Part 3

Raffaelle was of the latter class—sweet of nature, gentle of disposition, gifted with a rare sense of grace, a facile talent of design, and a refinement of feeling which, if it sometimes degenerated into weakness, never utterly lost its enchantment. He was exceedingly impressionable, reflected by turns the spirit of his masters,—was first Perugino, and afterwards modified his style to that of Fra Bartolommeo, and again, under the influence of Michel Angelo, strove to tread in his footsteps. He was not of a deep nature nor of a powerful character. There was nothing torrential in his genius, bursting its way through obstacles and sweeping all before it. It was rather that of the calm river, flowing at its own sweet will, and reflecting peacefully the passing figures of life. He painted as the bird sings. He was an artist because nature made him one—not because he had vowed himself to art, and was willing to struggle and fight for its smile. He was gentle and friendly—a pleasant companion—a superficial lover—handsome of person and pleasing of address—who always went surrounded by a corona of followers, who disliked work and left the execution of his designs in great measure to his pupils, while he toyed with the Fornarina. I do not mean to undervalue him in what he did. His works are charming—his invention was lively. He had the happy art of telling his story in outline, better, perhaps, than any one else of his age. His highest reach was the Madonna di S. Sisto, and this certainly is full of that large sweetness and spiritual sensibility which entitles him to the common epithet of “Divino.” But when he died at the early age of thirty-seven, he had come to his full development, and there is no reason to suppose that he would ever have attained a greater height. Indeed, during his latter years he was tired of his art, neglected his work, became more and more academic, and preferred to bask in the sunshine of his fame on its broad levels, to girding up his loins to struggle up precipitous ascents to loftier peaks. The world already began to blame him for this neglect, and to say that he had forgotten how to paint himself, and gave his designs only to his students to execute. Moved by these rumors, he determined alone to execute a work in fresco, and this work was the famous Galatea of the Palazzo Farnese. He was far advanced in it, when, during his absence one morning, a dark, short, stern-looking man called to see him. In the absence of Raffaelle, this man gazed attentively at the Galatea for a long time, and then taking a piece of charcoal, he ascended a ladder which stood in the corner of the vast room, and drew offhand on the wall a colossal male head. Then he came down and went away, saying to the attendant, “If Signore Raffaelle wishes to know who came to see him, show him my card there on the wall.” When Raffaelle returned, the assistant told him of his visitor, and showed him the head. “That is Michel Angelo,” he said, “or the devil.”

And Michel Angelo it was. Raffaelle well knew what that powerful and colossal head meant, and he felt the terrible truth of its silent criticism on his own work. It meant, Your fresco is too small for the room—your style is too pleasing and trivial. Make something grand and colossal. Brace your mind to higher purpose, train your hand to nobler design. I say that Raffaelle felt this stern criticism, because he worked no more there, and only carried out this one design. Raffaelle’s disposition was sweet and attractive, and he was beloved by all his friends. Vasari says of him, that he was as much distinguished by his _amorevolezza ed umanità_, his affectionate and sympathetic nature, as by his excellence as an artist; and another contemporary speaks of him as of _summæ bonitatis_, perfect sweetness of character. All this one sees in his face, which, turning, gazes dreamily at us over his shoulder, with dark, soft eyes, long hair, and smooth, unsuffering cheeks where Time has ploughed no furrows—easy, charming, graceful, refined, and somewhat feminine of character.

Michel Angelo was made of sterner stuff than this. His temper was violent, his bearing haughty, his character impetuous. He had none of the personal graces of his great rival. His face was, as it were, hammered sternly out by fate; his brow corrugated by care, his cheeks worn by thought, his hair and beard stiffly curled and bull-like; his expression sad and intense, with a weary longing in his deep-set eyes. Doubtless, at times, they flamed with indignation and passion—for he was very irascible, and suffered no liberties to be taken with him. He could not “sport with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neæra’s hair.” Art was his mistress, and a stern mistress she was, urging him ever onward to greater heights. He loved her with a passion of the intellect; there was nothing he would not sacrifice for her. He was willing to be poor, almost to starve, to labor with incessant zeal, grudging even the time that sleep demanded, only to win her favor. He could not have been a pleasant companion, and he was never a lover of woman. His friendship with Vittoria Colonna was worlds away from the senses,—worlds away from such a connection as that of Raffaelle with the Fornarina. They walked together in the higher fields of thought and feeling, in the region of ideas and aspirations. Their conversation was of art, and poesy, and religion, and the mysteries of life. They read to each other their poems, and discoursed on high themes of religion, and fate, and foreknowledge. The sonnets he addressed to her were in no trivial vein of human passion or sentiment.

