Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

“ The artists of his day, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the other great men, were each severally employed in working out once and for all some particular problem in connection with their art. Michelangelo, a giant in intellect, painter, sculptor, architect, and poet, studied the human body as it had not been studied since the days of ancient Greece. His sculptured figures on the tombs of the Medici in Florence rank second only to those of the greatest Greek sculptors, and his ceiling in the Sistine Chapel is composed of a series of masterpieces of figure-painting. ”

“ It was betrayed, and he escaped and hid himself—and the next great thing he did was the Last Judgment, in the Sixtine Chapel. He did stirring work in wild times, besides painting, and hewing marble, and building Saint Peter's.
That brings one back to thinking how much those men knew. Their universal knowledge seems utterly unattainable to us, with all our modern machinery of education. Michelangelo grew up in a suburb of Florence, to which his father moved when he was a child, at a notary's desk, his father trying to teach him enough law to earn him a livelihood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been said of Titian by a great French critic that 'he absorbed his predecessors and ruined his successors.' Michelangelo absorbed no one and ruined no one; for no painter, sculptor or architect ever attempted what he accomplished, either before him or after him. No sane person ever tried to produce anything like the 'Last Judgment,' the marble 'Moses,' or the dome of Saint Peter's. Michelangelo stood alone as a creator, as he lived a lonely man throughout the eighty-nine years of his life. ”

“ When Michelangelo was of age to go to school, his father put him under a grammarian at Florence named Francesco da Urbino. It does not appear, however, that he learned more than reading and writing in Italian, for later on in life we find him complaining that he knew no Latin. The boy's genius attracted him irresistibly to art. He spent all his leisure time in drawing, and frequented the society of youths who were apprenticed to masters in painting and sculpture. Among these he contracted an intimate friendship with Francesco Granacci, at that time in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandajo. ”

“ Dürer in Germany and Da Vinci in Italy had been faithful dissectors, and Michelangelo kept up the tradition.
The personality of this greatest of geniuses that the world has ever known can scarcely fail to be interesting. Michelangelo is the true type of one of the greatest periods of human history, and as such every detail of his life appeals to men. Like many great geniuses, Michelangelo was what is called a handy man, that is, one who could fashion implements and objects skilfully with his hands. ”

“ While Leonardo da Vinci was indeed a universal genius well deserving of the high title, it must not be forgotten that the age in which he lived was the age of Michelangelo. The "divine master," his compatriot artists have loved to call him ever since his own day. It is probable that he must be {52} conceded to have carried human nature as far in its power of expression of the beauty and truth of life as any man that ever lived. The divine in human nature nowhere shines out so conspicuously as in Michelangelo's achievements. ”

“ His countenances express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside of them Michelangelo's personages are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's virgins are only placid children whose souls are still asleep. His beings feel and think through every line and trait of their physiognomy. Time is necessary to enter into communion with them ”

“ There was a San Petronio whose drapery, begun by Niccolò da Bari, was unfinished. To this statue Michelangelo put the last touches; and he also carved a kneeling angel with a candelabrum, the workmanship of which surpasses in delicacy of execution all the other figures on the tomb.
III Michelangelo left Bologna hastily. It is said that a sculptor who had expected to be employed upon the arca of S. Domenic threatened to do him some mischief if he stayed and took the bread out of the mouths of native craftsmen. He returned to Florence some time in 1495. ”

“ On the walls of the Sixtine Chapel there are paintings by such men as Perugino, Luca Signorelli, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo, as well as by a number of others; but Michelangelo overshadows them all with his ceiling and his 'Last Judgment.' There is something overpowering about him, and there is no escaping from his influence. He not only covers great spaces with his brush, but he fills them with his masterful drawing, and makes them alive with a life at once profound and restless. One does not feel, as with other painters, that a vision has been projected upon a flat surface ”

“ Among these artists he knew particularly well Francesco Granacci, Giuliano Bugiardini, Jacopo Sansovino, Aristotele da San Gallo, Rosso, Pontormo, Guglielmo della Porta, Vignole, and the musician Archadelt.
[109] Correspondence between Sebastiano del Piombo and Michelangelo has been published by Gaetano Milanesi with a French translation by A. LePileur and an introduction by E. Müntz in the Bibl. Internationale de l'Art (Librairie de l'Art, 1890) . ”

“ He allowed Michelangelo to return to Florence, and, though he loaded Raffaelle with honours, it is a fact that he was five years behindhand with the payment of his salary as architect of St Peter's. A letter of Messer Baldassare Turini da Pescia turns on the ridiculous investiture of the jester Mariano with the tonaca of Bramante, performed by the Pope himself when Bramante was scarce cold in his grave. This leaves a most painful impression, and makes it very doubtful whether Leo ever took his patronage of the arts very seriously. ”

“ Before the expulsion of the Medici he went to Bologna, and there executed several works. Returning to Florence in 1495, he was called next year to Rome, where he lived till 1501, producing works which displayed his extraordinary genius, the most important of them being the Pieta di San Pietro (1498) . Again returning to Florence, he carved his first David from an immense block of Carrara marble. In 1505 he was summoned again to Rome, by Pope Julius II, to design his tomb, and this work occupied Michelangelo, from time to time, throughout the remainder of his life. ”

