Vitruvius; that, if they could understand him, it was by no
means certain he was right; and that, if he was right for his own age,
he would not be right for the sixteenth century after Christ. It was
just at this moment, when Vitruvius began to dominate the Italian
imagination, that Michelangelo was called upon to build. The genial
adaptation of classical elements to modern sympathies and uses, which
had been practised by Alberti, Brunelleschi, Bramante, yielded now to
painful efforts after the appropriation of pedantic principles.
Instead of working upon antique monuments with their senses and
emotions, men approached them through the medium of scholastic
erudition. Instead of seeing and feeling for themselves, they sought
by dissection to confirm the written precepts of a defunct Roman
writer. This diversion of a great art from its natural line of
development supplies a striking instance of the fascination which
authority exercises at certain periods of culture. Rather than trust
their feeling for what was beautiful and useful, convenient and
attractive, the Italians of the Renaissance surrendered themselves to
learning. Led by the spirit of scholarship, they thought it their duty
to master the text of Vitruvius, to verify his principles by the
analysis of surviving antique edifices, and, having formed their own
conception of his theory, to apply this, as well as they were able, to
the requirements of contemporary life.

Two exits from the false situation existed: one was the
picturesqueness of the Barocco style; the other was the specious vapid
purity of the Palladian. Michelangelo, who was essentially the genius
of this transition, can neither be ascribed to the Barocco architects,
although he called them into being, nor yet can he be said to have
arrived at the Palladian solution. He held both types within himself
in embryo, arriving at a moment of profound and complicated difficulty
for the practical architect; without technical education, but gifted
with supreme genius, bringing the imperious instincts of a sublime
creative amateur into every task appointed him. We need not wonder if
a man of his calibre left the powerful impress of his personality upon
an art in chaos, luring lesser craftsmen into the Barocco mannerism,
while he provoked reaction in the stronger, who felt more
scientifically what was needed to secure firm standing-ground. Bernini
and the superb fountain of Trevi derive from Michelangelo on one