“Rapt above earth” (he writes) “by power of one fair face, Hers, in whose sway alone my heart delights, I mingle with the Blest on those pure heights Where man, yet mortal, rarely finds a place— With Him who made the Work that Work accords So well that, by its help and through His grace, I raise my thoughts, inform my deeds and words, Clasping her beauty in my soul’s embrace.”

In his _soul’s_ embrace, not in his arms. When he stood beside her dead body, he silently gazed at her, not daring to imprint a kiss on that serene brow even when life had departed. If he admired Petrarca, it was as a philosopher and a patriot,—for his canzone to Liberty, not for his sonnets to Laura. Dante, whom he called _Stella di alto valor_, the star of high power, was his favorite poet; Savonarola his single friend. The “Divina Commedia,” or rather the “Inferno” alone, he thought worthy of illustration by his pencil; the doctrines of the latter he warmly espoused. “True beauty,” says that great reformer, “comes only from the soul, from nobleness of spirit and purity of conduct.” And so, in one of his madrigals, says Michel Angelo. “They are but gross spirits who seek in sensual nature the beauty that uplifts and moves every healthy intelligence even to heaven.”

For the most part he walked alone and avoided society, wrapped up in his own thoughts; and once, when meeting Raffaelle, he reproached him for being surrounded by a _cortège_ of flatterers; to which Raffaelle bitterly retorted, “And you go alone, like the headsman”—_andate solo come un boia_.

He was essentially original, and, unlike his great rival, followed in no one’s footsteps. “Chi va dietro agli altri non li passa mai dinanzi,” he said,—who follows behind others can never pass before them.

Yet, with all his ruggedness and imperiousness of character, he had a deep tenderness of nature, and was ready to meet any sacrifice for those whom he loved. Personal privations he cared little for, and sent to his family all his earnings, save what was absolutely necessary to support life. He had no greed for wealth, no love of display, no desire for luxuries: a better son never lived, and his unworthy brother he forgave over and over again, never weary of endeavoring to set him on his right path.

But at times he broke forth with a tremendous energy when pushed too far, as witness this letter to his brother. After saying, “If thou triest to do well, and to honor and revere thy father, I will aid thee like the others, and will provide for thee in good time a place of business,” he thus breaks out in his postscript:—

“I have not wandered about all Italy, and borne every mortification, suffered hardship, lacerated my body with hard labor, and placed my life in a thousand dangers, except to aid my family; and now that I have begun to raise it somewhat, thou alone art the one to embroil and ruin in an hour that which I have labored so long to accomplish. By the body of Christ, but it shall be found true that I shall confound ten thousand such as thou art if it be needful,—so be wise, and tempt not one who has already too much to bear.”

He was generous and large in his charities. He supported out of his purse many poor persons, married and endowed secretly a number of young girls, and gave freely to all who surrounded him. “When I die,” asked he of his old and faithful servant Urbino, “what will become of you?” “I shall seek for another master in order to live,” was the answer. “Ah, poor man!” cried Michel Angelo, and gave him at once 10,000 golden crowns. When this poor servant fell ill, he tended him with the utmost care, as if he were a brother, and on his death broke out into loud lamentations, and would not be comforted.

His fiery and impetuous temper, however, led him often into violence. He was no respecter of persons, and he well knew how to stand up for the rights of man. There was nothing of the courtier in him; and he faced the Pope with an audacious firmness of purpose and expression unparalleled at that time; and yet he was singularly patient and enduring, and gave way to the variable Pontiff’s whims and caprices whenever they did not touch his dignity as a man. Long periods of time he allowed himself to be employed in superintending the quarrying of marble at Carrara, though his brain was teeming with great conceptions. He was oppressed, agitated, irritated on every side by home troubles, by papal caprices, and by the intestine tumult of his country, and much of his life was wasted in merely mechanical work which any inferior man could as well have done. He was forced not only to quarry, but to do almost all the rude blocking out of his statues in marble, which should have been intrusted to others, and which would have been better done by mere mechanical workmen. His very impetuosity, his very genius, unfitted him for such work: while he should have been creating and designing, he was doing the rough work of a stone-cutter. So ardent was his nature, so burning his enthusiasm, that he could not fitly do this work. He was too impatient to get to the form within to take heed of the blows he struck at the shapeless mass that encumbered it, and thus it happened that he often ruined his statue by striking away what could never be replaced.

Vigenero thus describes him:—

“I have seen Michel Angelo, although sixty years of age, and not one of the most robust of men, smite down more scales from a very hard block of marble in a quarter of an hour, than three young marble-cutters would in three or four times that space of time. He flung himself upon the marble with such impetuosity and fervor, as to induce me to believe that he would break the work into fragments. With a single blow he brought down scales of marble of three or four fingers in breadth, and with such precision to the line marked on the marble, that if he had broken away a very little more, he risked the ruin of the work.”

