Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/346

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Michelagnolo found his chief pleasure in the labours of art; all that he attempted, however difficult, proving successful, because nature had imparted to him the most admirable genius, and his application to those excellent studies of design was unremitting. For the greater exactitude, he made numerous dissections of the human frame, examining the anatomy of each part, the articulations of the joints, the various muscles, the nerves, the veins, and all the different minutiae of the human form. Nor of this only, but of animals, and more particularly of horses, which he much delighted in, and kept for his pleasure, examining them so minutely in all their relations to art, that he knew more of them than do many whose sole business is the care of those animals. These labours enabled him to complete his works, whether of the pencil or chisel, with inimitable perfection, and to give them a grace, a beauty, and an animation, wherein (be it said without offence to any) he has surpassed even the antique. In his works he has overcome the difficulties of art, with so much facility, that no trace of labour appears in them, however great may be that which those who copy them find in the imitation of the same.

The genius of Michelagnolo was acknowledged in his lifetime, and not as happens in many cases, after his death only; and he was favoured, as we have seen, by Julius II., Leo X., Clement VII., Paul III., Julius III., Paul IV., and Pius IV.; these Pontiffs having always desired to keep him near them, as indeed would Soliman, Emperor of the Turks, Francis, KiUj^ of France, the Emperor Charles V., the Signoria of Vemce, and lastly Puke Cosimo de’ Medici: all very gladly have done, each of those monarchs and potentates having offered him the most honourable appointments, for the love of his great abilities. These things do not happen to any except men of the highest distinction, but in him all the three arts were found in such perfection, as God hath vouchsafed to no other master, ancient or modern, in all the many years that the sun has been turning round.