OF MICHAEL ANGELO

Contrast of Michael Angelo and Cellini--Parentage and Boyhood of Michael
Angelo--Work with Ghirlandajo--Gardens of S. Marco--The Medicean
Circle--Early Essays in Sculpture--Visit to Bologna--First Visit to
Rome--The "Pieta" of S. Peter's--Michael Angelo as a Patriot and a Friend
of the Medici--Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa--Michael Angelo and Julius
II.--The Tragedy of the Tomb--Design for the Pope's Mausoleum--Visit to
Carrara--Flight from Rome--Michael Angelo at Bologna--Bronze Statue of
Julius--Return to Rome--Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel--Greek and Modern
Art--Raphael--Michael Angelo and Leo X.--S. Lorenzo--The new
Sacristy--Circumstances under which it was designed and partly
finished--Meaning of the Allegories--Incomplete state of Michael Angelo's
Marbles--Paul III.--The "Last Judgment"--Critiques of Contemporaries--The
Dome of S. Peter's--Vittoria Colonna--Tommaso Cavalieri--Personal Habits
of Michael Angelo--His Emotional Nature--Last Illness.

The life of Italian artists at the time of the Renaissance may be
illustrated by two biographies. Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Benvenuto
Cellini were almost opposite in all they thought and felt, experienced and
aimed at. The one impressed his own strong personality on art; the other
reflected the light and shadow of the age in the record of his manifold
existence. Cellini hovered, like some strong-winged creature, on the
surface of human activity, yielding himself to every impulse, seeking
every pleasure, and of beauty feeling only the rude animal compulsion.
Deep philosophic thoughts, ideas of death and judgment, the stern
struggles of the soul, encompassed Michael Angelo; the service of beauty
was with him religion. Cellini was the creature of the moment--the glass
and mirror of corrupt, enslaved, yet still resplendent Italy. In Michael
Angelo the genius of the Renaissance culminated; but his character was
rather that of an austere Republican, free and solitary amid the
multitudes of slaves and courtiers. Michael Angelo made art the vehicle of
lofty and soul-shaking thought. Cellini brought the fervour of an
inexhaustibly active nature to the service of sensuality, and taught his
art to be the handmaid of a soulless paganism. In these two men,
therefore, we study two aspects of their age. How far both were
exceptional, need not here be questioned; since their singularity consists
not so much in being different from other Italians of the sixteen