Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/299

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It chanced about this time that Michelagnolo fell from a no inconsiderable height of the scaffolding around this work and hurt his leg, yet in the pain and anger this caused him he would suffer no surgeon to approach his bed; wherefore the Florentine physician, Maestro Baccio Rontini, the friend of Michelagnolo, and a great admirer of his genius, who was a very eccentric person, taking compassion on his state, went one day to knock at the door of the house. Obtaining no reply, either from his neighbours or himself, he strove to make his way in by a secret entrance, and from room to room at length arrived at that wherein the master lay. He found him in a desperate state, but from that moment he would not leave his bed-side, and never lost sight of the patient until he had effectually cured the injured leg.

His malady overcome, and having returned to his work, the master laboured thereat continually for some months, when he brought it to an end, giving so much force to the figures of the same, that they verified the description of Dante,—“Dead are the dead, the living seem to live.” The sufferings of the condemned and the joys of the blessed are exhibited with equal truth; wherefore, this painting being given to view, Michelagnolo was found to have surpassed not only all the early masters who had painted in that Chapel, but himself also, having resolved, as respected the ceiling which had rendered him so celebrated, to be his own conqueror; here, therefore, he had by very far exceeded that work, having imagined to himself all the terrors of the last day with the most vivid force of reality. For the greater pain of those who have not passed their lives well, he has represented all the Passion of our Saviour Christ, as presenting itself to their view; the cross, the column, the lance, the sponge, the nails, and the crown of thorns, being all borne in the air by nude figures; whose difiicult and varied movements are executed with infinite facility. The seated figure of our Lord, with a countenance terrible in anger, is turned towards the condemned, on whom he thunders anathema, not without great horror on the part of Our Lady, who, wrapt in her mantle, is the witness of that destruction.

There are, besides, a vast number of figures. Prophets, and Apostles, surrounding the Saviour; those of Adam and St. Peter are more especially conspicuous, and they are believed to have been made so; the one as the first parent of