great master; "and I confess
that nothing I had seen from the brush of Michelangelo showed better
painting." He adds that it was restored by a second-rate artist and
sent to England. What became of Mini's copy is uncertain. We possess a
painting in the Dresden Gallery, a Cartoon in the collection of the
Royal Academy of England, and a large oil picture, much injured, in
the vaults of the National Gallery. In addition to these works, there
is a small marble statue in the Museo Nazionale at Florence. All of
them represent Michelangelo's design. If mere indecency could justify
Desnoyers in his attempt to destroy a masterpiece, this picture
deserved its fate. It represented the act of coition between a swan
and a woman; and though we cannot hold Michelangelo responsible for
the repulsive expression on the face of Leda, which relegates the
marble of the Bargello to a place among pornographic works of art,
there is no reason to suppose that the general scheme of his
conception was abandoned in the copies made of it.

Michelangelo, being a true artist, anxious only for the presentation
of his subject, seems to have remained indifferent to its moral
quality. Whether it was a crucifixion, or a congress of the swan with
Leda, or a rape of Ganymede, or the murder of Holofernes in his tent,
or the birth of Eve, he sought to seize the central point in the
situation, and to accentuate its significance by the inexhaustible
means at his command for giving plastic form to an idea. Those,
however, who have paid attention to his work will discover that he
always found emotional quality corresponding to the nature of the
subject. His ways of handling religious and mythological motives
differ in sentiment, and both are distinguished from his treatment of
dramatic episodes. The man's mind made itself a mirror to reflect the
vision gloating over it; he cared not what that vision was, so long as
he could render it in lines of plastic harmony, and express the utmost
of the feeling which the theme contained.

Among the many statues left unfinished by Michelangelo is one
belonging to this period of his life. "In order to ingratiate himself
with Baccio Valori," says Vasari, "he began a statue of three cubits
in marble. It was an Apollo drawing a shaft from his quiver. This he
nearly finished. It stands now in the chamber of the Prince of
Florence; a thing of rarest beauty, though not quite completed." This
noble piece of sculpture illustrates th