Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/74

 a combination of dignity and magnificence of decoration, beyond what even the powers of Bramante could have effected.

Such was the unparalleled eminence which this wonderful genius attained in the three sister arts of sculpture, architecture, and painting. His chief characteristics were grandeur and sublimity. His powers were little adapted to represent the gentle and the beautiful; but whatever in nature partook of the sublime and the terrible, were portrayed by him with such fidelity and grandeur as intimidates the beholder. Never before nor since has the world beheld so powerful a genius. The name of Michael Angelo will be immortal as long as the peopled walls of the Sistine chapel endure, or the mighty fabric of St. Peter's rears its proud dome above the spires of the Eternal city.

MICHAEL ANGELO'S FIRST PATRON.

Lanzi says that Lorenzo the Magnificent, desirous of encouraging the statuary art, then on the decline in his country, had collected in his gardens many antique marbles, which he committed to the care of Bertoldo. He requested Ghirlandaio to send him a talented young man, to be educated there, and he sent him Michael Angelo, then a youth of sixteen. Lorenzo was so pleased with his genius that he took him into his palace, rather as a relative than a dependent, placing him at the same table with his own sons, with Poliziano and other learned men who