"How shall we speak of him? for our blind eyesAre all unequal to his dazzling rays.Easier it is to blame his enemies,Than for the tongue to tell his highest praise.For us he did explore the realms of woe;And, at his coming, did high heaven expandHer lofty gates, to whom his native landRefused to open hers. Yet shall thou know,Ungrateful city, in thine own despite,That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame;For virtue, when oppressed, appears more bright.And brighter, therefore, shall his glory be,Suffering of all mankind most wrongfully,Since in the world there lives no greater name."Southey.
"How shall we speak of him? for our blind eyesAre all unequal to his dazzling rays.Easier it is to blame his enemies,Than for the tongue to tell his highest praise.For us he did explore the realms of woe;And, at his coming, did high heaven expandHer lofty gates, to whom his native landRefused to open hers. Yet shall thou know,Ungrateful city, in thine own despite,That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame;For virtue, when oppressed, appears more bright.And brighter, therefore, shall his glory be,Suffering of all mankind most wrongfully,Since in the world there lives no greater name."Southey.
"How shall we speak of him? for our blind eyes
Are all unequal to his dazzling rays.
Easier it is to blame his enemies,
Than for the tongue to tell his highest praise.
For us he did explore the realms of woe;
And, at his coming, did high heaven expand
Her lofty gates, to whom his native land
Refused to open hers. Yet shall thou know,
Ungrateful city, in thine own despite,
That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame;
For virtue, when oppressed, appears more bright.
And brighter, therefore, shall his glory be,
Suffering of all mankind most wrongfully,
Since in the world there lives no greater name."
Southey.
Venice offered Michael Angelo all possible inducements to remain, and Francis I. of France eagerly besought the artist to live at his court; but his heart was in Florence, and thither he returned, and bravely helped to defend her to the last. When the Medici were again triumphant, and freedom was dead, the artist being too great a man to imprison or kill, he was publicly pardoned by the pope, and went sadly to his work on the monuments in the Medici Chapel of San Lorenzo.
Here he labored day and night, eating little and sleeping less, ill in body and suffering deeply in heart for his beloved Florence; working into the speaking stone his sorrow and his hopes. In 1534 the Medici Chapel was completed,—a massive piece of architecture, executed at an almost fabulous expense. On one side is the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, withhis statue in a sitting posture, holding in his hand the bâton of a general. Beneath him, over the tomb, are the statues Day and Night. Opposite is the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the father of Catherine de' Medici. It is clad in armor, with a helmet overshadowing the grave features. The Italians call it Il Pensiero ("Thought," or "Meditation").
Hawthorne said of this statue, "No such grandeur and majesty have elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle—the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk.... This statue is one of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but also with grief and impatience, because I feel that I do not come at all to that which it involves, and that by and by I must go away and leave it forever. How wonderful! To take a block of marble, and convert it wholly into thought, and to do it through all the obstructions and impediments of drapery."
Some authorities believe that the statue usually called Lorenzo was intended for Giuliano. Michael Angelo himself, when remonstrated with because the portraits were not correct likenesses, replied that he "did not suppose people a hundred years later would care much how the dukes looked!"
Under this statue are Dawn and Twilight. Ruskin calls these, with Night and Day, "Four ineffable types, not of darkness nor of day—not ofmorning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn, of the souls of men."
Day is a gigantic figure of a man; Night, of a woman in a profound sleep, with her foot resting on a thick bundle of poppy-heads. When this statue was exhibited for the first time, Giovanni Batista Strozzi wrote a verse, and attached it to the marble:—
"Carved by an Angel, in this marble whiteSweetly reposing, lo, the Goddess Night!Calmly she sleeps, and so must living be:Awake her gently; she will speak to thee."
"Carved by an Angel, in this marble whiteSweetly reposing, lo, the Goddess Night!Calmly she sleeps, and so must living be:Awake her gently; she will speak to thee."
"Carved by an Angel, in this marble white
Sweetly reposing, lo, the Goddess Night!
Calmly she sleeps, and so must living be:
Awake her gently; she will speak to thee."
To which Michael Angelo wrote the following reply:—
"Grateful is sleep, whilst wrong and shame surviveMore grateful still in senseless stone to live;Gladly both sight and hearing I forego;Oh, then, awake me not. Hush—whisper low."
"Grateful is sleep, whilst wrong and shame surviveMore grateful still in senseless stone to live;Gladly both sight and hearing I forego;Oh, then, awake me not. Hush—whisper low."
"Grateful is sleep, whilst wrong and shame survive
More grateful still in senseless stone to live;
Gladly both sight and hearing I forego;
Oh, then, awake me not. Hush—whisper low."
Of Day, Mrs. Oliphant says, in her "Makers of Florence," "Bursting herculean from his strong prison, half heroic, nothing known of him but the great brow and resolute eyes, and those vast limbs, which were not yet free from the cohesion of the marble, though alive with such strain of action."
Twilight is the strong figure of a man. Dawn, or Morning, Grimm considers "the most beautiful of all. She is lying outstretched on the gently sloping side of the lid of the sarcophagus. Not, however, resting, but as if, still in sleep, she hadmoved towards us; so that, while the upper part of the back is still reclining, the lower part is turned to us. She is lying on her right side; the leg next us, only feebly bent at the knee is stretching itself out; the other is half drawn up, and with the knee bent out, as if it was stepping forward and seeking for sure footing. An entire symphony of Beethoven lies in this statue."
In 1534, the same year in which the Medici statues were finished, Michael Angelo's father died, at the age of ninety. The artist gave him a costly burial, and wrote a pathetic poem in his memory. The beloved brother, Buonarotto, had died in Michael Angelo's arms. His young mother had died years before when he went to Rome, scarcely more than a boy.
"Already had I wept and sighed so much,I thought all grief forever at an end,Exhaled in sighs, shed forth in bitter tears.* * * * * *For thee, my brother, and for him who wasOf thee and me the parent, love inspiresA grief unspeakable to vex and sting.* * * * * *Full ninety times the sun had bathed his faceIn the wet ocean, ending his annual roundEre thou attainedst to the Peace Divine.* * * * * *There, where (to Him be thanks!) I think thee now,And hope to see again if my cold heartBe raised from earthly mire to where thou art.* * * * * *And if 'twixt sire and son the noblest loveStill grows in Heaven, where every virtue grows,While giving glory to my heavenly Lord,I shall rejoice with thee in Heaven's bliss."
"Already had I wept and sighed so much,I thought all grief forever at an end,Exhaled in sighs, shed forth in bitter tears.
"Already had I wept and sighed so much,
I thought all grief forever at an end,
Exhaled in sighs, shed forth in bitter tears.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
For thee, my brother, and for him who wasOf thee and me the parent, love inspiresA grief unspeakable to vex and sting.
For thee, my brother, and for him who was
Of thee and me the parent, love inspires
A grief unspeakable to vex and sting.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
Full ninety times the sun had bathed his faceIn the wet ocean, ending his annual roundEre thou attainedst to the Peace Divine.
Full ninety times the sun had bathed his face
In the wet ocean, ending his annual round
Ere thou attainedst to the Peace Divine.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
There, where (to Him be thanks!) I think thee now,And hope to see again if my cold heartBe raised from earthly mire to where thou art.
There, where (to Him be thanks!) I think thee now,
And hope to see again if my cold heart
Be raised from earthly mire to where thou art.
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
And if 'twixt sire and son the noblest loveStill grows in Heaven, where every virtue grows,While giving glory to my heavenly Lord,I shall rejoice with thee in Heaven's bliss."
