le instance, out of the many
hundreds of examples furnished by his work, in which a note of
femininity has been added to the masculine type. He did not think
enough of women to reverse the process, and create hermaphroditic
beings like the Apollino of Praxiteles or the S. Sebastian of Sodoma.
His boys and youths and adult men remain, in the truest and the purest
sense of the word, virile. Yet with what infinite variety, with what a
deep intelligence of its resources, with what inexhaustible riches of
enthusiasm and science, he played upon the lyre of the male nude! How
far more fit for purposes of art he felt the man to be than the woman
is demonstrated, not only by his approaching woman from the masculine
side, but also by his close attention to none but male qualities in
men. I need not insist or enlarge upon this point. The fact is
apparent to every one with eyes to see. It would be futile to expound
Michelangelo's fertility in dealing with the motives of the male
figure as minutely as I judged it necessary to explain the poverty of
his inspiration through the female. But it ought to be repeated that,
over the whole gamut of the scale, from the grace of boyhood, through
the multiform delightfulness of adolescence into the firm force of
early manhood, and the sterner virtues of adult age, one severe and
virile spirit controls his fashioning of plastic forms. He even
exaggerates what is masculine in the male, as he caricatures the
female by ascribing impossible virility to her. But the exaggeration
follows here a line of mental and moral rectitude. It is the
expression of his peculiar sensibility to physical structure.

IX

When we study the evolution of Michelangelo's ideal of form, we find
at the beginning of his life a very short period in which he followed
the traditions of Donatello and imitated Greek work. The seated
Madonna in bas-relief and the Giovannino belong to this first stage.
So does the bas-relief of the Centaurs. It soon becomes evident,
however, that Michelangelo was not destined to remain a continuator of
Donatello's manner or a disciple of the classics. The next period,
which includes the Madonna della Febbre, the Bruges Madonna, the
Bacchus, the Cupid, and the David, is marked by an intense search
after the truth of Nature. Both Madonnas might be criticised for
unreality, owing to the enormous development of the thorax and
something artificial in the type of face. But all the male figures
seem