YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

EAPHAEL

AND

MICHELANGELO:

CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY.

BV V

CHARLES Of PERKINS,
AUTHOR OF "TUSCAN" AND "ITALIAN" SCULPTORS,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE.

BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1878.

COPYRIGHT, 1877.
Bv CHARLES C. PERKINS.

AU rights reserved.

UniverS[ty Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co.,
Cambridge

TO
HENRY WADSWORTII LONGFELLOW,
IPoct, Notocltst, an5 Scholar.

Dear Mr. Longfellow, —
• This book, of which you have so kindly accepted the dedication, should begin
with the first line of Lionardo da Vinci's only sonnet,
"Chi non puo quel clie vuol, quel clie puo voglia."
Unable to make it what I would, I have willed to make it what I could.
I thank you for having taken it under the protection of your name ; and for
having helped to make it in some measure worthy of this honor, by allowing
me to insert your hitherto unpublished translations of several of Michelangelo's
poems, which are so beautiful and at the same time so literal that even those
who cannot read the originals may appreciate their sombre richness of thought and
imagery. They will not only add to the great artist's admirers, but also, if pos
sible, to those of his translator. Faithfully yours, CHARLES C. PERKINS.
Boston, December, 1877. /

PKEFACE.

rTIHE bibliography of Michelangelo, compiled by Passerini, and pub-
-*- lished at Florence when the four hundredth anniversary of the
great artist's death was solemnly celebrated by his compatriots, con
tains titles of works covering no less than one hundred and fifty-three
widely printed pages, which treat of him directly or indirectly, and
it may be safely said that, were there a bibliography of Eaphael, it
would be almost equal in length.
As in many of the books relating to the two artists their lives and
works are fully and ably discussed, the publication of this volume may
at first sight seein superfluous. My chief reason for hoping that it will
not be so considered is that, as far as I know, Eaphael and Michel
angelo are here for the first time treated of conjointly, so far as facts
allow, and opportunity for bringing out the distinctive peculiarities of
each by force of contrast has thus been afforded, of which I have
endeavored to take advantage.
It often happens that our interest in natural objects, to whose
beauty we have through habit ceased to be consciously sensible, is
revived, if through the operation of natural laws they are brought be
fore us in a new light. Thus, when of late Mars and Saturn nightly
approached each other until they seemed to be almost a unit, every
one became a star-gazer. It may be that the conjunction of two art
planets here arbitrarily effected will interest many who have long
since ceased to readNbooks about either in which their orbits are
widely separated.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
Pages
Political and Artistic History of Umbria. — The ITmhrian School prior to Raphael's
Birth. — Giovanni Santi and Perugino  1-29

CHAPTER II.
Birth and early Education of Michelangelo. — Works executed during his Apprentice
ship to Ghirlandajo, and while studying at the Gardens of St. Mark. — Lorenzo
de' Medici and the Palazzo Medici. — Michelangelo's first Visit to Rome. — The
Bacchus and the Pieta  30-54

CHAPTER III.
Gradual Manifestation of Raphael's Individuality traced in early Pictures painted while
he was the Scholar of Perugino. — Raphael at Siena and at Florence. — The Car
toons of Lionardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. — The David and other Works by
Michelangelo before 1500. — He returns to Rome. — Pictures by Raphael in his
Second or Florentine Manner  55-79

CHAPTER IV.
Julius II. — Michelangelo designs his Monument. — Quarrels with the Pope. — Goes
back to Florence, and thence to Bologna, where he is reconciled with him. —
Bronze Statue of Julius II. — After a short visit to Florence, returns to Rome. — ¦
Raphael and Michelangelo working in the Pope's Service. — The Sistine Chapel
Ceiling. — Description of it, and Critical Remarks  80-107
CHAPTER V.
Rome's Influence upon Raphael. — Plans for the Restoration of her Ancient Buildings.
— Frescos in the "Camera della Segnatura." — The "Disputa," the Parnassus, the
School of Athens, and the Jurisprudence. — Pictures painted at Rome before the
Death of Julius II. — The Heliodorus and the Miracle of Bolsena. — Frescos . 108-140

via CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.
Accession of Leo X. — Character of his licign. — Michelangelo and the Facade of San
Lorenzo. — Exile at Carrara. — Works at Florence upon the Monument of Julius
II. — The Christ at the Minerva. — Contrast between the Lives of Raphael and
Michelangelo during Leo's Reign. — Vatican Frescos. — The Attila, the Liberation
of St. Peter. — Easel Pictures. — The Farnesina Frescos. — Marc Antonio and his
Engravings. — The Statue of Jonah in the Chigi Chapel at Santa Maria del Popolo.
— Raphael and Michelangelo considered as Architects . . . . .141-172
CHAPTER VII.
The St. Cecilia and the Vi.sion of Ezekiel by Raphael. — Fresco of the " Inccndio del
Borgo " at the Vatican. — The Scholars of Raphael, and the Assistance which they
gave him. — The Cartoons. — The Loggie. — The Madonna di San Sisto, and the
Transfiguration. — Death of Raphael, and Critical Estimate of him as a Painter 173-196
CHAPTER VIII.
Causes of Michelangelo's apparent Hostility to Raphael. — Intrigues of Sehastiano del
Piombo and his Friends. — Death of Leo X. — Clement VII. — Successive Con
tracts for the Monument to Julius II. — Ultimate Result. — The Moses, the
Prisoners at the Louvre, etc. — Siege of Florence. — The Medici Tombs at San
Lorenzo ....  197-227
CHAPTER IX.
Bust of Brutus. — Michelangelo commissioned to paint the Last Judgment by Pope
Paul III. — Appointed Head Architect of St. Peter's. — The Dome of St. Peter's 228-243
CHAPTER X.
The Old Age of Michelangelo. — His Poems. — Vittoria Colonua. — Work of the Re
formers in Italy. — Tommaso de' Cavalieri, Luigi del Riccio, Vasari, and Lionardo
Buonarroti. — Last Works of Michelangelo. — His Death and Funeral Obsequies.
— Portraits of him. — Estimate of his Character and Genius . . . 244-270

APPENDIX.
ArrENDix A. — The Medici Collections, referred to in Chapter II. p. 38, note 11 . 273
Appendix B. — The Birthday of Michelangelo, Poem by Dr. T. W. Parsons, referred
to in Chapter VIII. p. 225, note 31  275
ArrENDix C. — Account of the Tapestries of Raphael during the French Revolution,
by M. E. Muntz, given in the Chroniquc des Arts, July, 1877, referred to in Chap
ter VII. p. ISO  279
Appendix D. — The Portraits of Michelangelo, referred to in Chapter X. p. 269,
note 55  280
Appendix E. — Extract from Passavant's Le Pcintre Gravcur, concerning the Engrav
ing by Jacob Binck, mentioned in Chapter IX. p. 240, note 26 . . . 281

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Heliotype from a pen-and-ink drawing, by C. C. Perkins  Frontispiece.
The composition in the lunette, one of the frescos in the "Loggie," by Raphael, repre
sents the Three Angels appearing to Abraham at the door of his tent. ...To face Title.
CHAPTER I.
Plate I., referred to at pages 4 and 7, has been unavoidably omitted. Page.
Fig. 1. House of Raphael at Urbino, from a sketch by Ingres  19
Fig. 2. Angel, said to be a portrait of Raphael, from a fresco by Giovanni Santi in the
Tiranni Chapel of San Dovnenico at Cagli  22
Plate II. Raphael and Perugino, from the School of Athens. Heliotyped from an en
graving by Jordan  To face 25
Tail- piece. Tripod from the Hypnerotomachia of Poliphilus  29

CHAPTER II.

Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5.
Fig,

Lorenzo de' Medici, from an Italian medal of the fifteenth century  37
Mask of a Faun, copied from the antique by Michelangelo  38
Anatomical Study. Pen-and-ink drawing at Vienna by Michelangelo  44
Marble Angel, by Michelangelo, in the church of San Domenico at Bologna  47
Tail-piece. Group of the Pieta, by Michelangelo, in the chapel of St. Petronilla at
St Peter's  54
CHAPTER III.
Fig. 7. The Three Graces. Antique group formerly in the so-called library of the Ca
thedral at Siena, lately removed to the Public Gallery  63
Platelll. The Belle Jardiniere. Heliotype from an engraving by Desnoyers (1805) To face 73
Plate IV. The Little Madonna of Lord Cowper at Panshanger, by Raphael. Helio
typed from an engraving by Mandel  To face 74
Tail-piece. Charity, from the Predella of Raphael's Entombment. Vatican Gallery  79

ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER IV.

Fig. 8. The Erythrrean Sibyl, by Michelangelo. Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel  102
Fig. 9. The Prophet Ezekiel. Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel  103
Tail-piece. Head of a Faun, from a pen-and-ink drawing by Michelangelo at the Louvre 107
CHAPTER V.
Fig. 10. The Dispute of the Sacrament. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline 115
Fig. 11. The Parnassus. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  122
Fig. 12. The School of Athens. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  125
Plate V. The Judgment of Solomon, by Raphael. Heliotyped from an engraving by
Anderloni  To face 131
Fig. 13. The Heliodorus. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  136
Fig. 14. The Miracle of Bolsena. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  138
Tail-piece. Michelangelo's statue of Giuliano de' Medici from his tomb in the Medici
Chapel at San Lorenzo  140
CHAPTER VI.
Fig. 15. Attila. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  154
Fig. 16. Liberation of St. Peter. Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  155
Plate VI. The Madonna "della Tenda,'' by Raphael. Heliotyped from an engraving
by Toschi  To face 158
Tail-piece. Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo de' Medici from his tomb in the Medici
Chapel at San Lorenzo  172
CHAPTER VII.
Fig. 17. The "Incendio del Borgo." Fresco by Raphael at the Vatican. Outline  175
Plate VII. The Finding of Moses. Fresco in the Loggie of the Vatican. From a draw
ing by Travalloni in the author's possession  To face 184
Plate VIII. The Transfiguration, by Raphael, from an engraving by Jordan  To face 189

CHAPTER VIII.
Fig. 18. Statue of a Sleeping Prisoner, by Michelangelo, intended to form a part of the
monument of Julius II. Louvre  214
Tail-piece. The Day, from the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici in the Medici Chapel at
San Lorenzo  227

ILLUSTRATIONS. xi

CHAPTER IX.
Plate IX. Bust of Brutus, by Michelangelo, at the Uffizi  To face 228
Plate X. The Lost Soul, by Michelangelo. Heliotyped from an original drawing
belonging to the author, formerly in the Reynolds, Lawrence, and Coningham
collections  To face 234
Plate XI. Heliotype from a part of a rare engraving by Jacob Binck, showing the un
finished dome of St. Peter's  To face 240
Plate XII. The Interior of St. Peter's. Heliotyped from a sepia drawing by Amici,
belonging to the author  To face 241
Tail-piece. The Dome of St. Peter's  243

CHAPTER X.
Plate XIII. Portrait of Michelangelo. Heliotyped from an engraving by A.
Francois.  To face 269
Tail-piece. Medallion portrait of Michelangelo, by Leone Lioni  270

CHAPTER I.
Raphael, 1483-1500.
Born April 6, 1483. Apprenticed to Perugino in 1500. Of this period no works are
known.

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

CHAPTER I.

'Raphael machte ehen alles, was andere zu machen wiinschten." — Goethe.
HE province of Umbria, which stretches
far inland from the Adriatic, contains
some of the most picturesque scenery
in Italy. It is a mountainous region,
seamed by deep ravines, and full of
rugged hills with towns perched like
eagles' nests upon their summits. These
have in many cases preserved much
of their medieval character, and none
I more so than Urbino, the birthplace

of Raphael. Broken by many towers and campaniles, and crowned
by the huge mass of the Ducal Palace, its picturesque outline stands
against the sky, but little changed since the days when one of its
humbler dwellings sheltered this child of genius. If this be true of
the town, it is even more so of the surrounding country. What Count
Castiglione, and the noble company who figure iu the pages of his
Perfect Courtier saw four centuries ago, when, after a night passed in
discussing the laws of courtesy, they stood at an open window of the
Ducal Palace, we may still see, "at the hour when the east is suffused
with the lovely rose-color which precedes the dawn, when all the stars
have paled their ineffectual fires, save Venus, that sweet mistress who
keeps the boundaries of night and day under her controL"
1

2 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
There, across the valley, are Monte Catria, whose summit rises 5,G00
feet above the sea; Monte del Cavallo, so named from a famous race
of horses bred by the later princes of Urbino in the luxuriant pas
tures at its base; Monte Nerone, the legendary abode of him who
played while Rome burned ; and the twin peaks, called the Sassi di
Simeone, blue in the far distance towards the Tuscan frontier. To
the north rise the triple peaks of San Marino, that tiny republic which,
having kept the torch of liberty lighted through long centuries of sur
rounding darkness, has survived to see its hope-inspiring rays brighten
into the daylight of freedom ; and the Monte Carpegna, overlooking the
cradle of that Montefeltrian race which gave those princes to Urbino,
whose beneficent and paternal sway made the lot of its inhabitants so
singularly fortunate.1
In the twelfth century they were feudal lords who, through the favor
of Frederic Barbarossa,2 were enabled to extend their dominion and
increase their power, and who, on the accession of the second and greater
Frederic, had their devotion to the imperial cause rewarded by the
confirmation and extension of the privileges granted to them by his
predecessor. The first really historical Montefeltro is Count Guido. Speaking to
Dante out of the midst of flames,3 he tells him how he,
"A man of arms, at first did clothe himself
In good St. Francis' girdle, hoping so
To have made amends. And certainly my hope
Had failed not, but that he, whom curses light on, —
The high-priest, — again seduced me into sin."
1 J. Dennistoun's Memoirs of t?ie Dukes of Urbino (3 vols., Longmans, 1851) is the stand
ard work upon their history. -
2 Antonio, first Lord of Montecoppiolo, or his son, was made Lord of Montefeltro by
Frederic Barbarossa in 1154.
8 Inferno, Canto XXVII. v. 67. It is uncertain whether the high-priest referred to is
Celestine V. or his successor, Boniface VIII. If the latter, Count Guido's sin was his advice
to that Pope to obtain possession of Palestrina, the stronghold of his enemies, the Colonna,
by promising them u, pardon which he never intended to give them, " a promettere assai,
e mantener poco."