And if 'twixt sire and son the noblest love
Still grows in Heaven, where every virtue grows,
While giving glory to my heavenly Lord,
I shall rejoice with thee in Heaven's bliss."
Clement was now dead, and Paul III. was in the papal chair. He, like the others, desired that Michael Angelo should do some great work to immortalize his reign. Clement had wished the artist to paint the "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel, and when Paul urged the carrying-out of this plan, Michael Angelo excused himself on account of the contract with the heirs of Julius II.
"It is now thirty years," cried Paul III., "that I have had this desire; and, now that I am pope, shall I not be able to effect it? Where is the contract, that I may tear it?"
One day he appeared in the studio of the painter, bringing with him eight cardinals, all of whom wished to see the designs for the "Last Judgment."
The artist was still at work on Moses. "This one statue is sufficient to be a worthy monument to Pope Julius," said the cardinal of Mantua. Paul III. refused to release Michael Angelo, and he began work on the Sistine Chapel.
The painting was not completed until nearly eight years had passed. There are three hundred figures and heads in this vast fresco. Says M. F. Sweetser, in his concise and excellent life of Michael Angelo, "About Christ are many renowned saints,—the Madonna, gazing mildly at the blessed and redeemed souls; Adam and Eve,curiously regarding the Judge; and a group of pleading apostles, bearing their emblems. These are surrounded by a vast throng of saints and martyrs, safe in Heaven, all of whom exemplify the saying that 'Michael Angelo nowhere admits, either into heaven or hell, any but the physically powerful.' Below the Judge are four angels blowing trumpets towards the four quarters of the universe, and four others holding the books by which the dead are to be judged. Under these the land and sea are giving up their dead.... As a work of art, the Last Judgment was one of the grandest productions of the famous art-century."
Biagio da Cesena, the pope's master of ceremonies, complained that so many naked figures made the painting more appropriate for bath-rooms and stables than for a chapel. What was the surprise of Biagio, when the painting was thrown open to the public, to find that the infernal judge Minos, with ass's ears, was his own portrait! He begged the pope to punish the artist; but Paul replied, "If the painter had placed thee in purgatory, I should have used every effort to help thee; but since he has put thee in hell, it is useless to have recourse to me, becauseex infernis nulla est redemptio."
Paul IV. later complained that the figures were shamefully nude, and desired to have them covered. "Tell his Holiness," said Michael Angelo, "that this is a mere trifle, and can be easily done; let him mend the world, paintings are easily mended." Paul finally had the nude figures draped by Danieleda Volterra, who thereupon bore the nickname of "the breeches-maker."
While painting this picture, the artist fell from the scaffold and injured his leg seriously. He refused to allow anything to be done for him, but his friend, the surgeon Rontini, forced his way into the house, and cared for him until he recovered.
These eight years had been the happiest of Michael Angelo's life. Before this time he had been cold in manner, often melancholy, and sometimes overbearing; now he was gentle, cheerful, and affectionate. He had written home in early life, "I have no friends; I need none, and wish to have none." Now he had found, what every human being needs, a friend whose tastes and aspirations were like his own. At sixty, he met and loved Vittoria Colonna, a woman whose mind was henceforward to be his inspiration, and whose sweet nature was to be his rest and satisfaction forever. For such a mind as Michael Angelo's there are few kindred spirits. Fortunate was he that the blessed gift came, even though late in life.
Vittoria was the daughter of Fabrizio Colonna, and the widow of Marchese di Pescara, the two highest nobles and generals of her time. Tenderly reared and highly educated, she had married at nineteen, her husband soon after engaging in the wars of the time. He was wounded at Pavia, and died before his young wife could reach him. Hewas buried at Milan, but the body was afterwards removed to Naples with great magnificence.
Vittoria, childless, well-nigh heart-broken, turned to literature as her solace. She desired to enter a convent; but the bishop of Carpentros, afterwards a cardinal, and an intimate friend of Vittoria, hastened to Paul III., who forbade the abbess and nuns of San Silvestro, on pain of excommunication, to permit her to take the veil. Vittoria must not be lost to the world.
When her poems were published, says T. Adolphus Trollope, in his life of this charming woman, "copies were as eagerly sought for as the novel of the season at a nineteenth-century circulating library. Cardinals, bishops, poets, wits, diplomatists, passed them from one to another, made them the subject of their correspondence with each other and with the fair mourner."
Hallam says, "The rare virtues and consummate talents of this lady were the theme of all Italy in that brilliant age of her literature."
Vittoria Colonna is one of the best illustrations in history of what a noble and intellectual woman can do for the upbuilding of society. Many gifted men gave her a sincere affection, and she held that affection while life lasted. She was well read in history, religious matters, and classic literature. Her first visit to Rome was a continued ovation. Even the Emperor Charles V. called upon her. Unselfish, sympathetic, with a gentle and winsome manner that drew every one into confidence, sheproved herself a companion for the most highly educated, and a helper for the lowly.
When she visited Ferrara, Duke Hercules II., who had married Renée of France, the daughter of Louis XII., received her, says Trollope, "with every possible distinction on the score of her poetical celebrity, and deemed his city honored by her presence. He invited, we are told, the most distinguished poets and men of letters of Venice and Lombardy to meet her at Ferrara. And so much was her visit prized that when Cardinal Giberto sent thither his secretary, Francesco della Torre, to persuade her to visit his episcopal city, Verona, that ambassador wrote to his friend Bembo, at Venice, that he had like to have been banished by the Duke, and stoned by the people, for coming there with the intention of robbing Ferrara of its most precious treasure, for the purpose of enriching Verona."... The learned and elegant Bembo writes of her that he considered her poetical judgment as sound and authoritative as that of the greatest masters of the art of song.... Bernardo Tasso made her the subject of several of his poems. Giovio dedicated to her his life of Pescara, and Cardinal Pompeo Colonna his book on "The Praises of Women;" and Contarini paid her the far more remarkable compliment of dedicating to her his work "On Free Will."
"Paul III. was," as Muratori says, "by no means well disposed towards the Colonna family. Yet Vittoria must have had influence with thehaughty and severe old Farnese. For both Bembo and Fregoso, the Bishop of Naples, have taken occasion to acknowledge that they owed their promotion to the purple in great measure to her."
It is probable that she first met Michael Angelo in the year 1536. He was then sixty-one, and she forty-six. "A woman," says Grimm, "needs not extreme youth to captivate the mind of a man who discovers in her the highest intelligence.... She belonged to that class of women who, apparently with no will of their own, never seek to extort anything by force, and yet obtain everything which is placed before them.... How tenderly she exercised her authority over Michael Angelo, who had never before been approached; whom she now for the first time inspired with the happiness of yielding to a woman, and for whom the years which she passed at that time in Rome she made a period of happiness, which he had never before known.... Whenever we contemplate the life of great men, the most beautiful part of their existence is that, when meeting with a power equal to their own, they find one worthy of measuring the depths of their mind.... There is no deeper desire than that of meeting such a mind; no greater happiness than having found it; no greater sorrow than to resign this happiness, whether it be that it has never been enjoyed, or that it has been lost."
Francesco d'Ollanda, a portrait-painter, has described one of the Sundays which he spent in thecompany of Michael Angelo and Vittoria, "the latter of whom he calls beautiful, pure in conduct, and acquainted with the Latin tongue; in short, she is adorned with every grace which can redound to a woman's praise."
When Michael Angelo arrived at her home on that Sunday, Vittoria, "who could never speak without elevating those with whom she conversed and even the place where she was, began to lead the conversation with the greatest art upon all possible things, without, however, touching even remotely upon painting. She wished to give Michael Angelo assurance." She said to him, "I cannot but admire the manner in which you withdraw yourself from the world, from useless conversation, and from all the offers of princes who desire paintings from your hand,—how you avoid it all, and how you have disposed the labor of your whole life as one single, great work."
