THE RESURRECTION Drawing (about 1540). Louvre.THE RESURRECTIONDrawing (about 1540). Louvre.
If instead of Michelangelo with his ardent faith and that warmth of enthusiasm which sweeps along his idealism and makes of the Divine Idea as he conceives it a living being to whom he passionately desires to unite himself we should take, I do not say a sceptic or an atheist, but a sincere believer after the manner of the Council of Trent, a Vasari or a Zucchero, then God will be to them not a source of love and ecstasy, but the principle of reason. The reason of the wise—behold the beginning and the end of art. A hundred years after Michelangelo, Poussin was to bind all art in obedience to this principle. He applied all its natural resources to the rendering of one idea. With him the attention is confined to the idea of the work—that is the principal thing. The abstract idea is more important than the form; thought alone is spontaneous; all the rest—life, expression, colour—is determined by the logic of reason. The subject regulates the composition and determines the centre of interest and the groupings of the picture; it indicates the character{154}of the people, their moral aspect and, consequently, their exterior, for the two are bound together. It determines the character of the landscape, which must bear a logical relationship to the scene; it presides even over the execution of the work. The manner of painting is imposed by the subject to be treated; it will be Phrygian or Dorian or Lydian, according to whether the idea is gentle or serious or sad. In this way everything is logical and calculated. Michelangelo's mystical ardour toward divine perfection at least left him his impetuous liberty of feeling. Poussin no longer left anything to chance. His reason commanded and his hand obeyed. If I name him here it is because he was both the end and the climax of artistic intellectualism. At least Poussin left on his work the impress of his great intelligence. His system rests on this idea, and with him the idea was clear and powerful. But what would it be in the hands of men of mediocre talent? The number of artists who either think for themselves, or express with new force the ideas of others, is infinitesimal. Moreover, the ideal is ordinarily to them merely an emphatic rendering of a vague conception of perfection which they have been taught. Under pretext of an intellectual ideal they deform nature; they leave it little by little, turning their backs, their{155}eyes proudly closed, looking only within themselves. "La bellezza," says Tomazzo, "e lontana dala materia" (Beauty is far from matter).[144]The symbol of the period which was to follow is that very Lomazzo,[145]painter, æsthetician—blind.
Blind, more or less, were all who lived around Michelangelo. Their too feeble eyes were dazzled by this sun which shone alone in that twilight of art, the night which was falling on Italy of the Renaissance. A long time after that sun had disappeared below the horizon the radiant glow still remained in the sky. Michelangelo enthralled Italian art.
There is no comparison between the influence which he exerted and that of the other masters of the sixteenth century, Corregio and Raphael. However superior they may have been to their century, Corregio and Raphael only reflected its thoughts with more charm and grandeur. Michelangelo is outside of his time, alone, apart and colossal. He is like a great mountain which inspires in those who dwell at the foot an invincible desire to reach the top; and what men have ever existed who were less capable of climbing those austere and sublime{156}heights? All those effeminate artists of the decadence, intoxicated by his inspiration, attempted to express heroic ideas in their insipid works. They lost the sense of proportion which alone could have saved them. Instead of confining themselves to the little world of their own fancy which, though cold, could have been redeemed by sincerity, they attempted great subjects. A mass of forms, heroic figures and furious gestures that they had learned, were whirled about in their mind, uncontrolled either by greatness of intelligence or of heart.
We must remember that Michelangelo lived through more than fifty years of the Golden Age of Italian art and, as happened in our own day to Victor Hugo, admiration for his works increased in proportion as they deserved it less. Even the factions that had been longest hostile to him—the school of Raphael, for instance—recognised his triumph. Perino del Vaga admits that all the painters worshipped him as their master, their leader and the god of drawing.[146]
The independents, or those who boasted that they were, said as Cellini did in his sonnets:{157}
"Just a leaf from thy crown, O divine Michelangelo, who alone art rich, who alone art immortal. That will suffice me and I shall have no desire for anything else, since for me that only is 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{158}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]
THE DOME OF ST. PETER'S From the Original Model in Wood. Preserved in the Vatican (1558).THE DOME OF ST. PETER'SFrom 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{159}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 forced talent!
