Book: The Old Masters and Their Pictures

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A sketch of the head of Christ for the original picture, which has been
preserved on a torn and soiled piece of paper at Brera, expresses the
most elevated seriousness, together with Divine gentleness pain on
account of the faithless disciple, a full presentiment of his own death,
and resignation to the will of the Father. It gives a faint idea of what
the master may have accomplished in the finished picture.

During his stay at Florence Lionardo painted a portrait of that Ginevra
Benci already mentioned as painted by Ghirlandajo; and a still more
famous portrait by Lionardo was that of Mona Lisa, the wife of his
friend Giocondo. This picture is also known as 'La Jaconde.' I wish to
call attention to it because it is the first of four surpassingly
beautiful portraits of women which four great painters gave in
succession to the world. The others, to be spoken of afterwards, are
Raphael's 'Fornarina,' Titian's 'Bella Donna,' and Rubens' 'Straw Hat.'
About the original of 'La Jaconde' there never has been a mystery such
as there has been about the others. At this portrait the unsatisfied
painter worked at intervals for four years, and when he left it he
pronounced it still unfinished. 'La Jaconde' is now in the Louvre in
nearly ruined condition, yet a judge says of it that even now 'there is
something in this wonderful head of the ripest southern beauty, with its
airy background of a rocky landscape, which exercises a peculiar
fascination over the mind.'

There is a painting of the Madonna and Child Christ said to be by
Lionardo, and probably, at least, by one of his school, and which
belongs, I think, to the Duke of Buccleuch, and was exhibited lately
among the works of the old masters. The group has at once something
touching and exalted in its treatment. The Divine Child in the Mother's
arms is strangely attracted by the sight of a cross, and turns towards
it with ineffable longing, while the Virgin Mother, with a pang of
foreboding, clasping the child in her arms, seeks to draw him back.

The fragment of the cartoon in which Lionardo competed with Michael
Angelo, may be held to survive in the fine painting by Rubens called
'the Battle of the Standard.' Of a famous Madonna and St Anne, by
Lionardo, the original cartoon in black chalk is preserved under glass
in our Royal Academy.[6]

Michael Angelo Buonarroti, born at Castel Caprese near Tuscany, 1475, is
the next of these universal geniuses, a term which we are accustomed to
hold in contempt, because we have only seen it exemplified in parody.
After Lionardo, indeed, Michael Angelo, though he was also painter,
sculptor, architect, engineer, poet, musician, might almost be regarded
as restricted in his pursuits, yet still so manifold was he, that men
have loved to make a play upon his name and call him 'Michael the
angel,' and to speak of him as of a king among men.

Michael Angelo was of noble descent, and though his ancient house had
fallen into comparative poverty, his father was mayor or podesta of
Chiusi, and governor of the castle of Chiusi and Caprese. Michael Angelo
was destined for the profession of the law, but so early vindicated his
taste for art, that at the age of thirteen years he was apprenticed to
Ghirlandajo. Lorenzo the Magnificent was then ruling Florence, and he
had made a collection of antique models in his palace and gardens, and
constituted it an academy for young artists. In this academy Michael
Angelo developed a strong bias for sculpture, and won the direct
patronage of the Medici.

To this period of his life belong two characteristic anecdotes. In a
struggle with a fellow-student, Michael Angelo received a blow from a
mallet in his face, which, breaking bone and cartilage, lent to his nose
the rugged bend,

'The bar of Michael Angelo.'

An ill-advised member of the Medician house, while entertaining a party
of guests during a snowstorm, sent out the indignant artist to make a
snow man within sight of the palace windows. These anecdotes bear
indirectly on the ruling qualities of Michael Angelo--qualities so
integral that they are wrought into his marble and painted on his
canvas--proud independence and energy.