"Gracious lady," replied Michael Angelo, "these are undeserved praises; but, as the conversation has taken this turn, I must here complain of the public. A thousand silly reproaches are brought against artists of importance. They say that they are strange people, that they are not to be approached, that there is no bearing with them. No one, on the contrary, can be so natural and human as great artists.... How should an artist, absorbed in his work, take from it time and thought to drive away other people's ennui?... An artist who, instead of satisfying the highest demands ofhis art, tries to suit himself to the great public, who has nothing strange or peculiar in his personal exterior, or rather what the world calls so,—will never become an extraordinary mind. It is true, as regards the ordinary race of artists, we need take no lantern to look for them; they stand at the corner of every street throughout the world, ready for all who seek them.... True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it. For, for those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect, for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it is striving after something divine. True painting is only an image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints,—a melody, a striving after harmony."
And then, says d'Ollanda, "Vittoria began a eulogium upon painting; she spoke of its ennobling influence upon a people,—how it led them to piety, to glory, to greatness, until the tears came into her eyes from the emotion within."
For ten or twelve years, in the midst of long separations and many sorrows, this affection of Vittoria and Michael Angelo shed its transcendent light over two great lives. It was impossible not to love a woman with such tenderness, sympathy, and sincerity. We may admire a beautiful or a brilliant woman, but if she lacks tenderness and sincerity the world soon loses its allegiance. When political changes made it necessary for her to leave Rome and go to the Convent of St. Catherine at Viterbo,Michael Angelo wrote her daily, while he painted in the Pauline Chapel, after the "Last Judgment" was finished, the "Crucifixion of Peter," and the "Conversion of Paul." In 1542 she wrote him tenderly, "I have not answered your letter before, thinking that if you and I continue to write according to my obligation and your courtesy, it will be necessary that I leave St. Catherine's Chapel, without finding myself with the sisters at the appointed hours, and that you must abandon the Pauline Chapel, and not keep yourself all the day long in sweet colloquy with your paintings ... so that I from the brides of Christ, and you from his vicar, shall fall away."
However she may chide him for writing too frequently, his words and works are most precious to her. When he paints for her a picture, she writes, "I had the greatest faith in God, that he would give you a supernatural grace to paint this Christ; then I saw it, so wonderful that it surpassed in every way my expectations. Being emboldened by your miracles, I desired that which I now see marvellously fulfilled, that is, that it should stand in every part in the highest perfection, and that one could not desire more nor reach forward to desire so much. And I tell you that it gave me joy that the angel on the right hand is so beautiful; for the Archangel Michael will place you, Michael Angelo, on the right hand of the Lord at the judgment day. And meanwhile I know not how to serve you otherwise than to pray to this sweet Christ, whom you have so well and perfectlypainted, and to entreat you to command me as altogether yours in all and through all."
What delicate appreciation of the genius of the man she loved! How it must have stimulated and blessed him! But more than all else she loved Michael Angelo for the one thing women value most in men, the strength and constancy of a nature that gives a single and lasting devotion.
She gave to Michael Angelo a vellum book, containing one hundred and three of her sonnets, and sent him forty new ones which she composed at the convent of Viterbo. These he had bound up in the same book which he received from her; her for whom, he said, "I would have done more than for any one else whom I could name in the world." He wrote back his thanks with the sweet self-abnegation of love.
"And well I see how false it were to thinkThat any work, faded and frail, of mine,Could emulate the perfect grace of thine.Genius, and art, and daring, backward shrink.A thousand works from mortals like to meCan ne'er repay what Heaven has given thee."
"And well I see how false it were to thinkThat any work, faded and frail, of mine,Could emulate the perfect grace of thine.Genius, and art, and daring, backward shrink.A thousand works from mortals like to meCan ne'er repay what Heaven has given thee."
"And well I see how false it were to think
That any work, faded and frail, of mine,
Could emulate the perfect grace of thine.
Genius, and art, and daring, backward shrink.
A thousand works from mortals like to me
Can ne'er repay what Heaven has given thee."
She inspired him to write poetry. "The productions of our great artist's pen," says John Edward Taylor, "rank unquestionably in the number of the most perfect of his own or any subsequent age. Stamped by a flow of eloquence, a purity of style, an habitual nobleness of sentiment, they discover a depth of thought rarely equalled, and frequently approaching to the sublimity of Dante."
Several of his most beautiful sonnets were to Vittoria:—
"If it be true that any beauteous thingRaises the pure and just desire of manFrom earth to God, the eternal fount of all,Such I believe my love: for, as in herSo fair, in whom I all besides forget,I view the gentle work of her Creator;I have no care for any other thingWhilst thus I love. Nor is it marvellous,Since the effect is not of my own power,If the soul doth by nature, tempted forth,Enamored through the eyes,Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth,And through them riseth to the primal love,As to its end, and honors in admiring:For who adores the Maker needs must love his work.""If a chaste love, exalted piety,If equal fortune between two who love,Whose every joy and sorrow are the same,One spirit only governing two hearts,—If one soul in two bodies made eterne,Raising them both to Heaven on equal wings,—If the same flame, one undivided ray,Shine forth to each, from inward unity,—If mutual love, for neither's self reserved,Desiring only the return of love,—If that which one desires the other swiftAnticipates, impelled by an unconscious power,—Are signs of an indissoluble faith,Shall aught have power to loosen such a bond?"John Edward Taylor.
"If it be true that any beauteous thingRaises the pure and just desire of manFrom earth to God, the eternal fount of all,Such I believe my love: for, as in herSo fair, in whom I all besides forget,I view the gentle work of her Creator;I have no care for any other thingWhilst thus I love. Nor is it marvellous,Since the effect is not of my own power,If the soul doth by nature, tempted forth,Enamored through the eyes,Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth,And through them riseth to the primal love,As to its end, and honors in admiring:For who adores the Maker needs must love his work."
"If it be true that any beauteous thing
Raises the pure and just desire of man
From earth to God, the eternal fount of all,
Such I believe my love: for, as in her
So fair, in whom I all besides forget,
I view the gentle work of her Creator;
I have no care for any other thing
Whilst thus I love. Nor is it marvellous,
Since the effect is not of my own power,
If the soul doth by nature, tempted forth,
Enamored through the eyes,
Repose upon the eyes which it resembleth,
And through them riseth to the primal love,
As to its end, and honors in admiring:
For who adores the Maker needs must love his work."
"If a chaste love, exalted piety,If equal fortune between two who love,Whose every joy and sorrow are the same,One spirit only governing two hearts,—If one soul in two bodies made eterne,Raising them both to Heaven on equal wings,—If the same flame, one undivided ray,Shine forth to each, from inward unity,—If mutual love, for neither's self reserved,Desiring only the return of love,—If that which one desires the other swiftAnticipates, impelled by an unconscious power,—Are signs of an indissoluble faith,Shall aught have power to loosen such a bond?"John Edward Taylor.
"If a chaste love, exalted piety,
If equal fortune between two who love,
Whose every joy and sorrow are the same,
One spirit only governing two hearts,—
If one soul in two bodies made eterne,
Raising them both to Heaven on equal wings,—
If the same flame, one undivided ray,
Shine forth to each, from inward unity,—
If mutual love, for neither's self reserved,
Desiring only the return of love,—
If that which one desires the other swift
Anticipates, impelled by an unconscious power,—
Are signs of an indissoluble faith,
Shall aught have power to loosen such a bond?"