“ Year by year there are more who, drawn by the strange fascination of his genius, seek to read the meaning of his art.
His subjects are all profoundly serious in intention. Life was no holiday to this strenuous spirit; it was a stern conflict with the powers of darkness in which such heroes as David and Moses were needed. Like the old Hebrew prophets, the artist poured out his soul in a vehement protest against evil, and a stirring call to righteousness.
Considered both as a sculptor and a painter, Michelangelo's one vehicle of expression was the human body. ”

“ During the [Pg 412] nine years' pontificate of Leo X. (1513-22) , Michelangelo was mostly employed in the unworthy occupation of procuring marble from the quarries of Pietra Santa for the façade of the church of San Lorenzo at Florence. The short reign of Adrian VI. succeeded, and Michelangelo went on working for a time at the monument to Julius. He was also employed on the works of the Medici Chapel at Florence. In 1523 when Clement VII. succeeded, the artist was put to various architectural works. Stormy years followed, and Michelangelo quitted the Medici statues to defend his native city. ”

“ A fine bust marks the spot, but the visitor can not help feeling a regret that the dust of this marvelous man does not rest beneath the zenith of the dome of Saint Peter's at Rome.
Sitting calmly in this quiet corner, and with closed eyes, viewing Michelangelo's life as a whole, the impression is one of heroic strength, battling with fierce passions, and becoming victor over them by working them up into art. The mold of the man was masculine, and the subdued sorrow that flavors his whole career never degenerates into sickly sentimentality or repining. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This unlimited universality of Painting is demonstrated by History itself, and by the examples of the greatest masters, who, without injury to the essential character of their art, have developed to perfection each particular stage by itself, so that we can find also in the history of Art the same sequence that may be pointed out in its nature—not indeed in exact order of time, but yet substantially. For thus is represented in Michelangelo the oldest and mightiest epoch of liberated Art, that in which it displays its yet uncontrolled strength in gigantic progeny ”

“ Just as we welcome the beautiful athlete for the radiant life that is in him, but bow before the personality of Sophocles, whose perfect form enshrined a noble and highly educated soul, so we gratefully accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the consummate art of Michelangelo with reverent awe. It is necessary in æsthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hierarchy of excellence, the grades of which are determined by the greater or less comprehensiveness of the artist's nature expressed in his work. ”

“ Note that the date is March 6, 1474, according to Florentine usage ab incarnatione, and according to the Roman usage, a nativitate, it is 1475.
Vasari tells us that the planets were propitious at the moment of Michelangelo's nativity: "Mercury and Venus having entered with benign aspect into the house of Jupiter, which indicated that marvellous and extraordinary works, both of manual art and intellect, were to be expected from him."
II Caprese, from its beauty and remoteness, deserved to be the birthplace of a great artist. ”

“ The strength of the work is unquestionable; its value as being, with the Victory, the most characteristic of its author’s works, is equally clear; its sublimity admits of greater doubt. The tombs of the two Medici, finished earlier than the Moses, are [403] works of a far higher and purer strain; being really the finest that Michelangelo ever produced. Upon each of the two sarcophagi rests a sitting figure in armour, the likeness of the dead man who reposes within. On each side of Lorenzo is a reclining statue, the one representing Twilight, the other Dawn ”

“ There were great ladies, [Pg 174] good and bad, like Vittoria Colonna and Lucrezia Borgia, who were scholars, and even Greek scholars, and probably equal to any students of their time. Few ladies of Michelangelo's day did not know Latin, and all were acquainted with such literature as there was—Dante, Macchiavelli, Aretino, Ariosto and Petrarch,—for Tasso came later,—the Tuscan minor poets, as well as the troubadours of Provence—not to mention the many collections of tales, of which the scenes were destined to become the subjects of paintings in the later days of the Renascence. ”

“ Vasari, for example, says that he avoided portraiture, and composed his faces by combining several individuals. We shall see a new ideal type of the male head emerge in a group of statues, among which the most distinguished is Giuliano de' Medici at San Lorenzo. We have already seen a female type created in the Madonnas of S. Peter's and Notre Dame at Bruges. But this is not the place to discuss Michelangelo's theory of form in general. That must be reserved until we enter the Sistine Chapel, in order to survey the central and the crowning product of his genius in its prime. ”

“ Pietra Santa is a little city on the Tuscan seaboard; Serravezza is a still smaller fortress-town at the foot of the Carrara mountains. Monte Altissimo rises above it; and on the flanks of that great hill lie the quarries Della Finocchiaja, which Michelangelo opened at the command of Pope Leo. It was not without reluctance that Michelangelo departed from Carrara, offending the Marquis Malaspina, breaking his contracts, and disappointing the folk with whom he had lived on friendly terms ever since his first visit in 1505. ”

“ The favor of princes lasts but for a day, but the Church is eternal. The Church should be his bride; to her and to her alone would he give his passionate soul. Thus mused Michelangelo, aged twenty-two. His first work at Rome was a statue of Bacchus, done it seems for an exercise to give Cardinal Giorgio a taste of his quality, just as he had drawn the human hand on the wall for his Bologna protector; for this fine and lofty pride in his power was a thing that clung to Michelangelo from rosy youth to hoary age. ”