Before going farther I wish to guard against a common misapprehension of
Michael Angelo--that he was a haughty, arrogant man, absolutely narrow
in his half-idolatrous, half-human worship of art. Michael Angelo was
severe in place of being sweet; he was impatient of contradiction; he
was careless and scornful of ceremony; and in his very wrath at flattery
and hypocrisy, he was liable to sin against his own honesty and
sincerity. But he was a man with a lofty sense of duty and a profound
reverence for God. He was, unlike Lionardo, consistently simple, frugal,
and temperate, throughout his long life. If he held up a high standard
to others, and enforced it on them with hardness, he held up a higher
standard to himself, and enforced it on himself more hardly still. He
was a thoroughly unworldly man, and actions which had their root in
unworldliness have been ascribed unjustly to a kind of Lucifer pride.
Greed, and the meanness of greed, were unknown to him. He worked for the
last ten years of his life (under no less than five different Popes) at
his designs for St Peter's, steadfastly refusing pay for the work,
saying that he did it for the honour of God and his own honour. He made
many enemies and suffered from their enmity, but I cannot learn that,
except in one instance, he was guilty of dealing an unworthy blow at
his opponents. He was generous to his scholars, and without jealousy of
them, suffering them to use his designs for their own purposes. He said,
'I have no friends, I need none, I wish for none;' but that was in
feeling himself 'alone before Heaven;' and of the friends whom he did
possess, he loved them all the more devotedly and faithfully, because
they were few in number.

One need only be told of his love for his old servant Urbino, whom he
presented with two thousand crowns to render him independent of service;
and when the servant was seized with his last illness Michael Angelo
nursed him tenderly, sleeping in his clothes on a couch that he might be
ready to attend his patient. When his cares were ended, Michael Angelo
wrote to a correspondent--'My Urbino is dead--to my infinite grief and
sorrow. Living, he served me truly; and in his death he taught me how to
die. Of Michael Angelo's more equal friendship with Vittoria Colonna I
hope my readers will read at leisure for themselves. No nobler, truer
friendship ever existed. It began when the high-born and beautiful,
gifted, and devout Marchesa de Pescara--most loyal of wives and widows,
was forty-eight, and Michael Angelo sixty-four years of age. After a few
years of privileged intercourse and correspondence, which were the
happiest years in Michael Angelo's life, it ended for this world when he
stood mourning by her lifeless clay. 'I was born a rough model, and it
was for thee to reform and re-make me,' the great painter had written
humbly of himself to his liege lady.[7]

Italy, in Michael Angelo's time, as Germany in Albert Duerer's, was all
quickened and astir with the new wave of religious thought which brought
about the Reformation. Ochino and Peter Martyr, treading in the
footsteps of Savonarola, had preached to eager listeners, but 'in Italy
men did not adopt Lutheranism, though they approached it;' and in all
the crowd of great Italian artists of the day, Michael Angelo shows
deepest traces of the conflict--of its trouble, its seriousness, its
nobleness. He only, among his brethren, acted out his belief that the
things of the world sank into insignificance before those thoughts of
God and immortality which were alone fully worthy of the soul. And it
was, as to a religious work for which he was fitted, that he at last
gave himself up to the raising of St Peter's. We shall have next in
order the life of a man who had all the winning qualities which Michael
Angelo wanted, but we shall hardly, through the whole range of history,
find a nobler man than Michael Angelo.

After his first visit to Rome, 1496, Michael Angelo executed his
colossal statue of David. In 1503 he entered into the competition with
Lionardo for the painting of one end of the Council-hall, in Florence,
which has been already mentioned. For this object he drew as his
cartoon, 'Pisan soldiers surprised while bathing by a sudden trumpet
call to arms.' The grand cartoon, of which only a small copy exists, was
said to have been torn to pieces as an act of revenge by a
fellow-sculptor, whom Michael Angelo had offended.

Michael Angelo was invited to Rome by Julius II. in 1504 to aid in
erecting the unapproachable monument which the Pope projected raising
for himself. Then commenced a series of contentions and struggles
between the imperious and petulant Pope and the haughty, uncompromising
painter, in which the latter certainly had the best of it. At one time
in the course of the quarrel, Michael Angelo departed from Rome without
permission or apology, and stoutly refused to return, though followed
hotly by no less than five different couriers, armed with threats and
promises, and urged to make the reparation by his own gonfaloniere. At
last a meeting and a reconciliation between Michael Angelo and the Pope
were effected at Bologna. Michael Angelo designed for Pope Julius II,
not only the statue of Pope Julius at Bologna, which was finally
converted into a cannon, and turned against the very man whose effigy it
had originally presented, but also for that tomb which was never
completed, the famous figure of Moses seated, grasping his beard with
one hand.