VITTORINO AND FEDERIGO. 3
That so ardent a Ghibelline as the poet should have condemned the
old count to a fiery expiation is not to be wondered at, for he had
twice joined hands with the Guelphs when temporary reconciliations
were effected between the two parties by Pope Celestine V., before he
took the vows at the convent of St. Francis at Assisi, where he died
in 1296, "in the odor of sanctity."4
Nearly a century after his death the house of Montefeltro, whose
representatives had struggled with neighboring princes, suffered from
Papal vengeance, and endured expatriation, was reinstated in the person
of Antonio, a dutiful son of the Church, then governed by Boniface IX.
During the great schism which followed, his son and successor Guid'
Antonio espoused the cause of Gregory XII.; but when it was closed
by the elevation of Martin V. to the Papacy, he made his peace with
the Pope, and was appointed gonfaloniere of the Church, and Vicar-
General of the Romagna. He was succeeded by his dissolute son, Odd'
Antonio, after whose assassination, which relieved his dominions of a
monster, Federigo, the natural son of Guid' Antonio, was raised to
power. With the accession of this prince the duchy entered upon its
golden age. Pre-eminent among Italian princes as a man of his word,
at a time when to break faith was a common practice, and distin
guished as a beneficent and paternal ruler, at a period when the gov
erned were generally regarded as existing only for the advantage and
profit of their superiors in power, Federigo had rivals in arms like the
Sforza, and equals in the patronage of arts and letters like the Medici,
but he stood alone in those moral qualities which become a prince even
more than courage and .esthetic sense.
Born in 1422, he was early sent to Venice as a hostage, studied arms
at Mantua under the Marquis Gian Francesco Gonzaga, and letters under
that model among tutors, Vittorino de' Eambaldini da Feltro (b. 1328,
d. 1447), whom the marquis had intrusted with the education of his
daughter and his two sons. His love for his pupils is fitly symbolized
*".... religiosissime in sacra Assisiensi domo obiit." — Angeli, Sloria del Convento
di Assisi.

4 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
upon the reverse of his medal, by the pelican plucking the feathers
from her breast to feed her young (Plate I. No. 1), and well expressed
by the name of the " Joyful Habitation," which was given to the house
where they pursued their studies with fellow-students from Italy, France,
Germany, and even Greece. In the "Joyful Habitation" gayety was
tempered by sobriety, and games succeeded studies. The eminent pro
fessors who taught grammar, dialectics, arithmetic, Greek, Latin, dancing,
music, and equitation under the direction of Vittorino, had, we are
assured, so great an affection for him, that they gave their lessons gratui
tously.6 The young Federigo was here fitted for the high duties of
his future position, and we cannot wonder that from the day when he
assumed them, he discharged them with the utmost fidelity. Treating
his subjects like his children, and regarded by them with filial affec
tion, he appointed officers whose special duty it was to inquire into
their wants, and himself made sure by personal inspection that those
wants were supplied. His second wife, Battista Sforza, daughter of
the Lord of Pesaro, whom he married after the death of his first wife,
Gentile de' Brancaleoni, was one of the most learned, accomplished,
and charming women of her time. When not occupied in defending
his territory from the incursions of such watchful enemies as the Ma-
latesta, or on active service as a condottiere, Federigo passed his life
in the society of his amiable duchess and that of the eminent men
of letters who frequented the court. He built the splendid Ducal
Palace at Urbino, and collected an immense number of manuscripts
and printed books for its library.6
5 P. Guingerie, Hist. Littirairc cVItalie, Vol. III. p. 251, et scq.
6 Many of the gems of the duke's library are. preserved at the Vatican, as, for example,
the famous Bible in Latin, and the Hebrew Bible, probably executed in Italy A. d. 1295,
which ranked as one of the finest in Italy. The palace and its literary and artistic treas
ures are described by Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, in the Rhymed Chronicle,
which he composed in honor of Federigo, as also by Count Castiglione in the Corlcr/gia.no,
Lib. I. p. 7. Lyons, 1575. The original manuscript of the Chronicle is in the Vatican
Library, No. 1305, Cod. Ottoboniani. Copious extracts from it are given in the Appendix
to the French translation of G. B. Passavant's Life of Raphael, Vol. I. Palis, 1860.

THE DUCAL PALACE. 5
A Dalmatian named Lutiano Lauranna was appointed head master
and engineer to the duke by letters-patent issued at Pavia in 14G8, but
it is probable that the palace had been commenced several years ear
lier, perhaps by some other architect.7 Though imposing by reason of
its immense size and striking position, its exterior effect is somewhat
unsatisfactory. The towers appear disproportionately high, and the com
bination of palace, church, and convent in one building is perplexing
to the eye. It is, however, a noble pile, and the many interesting asso
ciations which cluster about it are enough to make it beautiful in the
traveller's eyes. The ground-floor offers little of interest, but the second
story, which is reached by a truly regal staircase, is rich in as per
fect examples of decorative sculpture as are to be found in any of
the Renaissance palaces of Italy. The marble architraves, doorposts,
lintels, and chimney-pieces of the great hall and the rooms opening out
of it are covered with trophies, amorini, arabesques and heraldic devices
sculptured by Ambrogio da Milano in the purest style of the fifteenth
century, with the most exquisite taste.8 The rose-bushes and carna
tions upon the chimney -jambs in the second room show the closest
attention to the structure of the plants and to their principle of growth,
and are as charming examples of the right use of plant-forms in orna
ment from a naturalistic point of view, as are the birds and amorini
of that of animal forms. Well may Giovanni Santi praise "li mirabil
fogliami, ond'egli (Ambrogio) agguaglia gli antichi in cio."
7 Certain conclusions as to the period when different parts of the edifice were con
structed are drawn from the initial letters carved upon them. "Where the letters F. C.
occur, as upon the lower story, we know that it must have been built while Federigo
was still Count of Urbino ; where we find F. D., as upon the great staircase, the date
must be after 1474, in which year he was raised to the rank of a Duke. Dennistoun
(History of the Dukes of Urbino, Vol. I. p. 147) says the palace was commenced in 1454.
Baldinucci says, 1447. Lauranna was succeeded by Baccio Pintelli as architect. (See
Gaye's Carteggio, Vol. I. pp. 274 - 276 ; also the same author's article in the Kunsiblalt,
Oct. 27, 1836.)
8 Die Hcrzogliclie Palast von Urbino, by Friedrich Arnold, Leipzig, T. 0. Weigel, 1857,
contains excellent lithographs of its sculptured decorations.