John Edward Taylor.
In 1544 the Colonna estates were confiscated by the pope, after a contest between Paul III. and thepowerful Colonnas, in which the latter were defeated, and Vittoria retired to the Benedictine Convent of St. Anna. Here her health failed. The celebrated physician and poet Fracastoro said, "Would that a physician for her mind could be found! Otherwise, the fairest light in this world will, from causes by no means clear, be extinguished and taken from our eyes."
At the beginning of 1547 she became dangerously ill, and was conveyed to the palace of her relative Giuliano Cesarini, the only one of her kindred in Rome. She died towards the last of February, 1547, at the age of fifty-seven.
She requested to be buried like the sisters with whom she last resided, and so entirely were her wishes carried out that her place of sepulture is unknown.
Michael Angelo staid beside her to the very last. When she was gone he almost lost his senses. Says his pupil, Condivi, "He bore such a love to her that I remember to have heard him say that he grieved at nothing so much as that when he went to see her pass from this life he had not kissed her brow or her face, as he kissed her hand. After her death he frequently stood trembling and as if insensible."
He wrote several sonnets to her memory.
"When the prime mover of my many sighsHeaven took through death from out her earthly place,Nature, that never made so fair a face,Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes.O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries!O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit of grace,Where art thou now? Earth holds in its embraceThy lovely limbs, thy holy thoughts the skies.Vainly did cruel Death attempt to stayThe rumor of thy virtuous renown,That Lethe's waters could not wash away!A thousand leaves, since he hath stricken thee down,Speak of thee, nor to thee would heaven convey,Except through death, a refuge and a crown."Henry W. Longfellow.
"When the prime mover of my many sighsHeaven took through death from out her earthly place,Nature, that never made so fair a face,Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes.O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries!O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit of grace,Where art thou now? Earth holds in its embraceThy lovely limbs, thy holy thoughts the skies.Vainly did cruel Death attempt to stayThe rumor of thy virtuous renown,That Lethe's waters could not wash away!A thousand leaves, since he hath stricken thee down,Speak of thee, nor to thee would heaven convey,Except through death, a refuge and a crown."Henry W. Longfellow.
"When the prime mover of my many sighs
Heaven took through death from out her earthly place,
Nature, that never made so fair a face,
Remained ashamed, and tears were in all eyes.
O fate, unheeding my impassioned cries!
O hopes fallacious! O thou spirit of grace,
Where art thou now? Earth holds in its embrace
Thy lovely limbs, thy holy thoughts the skies.
Vainly did cruel Death attempt to stay
The rumor of thy virtuous renown,
That Lethe's waters could not wash away!
A thousand leaves, since he hath stricken thee down,
Speak of thee, nor to thee would heaven convey,
Except through death, a refuge and a crown."
Henry W. Longfellow.
The monument of Julius had at last been completed, and placed in the Church of San Pietro in Vincola. In 1546, Antonio di San Gallo, the director of the building of St. Peter's, died, and Michael Angelo was commissioned to carry forward the work. Fortunately Vittoria lived to see this honor conferred upon him.
He was now seventy-one years old. For the remaining eighteen years of his life, he devoted himself to this great labor, without compensation. When Paul III., with Cardinal Marcello, summoned Michael Angelo to talk over some alleged defects, the aged artist boldly replied to the cardinal, "I am not nor will I consent to be obliged to tell, to your eminence or any one else, what I ought or wish to do. Your office is to bring money and guard it from thieves, and the designing of the building is left to me." Then he said to the pope, "Holy Father, you see what I gain; if these fatigues which I endure do not benefit my soul, I lose both time and labor." The pope, who loved him, placedhis hands on his shoulders, saying, "You benefit both soul and body: do not doubt."
When asked if the new dome would not surpass that of the Duomo of Florence, by Brunelleschi, he said, "It will be more grand, but not more beautiful."
Michael Angelo lived very simply in Rome, though he had amassed a large property, most of which he left to his nephew Leonardo, to whom and his family he was tenderly attached. When this nephew was married, the sculptor wrote him "not to care about a great dowry, but that you should look to a healthy mind, a healthy body, good blood, and good education, and what sort of family it is.... Above all, seek the counsel of God, for it is a great step."
Michael Angelo was devotedly attached to Urbino, who had been his servant for twenty-six years, and who loved him so much, says Vasari, "that he had nursed him in sickness, and slept at night in his clothes beside him, the better to watch for his comforts." One day the artist said to him, "When I die, what wilt thou do?"—"Serve some one else," was the reply. "Thou poor creature, I must save thee from that," said the sculptor, and immediately gave him two thousand crowns.
At Urbino's death, when his master was about eighty, Michael Angelo wrote Vasari, in deep grief, of his "infinite loss." "Nor have I now left any other hope than that of rejoining him in Paradise. But of this God has given me a foretaste, in themost blessed death that he has died; his own departure did not grieve him, as did the leaving me in this treacherous world, with so many troubles. Truly is the best part of my being gone with him, nor is anything now left me except an infinite sorrow."
The artist was again and again urged to return to Florence, by the reigning dukes, but he replied, "You must see by my handwriting that I touch the twenty-fourth hour, and no thought is now born in my mind in which death is not mixed."
He was implored on every side to carve statues and paint pictures. He promised Francis I. of France a work in marble, in bronze, and in painting. "Should death interrupt this desire," said Michael Angelo, "then, if it be possible to sculpture or paint in the other world, I shall not fail to do so, where no one becomes old."
He furnished plans for several Roman gates which Pius IV., who succeeded Paul IV., wished to rebuild, and made designs for various other buildings and public squares. He erected the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, amid the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian. "Nothing exists in architecture," says Mr. Heath Wilson, "which exceeds the plan of this church in beauty and variety of form. The general proportions are so harmonious, the lines of the plan so gracefully disposed, the form of the whole so original, that, without looking at the elevations, the eye is delighted by the evidence on all sides of the imagination, taste, and skillshown by the venerable architect in this superb work."
The great sculptor never ceased to work or to study. When old he drew a picture representing himself as an aged man in a cart, with these words underneath:Ancora impara(still learning). He painted but two portraits, one of Vittoria Colonna, and one of young Tommaso dei Cavalieri, whom he tenderly loved. To this youth, whom Varchi, the Florentine professor and court scholar, declared to be the most attractive young man he had ever known, Michael Angelo wrote this beautiful sonnet:—
"Through thee I catch a gleam of tender glow,Which with my own eyes I had failed to see;And walking onward step by step with thee,The once oppressing burdens lighter grow.With thee, my grovelling thoughts I heavenward raise,Borne upward by thy bold, aspiring wing;I follow where thou wilt,—a helpless thing,Cold in the sun, and warm in winter days.My will, my friend, rests only upon thine;Thy heart must every thought of mine supply;My mind expression finds in thee alone.Thus like the moonlight's silver ray I shine:We only see her beams on the far sky,When the sun's fiery rays are o'er her thrown."
"Through thee I catch a gleam of tender glow,Which with my own eyes I had failed to see;And walking onward step by step with thee,The once oppressing burdens lighter grow.With thee, my grovelling thoughts I heavenward raise,Borne upward by thy bold, aspiring wing;I follow where thou wilt,—a helpless thing,Cold in the sun, and warm in winter days.My will, my friend, rests only upon thine;Thy heart must every thought of mine supply;My mind expression finds in thee alone.Thus like the moonlight's silver ray I shine:We only see her beams on the far sky,When the sun's fiery rays are o'er her thrown."
"Through thee I catch a gleam of tender glow,
Which with my own eyes I had failed to see;
And walking onward step by step with thee,
The once oppressing burdens lighter grow.