Battista Franco of Venice,il Semoleidistinguished himself above all others by his zeal in copying Michelangelo. Vasari says that there was not a sketch, not the roughest note, or any sort of fragment of his which he had not devoutly drawn. He knew the whole Sistine by heart. In 1536 he came to Florence and drew once more all the statues of S. Lorenzo. In 1541 he hurried to Rome for the "première" of the Last Judgment, and he made a drawing of the whole thing "con infinita maraviglia il designo tutto." We can understand that he had no time to do any thinking for himself. For a long time he refrained from painting anything of his own.{160}When he decided to begin it was to reproduce in his Battle of Montemurlo some fragments of the war against Pisa or of the Rape of Ganymede.[151]
The independent Cellini writes in his memoirs: "I devoted myself continually to trying to absorb thoroughly the beautiful style of Michelangelo, and since then I have never departed from it."
A hundred years later still Bernini copied the Last Judgment for two successive years before he began to draw from nature. Scivoli watched him doing it and said: "Sei un furbo; no fai quel che vedi: questa è di Michelangelo." ("You are a fool. You are not drawing what you see; this is nothing but Michelangelo").[152]
Bernini, who tells of this, does not see that it is a criticism, for he recommends this same system of education to young artists.
"It is necessary first for a young man to form an idea of the beautiful, for this is of use to him all his life; it ruins young men to begin by drawing from nature, which is almost always weak and mean, and which then fills their imagination, so that they can{161}never produce anything beautiful or great, qualities which are never found in natural things. Those who make use of nature should be already skilful enough to recognise its faults and to correct them. A young man is not capable of this until he has gained full knowledge of beauty."[153]
The essential idea of this teaching was that nature is evil; just what Michelangelo thought. But we now see to what unexpected results his pessimistic idealism led. It produced not only separation from nature, but renunciation of personal feeling for formulas, "since it is not possible for one individual to have light on all subjects nor to grasp without assistance the difficulty of arts so profound and so little understood."
What would Michelangelo have thought of these servile disciples, he who said proudly that "whoever follows others will never go forward, and whoever does not know how to create by his own abilities can gain no profit from the works of other men."
But they had lost even the consciousness of their servility and took more pride in living on Michelangelo's crumbs than he had in creating the work which was to be the nourishment of two centuries. Some drew tranquilly on their memory and their{162}notes, others mimicked the master's grandiose manner, and they were all entirely satisfied with themselves, not one of them realising what their master and model had suffered in giving birth to these works which were so easy for them to imitate.
Michelangelo's idealism had a powerful corrective in "the sense of the beauty of struggle, and the holiness of suffering." "Nothing approaches nearer to God," he wrote, "than the effort to produce a perfect work, because God is perfection."
No one ever struggled more fiercely than this man, who ceaselessly tormented himself and wept at "losing his time uselessly" while he was working at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, who wrought with his blood the beings whom he created and was dissatisfied with his sublime creations at the moment of finishing them and left them incomplete, who to his last day in agony and tears
"Weeping, loving, burning and sighing—for there was no human emotion which he had not felt."{163}
He was vainly seeking the visioned ideal, and in dying he regretted not the joy of living, but his interrupted labours.[155]
Beside that virile modesty what can we think of the absurd vanity of all those little masters who declared that they derived from the great master and believed themselves to be Michelangelos?
Vasari dares to write:
"To-day art has been brought to such perfection that while our predecessors produced a picture in six years we produce six in one year. I can bear witness since I have seen this done and have done it myself, and nevertheless our works are much more finished and more perfect than those of the renowned painters who preceded us."[156]
Even the weakest ones had the same feeling. Perino del Vaga considered himself very much superior to Masaccio, and in Cellini vanity ended by touching madness. He felt that antiquity was only valuable as a background to his works, and for his{164}Jupiter he used the bronze castings which Primataccio brought from Rome.[157]
When an artist is so sure of success he no longer takes any trouble to deserve it. "Che cartoni o non cartoni," cries Giorlamo da Treviso, "io, io, ho l'arte su la punta dell pennello" ("Have I need of studies, I who have art on the point of my brush!").
The scruples that Michelangelo had felt no longer checked the artists. They were not afraid to finish what they had begun. Pomeranci, Semino, Calvi, painted four square yards a day. Cambiaso painted, at the age of seventeen, the story of Niobe without studies or sketches. He produced as many works as a dozen painters together, and his wife lighted the fire with bundles of drawings which he tossed off every moment. His contemporaries compare him to Michelangelo, and add that the latter does not gain by the comparison. Santi di Tito made a portrait in less than half an hour. He set up a factory in his house and turned them out in enormous quantities. His pupil, Tempesti, did not succeed{165}in finding sufficient occupation for his talents in the great frescoes at Rome and, as a relaxation from painting, made fifteen hundred engravings. In a month Vasari, Tribolo and Andrea del Cosimo built and decorated a palace. In a day Perino del Vaga painted the Passage of the Red Sea.
THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS Duomo, Florence (1553-1555).THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSSDuomo, Florence (1553-1555).
The Venetians, thanks to their distance from Rome and Florence and to their ardent communion with nature, which to the horror of Vasari they dared to copy honestly,[158]were saved for a time, but in the end caught the infection. The Florentine spirit won this last refuge of art, and Tintoretto infused the spirit of Michelangelo into Venetian realism.[159]{166}
The brain of Italy was a prey to fever.[160]Michelangelo had destroyed the balance of mind of a period dried out by intellectualism and weakened by the taste for pleasure. The shock of his dazzling light on their eyes, too feeble to bear it, blinded them and inspired a delirium of imagination without poetry, without thought and without life.
The Carracci were needed at the end of the century, if not to snatch Italian art from inevitable death, at least to lend it, emerging from its follies and delusions, an air of dignity and a cold distinction in which it could veil itself to die.
The greatness of Michelangelo was thus fatal to Italian art. So it is with everything that rises too far above its own time. Decadence can only be averted or retarded by intelligent and moderate talents like the Carracci, who, hardly separated from the average of their times, are easily understood by it. They are the geniuses of common sense, and they are, therefore, useful to the common man. The heroes of art are also its tyrants; their glory kills, and the greater they are the more they are to be feared, for they impose on all men the laws of a{167}personality which can exist but once. They are a devouring force; they illumine, but they burn; they have the right to be unique in their being and in their work. They seem to realise in themselves the whole aim of nature, and there is nothing left for those who follow but to be absorbed and disappear.
It would be absurd to offer Michelangelo as a model to young artists. Should great men ever be taken as models in art? Is not that one of the errors of classical training? They are examples of energy, sources of force and beauty. It is well to look for a moment on their radiance, then tear ourselves from their contemplation and work.{168}{169}
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The great European Museums—especially the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Albertina in Vienna, the British Museum, Oxford University and Windsor—contain very rich collections of Michelangelo's drawings. The most beautiful of those in the Louvre came from the Jabach and Mariette collections.
"You could not ask for anything more finished or showing a greater knowledge of drawing," says Mariette; ... "they are almost too much finished.... I do not know any other master who finished his studies more completely. When he is looking for a certain pose he dashes off impetuously on the paper what comes from his imagination. He draws with large strokes.... But if he wants to study nature so that he may reproduce it later on in sculpture or in painting he follows an entirely different method.... His drawing is no longer a sketch, but a finished fragment in which no detail is left out, it is the flesh itself; and Michelangelo needed nothing more than this for his modelling. I have a number of drawings where you can see the marks which Michelangelo made on them, and which indicate that these designs were used by him as guides in his modelling...."
Some of the drawings in the Louvre were for the tombs of the Medici and for the bronze David for Florimond Robertet.
Another curious thing about these drawings is that we often find upon them verses by Michelangelo, fragments of poems. Both verses and drawings are often the repetitions or variations of certain ideas which were in his mind for years and occupied his attention with the tenacity of fixed ideas.
Michelangelo used indifferently red chalk, pen and ink, and charcoal or pencil.{180}
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I.—WRITINGS OF MICHELANGELO
Le Lettere di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti, publicate, coiRicordi ed i Contratti artistici, per cura di GaetanoMilanesi. Florence, 1875, in-fol., IX, 721 pages. Lemonnier (495 letters, from 1497 to 1563).
Rime di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti, raccolte da Michelagnolo suo nipote. Florence, 1623, Giunti (first complete edition, but full of errors).
Rime di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti, cavate dagli autografi e publicate da CesareGuasti. Florence, 1863 (first really accurate edition).
Die Dichtungen des Michel-Angelo Buonarroti, herausgegeben und mit kritischem Apparat versehen von CarlFrey. Berlin, 1897 (the finest and most complete edition of the poems of Michelangelo which has been made up to the present time).
II.—WORKS ON MICHELANGELO
I. WRITINGS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
GiorgioVasari.—Vite degli architetti, pittori e scultori(first edition). Florence, 1550, in 4to;—(second edition). Florence, 1568, in 4to.—edition ofMilanesi. Florence, 1856, Lemonnier.
