MICHAEL ANGELO (1475–1564)

“The fetters of my tongue do Thou unbind That I may have the power to sing of Thee, And sound Thy praises everlastingly.” WORDSWORTH (_From the Italian of Michael Angelo_).

“The Entombment of our Lord” (790). We come now to an artist who was the crown and glory of his age, and of his school, as he was the crown and glory of the art of all time. You have all heard of Michael Angelo. Ruskin says that his imaginative perception was almost superhuman. If you go to Rome you will visit the Sixtine Chapel, the ceiling of which he painted. Saints, sibyls, prophets are there. The story of the creation of man, of his fall and of his redemption, is the theme presented there. Over the altar he painted that greatest of all visions seen by the inner eye of man—the Last Judgment.

It would be impossible for me to sketch here Michael Angelo’s life, or to give you an idea of his greatness. He was the son of Lodovico di Leonardo Buonarotti Simoni, a descendant, it is said, of the Counts of Canossa. His father had a small estate close to Florence, and that estate was rich in quarries of hard stone. “The nurse of Michael Angelo,” says Vasari, “was a stone-cutter’s wife, and she would sometimes put into the baby hands of her little charge a chisel and hammer.” Michael Angelo used to say to Vasari, “Giorgio, if I have anything of genius it came to me from being in the subtle air of your country of Arezzo, while from my nurse I got the chisel and hammer with which to fashion my figures.”

His father wished to place him in the woollen and silk trade, but the hand of the spirit was upon the boy, and he would spend his time in drawing secretly. There was no resisting the claims of inborn genius, and when Michael Angelo was fourteen his father had ceased to throw obstacles in his way. He placed the boy with Ghirlandajo, who was considered the best teacher in Italy. The master recognised the genius of his pupil.

Lorenzo de’ Medici was one of the great nobles of Venice; he had a splendid garden on the Piazza San Marco, the alleys of which were filled with antique sculpture. Lorenzo wished to transform that garden into a school of sculpture. He wrote to Ghirlandajo inviting him if he had a pupil of genius to send the youth to this open-air academy. Michael Angelo was sent, and we must think of him in the fragrant avenues of the beautiful garden handling the marble and the chisel. He was greatly envied by some of his fellow-students, and, in a quarrel with one, he received a heavy blow which fractured his nose. This gave a peculiar look to his rugged countenance—the look of an antique bust that has been mutilated. Michael Angelo won the love of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and stayed in his house four years, when the death occurred of that great patron of art.

He then left Venice for Florence and went on to Rome, executing on his way a triumphant series of works. I could not enumerate to you all that he did in sculpture and in painting, but here are a few masterpieces—the statues of “David” and “Moses,” the wonderful statue of Duke Lorenzo brooding in the shadow of the grave, the four symbolic figures of “Night” and “Day,” of “Dawn” and “Twilight” that are so beautiful, Vasari tells us, that “if art were lost they are sufficient to restore it to light.” Pope Julius II. had ordered the mausoleum for himself, and he resolved to rebuild the church of St. Peter in order to give Michael Angelo’s work a fair setting. Thus he became the architect of the great cathedral of St. Peter’s at Rome.

Michael Angelo was a solitary man, a patriot and a poet in marble, in painting and in words. Raphael, of the “sweet Madonnas,” used to say that he thanked God to have been born in the days of Michael Angelo. In his old age the incomparable artist loved the beautiful Vittoria Colonna, the widow of the Marquis of Pescara. He wrote sonnets to her and she wrote some to him. Religious sympathy united them. In his youth Michael Angelo had heard Savonarola preach, and he and Vittoria were the monk’s disciples, for both believed in the internal reform of the Church such as Savonarola preached. She died, and the old man watched by her bedside; and, when the last sigh had left her lips, he kissed the dead hands, afterwards bitterly regretting that he had not kissed her forehead and cheek. Beautiful and sacred friendship worthy of two such peerless souls! He died many years after, but he preserved to the last the memory of what she had been. Our poet Wordsworth has translated some of Michael Angelo’s sonnets. In one addressed to Vittoria he says—

“Better plea, Love cannot have, than that in loving thee Glory to that eternal Peace is paid, Who such divinity to thee imparts As hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts.”

This picture of “The Entombment” is quite unfinished. Perhaps it was painted in early youth and laid aside. There is grandeur in the conception, but it fails to hold us by the subtle charm of presentation. There are the three Marys. The kneeling Virgin is vaguely outlined; just in front of her is Mary, the wife of Cleophas, a figure that has in it a touch of woeful grace. The other Mary, a tall, slight woman, helps to hold the twisted sheet in which Christ is being carried. Salome is also there, seated on the ground examining something in her hand which has not been rendered by the artist. Joseph and another in the background support the Saviour, whose figure is painful to look at in its emaciation. The picture in its unfinished state is valuable to students, for it reveals Michael Angelo’s method of work.

“The Madonna and Infant Christ: St. John the Baptist and Angels” (809). This picture is unfinished also, but the charm and majesty of the work are manifest. There is in it a haunting mystery. The Madonna, a beautiful figure, holds an open book out of reach of the Child, who is trying to grasp it. That book contains the scroll on which the sorrows He has to meet are recorded. St. John the Baptist, hiding his sad little countenance, stands near her. Behind are two wingless angels reading from another scroll. On the other side of the Virgin and behind her are two unfinished angels with shrouded heads. Mark the beauty of the Virgin’s expression, the simple treatment of the folds of her dress, the nobility of her attitude. From these two pictures you must try to guess the greatness of Michael Angelo’s genius—a genius expressive of that of Florence, of its intellect, its unresting quality, its religion. You must always remember that to understand a picture you must try to feel it through the artist’s temperament; you must try to understand the ideals of the age in which it was painted; above all, you must understand its religion. It is Michael Angelo’s spiritual power that still lives on for us in these works, however unfinished they may be, and gives to them an arresting quality.

“THE MADONNA AND INFANT CHRIST, ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, AND ANGELS” (809)

BY MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI

page 40 ]