Sidney Colvin

“ The work of Michelangelo’s youth is for the most part comparatively tranquil in character. His early sculpture, showing a degree of science and perfection unequalled since the antique, has also something of the antique serenity. It bears strongly the stamp of intellectual research, but not by any means that of storm or strain. In the cartoon of the “Bathers” the qualities afterwards proverbially associated with Michelangelo—his furia, his terribilità, the tempest and hurricane of the spirit which accompanied his unequalled technical mastery and knowledge—first found expression. ”

“ These last are all shown in relatively simple human actions and household relations, heightened but not falsified by the artist’s genius, and rising into majestic, significance from roots deep in daily human nature. The work represents all the powers of Michelangelo at their best. Disdaining all the accessory allurements of the painter’s art, he has concentrated himself upon the exclusive delineation of the human form and face at their highest power. ”

“ The frescoes of the Pauline Chapel are on their part so injured as to be hardly susceptible of useful study or criticism. In their ruined state they bear evidence of the same tendencies that made the art of Michelangelo in its latest phase so dangerous an example to weaker men—the tendency, that, is, to seek for unqualified energy and violence of action, both in place and out, for “terribleness” quand même, and to design actions not by help of direct study from nature, but by scientific deduction from the abstract laws of structure and movement. ”

“ In it Michelangelo shows more than ever the omnipotence of his artistic science, and the fiery daring of his conceptions. But the work, so far as its deplorably deteriorated condition admits comparison, is hardly comparable in the qualities of colour and decorative effect to the earlier and, far more nobly inspired frescoes of the ceiling. It is to these and not to the “Last judgment” that the student must turn if he would realize what is best and greatest in the art of Michelangelo. ”

“ Then comes the great fresco of the “Last Judgment,” for which there exist both general sketches and particular studies. In the few extant drawings for the Cappella Paolina a faltering both of the imagination and of the hand become discernible. To the same or to still later years belong many beautiful but somewhat tentative drawings done either directly for, or nearly in the spirit of, the famous “Crucifixion” which he is recorded to have painted with so much devotion for Vittoria Colonna. ”

“ Soon, however, schemes of war and conquest interposed to divert the thoughts of Julius, not from the progress of his own monument merely, but from artistic enterprises altogether. One day Michelangelo heard him say at table to his jeweller that he meant to spend no more money on pebbles, either small or great. To add to the artist’s discomfiture, when he went to apply in person for payments due, he was first put off from day to day, and at last actually with scant courtesy dismissed. ”

“ About the time of Michelangelo’s final change of domicile from Florence to Rome (1532–1535) he began the practice of making highly finished and fully shaded drawings of classic or symbolic subjects in red or black chalk for presentation to his friends, especially to young Tommaso Cavalieri, the object of his passionate Platonic affection, from about 1532. The “Fall of Phaeton,” the “Tityos,” the “Ganymede,” the “Men shooting at a Mark,” are well-known examples; in this class of work the Windsor collection is far the richest. ”

“ A work of greater interest in Florence itself had diverted him from his engagement to his Sienese patrons. This was the execution of the famous colossal statue of David, popularly known as “the Giant.” It was carved out of a huge block of marble on which another sculptor, Agostino d’Antonio, had begun unsuccessfully to work forty years before, and which had been lying idle ever since. Michelangelo had here a difficult problem before him. ”

“ The work, except in one or two places, is of the utmost finish, and the statue looks like one of the prophets of the Sixtine ceiling done in marble. The “Slaves” at the Louvre are youthful male figures of equally perfect execution, nude but for the band which passes over the breast of one and the right leg of the other. One, with his left hand raised to his head and his right pressed to his bosom, his eyes almost closed, seems succumbing to the agonies of death ”

“ Though Michelangelo’s earliest studies were directed towards painting, he was by nature and predilection much more inclined to sculpture. In that art he presently received encouragement and training under the eye of an illustrious patron, Lorenzo dei Medici. On the recommendation, it is said, of Ghirlandaio, he was transferred, before the term of his apprenticeship as a painter had expired, to the school of sculpture established by Lorenzo in the Medici gardens. ”

“ Lastly his friend and partisan Sebastian del Piombo at Rome, ever eager to keep up the feud between the followers of Michelangelo and those of Raphael, besought him on Raphael’s death to return at once to Rome, and take out of the hands of the dead master’s pupils the work of painting still remaining to be done in the Vatican chambers. ”

“ His father and brothers were dead, and his family sentiment concentrated itself on a nephew, Leonardo, to whom he showed unremitting practical kindness, coupled with his usual suspiciousness and fitfulness of temper. In almost all his relations the old man continued to the end to manifest the same loyal and righteous heart, accompanied by the same masterful, moody, and estranging temper, as in youth. ”