While employed at the tomb, Michael Angelo, then in his fortieth year,
was desired by the Pope to undertake the decoration of the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel. Here, again, the hand of an enemy is said to have
been at work. Michael Angelo, with the first place as a sculptor, was
inexperienced in fresco painting; while Raphael, who was taking the
place of Lionardo as Michael Angelo's most formidable rival (yet whom it
is said Michael Angelo pointed out as the fittest painter of the
ceiling), and who was then engaged in painting the Vatican chambers, had
already achieved the utmost renown. It was anticipated by secret
hostility, so records tradition, that Michael Angelo would fail signally
in the unaccustomed work, and that his merit as an artist would pale
altogether before that of Raphael's. I need hardly write how entirely
malice was balked in the verdict to which posterity has set its seal.

Michael Angelo brought artists from Florence to help him in his great
undertaking, for over the chapel, whose walls had already been painted
by older artists--among them Ghirlandajo, was an enormous vault of 150
feet in length by 50 in breadth, which Michael Angelo was required to
cover with designs representing the Fall and Redemption of Man. But the
painter was unable to bear what seemed to him the bungling attempts of
his assistants; so dismissing them all and destroying their work, he
shut himself up, and working in solitude and secrecy, set himself to
evolve from his own inner consciousness the gigantic scenes of a
tremendous drama. In 22 months (or, as Kugler holds, in three years,
including the time spent on the designs) he finished gloriously the
work, the magnitude of which one must see to comprehend. On All Saints'
Day, 1512, the ceiling was uncovered, and Michael Angelo was hailed,
little though he cared for such clamorous hailing, as a painter indeed.
For this piece of work Michael Angelo received 3000 crowns.

Pope Julius died, and was succeeded by Leo X. of the Medician house,
but, in spite of early associations as well as of mother country,
Michael Angelo was no more acceptable to the Pope--a brilliantly
polished, easy-tempered man of the world, who filled the chair of St
Peter's, than Lionardo had been. Leo X, greatly preferred Raphael, to
whom all manner of pleasantness as well as of courteous deference was
natural, to the two others. At the same time, Leo employed Michael
Angelo, though it was more as an architect than as a painter, and rather
at Florence than at Rome. At Florence Michael Angelo executed for Pope
Clement VII., another Medici, the mortuary chapel of San Lorenzo, with
its six great statues, those of the cousins Lorenzo de Medici and
Giuliano de Medici, the first called by the Florentines 'Il Pensiero,'
or 'Pensive Thought,' with the four colossal recumbent figures named
respectively the Night, the Morning, the Dawn, and the Twilight.

In 1537 Michael Angelo was employed by his fellow citizens to fortify
his native city against the return of his old patrons the Medici, and
the city held out for nine months.

Pope Paul III., an old man when elected to the popedom, but bent on
signalizing his pontificate with as splendid works of art as those
which had rendered the reigns of his predecessors illustrious, summoned
another man, grown elderly, Michael Angelo, upwards of sixty years,
reluctant to accept the commission, to finish the decoration of the
Sistine Chapel; and Michael Angelo painted on the wall, at the upper
end, his painting, 'The Last Judgment.' The picture is forty-seven feet
high by forty-three wide, and it occupied the painter eight years. It
was during its progress that Michael Angelo entered on his friendship
with Vittoria Colonna.

For the chapel called the Paolina or Pauline Chapel Michael Angelo also
painted less-known frescoes, but from that time he devoted his life to
St Peter's. He had said that he would take the old Pantheon and 'suspend
it in air,' and he did what he said, though he did not live to see the
great cathedral completed. His sovereign, the Grand Duke of Florence,
endeavoured in vain with magnificent offers to lure the painter back to
his native city. Michael Angelo protested that to leave Rome then would
be 'a sin and a shame, and the ruin of the greatest religious monument
in Christian Europe.' Michael Angelo, like Lionardo, did not marry; he
died at Rome in 1563, in his eighty-ninth year.

His nephew and principal heir,[8] by the orders of the Grand Duke of
Florence, and it is believed according to Michael Angelo's own wish,
removed the painter's body to Florence, where it was buried with all
honours in the church of Santa Croce there.

The traits which recall Michael Angelo personally to us, are the
prominent arch of the nose, the shaggy brows, the tangled beard, the
gaunt grandeur of a figure like that of one of his prophets.

While Michael Angelo lived, one Pope rose on his approach, and seated
the painter on his right hand, and another Pope declined to sit down in
his painter's presence; but the reason given for the last condescension,
is that the Pope feared that the painter would follow his example. And
if the Grand Duke Cosmo uncovered before Michael Angelo, and stood hat
in hand while speaking to him, we may have the explanation in another
assertion, that 'sovereigns asked Michael Angelo to put on his cap,
because the painter would do it unasked.'