AscanioCondivi.—Vita di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti. Rome, 1553, AntonioBlado;—(second edition). Florence, 1746, with notes by Mariette.
PaoloGiovio.—Michaelis Angeli Vita, published byTiraboschiin hisStoria della letteratura italiana, Vol. IX, Modena, 1781.{182}
Sammlung ausgewaehlter Biographien Vasaris, herausg. von CarlFrey(in the second volume are gatheredle Vite de Michel-Angelo Buonnaroti, critical edition of all the biographies written by his contemporaries).
VittoriaColonna.—Rime(first edition). Parma, 1538;—(second edition), 1539;—(third edition), 1544;—editionSaltini. Florence, 1860, Barbera.—Carteggio, published by ErmannoFerreroand GiuseppeMüller. Turin, 1892, Loescher(Letters and documents).—Lettere inedite, published bySalza. Florence, 1898.—Codice delleRime di Vittoria Colonna, appartenente a Margherita, regina di Navarra scoperto ed illustrato. Pistoia, 1900, ed. Tordi.
Françoisde Hollande.—Quatre Entretiens sur la Peinture, held in Rome 1538 to 1539, written in 1548, published by Joachimde Vasconcellos;—French translation inLes Arts en Portugal, by CountRaczynski. Paris, 1846, Renouard.
DonatoGiannotti.—De' giorni che Dante consumo nel cercare l'Inferno e'l Purgatorio. Dialoghi. Florence, 1859.
BenvenutoCellini.—Vita(1559 to 1562), first edition. Naples, 1728.—I Trattati dell'oreficeria e della scultura. Florence, 1893, edition C. Milanesi.
BenedettoVarchi.—Due lezioni di Benedetto Varchi. Florence, 1549.—Orazione funerale recitata nelle esequie di Michel-Angela Buonarroti. Florence, 1564, Giunti.
FrancescoBerni.—Opere burlesche. Florence, 1548. Giunti.
Michelangelo's correspondents: I.Sebastiano del Piombo, Ed. Milanesi, French translation by A.le Prieur. Paris, 1890, Librairie de l'Art.
Blaisede Vigenère.—Les Images de Philostrate. Paris, 1629.
II.—MODERN WORKS
RichardDuppa.—The Life and Literary Works of Michel-Angelo Buonarroti. London, 1806, 1816 (translations in verse of the poetry of Michel-Angelo by Southey and Wordsworth).
Quatremerede Quincy.—Histoire de la vie et des ouvrages de Michel-Ange Buonarroti. Paris, 1835.{183}
GiovanniGaye.—Carteggio inedito d'artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI. Florence, 1839, three volumes.
Fr.Al Rio.—Michel-Ange et Raphael(first edition). Hanover, 1860 (since then there have been seven editions; the last appeared in 1900 with illustrations).
AurelioGotti.—Vita di Michel-Angelo. Florence, 1875, two volumes.
C. HeathWilson.—Life and Works of Michel-Angelo. London, 1876.L'Œuvre et la Vie de Michel-Ange, by CharlesBlanc, Eug.Guillaume, PaulMantz, CharlesGarnier, A.Mezières. Anatole deMontaiglon, GeorgesDuplessisand LouisGonse. Paris, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1876.
AntonSpringer.—Raffael und Michelangelo, 1878.
John AddingtonSymonds.—The Life of Michel-Angelo Buonarroti. London, 1893.
CorradoRicci.—Michelangelo. Florence, 1901.
HenryThode.—Michel-Angelo und das Ende der Renaissance, 1evol. Berlin, 1902.—2evol. Berlin, 1903.
Alfredvon Reumont.—Vittoria Colonna. Fribourg, 1881.
AlbertHauck.—Vittoria Colonna. Heidelberg, 1882.
Giotti.—Catalogo delle opere d'arti e dei disegni di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti, 1875.
F.Reiset.—Notice des dessins du musée du Louvre. Paris, 1866.
Baron H.Geymuller.—Michelangelo als Architekt.
Dr ErnstSteinmann.—Die Sixtinische Kapelle.
CarlFrey.—Studien zu Michelagnolo (Jahrb. der K. preuss. Kunstssamml.) 1895-1896.
LuigiPasserini.—La bibliografia di Michel-Angelo Buonarroti e gli incisori delle sue opere. Florence, 1875.
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