventy-five years of age when he carried these frescoes to completion, and he himself confessed to Vasari that he did so "with great effort and fatigue." Nevertheless he found sufficient time and strength to complete the famous monument of Pope Julius II. during the intervals of his fresco painting, and in 1545 the tragedy of the tomb finally came to an end. ”

“ Matthew, now in the courtyard of the Accademia, in Florence, being the only work which resulted from this commission: "And in order not altogether to give up painting," says Condivi, "he executed a round panel of Our Lady for Messer Agnolo Doni, a Florentine citizen, for which he received seventy ducats." This tondo, representing The Holy Family, with nude figures in the background, is now in the Uffizi Gallery, and apart from its originality and artistic merit, it is especially interesting as being the only easel picture which may be attributed with absolute certainty to Michelangelo. ”

“ Indeed, the execution and design of this Madonna and Child are so inferior as to render it a work of extremely doubtful authenticity.
Although he applied himself principally to the study of sculpture, Michelangelo continued to devote many hours every day to drawing, and, like most young artists of his age, he drew and studied assiduously in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of the Carmine, containing the famous frescoes of Masaccio and his followers. ”

“ Michelangelo would gladly have declined the commission, for which he considered himself unfit, but, seeing the Pope's obstinacy, he reluctantly set to work on May 10th, 1508. The difficulties which he had to surmount were enormous, but he was not a man to be frightened by obstacles, however formidable. Knowing little or nothing of the technicalities of fresco painting, Michelangelo at first called six Florentine painters to his aid, including his old friends Francesco Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini. ”