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1905.] and Michelangelo, were at continual war in their souls with conditions that surrounded them in the times in which they lived. Such a man as Michelangelo could not escape from the tempest of the world by wrapping himself up with dreams of a “golden age,” as Correggio, for instance, did,

Once more compare the two pictures to observe the difference in the two artists’ methods. One reason for the difference is that Correggio’s is painted in oil on canvas, Michelangelo’s in fresco on the plaster of the ceiling. The meaning of the word “fresco” is “fresh,” and fresco pictures were painted on the plaster while it was still damp, so that the colors, which were mixed with water, in the process of drying sank into the surface of the plaster. The wall or ceiling to be so decorated was coated with the rough-cast plaster and allowed to dry thoroughly, after which a thin layer of smooth finish was spread over as large a portion of the surface as the artist could finish in one day, Meanwhile he had prepared his drawing, and, laying this against the surface, went over the lines of it with a blunt instrument, so that, when the drawing or cartoon was removed, the outline of the figures appeared, cut in the damp plaster. Then he applied the color, working rapidly, having no doubt that the effect would be exactly what he aimed to produce, since correction, or working over what had already been painted, was not easy,

On the other hand, with oil paints the artist can work at his leisure, allowing his canvas time to dry, working over it again and again, and finally toning it all together by brushing over it thin layers of transparent colors, called glazes. It was by the use of these glazes that Correggio obtained the golden glow of his pictures. We can realize at once how this method was suited to the dreamy luxuriance of his imagination; while, on the contrary, more in harmony with the genius of Michelangelo was the more forcible method of the fresco. For in the strict sense of the word he was not a painter; that is to say, he was not skilled in, and probably was impatient of, the slower, tenderer way in which a painter reaches his results, He was not a colorist, nor skilled in the rendering of light and atmosphere; but he was a great draftsman, a great sculptor, and a profound thinker. And in every case it was the result of some grand or fiery thought, straight out from himself in all the heat of kindled imagination, that he set upon the paper, or struck out with forceful action of the hammer and chisel.

In his later life, when sore oppressed, he would retreat to the marble-quarries of Carrara under the pretext of searching for material. To him each block of marble, rugged, hard, and jagged, held a secret, needing only the genius of a sculptor’s chisel to liberate it.

It is the feeling of the sculptor that we recognize in this painting of “Jeremiah”; the feeling for solidity and weight, for stability and pose; a preference for simple lines and bold surfaces. To appreciate this distinction, compare Correggio’s picture, composed of so many varieties of lighted and shadowed parts, and with no suggestion of the figures being firmly planted. While Correggio has relied upon beautiful drawing, upon exquisite expression of hands and faces, upon color, light and shade, and his golden atmosphere that envelops the whole, Michelangelo relied almost entirely upon form—the form of the figure and of the draperies. He told, when the latter requested him to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at Rome, that he was not a painter, but a sculptor; yet, after he had shut himself up for four years,—from 1508 to 1512,—and the scaffold was removed, a result had been achieved which is without parallel in the world.

Very wonderful is the work which Michelangelo spread over this vast area of ten thousand square feet. The fact that there are three hundred and forty-three principal figures, many of colossal size, besides numerous others introduced for decorative effect, and that the creator of this vast scheme was but thirty-three when he began his work—all this is marvelous, prodigious, and yet not so marvelous as the variety of expression in the figures. The Jeremiah is only one of twelve figures in the vault of the ceiling.

If there is one point more than another in which Michelangelo displayed his genius it is in this, that he was the first to make the human form, and not the face alone, express a variety of mental emotions—pity, terror, anguish, love, yearning, ecstasy, and so forth. Just as it is