6 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
To one who has some knowledge of sculpture, liberty to wander
through and to work in the vast halls and corridors of such a palace
gives a pleasure which once enjoyed can never be forgotten. While the
pencil threads its way through the intricate designs of Ambrogio, the
mind reverts to the past, and the stately forms of the noble dead
who once peopled these marble halls, and enlivened them with their
words of wit and wisdom, revive and pass before you. First comes
Federigo, not as he appears in his well-known portrait by Piero della
Francesca at the Uffizi, which was painted after the lance of an antag
onist in the lists had marred his comely features, but as he was at the
commencement of a reign whose bright lustre, like that of a lighted
torch brought into a dark place, dispelled the gloom which had shrouded
Urbino during that of his predecessor. Hand in hand with her noble
spouse walks Battista Sforza, — "d'oncstate altera,
Di pompa signorile, e d'alto ingegno,
E di tutte virtu lucente sfera," —
she who, at the age of twenty, addressed the learned ^Eneas-Sylvius
(Pope Pius II.), at Milan, in a Latin improvisation of such elegance
that he declared himself unable to answer her fitly; who graced the
court of Urbino by her virtues and accomplishments, and seconded her
husband in all his arduous enterprises ; and who, when thinking herself
dying while he was absent, "Con un solo altissimo desio
Stnva, di-rivedere il suo Signore
Vittorioso, e poi tornar a Dio";
and when he came, embraced him for the last time, placed their clearly
bought son Guidobaldo in his arms, and then
"Chiuse quel santo, onesto e grave ciglio,
Rendendo l'alma al ciel divotamente,
Libera e sciolta dal mondan periglio."
Behind his worthy parents walks the young Guidobaldo, his Ion"- fair
hair crowned by the little round cap of velvet which he wears in

THE CORTEGGIANO. 7
his portrait at the Palazzo Colonna. He also holds a fair and vir
tuous lady by the hand, Elizabetta Gonzaga, daughter of the Marquis of
Mantua (Plate I. No. 2), who presided as his wife over the reunions de
scribed in the pages of the Cortcggiano, and was in every respect worthy
to succeed her husband's mother as Duchess of Urbino. Next comes
a grave and learned personage, the Count Ottaviano Ubaldini, the tutor
of the young duke, who exercised absolute authority over him, from
the time of his father's death until, at the age of fourteen, he won his
spurs upon the battle-field. After him follow the ladies in waiting,
headed by Emilia Pia (Plate I. No. 3), the widow of the Lord of Carpi,
one of the brightest ornaments of the court. Then come the brave and
noble Genoese brothers Fregoso, — Ottaviano, who freed his country
from the French and was created Duke of Genoa, and Federigo, Arch
bishop of Salerno, versed in letters sacred and profane; and behind
them Giuliano de' Medici, brother of Leo X.; Czesar Gonzaga, who died
young, just when "he had begun to show more than hopeful qualities";
Cardinal Bembo, the chief ornament of the court of Leo X., who, to
use the exaggerated language of his biographer, "opened a new Au
gustan age, emulated Cicero and Virgil with like success, and rivalled
the elegance and purity of Petrarch and Boccaccio in his writings";
Cardinal Bernardo da Bibbiena, author of La Calandra, one of the
earliest comedies produced in modern times;9 Count Balthasar Castig-
lione, author of the Corteggiano, the friend of Michelangelo, and of
Raphael, who painted that admirable portrait of him now at the Louvre
to which he himself, under the name of his wife, addressed one of the
most perfect of modern Latin sonnets. After these come other men of
letters, together with a crowd of poets, musicians, and artists, such as
Justus of Ghent, Piero della Francesca, Gentile da Fabriano, Ambrogio
da Milano, and Giovanni Santi with the young Raphael, whose golden
hair is cut straight across his forehead as in the fresco by his father
at Cagli, and whose innocent eyes have that far-away look which tells
us that he has already begun to see visions and dream inspired dreams.
9 Abbate Saverio Bettinelli, Del risorgimento d' Italia, Vol. II. p. 105.

8 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
As they pass on and vanish with the rest, our reverie is broken by
the custode's "Si chiude, S ignore," and, gathering up our belongings,
we go forth again into the world of to-day, grateful for the hours
during which we have been allowed to forget it.
It would be ungracious, however, to leave the palace without saying
a word about the Corteggiano, which contains so graphic an account
of its former inmates. As its author modestly tells us in his Preface,
"it is a painted portrait of the court of Urbino, not indeed from the
hand of a Raphael or a Michelangelo, but from that of a second-rate
artist, who knows how to put in the outlines correctly, but who cannot
fill them in with lovely colors, and by the help of perspective make
them appear real to the eye." Its object is to portray the perfect
courtier, such a courtier, in short, "that the prince who is worthy to
be served by him, no matter how small his principality may be, shall
be rightly considered a great man among princes." This is done in a
series of conversations between the eminent men and women of the
court, who meet together every evening. "At Urbino," says Count
Castiglione, "all the hours of the day were occupied in honorable and
pleasant exercises of body and of mind; but as it happened that the
duke, on account of his infirmity (the gout), went to bed veiy soon
after supper, the company generally adjourned to the apartment of the
duchess, where the Signora Emilia Pia, who was endowed with Lively
understanding and judgment, took the lead, and inspired all with her
wisdom and strength. At the sight of the duchess supreme content
beamed from all faces. She was as a chain which united those who
met together under her gentle sway in such friendly feeling, that never
was there greater unity of will, or more cordial affection, than between
them." Music, dancing, and conversation, often prolonged until dawn
broke over the Apennines, filled up the hours of the night. On one
occasion the Signora Emilia Pia proposed "that each one should say
with what especial virtue he or she would desire to see his or her
beloved one adorned, and also what defect he or she could best toler
ate in him or her, since every one must have some defect"; the object

DUKE GUIDOBALDO. 9
being to discover what are the highest virtues, and what the least ob
jectionable defects. After discussing this question, Federigo Fregoso
proposes that one of the company should give his idea of all the con
ditions and special qualities which are necessary to the perfect courtier
and the perfect court lady. The highest gifts and accomplishments are
bestowed by the speakers upon each, so that no one quality of mind
or body needful to manly or womanly perfection is forgotten. Despite
the presence of such models of womanhood as the duchess and Emilia
Pia, two of the disputants dare to maintain the general inferiority of
the female sex, and one of them, Don Gasparo, — whose ideal of a per
fect female courtier, as Donna Emilia tells him, is a woman "who only
knows how to cook and to sew," — jeeringly asks Giuliano de' Medici,
the champion of the sex, why it happens that, having ascribed . all
virtues and capacities to women, he does not advise that they should
be made governors of cities, and legislators, and captains of armies,
leaving the men at home to attend to household duties. To this Giuli
ano, who has previously declared that all men of worth esteem and
reverence woman, and consider her qualities and consequent titles to
respect in no wise inferior to those of man, makes answer: "And if
I did so advise, perhaps I should not be much in the wrong. Do you
not know that Plato, who had no very high opinion of women, makes
them guardians of the city, and gives all martial offices to men ? Do
you not believe that many women are quite as capable as men of gov
erning cities and armies?" This shows us that the woman question
was a mooted one long before our day, in a country which was at the
time famous for women of extraordinary gifts and attainments. The
last chapter of the Perfect Courtier is devoted to the discussion of
the question, as to what is the highest beauty in man or woman ; and
the conclusions arrived at are those of Plato, Savonarola, and other
great Idealists, that the good and the beautiful are identical, and this
especially in "human bodies, whose chief beauty is the beauty of the
soul, which, as it is an emanation from the Divine Source of beauty,
makes that beautiful with which it comes in contact, unless the body

