Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings (IA cyclopediaofpain03cham).pdf/283

 construction. In May, 1506, after a quarrel with Julius, Michelangelo fled from Rome to Florence. A reconciliation was effected between them in August, at Bologna, where the artist remained, to cast the Pope's statue in bronze, until March, 1508, when he was again at Florence for a short time, until his forced return to Rome to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This greatest of his works was begun in May, 1508, and the first unsatisfactory experiment of painting with Granacci, and other assistants, in September of that year. Their work having been destroyed, the great artist grappled with his herculean task single-handed. On All Saints' Day, 1509, when the ceiling had been half completed, the chapel was thrown open to the public. Satisfied with the effect, Pope Julius then allowed the scaffolding to be replaced and Michelangelo to resume his labours, which he probably completed in 1512, although the chapel was not reopened until after March, 1513, when the Pope died. The vaulted ceiling is divided into compartments containing scenes from the Book of Genesis. Sublime figures of Sibyls and Prophets are painted in the pendentives, and subjects taken from the Old Testament in the lunettes. All these are bound together by a simulated architectural framework, vivified by figures representing the genii of architecture. The theme of the artist is man and his redemption; the actors in the great drama are Adam and his progeny; the assisting chorus, those sublime figures of Sibyls and Prophets in which Michelangelo displays his unrivalled powers of conception, imagination, design, and drawing. Could we also add to these power as a colourist, we should call him the greatest of painters; but this we cannot do, because colour was to him an, in itself, unimportant means for the representation of form, upon which his essentially plastic genius concentrated itself. In the Holy Family, at the Uffizi, his one certainly authentic oil picture, the colour is cold and inharmonious, while in his frescos it is of secondary importance. Before the death of Pope Clement VII. (1534) Michelangelo had made designs for the fresco of the Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel, and in September of that year it was begun, at the bidding of Paul III., and finished in 1541. While the Last Judgment shows no sign of diminished power, the frescos of the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Crucifixion of St. Peter, in the Pauline Chapel (about 1550), exhibit a marked decline. When Leo X. succeeded, in 1513, he appointed Michelangelo architect of the projected, but never built, façade of San Lorenzo, and caused him to waste three years in marble-buying and road-building at Carrara and Seravezza. In 1519 he was ordered by Leo to build the Chapel of the Medici, begun in 1520, to sculpture for it tombs of the famous members of the family, partially completed in 1525-29, and to construct the library of San Lorenzo, undertaken in 1523, when this Pope was succeeded by Clement VII. Six years later he besieged Florence to restore the Medici, and Michelangelo as commissioner-general conducted the defence. In this capacity he went to Ferrara to study the fortifications, and was commissioned by the duke to paint a Leda, supposed to be the picture in tempera in the National Gallery (unexhibited), London. This is the only other picture by him, besides those already mentioned, in existence, for the Three Fates, Pitti Gallery, Florence, belongs to his school. After Aug. 12, 1530, when Florence was betrayed to the Imperial forces, Michelangelo resumed his work at the Medici Chapel, and carried it on until 1534, when he began to paint the Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel. Before this time he had finished the statue of Moses for the tomb of Julius II., finally completed, on a very reduced scale, in 1545 for the Church of S. Pietro in Vincula. In 1546 Michelangelo succeeded Antonio di Sangallo as head architect of St. Peter's, confirmed by papal brief, Jan. 1, 1547. In February of that year he sustained a severe affliction in the death of Vittoria Colonna, who had long been the pre