The solitary instance in which Michael Angelo is represented as taking
an unfair advantage of an antagonist, is in connection with the
painter's rivalry in his art with Raphael. Michael Angelo undervalued
the genius of Raphael, and was disgusted by what the older man
considered the immoderate admiration bestowed on the younger. A
favourite pupil of Michael Angelo's was Sebastian Del Piombo, who being
a Venetian by birth was an excellent colourist. For one of his
pictures--the very 'Raising of Lazarus' now in the National Gallery,
which the Pope had ordered at the same time that he had ordered
Raphael's 'Transfiguration'--it is rumoured that Michael Angelo gave the
designs and even drew the figures, leaving Sebastian the credit, and
trusting that without Michael Angelo's name appearing in the work, by
the help of his drawing in addition to Sebastian's superb colouring,
Raphael would be eclipsed, and that by a painter comparatively obscure.

The unwarrantable inference that the whole work was that of one painter,
constituted a stratagem altogether unworthy of Michael Angelo, and if it
had any existence, its getting wind disappointed and foiled its authors.
When the story was repeated to Raphael, his sole protest is said to have
been to the effect that he was glad that Michael Angelo esteemed him so
highly as to enter the lists with him.

We can judge of Michael Angelo's attainments as a poet, even without
having recourse to the original Italian, by Wordsworth's translations of
some of the Italian master's sonnets, and by Mr John Edward Taylor's
translations of selections from Michael Angelo's poems.

Michael Angelo was greater as an architect and a sculptor than as a
painter, because his power and delight lay in the mastery of form, and
in the assertion, through that mastery, of the idealism of genius. It is
not necessary to speak here of the mighty harmonies and the ineffable
dignity of simplicity, somewhat marred by the departure from Michael
Angelo's designs, in St Peter's. It has been the fashion to praise them
to the skies, and it has been a later fashion to decry them, in awarding
a preference to the solemn shades and the dim rich dreaminess of Gothic
architecture. Both fashions come to this, after all, that beauty, like
these great men of genius of old, is many-sided.

In Michael Angelo's works of sculpture a weird charm attaches to his
monuments in honour of the Medici in the chapel of San Lorenzo,
Florence. Perhaps something of this weirdness has to do with the tragic
history of the men, and with a certain mystery which has always shrouded
the sculptor's meaning in these monuments.

Mrs Jameson quotes an account of Michael Angelo at work. An eye-witness
has left us a very graphic description of the energy with which, even in
old age, Michael Angelo handled his chisel:--"I can say that I have
seen Michael Angelo at the age of sixty, and, with a body announcing
weakness, make more chips of marble fly about in a quarter of an hour
than would three of the strongest young sculptors in an hour,--a thing
almost incredible to him who has not beheld it. He went to work with
such impetuosity and fury of manner, that I feared almost every moment
to see the block split into pieces. It would seem as if, inflamed by the
idea of greatness which inspired him, this great man attacked with a
Vigenere."

In painting Michael Angelo regarded colouring as of secondary
importance. He is not known to have executed one painting in oil, and he
treated oil and easel-painting generally as work only fit for women or
idle men. While he approached the sublime in his painting, it was by no
means faultless. Even in form his efforts were apt to tend to heaviness
and exaggeration, and the fascination which robust muscular delineation
had for him, betrayed him into materialism. Fuseli's criticism of
Michael Angelo's work, that Michael Angelo's women were female men, and
his children diminutive giants, is judged correct. Incomparably the
greatest painting of Michael Angelo's is his ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel. It includes upwards of 200 figures, the greater part colossal,
as they were to be looked at, in the distance, from below.

