Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/246

Rh 232 of the first patriarchs, with accessory personages of prophets and sibyls dreaming on the new dispensation to come, and, in addition, those of the forefathers of Christ. The whole was to be enclosed and divided by an elaborate framework of painted architecture, with a multitude of nameless human shapes supporting its several members or reposing among them, shapes mediating, as it were, between the features of the inanimate framework and those of the great dramatic and prophetic scenes themselves. Michelangelo s plan was accepted by the pope, and by May 1508 his preparations for its execution were made. Later in the same year he summoned a number of assistant painters from Florence. Trained in the traditions of the earlier Florentine school, they were unable, it seems, to interpret Michelangelo s designs in fresco either with sufficient freedom or sufficient uniformity of style to satisfy him. At any rate he soon dismissed them, and carried out the remainder of his colossal task alone, except for the necessary amount of purely mechanical and subordinate help. The physical conditions of prolonged work, face upwards, upon this vast expanse of ceiling were adverse and trying in the extreme. But after four and a half years of toil the task was accomplished. Michelangelo had during its progress been harassed alike by delays of payment and by hostile intrigue. The absolute need of funds for the furtherance of the undertaking had even constrained him at one moment to break off work, and pursue his inconsiderate master as far as Bologna. His ill-wishers at the same time kept casting doubts on his capacity, and vaunting the superior powers of Raphael. That gentle spirit would by nature have been no man s enemy, but unluckily Michelangelo s moody, self- concentrated temper prevented the two artists being on terms of amity such as might have stopped the mouths of mischief-makers. Once during the progress of his task Michelangelo was compelled to remove a portion of the scaffolding and exhibit what had been so far done, when the effect alike upon friends and detractors was overwhelm ing. Still more complete was his triumph when, late in the autumn of 1512, the whole of his vast achievement was disclosed to view. The main field of the Sixtine ceiling is divided into four larger alternating with five smaller fields. The following is the order of the subjects depicted in them: (1) the dividing of the light from the darkness; (2) the creation of sun, moon, and stars, and of the herbage ; (3) the creation of the waters ; (4) the creation of man ; (5) the creation of woman ; (6) the temptation and expulsion ; j (7) an enigmatical scene, said to represent the sacrifice of Cain and Abel, but rather resembling the sacrifice of Noah ; (8) the deluge ; (9) the drunkenness of Noah. The figures in the last three of these scenes are on a smaller scale than those in the first six. In numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 the field of the picture is reduced by the encroach ments of the architectural framework and supporters. These sub jects are flanked at each end by the figure of a seated prophet or sibyl alternately ; two other prophets are introduced at each ex tremity of the series, making seven prophets and five sibyls in all. In the angles to right and left of the prophets at the two extremities are the Death of Goliath, the Death of Judith, the Brazen Ser pent, and the Punishment of Hainan. In the twelve lunettes above the windows, and the similar number of triangular vaulted spaces over them, are mysterious groups, or pairs of groups, of figures, which from Michelangelo s own time have usually been known as Ancestors of Christ. The army of nameless architectural and subordinate figures is too numerous to be here spoken of. The work represents all the powers of Michelangelo at their best. Disdaining all the accessory allurements of the painter s art, he has concentrated himself upon the exclusive delineation of the human form and face at their highest power. His imagination has conceived, and his knowledge and certainty of hand have enabled him to realize, attitudes and combinations of unmatched variety and grandeur, and countenances of unmatched expressiveness and power. But he has not trusted, as he came later to trust, to science and acquired knowledge merely, neither do his personages, so far as they did afterwards, transcend human possibility or leave the facts of actual life behind them. In a word, his sublimity, often in excess of the occasion, is here no more than equal to it ; more over it is combined with the noblest elements of grace and even of tenderness. As for the intellectual meanings of his vast design, over and above those which reveal themselves at a first glance or by a bare description, they are from the nature of the case in exhaustible, and can never be perfectly defined. Whatever the soul of this great Florentine, the spiritual heir of Dante, with the Christianity of the Middle Age not shaken in his mind, but expanded and transcendentalized, by the knowledge and love of Plato, whatever the soul of such a man, full of suppressed tender ness and righteous indignation, and of anxious questionings of coming fate, could conceive, that Michelangelo has expressed or shadowed forth in this great and significant scheme of paintings. The details it must remain for every fresh student to interpret in his own manner. The Sixtine chapel was no sooner completed than Michelangelo resumed work upon the marbles for the monument of Julius. But four months only had passed when Julius died. His heirs immediately entered (in the summer of 1513) into a new contract with Michelangelo for the execution of the monument on a reduced scale. What the precise nature and extent of the original design had been we do not know, but the new one was extensive and magnificent enough. It was to consist of a great quadrilateral structure, two courses high, projecting from the church wall, and decorated on its three unattached sides with statues. On the upper course was to be placed the colossal recumbent figure of, the pope under a canopy, and beside it mourning angels, with prophetic and allegoric personages at the angles, sixteen figures in all. The lower course was to be enriched with twenty- four figures in niches and on projecting pedestals : in the niches, Victories trampling on conquered Provinces ; in the pedestals, Arts and Sciences in bondage. The entire work was to be completed in nine years time. During the next three years, it would seem, Michelangelo brought to completion three at least of the promised figures, and they are among the most famous of all exist ing works of the sculptor s art, namely, the Moses now in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome and the two &quot;Slaves&quot; at the Louvre. The Moses, originally intended for one of the angles of the upper course, is now placed at the level of the eye, in the centre of the principal face of the monument as it was at last finished, on a deplorably reduced and altered scale, by Michelangelo and his assistants in his old age. The prophet, heavily bearded and draped, with only his right arm bare, sits with his left foot drawn back, his head raised and turned to the left with an expression of in dignation and menace, his left hand laid on his lap and his right grasping the tables of the law. The work, except in one or two places, is of the utmost finish, and the statue looks like one of the prophets of the Sixtine ceiling done in marble. The &quot;Slaves &quot;at the Louvre are youthful male figures of equally perfect execution, nude but for the band which passes over the breast of one and the right leg of the other. One, with his left hand raised to his head and his right pressed to his bosom, and his eyes almost closed, seems succumbing to the agonies of death; the other, with his arms bound behind his back, looks upward still hopelessly struggling. There is reason to believe that all three of these figures were finished between 1513 and 1516. The beginnings of other figures or groups intended for the same monument are to be found at Florence, where they were no doubt made and then abandoned some years later, viz., four rudely blocked figures of slaves or prisoners, in a grotto of the Boboli gardens, and the so-called Victory in the National Museum, an unfinished group of a combatant kneeling on and crushing to death a fallen enemy; with these may be associated a wax model known as Hercules and Cacus in the South Ken sington Museum, and the figure of a crouching man at St Peters burg. By this time (1516) Michelangelo s evil star was again in the ascendant. Julius II. had been succeeded on the papal throne by a Medici under the title of Leo X. The Medici, too, had about the same time by force and fraud re-established their sway in Florence, overthrowing the free institutions that had prevailed there since the days of Savonarola. Now on the one hand this family were the hereditary friends and patrons of Michelangelo; on the other hand he was a patriotic son of republican Florence; so that henceforward his personal allegiance and his political sympathies were destined to be at conflict. Over