With thee, my grovelling thoughts I heavenward raise,
Borne upward by thy bold, aspiring wing;
I follow where thou wilt,—a helpless thing,
Cold in the sun, and warm in winter days.
My will, my friend, rests only upon thine;
Thy heart must every thought of mine supply;
My mind expression finds in thee alone.
Thus like the moonlight's silver ray I shine:
We only see her beams on the far sky,
When the sun's fiery rays are o'er her thrown."
His last work was a group of the Virgin and the dead Christ, which he intended should be placed on an altar over his own tomb; but it was left unfinished from a flaw in the marble, and is now in the cathedral in Florence. Vasari found the aged artist working at it late at night, when he hadarisen from his bed because he could not sleep. A tallow candle was placed in his pasteboard cap, so as to leave his hands free for work. Once, as they were looking at the statue, Michael Angelo suffered the lantern which he held in his hand to fall, and they were left in darkness. He remarked, "I am so old that Death often pulls me by the cape, and bids me go with him; some day I shall fall myself, like this lamp, and the light of life will be extinguished."
To the last Michael Angelo was always learning. He used often to visit the Vatican to study the Torso Belvedere, which he declared had been of the greatest benefit to him.
In 1563-64 he was elected vice-president of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts. That winter his strength failed rapidly, though all was done for him that love and honor could possibly do, for he had many devoted friends among all classes, and was constantly aiding artists and others. He did not fear death, for he said, "If life be a pleasure, since death also is sent by the hand of the same master, neither should that displease us."
Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the 18th of February, 1564, the same month in which Vittoria died, the great man passed away, in the ninetieth year of his age. Daniele da Volterra, Condivi, and Cavalieri stood by his bedside. His last words to them were, "I give my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my worldly possessions to my nearest of kin."
The pope and the Romans were determined tokeep the dead Michael Angelo in Rome; but his wish had been to lie in Florence. The body, therefore, was conveyed to the latter city, disguised as a bale of merchandise, and buried in Santa Croce, on Sunday night, March 12th, the Tuscan artists following with their lighted torches, accompanied by thousands of citizens. In the month of July a grand memorial service was held, in the Church of San Lorenzo, for the illustrious dead, paintings and statuary surrounding a catafalque fifty-four feet high.
After thirty years of voluntary exile, the melancholy, solitary, great-souled man lay in his native Florence. He had loved liberty and uprightness. He had been ambitious, and devoted to his masterly work, with the will-power and intensity which belong to genius. He had allowed no obstacles to stand in his path,—neither lack of money nor jealousy of artists. He had faith in himself. He spoke sometimes too plainly, but almost always justly. Cold and unapproachable though he was, children loved him, and for them he would stop and make sketches on the street. He had the fearlessness of one who rightly counts manhood above all titles. He was too noble to be trifling, or petty, or self-indulgent. Great in sculpture, painting, poetry, architecture, engineering, character, he has left an imperishable name. Taine says, "There are four men in the world of art and of literature exalted above all others, and to such a degree as to seem to belong to another race; namely, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michael Angelo."
"The world perhaps contains no example of a genius so universal, so creative, so incapable of self-contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and of subsequent ages. His countenances express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Michael Angelo's personages alongside of his are simply heroic athletes; Raphael's virgins are only placid children, whose sleeping souls have not yet lived." Thus writes Taine of Da Vinci, in his "Travels in Italy."
LEONARDO DA VINCI
LEONARDO DA VINCI.
Mrs. Jameson calls Leonardo da Vinci, in her "Early Italian Painters," "Themiracle of that age of miracles. Ardent and versatile as youth; patient and persevering as age; a most profound and original thinker; the greatest mathematician and most ingenious mechanic of his time; architect, chemist, engineer, musician, poet, painter!"
Hallam, in his "History of the Literature of Europe," says of the published extracts from the great volumes of manuscript left by Leonardo, "These are, according to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, more like revelations ofphysical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Castelli, and other names illustrious—the system of Copernicus—the very theories of recent geologists, are anticipated by Da Vinci within the compass of a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe of preternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, he first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature.
"If any doubt could be harbored, not as to the right of Leonardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be by an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record."
This man, whom Vasari thinks "specially endowed by the hand of God himself," was born in 1452, at Castello da Vinci, a village in the Val d'Arno, near Florence. His father, Piero Antonio da Vinci, was a notary of the republic, a man of considerable property and influence. When he was twenty-five, he married the first of his four wives, Albiera di Giovanni Amadori, in 1452, andbrought home his illegitimate son, Leonardo, born the same year, whom she tenderly cared for as her own.
Of Leonardo's mother, Caterina, little is known, save that five years later she married, presumably in her own circle. Among the twelve other children who came into the home of the advocate, Leonardo was the especial pet and pride, probably because he seemed to have been given all the talents originally intended for the Da Vinci family.
The handsome boy, whose "beauty of person," says Vasari, "was such that it has never been sufficiently extolled," and with "a grace beyond expression," cheerful, eager, enthusiastic, and warmhearted, when sent to school, learned everything with avidity. "In arithmetic he often confounded the master who taught him, by his reasonings and by the difficulty of the problems he proposed." He had that omnivorous appetite for books which Higginson calls the sure indication of genius.
He loved nature intensely. He studied every flower and tree about the country home; made companions of the river Arno, the changing clouds, and the snow-capped mountains. Passionately fond of music, he not only learned to play on the guitar and lute, but invented a lyre of his own, on which he improvised both the song and the air.
On the margins of his books he sketched such admirable drawings that his father took them to Andrea Verrochio, a famous Florentine artist, who was "amazed," and advised that the youth becomea painter. Leonardo entered the studio of Verrochio when he was about eighteen, and at once became deeply absorbed in his work. He began to make models in clay, arranging on these soft drapery dipped in plaster, which he drew carefully in black and white on fine linen; also heads of smiling women and children out of terra cotta: already he had that divine gift of painting the "Da Vinci smile," which seems to have been born with him and to have died with him. He studied perspective, and with his fellow-students made chemical researches into the improvement of colors.
Verrochio was engaged in painting a picture of St. John baptizing Christ, for the monks of Vallombrosa, and requested Leonardo to paint an angel in the left-hand corner, holding some vestments. When the work was finished, and Verrochio looked upon Leonardo's angel, "a space of sunlight in the cold, labored old picture," as W. H. Pater says, in his "Studies in the History of the Renaissance," Verrochio became so discouraged "because a mere child could do more than himself," that he would never touch the brush again. This work is now in the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.
About this time, according to Vasari, Leonardo made his famous shieldRotella del Fico. "Ser Piero da Vinci, being at his country house, was there visited by one of the peasants on his estate, who, having cut down a fig-tree on his farm, had made a shield from part of it with his own hands,and then brought it to Ser Piero, begging that he would be pleased to cause the same to be painted for him in Florence. This the latter very willingly promised to do, the countryman having great skill in taking birds and in fishing, and being often very serviceable to Ser Piero in such matters. Having taken the shield with him to Florence, therefore, without saying anything to Leonardo as to whom it was for, he desired the latter to paint something upon it.