10 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
is of such vile material that the soul cannot make any impression
upon it."
"Beauty," says Cardinal Bembo, "is the sign that the soul, by reason of
its divine power, has won a victory over matter, and with its light has
dispelled the darkness of the body." In the same spirit Savonarola said,
in one of his sermons at Florence,10 " Compare two equally beautiful
women, the one virtuous, the other vicious, and you will see that the
first is of an almost angelic beauty, with which that of the other can
not be compared. This is so because the good soul partakes of the
beauty of God, and radiates its celestial loveliness through the body."
So also Castiglione, in almost the very words of Plato, declares " that
through the perception of individual beauty we rise to the perception
of universal beauty, and thus at last arrive at a conception of divine
beauty." It is well to know that while Alexander VI. ruled at Rome, and
Lorenzo de' Medici at Florence, there were men like Savonarola Mho
uttered such sentiments as these; and that while Leo X. sat more like
a pagan emperor than a Pope upon St. Peter's chair, and not only tol
erated but applauded comedies like La Calandra at the Vatican, there
was such a court in Italy as that of Urbino, where virtuous women
and high-minded men were rather the rule than the exception, and
where lofty sentiments could be publicly professed, without fear of
ridicule or risk of contempt.
It is not necessary to follow Guidobaldo through the complicated
mazes of political events in which he was constantly entangled. Suf
fice it to say that he was twice driven but of his states by Caesar
Borgia, who, having made himself master of the Romagna, seized upon
the duchy of Urbino and obliged him to take refuge in the Venetian
territory, which he reached with great difficulty, owing to his dis
abled condition. After the death of Alexander VI. and the downfall
of his infamous son, the duke adopted Francesco Maria della Rovere,
10 Third sermon of the course on the Prophet Haggei. Villari, Vita di Savonarola,
VoL I. p. 472.

GUIDO PALMERUCCI. 11
nephew of Pope Julius II., as his heir, and thenceforward maintained
the most amicable relations with the Holy See.
As the political history of Umbria is henceforward connected with
Guidobaldo's successor, Francesco Maria della Rovere, and his uncle,
Pope Julius II., we will now take up its artistic history prior to the
time of Raphael, who, though by far the greatest of Umbrian masters,
was by no means the earliest. He was in fact the latest born, the
Benjamin of a school which since the thirteenth century had produced
painters and workers in mosaic of more than ordinary ability, at
Gubbio, Perugia, Foligno, and Fabriano. The artists in these different
towns knew little of each other until the time when they began to
study the frescos at Assisi, and were thus brought into contact. Our
knowledge of the first famous Umbrian painter, Oderigi Bonagiunta,
generally called Oderigi d'Agobbio, miniaturist and illuminator, is due
to Dante. In the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio he tells us how he
met one bending beneath a weight like that we sometimes feel in
dreams, and thus addressed him : —
" ' Art not thou Oderigi ? Art not thou
Agobbio's glory, glory of that art
Which they of Paris call the limner's skill?'11
' Brother, ' said he, ' with tints that gayer smile
Bolognian Franco's pencil limns the leaves.' "
We do not know the year of his birth,12 but it is clear from this
11 Certain French writers (see Aucassin and Nicolette, Pater's Studies, p. 1) assert that
in this line Dante intended to express his belief that miniature-painting originated in Paris ;
but we cannot accept this inference, as he certainly knew that both Italy and France in-'
herited the art from Byzantium, and that, had it not been for the Greek miniaturists dur
ing the Dark Ages, painting would have been a lost art. He clearly meant to point out
that in Paris the adorning of manuscripts with pictures in miniature is called "illumi
nating." The last line, in which Oderigi designates the gay and cheerful appearance of
Franco's miniatures by the words " Piu ridon' le carte," specifies the peculiar charac
teristic of the early paintings of the school of Urbino, which were always bright, clear,
transparent, and gay in color. Franco of Bologna was the pupil of Oderisio, and, as it
would seem, painted in even brighter colors than his master.
12 Baldinucci says before 1300. See Vasari (Le Monnier, ed.), Vol. I. p. 321.

12 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
mention of him that he died in the early part of the fourteenth cen
tury. In 12G4-5 he was living at Gubbio, and in 1295 at Rome,
where Dante may have known him. No certain works from his hand
exist, but Cavalcaselle conjectures that the miniatures which adorn the
pages of two Masses in the Archivio de' Canonici at Rome may have
been painted by him.13 Another Umbrian painter, Guido Palmerucci
(1280-1345), who was driven into exile with other Ghibellines when
Napoleone Orsini, rector of the duchy of Spoleto, took and sacked Gub
bio in the year 1300, and not permitted to return for eighteen years, may
have been brought into contact with Dante through his acquaintance
with Bosone de Raffaelle,14 but he is not mentioned in the Divina Com-
18 They represent scenes from the lives of the Virgin and St. George, and are painted
with the "gay transparent colors, the peculiar choice of harmonies, the richness of orna
ment, and minuteness of detail peculiar to the Umbrians, and without recognition of the
great maxims of composition which were only possessed by the artists of Florence." —
History of Painting in Italy, Vol. II. p. 184.
14 The Gubbian exile who brought Dante hack with him from Arezzo to Gubbio, and
lodged him in his own house. This was in 1318. It has been supposed that Dante taught
Greek to Bosone's son. The father, who survived his illustrious friend, became imperial
vicar at Pisa, and Roman senator. He was one of the earliest commentators of the Divina
Commedia, and also wrote a romance called VAvvcnturoso Ciciliano. The house of Bosone
in which Dante lived at Gubbio has an inscription upon it, "more Italiano," commem
orative of the fact, and the street in which it stands is called the Strada di Dante. Dante
spent a part of the year 1318 in the monastery of Avellana, Sta Croce di Fonte, on Monte
Catria, about twenty miles from Gubbio. Here he probably wrote the 20th - 25th cantos
of the Paradiso. His room is still shown to the traveller. It contains a bust of the Al-
tissimo Poeta and this inscription : —
"Hie mansit Dante Aligherius Poeta
Et cannina scripsit."
The site of the monastery is thus described in the twenty-first canto of the Paradiso,
v. 106, et seq. : — ¦ '"Twixt either shore
Of Italy, nor distant from thy land,
A stony ridge ariseth ; in such sort
The thunder doth not lift his voice so high.
They call it Catria, at whose foot a cell
Is sacred to the lonely Eremite [S. Pier Damiani] ;
For worship set apart, and holy rites."
See Balbi, Vita di Dante, p. 388, et seq.

