Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/400

348 parsimonious patron, whose features are familiar to us in Raphael's portrait, sent Michelangelo forty florins, instead of the sixty for which he had asked, upon which the master returned the money indignantly, and demanded him to send back the picture. Angelo Doni, however, knew the value of the work too well to let it go, and after a prolonged wrangle, he sent Michelangelo seventy florins, and kept the painting which now adorns the Tribune of the Uffizi. It is a singularly powerful and original work, characteristic alike of the master's defects and qualities. The Virgin, a strong handsome young Tuscan peasant-woman, kneels on the ground, and turns round with uplifted arms to receive the Child from St. Joseph. Behind a parapet, the young St. John is seen fixing his eager gaze on the Child, and five nude youths are introduced, sitting or leaning on a balustrade in the background. The figures are admirably foreshortened, and their complicated attitudes are rendered with consummate skill, while the nudes in their manly beauty are prototypes of the genii of the Sistina. There is little of Raphael's charm, or of Leonardo's suavity, but the expression of the Virgin's upturned face is noble and reverent, and the whole group is marked by a severe majesty that is highly characteristic of the artist.

Early in 1505, Michelangelo was called to Rome by the new Pope Julius II., and entered on the second period of his career. The rest of his long life was spent in the service of successive pontiffs, and his best years were wasted in planning vast schemes, never destined to be realised, for these Imperious and changeable masters. Julius II., in