This is pitiable. This was not the work for a great genius like him, but for a common stone-cutter. What waste of time and energy to no purpose,—nay, to worse than no purpose,—to the danger, often the irreparable injury, of the statue. A dull, plodding, patient workman would have done it far better. It is as if an architect should be employed in planing the beams or laying the bricks and stones of the building he designed. In fact, Michel Angelo injured, and in some cases nearly ruined, most of his statues by the very impatience of his genius. Thus the back head of the Moses has been struck away by one of these blows, and everywhere a careful eye detects the irreparable blow beyond its true limit. This is not the Michel Angelo whom we are to reverence and admire; this is an _abbozzatore_ roughing out the work. There is no difficulty in striking off large cleavings of marble at one stroke—any one can do that; and it is pitiable to find him so engaged.

Where we do find his technical excellence as a sculptor is when he comes to the surface—when with the drill he draws the outline with such force and wonderful precision—when his tooth-chisel models out, with such pure sense of form and such accomplished knowledge, the subtle anatomies of the body and the living curves of the palpitant flesh; and no sculptor can examine the colossal figures of the Medici Chapel without feeling the free and mighty touch of a great master of the marble. Here the hand and the mind work together, and the stone is plastic as clay to his power.

It was not until Michel Angelo was sixty years of age that, on the death of Antonio San Gallo, he was appointed to succeed him as architect, and to design and carry out the building of St. Peter’s, then only rising from its foundations. To this appointment he answered, as he had before objected when commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel, “Architecture is not my art.” But his objections were overruled. The Pope insisted, and he was finally prevailed upon to accept this commission, on the noble condition that his services should be gratuitous, and dedicated to the glory of God and of His Apostle, St. Peter; and to this he was actuated, not only by a grand sentiment, but because he was aware that hitherto the work had been conducted dishonestly, and with a sole view of greed and gain. Receiving nothing himself, he could the more easily suppress all peculation on the part of others.

He was, as he said, an old man in years, but in energy and power he had gained rather than lost, and he set himself at once to work, and designed that grand basilica which has been the admiration of centuries, and to swing, as he said, in air the Pantheon. That mighty dome is but the architectural brother of the great statues in the Medicean Chapel, and the Titan frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. Granted all the defects of this splendid basilica, all the objections of all the critics, well or ill founded, and all the deformities grafted on it by his successors—there it is, one of the noblest and grandest of all temples to the Deity, and one of the most beautiful. The dome itself, within and without, is a marvel of beauty and grandeur, to which all other domes, even that of Brunelleschi, must yield precedence. It is the uplifted brow and forehead that holds the brain of papal Rome, calm, and without a frown, silent, majestic, impressive. The church within has its own atmosphere, which scarcely knows the seasons without; and when the pageant and the pomp of the Catholic hierarchy passes along its nave, and the sunlight builds its golden slanting bridge of light from the lantern to the high altar, and the fumes of incense rise from the clinking censer at High Mass, and the solemn thrill of the silver trumpets sounds and swells and reverberates through the dim mosaicked dome where the saints are pictured above, cold must be his heart and dull his sense who is not touched to reverence. Here is the type of the universal Church—free and beautiful, large and loving; not grim and sombre and sad, like the northern Gothic cathedrals. We grieve over all the bad taste of its interior decoration, all the giant and awkward statues, all the lamentable details, for which he is not responsible; but still, despite them all, the impression is great. When at twilight the shadows obscure all these trivialities, when the lofty cross above the altar rays forth its single illumination and the tasteless details disappear, and the towering arches rise unbroken with their solemn gulfs of darkness, one can feel how great, how astonishing this church is, in its broad architectural features.

At nearly this time Michel Angelo designed the Palazzo Farnese, the Church of Sta Maria degli Angeli in the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian, the Laurentian Library and the palaces on the Capitol, and various other buildings, all of which bear testimony to his power and skill as an architect.

For St. Peter’s as it now stands Michel Angelo is not responsible. His idea was to make all subordinate to the dome; but after his death, the nave was prolonged by Carlo Maderno, the façade completely changed, and the main theme of the building was thus almost obliterated from the front. It is greatly to be regretted that his original design was not carried out. Every change from it was an injury. The only point from which one can get an idea of his intention is from behind or at the side, and there its colossal character is shown.

We have thus far considered Michel Angelo as a sculptor, painter, and architect. It remains to consider him as a poet. Nor in his poetry do we find any difference of character from what he exhibited in his other arts. He is rough, energetic, strong, full of high ideas, struggling with fate, oppressed and weary with life. He has none of the sweet numbers of Petrarca, or the lively spirit of Ariosto, or the chivalric tones of Tasso. His verse is rude, craggy, almost disjointed at times, and with little melody in it, but it is never feeble. It was not his art, he might have said, with more propriety than when he thus spoke of painting and architecture. Lofty thoughts have wrestled their way into verse, and constrained a rhythmic form to obey them. But there is a constant struggle for him in a form which is not plastic to his touch. Still his poems are strong in their crabbedness, and stand like granite rocks in the general sweet mush of Italian verse.