ERA ANGELICO. 13
media. " Under the eyes and in response to the songs of Dante and
Bosone," says a late writer upon the painters of the Umbrian school,
"Palmerucci, their brother in art and in exile, confided the inspirations
of his fancy to his brush, and upon the roofs and walls of the silent
churches of Gubbio portrayed a people of angels and of saints."16
His works there and at Cagli are gigantic miniatures, replete with the
tender softness of the early Umbrian painters, and one of them, a St.
Anthony, at S. Maria Nuova di Gubbio, is especially interesting as an
indication of the source whence the school of Perugia took its rise.16
A fresh impulse was given to the development of the Umbrian school
by Gentile da Fabriano, one of the really great Italian painters of the
fifteenth century, and by Ottaviano, the son and scholar of Martino
Nelli, whose best work is the Madonna called "del Belvidere" in the
church of Santa Maria Nuova at Gubbio.17 Its brightly colored angels
and saints are grouped around the Madonna, who sits in their midst
holding the infant Jesus upon her knee. Their faces are full of a gentle
sweetness, but neither mystic nor elevated in character. The sweet
ness of the Virgin and the radiant expression of the angels fill M.
Rio18 with an ineffable ecstasy, but to the prosaic Cavalcaselle the
picture is nothing but a "simple combination of saints and angels of
different sizes cast symmetrically on a blue ground." The extreme con
trast between these two judgments shows how the point of view taken
by men of very opposite temperaments may influence their opinion
about a work of art, which is. after all of a rather neutral character.19
15 Niccolo' Alunno e la scuola Umbra, by S. Frenfanelli Cibo, p. 16.
16 See Cavalcaselle (Vol. II. p. 187), who calls the St. Anthony "a natural forerunner
of Perugino's splendid saints in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia." Perugia produced
nothing of value in the fourteenth century, but in the fifteenth followed the style of the
Gubbian painters.
17 The Arundel Society has published a chromo-lithograph of this work, which was
painted in 1403.
18 De I'Art C/ireticn, Vol. II. p. 155.
19 Ottaviano Nelli painted a series of mediocre frescos upon the walls of the chapel of
the Palazzo Trinci at Foligno, representing episodes from the life of the Virgin. The Trinci

14 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Ottaviano Nelli's fellow-pupil, Gentile da Fabriano (born between
1360 and 1370, died about 1450), was an artist of far higher rank, who
though he lived in Florence in the days of Paolo Uccelli and Brunel-
leschi, remained a true Umbrian in his art. His masterpiece, the
Adoration of the Magi, in the Academy at Florence (painted in 1423),
is Umbrian, like his other works, in its want of aerial perspective, its
abundant use of gilt ornament in relief, its minute finish, absence of
shadow, and bright contrasts of color. Although he has been called both
master and pupil of Fra Angelico, Gentile had nothing in common with
him save a love of finish, for the angelic candor and mysticism which
formed the essence of Fra Beato's art were unknown to him.20
Fra Angelico and his scholar Benozzo Gozzoli both took from and
gave to Umbria. It was about 1409 that Fra Angelico and the Do
minican monks of his convent at Fiesole stole silently out of its gates at
midnight, and, pilgrims for conscience' sake, directed their steps towards
the Tuscan frontier. Their prior, Antonio da Milano, had been thrown
into prison by order of the superior, because he persisted in adhering
to the party of Pope Gregory XII., who, together with Benedict XIII.,
were the great Ghibelline lords of Foligno, who like the Montefeltros of Urbino and the
Malatestas of Rimini, though in a less degree, patronized letters and the arts. In 1439
they were driven out by the papal partisans, led by a martial Cardinal, Vitelleschi, and it
is said that Eugenius IV., who imprisoned Corrado Trinci and his two sons in the Castle
of Seriano near Viterbo, caused them to be strangled there. The very next year Folicmo
received what the chronicler (Pietro degli Unti) describes in words which paint the temper
of these tempestuous times as the "delightful news," — "la buonissima novella,"  that
this very Cardinal Altellesehi who had expelled the Trinci had received five wounds from
the hand of the "castellano" of the Castle of St. Angelo at Rome.
w When Rogier van der "VVeyden saw Gentile's now destroyed frescos at Sta Francesca
Romana, he called him the greatest of Italian painters, perhaps, as Passavant remarks, be
cause he saw in them a reflex of his own qualities. Gentile, however, did not approach
Van der Weyden in such power of expression as he showed in his Deposition from the
Cross in the Museum at Antwerp. Gentile was the master of Jacopo Bellini, the founder
of the Venetian school, who followed him to Florence when he went there in 1422, and
served him as his apprentice, or "garzone di bottega." He died at Rome, whither he was
called by Pope Martin V., about 1450, and was buried at S'» Francesca Romana.

UMBRIAN ART. 15
had been deposed by the Council at Pisa and replaced by a third pope,
Alexander V. Upon this the monks, seeing no safety but in flight,
determined to go to Foligno, where they could safely support the cause
of Gregory. There, after a long journey, they were received with re
joicings by their brothers of the same persuasion in the Dominican
convent. Having thus escaped from the uncongenial atmosphere of
Florence, which had become impregnated with the love of classic art
and classic literature, into a region where such ideas had not pene
trated, Fra Angelico found a congenial spirit in Federigo Frezzi,21 the
prior of the convent at Foligno, where he long resided. With him Fra
Angelico doubtless studied the Paradiso, and fed his spirit upon its
mystical language. Together they must have often climbed the steep
path which leads up the mountain-side to Assisi, to study those works
of the early Tuscan painters which were so well calculated to strengthen
in the painter monk that love of religious art, of which he was to be the
peculiar exponent among the Florentines. In the convent at Foligno
he found miniature-painters working in a truly devotional spirit, and
in the churches of that city he saw the works of a past generation of
painters, who had been bred up within the region which the spirit of
St. Francis long kept under its gentle sway.22 Upon Mezzastro, Alunno,
and other Umbrian painters of his time Angelico had a decided influ
ence, as well as upon the development of the school of Perugia which,
though it held an insignificant place in the fourteenth century, led the
Umbrian school in the fifteenth. This influence was strengthened by
his scholar, Benozzo Gozzoli, whose early works at Montefalco, begun
21 This Dominican monk, who was one of the most eminent poets of his time, wrote in
the spirit of Dante, and was one of the first promoters of the study of the Divina Commedia
in Italy.
22 As St. Francis among Roman Catholic saints, so is Fra Angelico among Roman Cath
olic painters, an ideal of sanctity and goodness. Self-abnegation, love of their fellows and
of all created things for their Creator's sake, coupled with an absence of ambition and an
unrivalled gentleness, meekness, and purity, are the distinguishing characteristics of both,
and these qualities are perhaps more remarkable in the painter because he lived at a time
when they were far less in harmony with surrounding influences.