"Accordingly, he one day took it in hand, but, finding it crooked, coarse, and badly made, he straightened it at the fire, and, giving it to a turner, it was brought back to him smooth and delicately rounded, instead of the rude and shapeless form in which he had received it. He then covered it with gypsum, and, having prepared it to his liking, he began to consider what he could paint upon it that might best and most effectually terrify whomsoever might approach it, producing the same effect with that formerly attributed to the head of Medusa. For this purpose, therefore, Leonardo carried to one of his rooms, into which no one but himself ever entered, a number of lizards, hedgehogs, newts, serpents, dragon-flies, locusts, bats, glow-worms, and every sort of strange animal of similar kind on which he could lay his hands; from this assemblage, variously adapted and joined together, he formed a hideous and appalling monster, breathing poison and flames, and surrounded by an atmosphere of fire; this he caused to issuefrom a dark and rifted rock, with poison reeking from the cavernous throat, flames darting from the eyes, and vapors rising from the nostrils in such sort that the result was indeed a most fearful and monstrous creature; at this he labored until the odors arising from all those dead animals filled the room with a mortal fetor, to which the zeal of Leonardo and the love which he bore to art rendered him insensible or indifferent.
"When this work, which neither the countryman nor Ser Piero any longer inquired for, was completed, Leonardo went to his father and told him that he might send for the shield at his earliest convenience, since, so far as he was concerned, the work was finished; Ser Piero went accordingly one morning to the room for the shield, and, having knocked at the door, Leonardo opened it to him, telling him nevertheless to wait a little without, and, having returned into the room, he placed the shield on the easel, and, shading the window so that the light falling on the painting was somewhat dimmed, he made Ser Piero step within to look at it. But the latter, not expecting any such thing, drew back, startled at the first glance, not supposing that to be the shield, or believing the monster he beheld to be a painting; he therefore turned to rush out, but Leonardo withheld him, saying,—'The shield will serve the purpose for which it has been executed; take it, therefore, and carry it away, for this is the effect it was designed to produce.'
"The work seemed something more thanwonderful to Ser Piero, and he highly commended the fanciful idea of Leonardo; but he afterwards silently bought from a merchant another shield, whereon there was painted a heart transfixed with an arrow, and this he gave to the countryman, who considered himself obliged to him for it to the end of his life. Some time after, Ser Piero secretly sold the shield painted by Leonardo to certain merchants for one hundred ducats, and it subsequently fell into the hands of the Duke of Milan, sold to him by the same merchants for three hundred ducats."
Leonardo painted also the "Head of Medusa," in the Uffizi Gallery, twined about with green, hissing serpents.
For the King of Portugal he painted a cartoon for a tapestry curtain,—"Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden." Of the flowers and fruits in this picture, Vasari says, "For careful execution and fidelity to nature, they are such that there is no genius in the world, however godlike, which could produce similar results with equal truth." This cartoon is lost.
The "Madonna della Caraffa," celebrated for the exquisite beauty of the flowers with dew upon them, which stood in a vase by the Virgin, and was highly prized by Clement VII., has also disappeared. The "Adoration of the Magi" and a "Neptune in his Chariot drawn by Sea-horses" were among Da Vinci's works at this time.
He was also studying military engineering,completed a book of designs for mills and other apparatus working by water, invented machines for dredging seaports and channels, and urged the making of a canal from Pisa to Florence, by changing the course of the Arno, a thing accomplished two hundred years later.
Still he did not neglect his painting. He went about the streets of Florence looking for picturesque or beautiful faces, which he transferred to his sketch-book, always carried at his girdle. He attended the execution of criminals to catch the expression of faces or contortion of limbs in agony. Yet so tender-hearted was he, that, Vasari says, "When he passed places where birds were sold, he would frequently take them from their cages, and, having paid the price demanded for them by the sellers, would then let them fly into the air, thus restoring to them the liberty they had lost."
He loved art. He said, "In the silence of the night, recall the ideas of the things which you have studied. Design in your spirit the contours and outlines of the figures that you have seen during the day. When the spirit does not work with the hands, there is no artist.... Do not allege as an excuse your poverty, which does not permit you to study and become skilful; the study of art serves for nourishment to the body as well as the soul.... When all seems easy, it is an unerring sign that the workman has but scant ability and that the task is above his comprehension."
Enjoying all athletic exercises; so strong thathe could bend a horseshoe in his hands; exceedingly fond of horses, of which he owned several,—he still found time to be the life and joy of the brilliant society of Florence; always leading, always fascinating with his intelligent conversation and elegant address. And yet the ambitious Leonardo was not satisfied in Florence. The Medici did not encourage him as they did Michael Angelo. Possibly they felt that he lacked a steady and dominant purpose. He finally made up his mind to try his fortune elsewhere, and wrote the following letter to Lodovico Sforza, Regent of Milan:—
"My Most Illustrious Lord,—Having seen and duly considered the experiments of all those who repute themselves masters and constructors of warlike instruments, and that the inventions and operations of the said instruments are not different from those in common use, I will endeavor, without derogating from any one else, to make known to your Excellency certain secrets of my own, and, at an opportune time, I shall hope to put them into execution, if they seem valuable to you. I briefly note these things below:—
"1. I have a method of making very light bridges, fit to be carried most easily, with which to follow the flight of enemies; and others, strong and secure against fire and battle; easy and commodious to lift up and to place in position. I have methods also to burn and destroy those of the enemy.
"2. I know, in case of the siege of a place, howto take away the water from the ditches, and to make an infinite variety of scaling-ladders and other instruments pertinent to such an expedition.
* * * * * *
"4. I have also kinds of cannon most commodious and easy to carry, with which to throw inflammable matters, whose smoke causes great fright to the enemy, with serious injury and confusion.
"5. I have means, by excavations and straight and winding subterranean ways, to come to any given point without noise, even though it be necessary to pass under moats and rivers.
* * * * * *
"8. When the operations of artillery are impossible, I shall construct mangonels, balistæ, and other engines of marvellous efficacy, and out of the common use; and, in short, according to the variety of events, I shall build various and infinite means of offence.
"9. And when it shall happen to be upon the sea, I have means of preparing many instruments most efficient in attack or defence, and vessels that shall make resistance to the most powerful bombardment; and powders and smokes.
"10. In time of peace I believe I can satisfy very well and equal all others in architecture, in designing public edifices and private houses, and in conducting water from one place to another. I can carry on works of sculpture, in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, also in pictures. I can do what canbe done equal to any other, whoever he may be. Also, I shall undertake the execution of the bronze horse, which will be the immortal glory and eternal honor of the happy memory of my lord your father, and of the illustrious honor of Sforza."
The result of this letter was a summons to the court at Milan, where Lodovico, though dissolute, was proud to surround himself with the most brilliant men and women of the age. Leonardo took with him a silver lyre, made in the shape of a horse's head, designed by himself, on which he played so skilfully that the duke and his court were enchanted. "Whatever he did," says Vasari, "bore an impress of harmony, truthfulness, goodness, sweetness, and grace, wherein no other man could ever equal him." Such a union of gentleness and sincerity with genius! Who could withstand its influence!
At Milan Leonardo remained for nineteen years, and here some of his most remarkable works were done.
One of the first pictures painted for the Regent was a portrait of a favorite, the beautiful Cecilia Gallerani, a gifted woman, skilled in music and poetry. Leonardo painted for her a picture of the Virgin, for which she probably was the model. The infant Saviour is represented as blessing a new-blown Madonna rose, the emblem of St. Cecilia.
The next portrait—it is now in the Louvre—was that of another beauty, loved by the duke, Lucrezia Crivelli, formerly called La BelleFéronnière, who was a favorite of Francis I. "The face," says Mr. Sweetser, "is at once proud and melancholy, with a warm and brilliant coloring and soft pure lines, the head full of light, and even the shadows transparent." In honor of both these portraits Latin poems were written by the poets of the time.