Such, then, was Michel Angelo,—sculptor, painter, architect, poet, engineer, and able in all these arts. Nor would it have been possible for him to be so great in any one of them had he not trained his mind to all; for all the arts are but the various articulations of the self-same power, as the fingers are of the hand, and each lends aid to the other. Only by having all can the mind have its full grasp of art. It is too often insisted in our days that a man to be great in one art must devote himself exclusively to that; or if he be solicited by any other, he must merely toy with it. Such was not the doctrine of the artists of old, either in ancient days of Greece or at the epoch of the Renaissance. Phidias was a painter and architect as well as a sculptor, and so were nearly all the men of his time. Giotto, Leonardo, Ghiberti, Michel Angelo, Verrocchio, Cellini, Raffaelle,—in a word, all the great men of the glorious age in Italy were accomplished in many arts. They more or less trained themselves in all. It might be said that not a single great man was not versed in more than one art. Thence it was that they derived their power. It does not suffice that the arm alone is strong; the whole body strikes with every blow.

The frescoes in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and the statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, are the greatest monuments of Michel Angelo’s power as an artist. Whatever may be the defects of these great works, they are of a Titanic brood, that have left no successors, as they had no progenitors. They defy criticism, however just, and stand by themselves outside the beaten track of art, to challenge our admiration. So also, despite all his faults and defects, how grand a figure Michel Angelo himself is in history, how high a place he holds! His name itself is a power. He is one of the mighty masters that the world cannot forget. Kings and emperors die and are forgotten,—dynasties change and governments fall,—but he, the silent, stern worker, reigns unmoved in the great realm of art.

Let us leave this great presence, and pass into the other splendid chapel of the Medici which adjoins this, and mark the contrast, and see what came of some of the titular monarchs of his time who fretted their brief hour across the stage, and wore their purple, and issued their edicts, and were fawned upon and flattered in their pride of ephemeral power.

Passing across a corridor, you enter this domed chapel or mausoleum—and a splendid mausoleum it is. Its shape is octagonal. It is 63 metres in height, or about 200 feet, and is lined throughout with the richest marbles—of jasper, coralline, persicata, chalcedony, mother-of-pearl, agate, giallo and verde antico, porphyry, lapis-lazuli, onyx, oriental alabaster, and beautiful petrified woods; and its cost was no less than thirty-two millions of francs of to-day. Here were to lie the bodies of the Medici family, in honor of whom it was raised. On each of the eight sides is a vast arch, and inside six of these are six immense sarcophagi, four of red Egyptian granite and two of gray, with the arms of the family elaborately carved upon them, and surmounted with coronets adorned with precious gems. In two of the arches are colossal portrait statues,—one of Ferdinand III. in golden bronze, by Pietro Tacca; and the other of Cosimo II. in brown bronze, by John of Bologna, and both in the richest royal robes. The sarcophagi have the names of Ferdinand II., Cosimo III., Francesco I., Cosimo I. All that wealth and taste can do has been done to celebrate and perpetuate the memory of these royal dukes that reigned over Florence in its prosperous days.

And where are the bodies of these royal dukes? Here comes the saddest of stories. When the early bodies were first buried I know not; but in 1791 Ferdinand III. gathered together all the coffins in which they were laid, and had them piled together pell-mell in the subterranean vaults of this chapel, scarcely taking heed to distinguish them one from another; and here they remained, neglected and uncared for, and only protected from plunder by two wooden doors with common keys, until 1857. Then shame came over those who had the custody of the place, and it was determined to put them in order. In 1818 there had been a rumor that these Medicean coffins had been violated and robbed of all the articles of value which they contained. But little heed was paid to this rumor, and it was not until thirty-nine years after that an examination into the real facts was made. It was then discovered that the rumor was well founded. The forty-nine coffins containing the remains of the family were taken down one by one, and a sad state of things was exposed. Some of them had been broken into and plundered, some were the hiding-places of vermin, and such was the nauseous odor they gave forth, that at least one of the persons employed in taking them down lost his life by inhaling it. Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, had become hideous and noisome. Of many of the ducal family nothing remained but fragments of bones and a handful of dust. But where the hand of the robber had not been, the splendid dresses covered with jewels, the silks and satins wrought over with gold embroidery, the richly chased helmets and swords crusted with gems and gold, still survived, though those who had worn them in their splendid pageants were but dust and crumbling bones within them.

“Here were sands, ignoble things, Dropped from the ruined sides of kings.”