Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/243

Rh M I C M I C 229 he went to Madagascar to investigate the flora of that island, and died there in 1802. His work as a botanist was chiefly done in the field, and he added largely to what was previously known of the botany of the East and of America. He also introduced many plants into Euro pean botanic gardens. He wrote two valuable works on North-American plants, the Histoire des chenes de CAmerique Septentrionale (1801), with 36 plates, and the Flora Jioreali- Americana (1803), 2 vols., with 51 plates. MICHAUX, FRANCOIS ANDR^ (1770-1855), son of the preceding, was, like his father, employed by the French Government to explore the forests of North America with a view to the introduction into France of trees valuable for their wood or other products. He was very success ful in carrying out this object. He published in 1810-13 a Histoire des Arbres forestieres de I Amerique Septentrionale, in 3 vols., with 156 plates, a work full of information on the characters, uses, distribution, and other points of interest in the various species. In 1817-19 a translation of it appeared under the title North American Sylva. He also wrote a Voyage a Vouest des Monts Alleghanys, 1804, besides articles in scientific magazines. MICHELANGELO (1475-1564). Michelangelo Buon arroti, best known simply as Michelangelo, the last and most famous of the great artists of Florence, was the son of Ludovico Buonarroti, a poor gentleman of that city, and of his wife Francesca di Neri. Ludovico was barely able to live on the income of his estate, but made it his boast that he had never stooped to add to it by mercantile or mechani cal pursuits. The favour of the Medici procured him em ployment in some minor offices of state, and in the autumn of 1474 he was appointed resident magistrate of Caprese, in the Casentino, for a period of six months. Thither he accordingly repaired with his family, and there, on March 6, 1475, his second son Michelagniolo or Michelangelo was born. Immediately afterwards the family returned to Florence, and the child was put to nurse with a marble- worker s wife of Settignano. His mother s health had already, it would seem, begun to fail ; at all events in about two years from this time, after she had borne her husband two more sons, she died. While still a young boy, Michelangelo determined in spite of his father s opposition to be an artist. He had sucked in the passion, as he himself used to say, with his foster-mother s milk. After a sharp struggle, his stubborn will overcame his father s pride of gentility, and at thirteen he got himself articled as a paid assistant in the workshop of the brothers Ghirlandaio. Domenico Ghirlandaio, bred a jeweller, had become by this time the foremost painter of Florence. In his service the young Michelangelo laid the foundations of that skill in fresco with which twenty years afterwards he confounded his detractors at Rome. He studied also, like all the Florentine artists of that age, in the Brancacci chapel, where the frescos of Masaccio, painted some sixty years before, still victoriously held their own; and here, in a quarrel with an ill-conditioned fellow-student, Torrigiani, he received the blow of which his face bore the marks to his dying day. Though Michelangelo s earliest studies were directed towards painting, he was by nature and predilection much more inclined to sculpture. In that art he presently received encouragement and training under the eye of an illustrious patron, Lorenzo dei Medici. On the recommendation, it is said, of Ghirlandaio, he was trans ferred, before the term of his apprenticeship as a painter had expired, to the school of sculpture established by Lorenzo in the Medici gardens. Here he could learn to match himself against his great predecessor, Donatello, one of whose pupils was the director of the school, and to com pare the works of that master and his Tuscan contemporaries with the antiques collected for the instruction of the scholars. Here, too, he could listen to discourses on Platonism, and steep himself in the doctrines of an enthusiastic philosophy which sought to reconcile with Christian faith the lore and the doctrines of the Academy. Michelangelo remained a Christian Platonist to the end of his days ; he was also from his youth up a devoted student of Dante. His powers of mind and hand soon attracted attention, and secured him the regard and favour of his patrons in spite of his rugged, unsociable exterior, and of a temper which at best was but a half-smothered volcano. Michelangelo had been attached to the school and house hold of the Medici for barely three years when, in 1492, his great patron Lorenzo died. Lorenzo s son Piero dei Medici inherited the position, but not the qualities, of his father ; Florence soon chafed under his authority ; and towards the autumn of 1494 it became apparent that disaster was impending over him and his adherents. Michelangelo was constitutionally subject to dark and sudden presentiments : one such seized him now, and, without awaiting the popular outbreak which soon followed, he took horse with two companions and fled to Bologna. There, being now in his twentieth year, he was received with kindness by a member of the Aldovrandi family, and on his commission executed two figures of saints, and one of an angel, for the shrine of St Dominic in the church of St Petronius. After about a year, work at Bologna failing, and his name having been included in his absence on the list of artists appointed to provide a new hall of assembly for the Great Council of Florence, Michelangelo returned home. The strange theocracy established by Savonarola was now in force, and the whole character of civic life at Florence was for the time being changed. But Michelangelo was not left without employment. He found a friend in another Lorenzo, the son of Pierfrancesco dei Medici, for whom he at this time executed a statue of the boy St John. Having also carved a recumbent Cupid in imitation of the antique, it was suggested to him by the same patron that it should be so tinted and treated as to look like a real antique, and sold accordingly. Without increasing the price he put upon the work, Michelangelo for amuse ment lent himself to the counterfeit, and the piece was then actually sold for a large sum to a Roman collector, the cardinal San Giorgio, as a genuine work of antiquity, the dealer appropriating the profits. When presently the cardinal discovered the fraud, he caused the dealer to refund ; but as to Michelangelo himself, it was represented to the young sculptor that if he went to Rome, the amateur who had just involuntarily paid so high a tribute to his skill would certainly befriend him. He set forth accord ingly, and arrived at Rome for the first time at the end of June 1496. Such hopes as he may have entertained of countenance from the cardinal San Giorgio were quickly dispelled. Neither did the banished Piero dei Medici, who also was now living at Rome, do anything to help him. On the other hand Michelangelo won the favour of a Roman nobleman, Jacopo Galli, and through him of the French cardinal Jean de Villiers de la Grolaie, abbot of St Denis. From the former he received a commission for a Cupid and a Bacchus, from the latter for a Pieta, or Mary lamenting over the body of Christ, works of which probably all three, the last two certainly, are preserved. Michelangelo s stay in Rome at this time lasted five years, from the summer of 1496 till that of 1501. The interval had been one of extreme political distraction at Florence. The excitement of the French invasion, the mystic and ascetic regimen of Savonarola, the reaction which led to his overthrow, and finally the external wars and internal dissidences which preceded a new settlement, had all created an atmosphere most unfavourable to art