'The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel contains the most perfect
works done by Michael Angelo in his long and active life. Here
his great spirit appears in noblest dignity, in its highest
purity; here the attention is not disturbed by that arbitrary
display to which his great power not unfrequently seduced him in
other works. The ceiling forms a flattened arch in its section;
the central portion, which is a plain surface, contains a series
of large and small pictures, representing the most important
events recorded in the book of Genesis--the Creation and Fall of
Man, with its immediate consequences. In the large triangular
compartments at the springing of the vault are sitting figures
of the Prophets and Sibyls, as the foretellers of the coming
Saviour. In the soffits of the recesses between these
compartments, and in the arches underneath, immediately above
the windows, are the ancestors of the Virgin, the series leading
the mind directly to the Saviour. The external of these numerous
representations is formed by an architectural frame-work of
peculiar composition, which encloses the single subjects, tends
to make the principal masses conspicuous, and gives to the whole
an appearance of that solidity and support so necessary, but so
seldom attended to in soffit decorations, which may be
considered as if suspended. A great number of figures are also
connected with the frame-work; those in unimportant situations
are executed in the colour of stone or bronze; in the more
important, in natural colours. These serve to support the
architectural forms, to fill up and to connect the whole. They
may be best described as the living and embodied _genii_ of
architecture. It required the unlimited power of an architect,
sculptor, and painter, to conceive a structural whole of so much
grandeur, to design the decorative figures with the significant
repose required by the sculpturesque character, and yet to
preserve their subordination to the principal subjects, and to
keep the latter in the proportions and relations best adapted to
the space to be filled.'--_Kugler_.

The pictures from the Old Testament, beginning from the altar, are:--

1. The Separation of Light and Darkness.
2. The Creation of the Sun and Moon.
3. The Creation of Trees and Plants.
4. The Creation of Adam.
5. The Creation of Eve.
6. The Fall and the Expulsion from Paradise.
7. The Sacrifice of Noah.
8. The Deluge.
9. The Intoxication of Noah.

'The scenes from Genesis are the most sublime representations of
these subjects;--the Creating Spirit is unveiled before us. The
peculiar type which the painter has here given of the form of the
Almighty
Father has been frequently imitated by his followers, and even by
Raphael, but has been surpassed by none. Michael Angelo has
represented him in majestic flight, sweeping through the air,
surrounded by _genii_, partly supporting, partly borne along with
him, covered by his floating drapery; they are the distinct
syllables, the separate virtues of his creating word. In the
first (large) compartment we see him with extended hands,
assigning to the sun and moon their respective paths. In the
second, he awakens the first man to life. Adam lies stretched on
the verge of the earth in the act of raising himself; the Creator
touches him with the point of his finger, and appears thus to
endow him with feeling and life. This picture displays a
wonderful depth of thought in the composition, and the utmost
elevation and majesty in the general treatment and execution. The
third subject is not less important, representing the Fall of
Man, and his Expulsion from Paradise. The tree of knowledge
stands in the midst; the serpent (the upper part of the body
being that of a woman) is twined around the
stem; she bends down towards the guilty pair, who are in the act
of plucking the forbidden fruit. The figures are nobly graceful,
particularly that of Eve. Close to the serpent hovers the angel
with the sword, ready to drive the fallen beings out of Paradise.
In this double action, this union of two separate moments, there
is something peculiarly poetic and significant: it is guilt and
punishment in one picture. The sudden and lightning-like
appearance of the avenging angel behind the demon of darkness has
a most impressive effect.'--_Kugler_.


The lower portion of the ceiling is divided into triangles, occupied by
the Prophets and Sibyls in solemn contemplation, accompanied by angels
and genii. Beginning from the left of the entrance their order is--

1. Joel.
2. Sibylla Erythraea.
3. Ezekiel.
4. Sibylla Persica.
5. Jonah.
6. Sibylla Libyca.
7. Daniel.
8. Sibylla Cumaea.
9. Isaiah.
10. Sibylla Delphica.

'The prophets and sibyls in the triangular compartments of the
curved portion of the ceiling are the largest figures in the
whole work; these, too, are among the most wonderful forms that
modern art has called into life. They are all represented
seated, employed with books or rolled manuscripts; genii stand
near or behind them. These mighty beings sit before us pensive,
meditative, inquiring, or looking upwards with inspired
countenances. Their forms and movements, indicated by the grand
lines and masses of the drapery, are majestic and dignified. We
see in them beings, who, while they feel and bear the sorrows of
a corrupt and sinful world, have power to look for consolation
into the secrets of the future. Yet the greatest variety
prevails in the attitudes and expression: each figure is full of
individuality. Zacharias is an aged man, busied in calm and
circumspect investigation; Jeremiah is bowed down, absorbed in
thought, the thought of deep and bitter grief; Ezekiel turns
with hasty movements to the genius next to him, who points
upwards with joyful expectation, etc. The sibyls are equally
characteristic: the Persian, a lofty, majestic woman, very aged;
the Erythraean, full of power, like the warrior goddess of
wisdom; the Delphic, like Cassandra, youthfully soft and
graceful, but with strength to bear the awful seriousness of
revelation.'--_Kugler_.

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