16 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
in the very year when he had parted company with his master at
Florence (1449), are replete with his spirit. They represent scenes
from the life of St. Francis, whose shrine (Assisi), seen across the beau
tiful valley of the Clitumnus, looks like a speck upon the Apennines.
Though Gozzoli cannot be said to have rivalled his master or even
approached him in his peculiar walk, some of his works at Montefalco,
especially a Virgin and Child with seven lovely angels in a lunette,
and a second Madonna group at Sto Fortunata, have mystic qualities
which warrant us in ranking him, at that period of his life, as a worthy
pupil of the Blessed Painter.23 For the time he was a stranger to the
intellectual movement which was going on, and the great political
changes which were taking place in the world around him. At Monte
falco he was raised as upon a rock, out of the reach of those rising
waters of paganism, which even before this had left their mark upon
the doors of St. Peter's Church at Rome and upon the walls of the
Temple of St. Francis at Rimini. Over Umbria, where religious feeling
in art manifested itself longest, these waters were not as yet to flow,
and the torch which Giotto and Cavallini had lighted at the altar-fires
of Assisi was to pass unquenched from the hands of Perugino into
those of the young Raphael.
Unlike the Umbrian painters of the earlier period, those of the
next generation were more or less affected both by the Sienese and
Florentine schools. The mystical, graceful, and tender style of such
Sienese painters as Domenico and Taddeo di Bartolo, who found their
way to Umbria, affected the pleasing, gentle, and passionless manner
of its native artists, and blended naturally congenial elements; while
at the same time the scientific knowledge of such artists of the Flor
entine school as Piero della. Francesca made Giovanni Santi and other
painters of his day acquainted with the artifices of linear perspective
and foreshortening, of which their predecessors, Palmerucci, Nelli, and
Nuzi da Fabriano, were ignorant. Unscientific, like the Florentines of
23 He completed the frescos at S. Francesco in 1452, the natal year of L. da Vinci and
Savonarola.

GIOVANNI SANTI. 17
their day, these latter were not, like some of them, capable of the
fervor of religious feeling which shows itself in the Pieta in the Lower
Church at Assisi, painted by Giotto's pupil, Pietro Cavallini, so full of
a sad, tender, and deep sentiment, not to be met with in their works.
We are at a loss to account for this in men who lived within the
range of the influences which radiated from Assisi, and cannot explain
it by the supposition that they lived more out of their studios, and
mixed more in politics, than their Tuscan brethren, for neither troubled
themselves about anything but art, which in the fourteenth century was
greatly under the control of the Church. Palmerucci was an ardent
Ghibelline, but he was an exception to the general rule. Dante may
have influenced him in favor of the Imperial party, but this is mere
conjecture. He was intimate with Giotto, and yet we know that that
great painter worked for men of all parties and monks of all colors,
as Niccola Pisano did for the Emperor Frederic II. and for his mortal
enemy Charles of Anjou, for the Dominicans at Bologna and the Fran
ciscans at Padua. And so was it with the Umbrian masters for the
most part. Ottaviano Nelli, who was an active citizen of Urbino and
held a civic office, worked for the Trinci whom the Church anathema
tized, and Maestro Bartolomeo of Foligno represented the excommuni
cated bishop, Rinaldo Trinci, kneeling tranquilly before the Madonna,
as if indifferent to the thunderbolts of the Roman See, which were
launched against him and his family on account of their Ghibellinism.
Evidently, however, they were not bigoted politicians or churchmen, nor
were they, judging from their works, artists of strong religious senti
ment. They kept alive the traditions of Oderisio, as the Giotteschi did
those of Giotto, and were not receptive enough to feel foreign influences
when brought in contact with them. This is more or less true also of
their successors in the fifteenth century ; almost entirely so of Gentile da
Fabriano, to a great extent of Niccolo di Liberatore da Foligno, better
known as Alunno,24 and not a little of Pietro Perugino, who main-
24 This artist's real name was Niccolo di Liberatore de' Mariani. See / Pitlori de' Fo-
', by Adamo Rossi, Perugia, 1872.
2

18 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
tained the repose and dignity of his style in all its freshness, although
he lived and worked so much out of Umbria. The school to which
he belonged by birth and natural affinity was eminently contempla
tive, like the Sienese. It developed from within, was subjective, seek
ing its inspirations in the soul; while the Florentine school of the
second half of the fifteenth century, which passed into the idealis
tic school of Masaccio out of the symbolical, historical, and to some
extent dramatic school of Giotto, was as markedly objective, nourish
ing itself from without, studying to imitate and reproduce natural ob
jects without selection, and growing less spiritual as it became more
scientific. Among the Umbrian artists of the fifteenth century not yet spoken
of is Giovanni Santi, who, besides his personal claim upon our at
tention, is specially interesting as the father and first instructor of
Eaphael. Cavalcaselle goes too far perhaps on the one hand, in speak
ing of him as one of the men who contributed to the brilliancy of the
constellation in which Piero della Francesca, Mellozzo da Forli, and
Luca Signorelli shone with such conspicuous lustre, and Grimm25 too far
on the other, in saying that his pictures are only interesting as the work
of Raphael's father. He was not indeed a man of genius, but a pains
taking, conscientious artist, who availed himself of those opportunities
for improvement which the visits of eminent artists from other parts
of Italy to Urbino brought within his reach, and thus acquired a
technical skill far surpassing that of Palmerucci or Nelli. He was
born towards the end of the first half of the fifteenth century at Col-
bordolo, a little castellated town on the summit of a mountain in
the duchy of Urbino. His family name of Sante or Santi, afterwards
changed to Sanctius or Sanzio, had been represented at Colbordolo
for a century before his birth, and might have continued to be so in
his own person, had not Sigismund Malatesta, the mortal enemy of
the Count of Urbino, laid the greater part of it in ashes, A. D. 1446.
25 Das Lebcn Raphaels, Vol. I. p. 49. "Ware er nicht der Vater Raphaels, so wiirden
sic schwerlich interesse erwecken."

GIOVANNI SANTI.

19

The fearful night when his "paternal nest was devoured by fire,"2e which
lived in the boy's recollection, led to the removal of the family to Urbino,

Fig. 1.

where his grandfather Peruzzolo, fearful of the return of Malatesta, and
hoping to better his fortunes, established himself four years later. Here
Sante, the father of Giovanni, carried on so successful a trade as a
huckster, or vender of small wares, that after some years he was able
to buy a house in the Contrada del Monte, No. 276, now famous as
the birthplace of Raphael (Fig. 1), where he lived with his two sons,

20 " Dache la fortuna divoro el paternel mio nido in fuoco." — Dedication of the Cronaca
Rimata to Guidobaldo.

