t Doni
thought forty sufficient; whereupon Michelangelo took the picture
back, and said he would not let it go for less than a hundred: Doni
then offered the original sum of seventy, but Michelangelo replied
that if he was bent on bargaining he should not pay less than 140. Be
this as it may, one of the most characteristic products of the
master's genius came now into existence. The Madonna is seated in a
kneeling position on the ground; she throws herself vigorously
backward, lifting the little Christ upon her right arm, and presenting
him to a bald-headed old man, S. Joseph, who seems about to take him
in his arms. This group, which forms a tall pyramid, is balanced on
both sides by naked figures of young men reclining against a wall at
some distance, while a remarkably ugly little S. John can be discerned
in one corner. There is something very powerful and original in the
composition of this sacred picture, which, as in the case of all
Michelangelo's early work, develops the previous traditions of Tuscan
art on lines which no one but himself could have discovered. The
central figure of the Madonna, too, has always seemed to me a thing of
marvellous beauty, and of stupendous power in the strained attitude
and nobly modelled arms. It has often been asked what the male nudes
have got to do with the subject. Probably Michelangelo intended in
this episode to surpass a Madonna by Luca Signorelli, with whose
genius he obviously was in sympathy, and who felt, like him, the
supreme beauty of the naked adolescent form. Signorelli had painted a
circular Madonna with two nudes in the landscape distance for Lorenzo
de' Medici. The picture is hung now in the gallery of the Uffizi. It
is enough perhaps to remark that Michelangelo needed these figures for
his scheme, and for filling the space at his disposal. He was either
unable or unwilling to compose a background of trees, meadows, and
pastoral folk in the manner of his predecessors. Nothing but the
infinite variety of human forms upon a barren stage of stone or arid
earth would suit his haughty sense of beauty. The nine persons who
make up the picture are all carefully studied from the life, and bear
a strong Tuscan stamp. S. John is literally ignoble, and Christ is a
commonplace child. The Virgin Mother is a magnificent _contadina_ in
the plenitude of adult womanhood. Those, however, who follow Mr.
Ruskin in blaming Michelangelo for carelessness about the human face
and head, s