“ Neither was Michelangelo idle at the same time as a painter. Leaving disputed works for the moment out of sight, he in these days at any rate painted for his and Raphael’s common patron, Angelo Doni, the “Holy Family” now in the Uffizi at Florence. In the autumn of 1504, the year of the completion of the “David,” he received from the Florentine state a commission for a work of monumental painting on a heroic scale. Leonardo da Vinci had been for some months engaged on his great cartoon of the “Battle of Anghiari,” to be painted on the wall of the great hall of the municipal council. ”

“ He dashed at the task with his accustomed fiery energy, and had carried a great part of the cartoon to completion when, in the early spring of 1505, he broke off the work in order to obey a call to Rome which reached him from Pope Julius II. His unfinished cartoon, in its power over the varieties and contrasts of energetic and vitally significant action, showed how greatly Michelangelo had profited by the example of his elder rival, Leonardo, little as, personally, he yielded to Leonardo’s charm or could bring himself to respond to his courtesy. ”

“ His imagination has conceived, and his knowledge and certainty of hand have enabled him to realize, attitudes and combinations of unmatched variety and grandeur, and countenances of unmatched expressiveness and power. But he has not trusted, as he came later to trust, to science and acquired knowledge merely ”

“ Michelangelo then returned to Florence, where proposals of work poured in on him from many quarters. The king of France desired something from his hand to place beside the two pictures he possessed by Raphael. The authorities of Bologna wanted him to design a façade for their church of St Petronius; those of Genoa to cast a statue in bronze of their great commander, Andrea Doria. Cardinal Grimani begged hard for any picture or statue he might have to spare; other amateurs importuned him for so much as a pencil drawing or sketch. ”

“ The heirs of Julius on their part showed an accommodating temper, and at the request of Leo allowed their three-years’-old contract to be cancelled in favour of another, whereby the scale and sculptured decorations of the Julian monument were again to be reduced by nearly a half. Michelangelo soon produced for the San Lorenzo façade a design of combined sculpture and architecture as splendid and ambitious in its way as had been that for the original monument of Julius. The contract was signed in January 1518, and the artist went to Carrara to superintend the excavation of the marbles. ”

“ The pope bade the artist do as he pleased. By May 1508 the preparations in the chapel had been completed and the work begun. Later in the same year Michelangelo summoned a number of assistant painters from Florence. Trained in the traditions of the earlier Florentine school, they were unable, it seems, to interpret Michelangelo’s designs in fresco either with sufficient freedom or sufficient uniformity of style to satisfy him. ”

“ We see him diligently copying in youth from the frescoes of Giotto, Masaccio, and his own master Ghirlandaio. At this date his instrument was the pen only, used in a manner of hatching: sometimes extremely careful and close, at others fiercely bold and free, and in either case all his own. Sketches and studies thus drawn with the pen exist for the “David,” the “Bathers Surprised,” the accessory figures for the tomb of Julius as first conceived, and the great series of the Sixtine Chapel decorations. ”

“ These, with a large number of other drawings, finished and unfinished, done for their own sakes and not for any ulterior use, are of infinite value and interest to the student. Michelangelo was the most learned and scientific as well as the most inspired and daring of draughtsmen, and from boyhood to extreme old age never ceased to practise with pen, chalk or pencil. He is said to have burned vast numbers of his drawings with his own hand and caused others to be burned by friends and pupils to whom he had given them ”

“ At best these frescoes can never have been happy examples of Michelangelo’s art.
Other Work of the years 1534–1549. Sculpture.—During the fifteen years when Michelangelo was mainly engaged on these paintings, he had also at last been enabled to acquit himself, although in a manner that can have been satisfactory to none concerned, of his engagements to the heirs of Julius. Once more the influence of the pope had prevailed on them to accept a compromise altogether to their disadvantage. ”

“ The main field of the Sixtine ceiling—in form a depressed barrel vault—is divided in Michelangelo’s scheme into four larger, alternating with five smaller fields. The following is the order of the subjects depicted in them: (1) the dividing of the light from the darkness; (2) the creation of sun, moon and stars; (3) the creation of the waters; (4) the creation of man; (5) the creation of woman ”

“ Florence Academy. Besides what has been said above, it has only to be added that a wax model in the Casa Buonarroti, showing nearly the same design with a different movement of the legs, is probably Michelangelo’s original sketch for the subject. “David,” commissioned by Pierre Rohan; bronze, lost; a clay model in the National Museum, Florence, may probably be a sketch for it; more than one bronze has been brought forward with claims to be the original, but none has stood the test of criticism. “Virgin and Child,” commissioned for Taddeo Taddei; circular relief, unfinished, marble ”