The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

This time, again, Michelangelo was unable to finish his work as completely as he would have wished. He desired to retouch certain portions; but, seeing the inconvenience of reërecting the scaffoldings, he determined to do nothing more, saying that what was wanting to his figures was not of importance. "You should put a little gold on them," said the Pope; "my chapel will look very poor." "The people I 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, could we dream of anything more marvellously beautiful than his "Adam" awaking for the first time to light? or more chaste, more graceful, more touching than his young "Eve" leaning toward her Creator, and breathing in through her half-opened lips the divine breath that is giving her life?

What is the meaning of this terrible work? What means this long evolution of human destiny? Why did these two beings that we see beautiful and happy in the beginning, why did they people the earth with this ardent, restless, at once gigantic and powerless race? Ah! Greece would have made this ceiling an Olympus, inhabited by happy and divine men! Michelangelo put there great unhappy beings, and this painful poem of humanity is truer than the wondrous fictions of ancient poetry and art. "Michelangelo," says Condivi, "especially admired Dante. He also devoted himself earnestly to the reading of the Scriptures and the writings of Savonarola, for whom he had always great affection, having preserved in his mind the memory of his powerful voice." Besides, the country of the great Florentine, the glorious Italy of the Renaissance, was in a state of dissolution. Such studies, such reminiscences, such and so sad realities, may explain the visions that passed through the mind of the great artist during the four years of almost complete solitude he passed in the Sistine. The precise meaning of these compositions will probably never be known, but so long as men exist they will, as is the object of art, attract minds toward the dim world of the ideal.

The year that followed the opening of the Sistine, and which preceded the death of Julius, appears, as do the first two of Leo X's pontificate, to have been the happiest and calmest of Michelangelo's life. The old Pope loved him, "showing him," says Condivi, "attentions he showed no other of those who approached him." He honored his probity, and even that independence of character of which he himself had more than once had experience; Michelangelo, on his side, forgave him his frequent outbursts of impetuosity, that were ever atoned for by prompt and complete acknowledgment.