Page:Bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers, volume 1.djvu/331

 appears, took him to Venice before what must be called bis flight thither in 1529. When in 1530 Clement VII., with the aid of the imperial cannon, gave the last blow to the liberties of Florence, or rather when the city, which fire and famine bad been unable to subdue, was treacherously yielded to the Medici, Michelangelo, who had returned from Venice, was in great danger, and was obliged to lie concealed for a time in the house of a friend. The Pope, however, who, like his predecessor Julius II., seems to have known the value of a man of genius, gave him his pardon, and ordered him to resume bis work on the tombs in the Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo, upon which he had been employed before the siege. He accordingly came forth from Ids hiding-place, and worked, as he says, with "morbid haste," but with saddened heart, on the four great recumbent figures of Night, Morning, Dawn, and Twilight, and the statues of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici. These are generally considered to be his greatest works in sculpture.

In 1534 Michelangelo lost his father, to whom and to his brothers most of his letters are written. He is seen by these letters to have been always a most dutiful and affectionate son, ever considerate, patient, and generous towards his family. Both his father and his brothers constantly depended upon him for help, which was given even at a time when he had to deny himself to send it. Indeed the sardonic old Titan who was so inaccessible to the rest of the world, and who braved even the anger of popes, stands forth in his letters as a singularly obedient and tender son, who bore with exemplary patience the very irritating conduct of father and brothers, who were perpetually worrying him about trivial family disputes and debts.

On the death of Clement VII. in 1534, Michelangelo's work in San Lorenzo, though unfinished, came to an end. He now again thought that he might be permitted to work on the tomb of Julius II. for which he had contracted, and which had caused him endless worry and regret. But the new Pope, Paul III., was possessed of another idea, and was determined, now he was Pope, to realize it; and Michelangelo, in furtherance of this idea, was again obliged to lay aside sculpture for painting.

The world-famous 'Last Judgment,' which Michelangelo now undertook as the completion of the Sixtine frescoes, may be regarded as the final expression of his art. In this work all traditionary types were cast aside. Christ is represented as the Avenger, and the lost souls fall before His wrath into the abyss ; the joys of the blessed being far less apparent than the convulsive struggles of the damned. The subject indeed, which had been treated with grotesque asceticism by the early religious painters, offered a marvellous opportunity for the display of naked human form, and as such Michelangelo seized upon it, and turned the old idea of the Dies tree into a great tragedy of humanity.

The 'Last Judgment' has suffered even more fatally from neglect than the other frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel, and moreover it has been injured by repainting, from which the others have been preserved by their inaccessible position. It contains 314 figures, and occupied Michelangelo from 1535 to 1541. But Michelangelo was now an old man, and worked, as be himself says, "unwillingly, working for one day, and resting for four."

This was almost the last great work in painting that he was called to undertake: though he afterwards consented to paint two frescoes in the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican representing the 'Conversion of St. Paul' and the 'Martyrdom of St. Peter.' In 1546, at the age of seventy-one, be was appointed by Paul III. chief architect of St. Peter's, an office which he continued to hold under four other popes. The great dome of St. Peter's was raised from his plan.

AH his poems, for he was a poet as well as a sculptor, painter, architect, and engineer, express a longing for the release of death, but it was not until he bad reached his ninetieth year that this release came to him. He died at Rome on the 18th of February, 1564, and was buried by his own desire at Florence.

Michelangelo was a man of melancholy temperament, and subject to violent outbursts of righteous anger which made him more feared than loved by those who did not know him well. Dwelling alone with his own great thoughts, he became impatient of interruption and contradiction, and ofttimes expressed himself with a bitterness which made him many enemies. No woman's name is in any way associated with his, with the exception of that of the noble Princess Vittoria Colonna, whose sympathetic friendship cheered the later years of his life. His life was a stormy one, no less from miserable personal disputes than from the stirring times in which he lived and took part. He felt deeply the ruin of the liberties of Florence, as evinced by his reply to some verses affixed to his statue of 'Night,' in which he makes the statue say, "Sleep is dear to me, and still more that I am of stone, 80 long as dishonour and shame last among us. The happiest fate is to see nothing and feel nothing. Therefore awake me not Speak low."

Of the art of Michelangelo all may judge. It needs long study before its masterly power is perfectly comprehended. All that the progressive artists of Florence had been striving after since the time of Masaccio was attained by him. He was influenced but not dominated by classic art. Like the great Greek artists before him, he seized on the nude human body as the best means of displaying the highest perfection of artistic beauty. While Titian and Correggio were seeking this perfection in sensuous loveliness, Michelangelo sought it in physical force, and by a daring; and a knowledge such as no artist hid ever before displayed, achieved his aim to the admiration of all succeeding ages. Power and intellect are the two qualities that mark his style, a profound knowledge of nature, and careful study of the living model, yet no servile copying even of nature, for be often violated rules of proportion, placed his figures in constrained and unusual positions, and in other ways rejected the teachings of science, if this was necessary for the expression of his idea. For Michelangelo was perhaps the greatest of idealists. His figures live by virtue of the life he has infused into them, and remain as the grandest creations of Italian art.

It does not come within the scope of this work to enumerate all his great works in sculpture and in architecture; many of them have, however, been mentioned in this article. Of those he executed in painting, the principal are:

Copy of Martin Schongauer's St. Anthony. His first reputed picture; now lost.

Circular Madonna and Child, painted for Angelo Doni