s good and beautiful."

Florence, his own country, more even than the rest of Italy gave him
blind admiration. The Academy of Drawing, founded by Vasari, was a
college of disciples and apostles. Since Michelangelo's great paintings
were at Rome the Florentines copied chiefly his statues, devoting
themselves principally, as Lanzi says, to ostentatiously showing "magna
ossa lacertosque."[147]

This was in accordance with the doctrine of the master, who declared
that sculpture should be the school of the painter and the ideal of
painting. Cellini, thinking to define the thought of Michelangelo,
absurdly declares and demonstrates that sculpture is seven times greater
than painting.

The painter formed himself from this time on by the study of statues,
and especially of those of Michelangelo. Colour was therefore regarded
as a secondary consideration,[148] and the only aim pursued was drawing
over-accentuated, full of unreasonable action, and of excessive
virtuosity. If he seemed to Cellini the greatest painter of all time, it
was only because all painting from Cellini's point of view was an
imitation of sculpture, and the artist who came nearest to him in
perfection is Bronzino.[149]

The danger of following a model is less if the model can be understood,
but the ideas of Michelangelo absolutely escaped his admirers. How could
it be otherwise when all his work is an act of revolt against his
century. We can but smile with pity when we see his contemporaries
expressing their enthusiasm for the formidable Night in precious and
carefully chosen phrases.[150]

[Illustration: THE DOME OF ST. PETER'S

From the Original Model in Wood. Preserved in the Vatican (1558).]

What supreme irony! The world only sees and admires the outer form of
those tremendous incarnations of contempt and weariness which are
called Moses or the Day, Victory subduing the Prisoner, the Dawn or the
Slaves. The world applauds the style of the imprecations launched
against it! It even repeats them without knowing the meaning.

Two drawings by Federigo Zucchero, which are in the Louvre, show a
number of artists installed in the chapel of S. Lorenzo zealously
copying Michelangelo's statues. How many artists of the sixteenth
century built their entire work on these notes without ever thinking
that such forms are only justified by the passions which animate them,
and that it is ridiculous to use them as aids to the learned virtuosity
of a cold and forc