ith the classic idea and became himself a pagan; he made the heroic
forms of Greece live again while putting into them his own savage
vigour. Following the suggestions of Poliziano he wrought the
bas-relief of the Combat of the Centaurs and the Lapithae of the Casa
Buonarroti, in which the figures are athletic and struggling and the
faces impassive and proud. He carved the bestial face of the Laughing
Satyr with its violent and strained expression as of one who was not
used to laughter, and a little later the relief of Apollo and Marsyas.

Nevertheless this paganism did not touch his Christian faith at all. The
struggle that was to endure almost all his life had already begun within
him between those two hostile worlds which he vainly tried to reconcile.
In 1489 and 1490 Savonarola began in Florence his fiery sermons on the
Apocalypse and Michelangelo went to hear them with all the rest of
Lorenzo's circle. He had been brought up very religiously by his father,
a kind, God-fearing man of the old style, and his brother Lionardo in
1491, under the influence of Savonarola, entered the Monastery of the
Dominicans at Pisa.

He could not remain indifferent to the burning words of a prophet who
was like an elder brother of the prophets of the Sistine and whose
sombre visions and fiery purity must have pierced the heart of the youth
who listened to the preaching in S. Marco or the Duomo. I am convinced,
nevertheless, that historians have very much exaggerated the effect of
this influence on Michelangelo. In the beginning he certainly did not
feel very strongly the heroic grandeur of the frail little preacher who
from his high pulpit launched his lightnings against pope and princes.
His first impression seems to have been almost entirely one of terror;
he did not escape from the contagion of fear which seized the entire
city at the thunder of the gloomy prophecies which held the bloody sword
of God suspended over Italy and which filled the streets of Florence
with people weeping madly. When at last there came the new Cyrus,
foretold by the monk of S. Marco, Charles VIII, King of France,
Michelangelo was seized with panic and fled to Venice (1494).

These superstitious terrors, irrational and uncontrollable, which
reappeared more than once in Michelangelo's life do not prove anything
in favour of his Savonarolaism. It might be supposed on the contrary
that a true disciple of Savonarola would have remained beside his master
rath