Page:The Life of Michael Angelo.djvu/86



terminated this herculean task, glorious but shattered. Through having to hold his head thrown back for months, whilst painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, "he injured his sight to such an extent that for a long time afterwards he could neither read a letter nor look at an object unless he held them above his head, in order to see them better."

He himself joked about his infirmities:

"Labour has given me a goitre, as water does to the cats of Lombardy . . . My stomach points towards my chin, my beard turns towards the sky, my skull rests on my back and my chest is like that of a harpy. The paint from my brush, in dripping on to my face, has made a many-coloured pattern upon it. My loins have entered into my body and my posterior counterbalances. I walk in a haphazard manner, without being able to see my feet. My skin is extended in front and shortened behind. I am bent like a Syrian bow. My intelligence is as strange as my body, for one plays an ill tune on a bent reed."