have
painted there," answered Michelangelo, "were poor." Accordingly nothing
was changed.

These paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine transcend all description.
How give an idea of these countless sublime figures to those who have not
trembled and turned pale in this awful temple? The immense superiority of
Michelangelo is manifest in this chapel itself, where are paintings of
Ghirlandajo, of Signorelli, which pale near those of the Florentine as
the light of a lamp does in the light of the sun. Raphael painted about
the same time, and under the influence of what he had seen in the
Sistine, his admirable "Sibyls of the Pace"; but compare them! He also no
doubt attained in some of his works--the "St. Paul" of the cartoon, the
"Vision of Ezekiel," the "Virgin" of the Dresden Museum--the summit of
sublime art; but that which is the exception with Sanzio is the rule with
the great Buonarroti. Michelangelo lived in a superhuman world, and his
daring, unexpected conceptions are so beyond and outside the habitual
thoughts of men that they repel by their very elevation, and are far from
fascinating all minds as do the wonderful and charming creations of the
painter of Urbino.

It is necessary, however, to combat the widespread opinion that
Michelangelo understood only the extreme feelings, and could express
these only by violent and exaggerated movements. All agree that his
figures possess the highest qualities of art--invention, sublimity of
style, breadth and science in the drawing, appropriateness and fitness of
color, and this character, so striking in the ceiling of the Sistine that
it is not of the painter that the paintings make you think, that looking
at it you say to yourself, "This tragic heaven must have come thus all
peopled with its gigantic forms"; and it is by an effort of the mind only
we are brought to think of the creator of this sublime work. But it is
denied that he understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms
which express the tender and delicate feelings, those which the divine
pencil of Raphael so admirably represented. I own that he took little
heed of the pleasurable aspect of things; his austere genius was at ease
only in grave thoughts; but I do not agree that he was always a stranger
to gentle beauty, to feminine beauty in particular. I shall not cite
the "Virgin" of the London Academy, nor in another order the admirable
"Captive" of the Louvre Museum; but, without quitting the Sistine