and moral
qualities, to the mysteries of his genius and to its limitations.

If this be true of all artists, it is in a peculiar sense true of
Michelangelo. Great as he was as sculptor, painter, architect, he was
only perfect and impeccable as draughtsman. Inadequate realisation,
unequal execution, fatigue, satiety, caprice of mood, may sometimes be
detected in his frescoes and his statues; but in design we never find
him faulty, hasty, less than absolute master over the selected realm
of thought. His most interesting and instructive work remains what he
performed with pen and chalk in hand. Deeply, therefore, must we
regret the false modesty which made him destroy masses of his
drawings, while we have reason to be thankful for those marvellous
photographic processes which nowadays have placed the choicest of his
masterpieces within the reach of every one.

The following passages from Vasari's and Condivi's Lives deserve
attention by those who approach the study of Buonarroti's drawings.
Vasari says: "His powers of imagination were such, that he was
frequently compelled to abandon his purpose, because he could not
express by the hand those grand and sublime ideas which he had
conceived in his mind; nay, he has spoiled and destroyed many works
for this cause; and I know, too, that some short time before his death
he burnt a large number of his designs, sketches, and cartoons, that
none might see the labours he had endured, and the trials to which he
had subjected his spirit, in his resolve not to fall short of
perfection. I have myself secured some drawings by his hand, which
were found in Florence, and are now in my book of designs, and these,
although they give evidence of his great genius, yet prove also that
the hammer of Vulcan was necessary to bring Minerva from the head of
Jupiter. He would construct an ideal shape out of nine, ten and even
twelve different heads, for no other purpose than to obtain a certain
grace of harmony and composition which is not to be found in the
natural form, and would say that the artist must have his measuring
tools, not in the hand, but in the eye, because the hands do but
operate, it is the eye that judges; he pursued the same idea in
architecture also." Condivi adds some information regarding his
extraordinary fecundity and variety of invention: "He was gifted with
a most tenacious memory, the power of which was such that, though he
painted so many thousands of figures, as any on