ng work of
Buonarroti, became ridiculous when adopted by men of feeble powers and
passionless imagination. By straining the art of sculpture to its utmost
limits, Michael Angelo expressed vehement emotions in marble; and the
forced attitudes affected in his work had their value as significant of
spiritual struggle. His imitators showed none of their master's sublime
force, none of that _terribilita_ which made him unapproachable in social
intercourse and inimitable in art. They merely fancied that dignity and
beauty were to be achieved by placing figures in difficult postures,
exaggerated muscular anatomy, and twisting the limbs of their models upon
sections of ellipses in uncomfortable attitudes, till the whole of their
work was writhen into uncouth lines. Buonarroti himself was not
responsible for these results. He wrought out his own ideal with the
firmness of a genius that obeys the law of its own nature, doing always
what it must. That the decadence of sculpture into truculent bravado was
independent of his direct influence, is further proved by the inefficiency
of his contemporaries.

Baccio Bandinelli and Bartolommeo Ammanati filled the squares of the
Italian cities with statues of Hercules and Satyrs, Neptune and
River-gods. We know not whether to select the vulgarity, the feebleness,
or the pretentiousness of these pseudo-classical colossi for condemnation.
They have nothing Greek about them but their names, their nakedness, and
their association with myths, the significance whereof was never really
felt by the sculptors. Some of Bandinelli's designs, it is true, are
vigorous; but they are mere drawings from undraped peasants, life studies
depicting the human animal. His "Hercules and Cacus," while it deserves
all the sarcasm hurled at it by Cellini, proves that Bandinelli could not
rise above the wrestling bout of a porter and a coal-heaver. Nor would it
be possible to invent a motive less in accordance with Greek taste than
the conceit of Ammanati's fountain at Castello, where Hercules by
squeezing the body of Antaeus makes the drinking water of a city spout
from a giant's mouth. Such pitiful misapplications of an art which is
designed to elevate the commonplace of human form, and to render permanent
the nobler qualities of physical existence, show how superficially and
wrongly the antique spirit had been apprehended.

Some years before his death Ammanati expressed in public his regret that
he had made so ma