Leonardo also painted two fine portraits of the lawful duke, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, and his wife, Isabella of Aragon, the latter picture "beyond all description beautiful and charming," now preserved in the Ambrosian Library. When these persons were married, Leonardo invented for the entertainment of the guests at the wedding feast a mechanical device called "The Paradise," a representation of the heavens and the revolving planets, which opened as the bride and bridegroom approached, while a person in imitation of the Deity recited complimentary verses.
Leonardo now began on the great equestrian statue of the warrior Francesco Sforza. He studied ancient works of art, especially the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, made almost countless drawings of horses in repose or on the battle-field, many of which are still preserved at Windsor Castle, studied every movement of live horses and every muscle of dead ones, and did not complete his clay model for ten long years. A genius like Da Vinci spends ten years on the model of an equestrian statue, and yet some artists of the present day, men and women, paint and mouldhorses or human beings after a few weeks or months of study, and expect to win fame!
When the clay model was exhibited in public at the royal wedding of the sister of Gian Galeazzo to the Emperor Maximilian, the enthusiasm was very great. All Italy talked of it, and poets and critics extolled it as beyond the works of Greece or Rome. Unfortunately the ensuing wars depleted the treasury of Milan, and prevented the work from being cast in bronze. When the French entered Milan in 1499, it became a target for the archers. Two years later the Duke of Ferrara asked the use of the model that a bronze horse with a statue of himself might be made; but the King of France refused, and the model finally disappeared.
During these years Leonardo founded the Milan Academy. Probably many of the manuscript volumes which he left were notes of lectures delivered to the students. He must have spoken to them on botany, optics, mechanics, astronomy, hydrostatics, anatomy, perspective, proportion, and other matters. He wrote a book on the anatomy of the horse. "He also," says Vasari, "filled a book with drawings in red crayons, outlined with the pen, all copies made with the utmost care from bodies dissected by his own hand. In this book he set forth the entire structure, arrangement and disposition of the bones, to which he afterwards added all the nerves, in their due order, and next supplied the muscles, of which the first are affixedto the bones, the second give the power of cohesion or holding firmly, and the third impart the motion."
Leonardo said in his notes, "The painter who has obtained a perfect knowledge of the nature of the tendons and muscles, and of those parts which contain the most of them, will know to a certainty, in giving a particular motion to any part of the body, which and how many of the muscles give rise and contribute to it; which of them, by swelling, occasion their shortening, and which of the cartilages they surround. He will not imitate those who, in all the different attitudes they adopt or invent, make use of the same muscles in the arms, back, or chest, or any other parts.... It is necessary that a painter should be a good anatomist, that in his attitudes and gestures he may be able to design the naked parts of the human frame, according to the just rules of the anatomy of the nerves, bones, and muscles; and that, in his different positions, he may know what particular nerve or muscle is the cause of such a particular movement, in order that he may make that only marked and apparent, and not all the rest, as many artists are in the habit of doing; who, that they may appear great designers, make the naked limbs stiff and without grace, so that they have more the appearance of a bag of nuts than the human superficies, or, rather, more like a bundle of radishes than naked muscles."
Leonardo irrigated the dry plains of Lombardy by utilizing the waters of the Ticino River, visitingmany cities and towns throughout Lombardy for this purpose, and carefully studying the canals of Egypt under the Ptolemies. He studied ancient architecture also. In his epitaph, composed in his lifetime, he calls himself, "The admirer of the ancients, and their grateful disciple. One thing is lacking to me, their science of proportion. I have done what I could; may posterity pardon me."
He designed a palace for Count Giovanni Melzi, at Vaprio, which became a favorite home for him, especially in the time of war—the residence of his beloved pupil, Francesco Melzi.
In 1492, after Leonardo had been eleven years at the Court of Milan, Lodovico, unscrupulous and immoral, married the gentle and saintly Beatrice d'Este. Leonardo conducted the grand wedding festivities, and designed and decorated the bride's apartments in the Castello della Rocca, making a beautiful bath-room in the garden, adorned with colored marbles and a statue of Diana. While the regent in no wise discontinued his profligate habits, he yet desired to please his wife, by gratifying her taste for religious things. As she had shown an especial fondness for the Dominican church and convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Lodovico ordered them reconstructed and embellished for her. In the refectory, the artist painted kneeling portraits of Beatrice, her husband, and their two little children, Maximilian and Francesco; but they have long since faded.
About the year 1496, Leonardo began hisimmortal work in the refectory, The "Last Supper." Here, where daily the sweet and broken-hearted wife came to remain for hours in meditation and prayer before the tomb of the Duchess Bianca, from which she sometimes had to be removed by force, Leonardo came daily to his masterpiece. Sometimes he would go to his work at daybreak, and never think of descending from his scaffolding to eat or drink till night, so completely absorbed was he in his work. "At other times," says Bandello, "he would remain three or four days without touching it, only coming for an hour or two, and remaining with crossed arms contemplating his figures, as if criticising them himself. I have also seen him at midday, when the sun in the zenith causes all the streets of Milan to be deserted, set out in all haste from the citadel, where he was modelling his colossal horse, and, without seeking the shade, take the shortest road to the convent, where he would add a few strokes to one of his heads, and then return immediately."
Leonardo made a cartoon of the whole picture, and separate studies of each figure. Ten of these are now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
He was long absorbed in his head of Christ. He used to say that his hand trembled whenever he attempted to paint it. At last, in despair, he asked counsel of a friend, Bernardo Zenale, who comforted him by saying, "Oh, Leonardo, the error into which thou hast fallen is one from which only the Divine Being himself can deliverthee; for it is not in thy power nor in that of any one else to give greater divinity and beauty to any figures than thou hast done to these of James the Greater and the Less; therefore, be of good cheer, and leave the Christ imperfect, for thou wilt never be able to accomplish the Christ after such apostles."
Leonardo finished the work in about three years. Beatrice, as might have been expected from such an ill-assorted union, died of sorrow in five years after her marriage. Lodovico, as has been often the case before and since in the world's history, realized too late the wrong he had done, and now strove to remedy it by causing a hundred masses a day to be said for her soul, shutting himself up in remorse for two weeks in a chamber hung with black, only coming forth to do penance at the sanctuaries where his lovely and neglected wife had worshipped. He now wished to make her last resting-place, Santa Maria delle Grazie, as beautiful as possible, and hastened Leonardo at his work on the "Last Supper" that he might see it completed, meantime raising a magnificent tomb to the memory of his neglected Beatrice.
The prior of the convent could not understand why Leonardo should meditate over his work, and, likewise in haste to have the picture finished, complained to Lodovico, who courteously entreated the artist to go on as rapidly as possible. Vasari says, "Leonardo, knowing the prince to be intelligent and judicious, determined to explain himselffully on the subject with him, although he had never chosen to do so with the prior. He therefore discoursed with him at some length respecting art, and made it perfectly manifest to his comprehension that men of genius are sometimes producing most when they seem to be laboring least, their minds being occupied in the elucidation of their ideas, and in the completion of those conceptions to which they afterwards give form and expression with the hand. He further informed the duke that there were still wanting to him two heads, one of which, that of the Saviour, he could not hope to find on earth....
"The second head still wanting was that of Judas, which also caused him some anxiety, since he did not think it possible to imagine a form of feature that should properly render the countenance of a man who, after so many benefits received from his Master, had possessed a heart so depraved as to be capable of betraying his Lord, and the Creator of the world; with regard to that second, however, he would make search, and after all—if he could find no better—he need never be at any great loss, for there would always be the head of that troublesome and impertinent prior. This made the duke laugh with all his heart; he declared Leonardo to be completely in the right: and the poor prior, utterly confounded, went away to drive on the digging in his garden, and left Leonardo in peace."
