Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/79

 *ried it to France. Vasari describes it as "a grand picture, painted in distemper, that seemed as if it breathed on the canvass"; and Mariette, in his notes on Condivi, affirms that he saw the picture, and that "Michael Angelo appeared to have forgot his usual style, and approached the tone of Titian." D'Argenville informs us that the picture was destroyed by fire in the reign of Louis XIII. Lanzi says, "In chiaro-scuro, Michael Angelo had not the skill and delicacy of Correggio; but his paintings in the Vatican have a force and relief much commended by Renfesthein, an eminent connoisseur, who, on passing from the Sistine chapel to the Farnesian gallery, remarked how greatly in this respect the Caracci themselves were eclipsed by Buonarotti."

MICHAEL ANGELO'S GRACE.

"It is a vulgar error," says Lanzi, "to suppose that Michael Angelo had no idea of grace and beauty; the Eve in the Sistine chapel turns to thank her Maker, on her creation, with an attitude so fine and lovely, that it would do honor to the school of Raffaelle. Annibale Caracci admired this, and many other naked figures in this grand ceiling, so highly that he proposed them to himself as models in the art, and according to Bellori, preferred them to the Last Judgment, which appeared to him to be too anatomical."