Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/248

Rh 234 MICHELANGELO consist of a Madonna and Child (left imperfect because the marble was short in bulk), and of the two famous monumental groups, each consisting of an armed and seated portrait-statue in a niche, with two emblematic figures reclining on each side of a sarcophagus below. The portraits are treated not realistically but typically. In that of Lorenzo seems to be typified the mood of brooding and concentrated inward thought preparatory to warlike action ; in that of Giuliano, the type of alert and confident practical survey immediately preceding the moment of action. To this contrast of the meditative and active characters corresponds to some extent a contrast in the emblematic groups accompanying the portraits. At the feet of the Duke Giuliano recline the shapes of Night and Day, the former a female, the latter a male personification, the former sunk in an attitude of deep but uneasy slumber, the latter (whose head and face are merely blocked out of the marble) lifting himself in one of wrathful and disturbed awakening. But for Michelangelo s unfailing grandeur of style, and for the sense which his works con vey of a compulsive heat and tempest of thought and feeling in the soul that thus conceived them, both these attitudes might be charged with extravagance. As grand, but far less violent, are those of the two companion figures that recline between sleep and waking on the sarcophagus of the pensive Lorenzo. Of these, the male figure is known as Evening, and the female as Morning (Crepuscolo and Aurora}. In Michelangelo s original idea, figures of Earth and Heaven were to be associated with those of Night and Day on the monument of Giuliano, and others of a corresponding nature, no doubt, with those of the Morning and Evening Twilight on that of Lorenzo ; these figures afterwards fell out of the scheme. Michel angelo s obvious and fundamental idea was, as some words of his own record, to exhibit the elements, and the powers of earth and heaven, lamenting the death of the princes ; it is a question of much interest, but not to be discussed here, what other ideas of a more personal and deeper kind may have conflicted or come into association with these, and found expression in these majestic works of art, whereof no one who looks upon them can escape the spell. Michelangelo had never ceased to be troubled by the heirs and executors of Julius, as well as by his own artistic con science and ambition, concerning the long-postponed comple tion of the Julian monument. Agreement after agreement had been made, and then from the force of circumstances broken. In 1532, on the completion of the Medicean monu ments at Florence, he entered into a new and what he firmly meant to be a binding contract to complete the work, on a scale once more very greatly reduced, and to set it up in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. But once more the demands of the pope diverted his purpose. Clement insisted that Michelangelo must complete his decorations of the Sixtine chapel by painting anew the great end wall above the altar, adorned until then by frescos of Perugino. The subject chosen was the Last Judgment, and Michelangelo began to prepare sketches. For the next two years he lived between Rome and Florence, and in the autumn of 1534, in his sixtieth year, settled finally and for the remainder of his life at Rome. Immediately afterwards Pope Clement died, and was succeeded by a Farnese under the title of Paul III. Even more than his predecessor, Paul insisted on claiming the main services of Michelangelo for himself, and forced him to let all other engagements drift. For the first seven years after the artist s return to Rome, his time was principally taken up with the painting of the colossal and multitudinous Last Judgment. This being completed in 1541, he was next compelled to undertake two more great frescos, one of the Conversion of Paul and another of the Martyrdom of Peter, in a new chapel which the pope had caused to be built in the Vatican, and named after himself Capella Paolina. The fresco of the Last Judgment in the Sixtine chapel is probably the most famous single picture in the world. In it Michelangelo .shows more than ever the omnipotence of his artistic science, and the fiery daring of his conceptions. The work exhibits the athletic unclothed human form in every variety and extremity of hitherto unattempted action and predicament. But of moderation, as well as of beauty and tenderness, it is almost entirely devoid. Whether from the complexion of his own thoughts, and the sseva indiynatio that was native to his breast, or from the influ ence of the passionate and embittered theological temper of the time, Michelangelo has here neglected the consolatory aspects of Christianity, and insisted on its terrific aspects almost exclusively. Neither in the qualities of colour and execution is the work, so far as the condition of either admits comparison, comparable for charm to the earlier and far more nobly-inspired frescos of the ceiling. It is to these, and not to the Last Judgment, that the student must turn if he would realize what is best and greatest in the art of Michelangelo. The frescos of the Pauline Chapel are on their part in part. so injured as to be hardly susceptible of useful study or criticism. In their ruined state they bear evidence of the same tendencies that made the art of Michelangelo in its latest pha!se so dangerous an example to weaker men, the tendency, that is, to seek for energy and violence of action both in place and out, for &quot;terrible- ness&quot; quand meme, and to design actions not by help of direct study from nature, but by scientific deduction from the abstract laws of structure and movement. At best these frescos can never have been happy examples of Michelangelo s art. During the fifteen years (1534-49) when Michelangelo was mainly engaged on these paintings, he had also at last been enabled to acquit himself, although in a manner that can have been satisfactory to none concerned, of his engagements to the heirs of Julius. Once more the influence of the pope had prevailed on them to accept a compromise altogether to their disadvantage. It was agreed that the Moses executed thirty years before should be the central figure of the new scheme ; assistants were employed to carve two smaller flanking figures of female personifications; and the three were in 1545 set up in S. Pietro in Vincoli in combination with an architectural structure of rich but incongruous design. During the same years the long-pent human elements of fervour and tenderness in Michelangelo s nature had found vent and utterance such as they had never found before. He had occasionally practised poetry in youth, and there are signs of some transient love-passage during his life at Bologna. But it was not until towards his sixtieth year that the springs of feeling were fairly opened in the heart of this solitary, this masterful and stern, life-wearied and labour- hardened man. Towards that age we find him beginning to address impassioned sonnets, of which the sentiment is curiously comparable to that expressed in some of Shake speare s, to a beautiful and gifted youth, Tommaso Cavalieri. Soon afterwards he made the acquaintance of the pious, accomplished, and high-souled lady, Vittoria Colonna, widow of the Marquis Pescara. For twelve years until her death, which happened in 1547, her friendship was the great solace of Michelangelo s life. On her, in all loyalty and reverence, he poured out all the treasures of his mind, and all his im prisoned powers of tenderness and devotion. He painted for her a crucifixion of extraordinary beauty, of which many imitations but not the original have come down to us. She was the chief inspirer of his poetry, in which, along with her praises, the main themes are the Christian religion, the joys of Platonic love, and the power and mysteries of art. Michelangelo s poetical style is strenuous and concentrated like the man. He wrote with labour and much self-correc tion ; we seem to feel him flinging himself on the material of language with the same overwhelming energy and vehemence, the same impetuosity of temperament, com bined with the same fierce desire of perfection, with which contemporaries describe him as flinging himself on the material of marble. And so the mighty sculptor, painter, and poet reached old age. An infirmity which settled on him in 1544, and the death of Vittoria Colonna in 1547, left him broken in health and heart. But his strength held on for many a year longer yet. His father and brothers were dead, and his family sentiment concentrated itself on a nephew, Leonardo, to whom he showed unremitting practical kind ness, coupled with his usual suspiciousness and fitfulness of temper. In almost all his relations the old man con tinued to the end to manifest the same loyal and righteous heart, accompanied by the same masterful, moody, and estranging temper, as in youth. Among the artists of