The "Last Supper" was painted in oils insteadof fresco, and soon began to fade. In 1515, when Francis I. was in Milan, he was so impressed with the picture that he determined to carry it back to France, and tried to find architects who could secure it from injury by defences of wood and iron so that it could be transported, but none could be found able to do it, and the project was abandoned. The painting was soon damaged by the refectory lying for some time under water. Later one of the monks made a doorway through it, cutting off the feet of Christ. In 1726 an artist named Belotti restored(?) it, leaving nothing untouched but the sky. His work proved unsatisfactory, and Mazza repainted everything except the heads of Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon. The indignant people soon compelled him to cease, and the prior who had permitted it was banished from the convent.
In 1796, when Napoleon entered Italy, the troops used the refectory as a stable. Three or four years later, it again lay under water for two weeks. At present, one is able to perceive only the general design as the work of Leonardo. Excellent copies were made by Da Vinci's pupils, so that the great picture has found its way into thousands of homes.
The Saviour and his apostles are seated at a long table, in a stately hall. On the left is Bartholomew; next, James the Less; then Andrew, Peter, Judas holding the money-bag, John, with Christ in the centre, Thomas on his right hand, then James the Greater, Philip, Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon.The moment chosen by the painter is that given by Matthew: "And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?"
Mrs. C. W. Heaton says of this picture, in her valuable life of Da Vinci, "In his dramatic rendering of the disciples, Leonardo has shown the boldest and grandest naturalism. They are all of them real, living men with passions like unto us—passions called for the moment by the fearful words of the Master, 'One of you shall betray me,' into full and various play."
Most who visit Milan to see the lace-work in stone of its exquisite cathedral, go also to the famous painting which tells alike the story of a great artist struggling to put immortal thoughts into his faces, and the story of the remorse of a human being in breaking the heart of a lovely woman. Had it not been to atone to Beatrice, probably the "Last Supper" would never have been painted in Santa Maria delle Grazie. Thus strangely has the bitterness of one soul led to the joy and inspiration of thousands!
In 1498, Louis XII. came to the throne of France, and laid claim to the duchy of Milan, enforcing his claim by arms. Lodovico fled, but was captured by the French, and kept a prisoner for ten years, until his death. Leonardo went back to his old home in Florence, taking with him two persons, his friend Luca Paciolo, who hadlived with him three years at Milan, the author ofDe Divina Proportione, for which book the artist made sixty drawings; and his beautiful pupil Salaï, his son as he called him, "a youth of singular grace and beauty of person, with curling and wavy hair, a feature of personal beauty by which Leonardo was greatly pleased." From this dear disciple the artist painted many of his angels' heads.
Florence had changed since he went away, scarcely more than a boy. Now he was in middle life, forty-eight years old, the famous painter of the "Last Supper," the polished and renowned scholar. His first work on his return was an altar-piece for the Annunciata Church,—the Madonna, St. Anna, and the infant Christ. The cartoon, now in the Royal Academy at London, caused the greatest delight. "When finished, the chamber wherein it stood was crowded for two days by men and women, old and young, as if going to a solemn festival, all hastening to behold this marvel of Leonardo's, which amazed the whole population."
He now painted two noble Florentine ladies, Ginevra Benci, a famous beauty, and the Mona Lisa, the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, the latter of whom it is conjectured that Leonardo loved.
Vasari says, "Whoever shall desire to see how far art can imitate nature, may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been faithfully reproduced. The eyes havethe lustrous brightness and moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and slightly livid circles, also proper to nature, with the lashes, which can only be copied as these are with the greatest difficulty; the eyebrows also are represented with the closest exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, with the separate hairs delineated as they issue from the skin, every turn being followed and all the pores exhibited in a manner that could not be more natural than it is; the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be easily believed to be alive; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips uniting the rose-tints of their color with that of the face in the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to be painted, but truly of flesh and blood; he who looks earnestly at the pit of the throat cannot but believe that he sees the beating of the pulses, and it may be truly said that this work is painted in a manner well calculated to make the boldest master tremble, and astonishes all who behold it, however well accustomed to the marvels of art.
"Mona Lisa was exceedingly beautiful; and while Leonardo was painting her portrait, he took the precaution of keeping some one constantly near her, to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her, to the end that she might continue cheerful, and so that her face might not exhibit the melancholy expression often imparted by painters to the likenesses they take. In thisportrait of Leonardo's, on the contrary, there is so pleasing an expression, and a smile so sweet, that while looking at it one thinks it rather divine than human, and it has ever been esteemed a wonderful work, since life itself could exhibit no other appearance."
No wonder Grimm says, "He who has seen the Mona Lisa smile is followed forever by this smile, just as he is followed by Lear's fury, Macbeth's ambition, Hamlet's melancholy, and Iphigenia's touching purity."
Pater says of the Mona Lisa, "'La Gioconda' is, in the truest sense, Leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the 'Melancholia' of Dürer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. We all know the face and hands of the figure, set in its marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic webs, as in some faint light under sea. Perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.
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"The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea."
One feels with Michelet, when he says, "Itfascinates and absorbs me. I go to it in spite of myself, as the bird is drawn to the serpent." I have found myself going day after day to the Louvre to linger before two masterpieces; to grow better through the womanhood of the Venus de Milo, and to rest in the peaceful, contented smile of the Mona Lisa. Nobody can forget the perfect hand. One seems to feel the delicacy of the loving touch which Leonardo gave as he painted through those long yet short four years, leaving the portrait, as he declared, unfinished, because of his high ideal of what a painting should be. The husband did not purchase the picture of the artist—did he not value the beauty? It was finally sold to Francis I., for four thousand gold crowns, an enormous sum at that day.
After Da Vinci had been two years in Florence, Cæsar Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI., appointed him architect and general engineer. He travelled through Central Italy, making ramparts and stairways for the citadel of Urbino, machinery at Pesaro, designing a house and better methods of transporting grapes at Cesena, and finer gates at Cesenatico. At one place he lingered to enjoy the regular cadence of the waves beating on the shore; at another, his soul filled with music, he was soothed by the murmur of the fountains. But Cæsar was soon obliged to flee into Spain, and Leonardo could no longer hold the position of engineer.
Pietro Soderini, who had been electedgonfaloniere for life, was the friend of both Leonardo and Michael Angelo. He wished to have these two greatest artists paint each a wall in the Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio. Michael Angelo chose for his subject a group of soldiers surprised by the enemy while bathing in the Arno; Leonardo, a troop of horsemen fighting round a standard, a scene from the battle of Anghiari, fought by the Florentines against the North Italians. Vasari says, "Not only are rage, disdain, and the desire for revenge apparent in the men, but in the horses also; two of those animals, with their fore-legs intertwined, are attacking each other with their teeth, no less fiercely than do the cavaliers who are fighting for the standard."
Vasari thinks it "scarcely possible adequately to describe ... the wonderful mastery he exhibits in the forms and movements of the horses.... The muscular development, the animation of their movements, and their exquisite beauty, are rendered with the utmost fidelity."
When the rival cartoons of Michael Angelo and Da Vinci were publicly exhibited, the excitement was great between the followers of each artist. When Da Vinci began to paint upon the wall, in oils, as in the "Last Supper," the colors so sank into it that he abandoned the work. Soderini accused him of having received money and not rendering an equivalent, which so wounded the pride, of the artist that his friends raised the amount which had been advanced to him, and offered it to thegonfaloniere, who generously refused to accept it. Da Vinci had already become offended with Soderini's treasurer, who offered him a portion of his pay in copper money. Leonardo would not take it, saying, "I am no penny-painter."