20 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Giovanni and Bartolomeo, and his two daughters, Margherita and
Santa. Bartolomeo became a priest, while his brother followed the
paternal trade, and tried other ways of gaining a living until he was
nearly thirty years old, when he began to study painting, "which
admirable art," as he tells us, "would be a heavy burden for the
shoidders of Atlas."27
At such an age the difficulties which he met with in his new profes
sion may well have seemed formidable to him, and it is not a little
remarkable that, although his shoulders were not of Atlantean strength,
he eventually carried his burden so creditably. Pungileoni28 suggests
that the frescos at Urbino by the brothers Jacopo and Lorenzo da San
Severino may have influenced his style, but their character is too
Giottesque to render this probable.29 Either Paolo Uccello, who came
to Urbino in 1468, or Piero della Francesca, who followed him in
the succeeding year, and was lodged in Giovanni's house at the ex
pense of the Company of the Corpus Domini while painting an altar-
piece for their chapel, or Melozzo da Forli, of whom he speaks so warmly
in his Chronicle, may have instructed him.30 But we suspect that
27 "El quale sarebbe grave agli omeri de Atalante.'' — Dedication of the Cronaca Rimata
to Guidobaldo.
28 Elogio Storico di Gio Santi, p. 4.
29 They were painted in 1416.
80 In the Vision, which forms a preface in nine books to the twenty-three books of the
Chronicle containing the history of Duke Federigo, Giovanni, guided by Plutarch, visits the
Elysian Fields, where he sees the shades of illustrious Greeks and Romans, converses with
eminent Mediajvalists, as also with the ancestors of the Dukes of Urbino, and with Jupiter,
Apollo, and Mars, under whose names he describes some of his contemporaries. The first
twelve books of the Chronicle recount the deeds of Duke Federigo, and the thirteenth book
contains an account of the illness and death of his wife, Battista Sforza. The fourteenth tells
of all the edifices erected by the duke, among which the palace at Urbino is more especially
dwelt upon. In the twenty-second book the visit of the duke to Milan is described, and
here the most eminent artists of the time, both native and foreign, are mentioned in a way
which would lead us to suppose that he was familiar with the works of many among them
otherwise than through report. The hearty praise accorded to his contemporaries by the
Chronicler shows that Giovanni was not a man of jealous disposition.

RAPHAEL'S BOYHOOD. 21
Melozzo, who is "so dear" to him, and "who is so great a master of
perspective," taught him that science which he understood so well, and
which was the passion of the time. Certain it is that when Giovanni
painted the large fresco in the Tiranni Chapel of S. Domenico at Cagli,31
he had mastered the difficulties of linear perspective in no mean de
gree, for he correctly carried the lines of the real entablature into the
design. Aerial perspective was, however, unknown to him, as its total
absence of atmosphere shows. The varied attitudes of the sleeping
soldiers in the Resurrection, which forms the subject of the upper por
tion of this fresco, prove that he had attained considerable skill in fore
shortening. The Virgin below the lunette, who sits enthroned in a
tabernacle with the child upon her knee, amid saints and angels, forms
an effective point of repose in the somewhat mannered composition,
which though not remarkable for expression is pleasing and well ar
ranged. One of the angels, that to the left, is said to be a portrait of
Raphael (Fig. 2) at the age of nine. This would fix the date of the
work in 1492, several years later than is generally supposed, and make
it one of the painter's last works.
It is not certain32 that the angel is a portrait of the boy Raphael,
but the face is characteristic, and it is reasonable to suppose that he
served his father as a model both in this fresco and in one of the child
Jesus sleeping in the Virgin's arms, which he painted on the wall in
one of the rooms of his house. The Madonna may be a portrait of
Raphael's mother, Magia Ciarla.
She was the daughter of a merchant of Urbino named Battista Ciarla,
and a most amiable and excellent woman. Her eldest son, Raphael,33
81 Cavalcaselle suggests that the frescos in this chapel were painted soon after 1481, the
date of the death of Pietro Tiranni's wife, in whose honor it was built and endowed. (See
Vol. II. p. 583.)
82 Cavalcaselle (Vol. II. p. 585) says the only grounds for believing so are the youth-
fulness and grace of this angel.
83 The other children were a son who died in 1485 while yet an infant, and a daughter
who also died (1491) at a very tender age. The Elisahetta who outlived Raphael was the
child of Giovanni's second wife, Bernardina.

22

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

Fio. 2.

was born on the 6th of April, 1483, at about nine o'clock in the even
ings* j^s we know nothing about his early education, we are left to
conjecture that,
being the son of an
artist, and endowed
with every instinct
of genius, he took
to the pencil and
the brush as soon as
he was old enough
to hold them, and
that his father
taught him what
painters' apprentices
always learned in
an artist's studio,
namely, how to
grind and mix col
ors and how to ap
ply them. That he
was always more
ready to watch his
father at work than
to study his lessons at school may be inferred, but we have no such
direct statement to this effect as we have about so many other embryo
artists of exceptional genius. As long as his mother lived his home
was a happy one; but after her death, when he was seven years old,
84 The 6th of April, 1520, the day of Raphael's death, was Good Friday, but Good Friday
in 1483 fell on the 28th of March. Now, as Vasari in his Life of Raphael says, "he died
on his birthday, which fell on Good Friday, aged 37," this passage, taken with Bembo's
statement in the epitaph on Raphael's tomb, " vixit annos xxxviii integer integros," is seen
to mean that he died on the same day of the month as that on which he was born, namely,
April 6. (See Passavant, Tr. Fr" VoL I. p. 26, and Note 1, p. 184, by Woltmann, to Waa-
gen's Kieine Schriften.)

THE SALA DEL CAMBIO. 23
it assumed a changed aspect under the control of a harsh step-mother,
one Bernardina, whose heart was as hard as the gold cups and platters
which her father, the goldsmith Pietro di Parto, hammered out in his
workshop. Giovanni Santi died two years after his second marriage,
leaving directions in his will that his brother, the priest Don Bartolo
meo, should be Raphael's guardian and tutor, and that so long as Ber
nardina remained a widow she was to be allowed to live with him in
the family mansion As both were ill-tempered persons, this arrange
ment turned out most unhappily, and their quarrels at last ended in a
lawsuit brought by the priest against his sister-in-law, with the hope
of ejecting her from the premises. Raphael's life would have been alto
gether wretched had he not found a second father in his maternal uncle,
Simone di Battista Ciarla, who watched over him with tender care
during the six years which elapsed between his father's death and his
removal to Perugia. During this time he probably placed him under
the direction of some artist resident at Urbino, such as Timoteo Viti,
who, having completed his studies under Francia at Bologna, returned
home a year after the death of Giovanni Santi; or Luca Signorelli,
who was at Urbino about the same time. This temporary arrangement
gave him time to decide which among the eminent painters of the time
should be intrusted with the task of developing the wonderful gifts of
his nephew.
There were Andrea Mantegna, whom Raphael's father regarded as
the greatest of artists, Francesco Francia, and Lionardo da Vinci, and
many others whose praises he had sung in his Rhymed Chronicle; but
Mantua, Bologna, Milan, and Florence were far-off cities, and the fond
uncle preferred to look nearer home for the desired master. Fortunately
for Raphael, this master was at last found in Pietro Vannucci, a na
tive of Citta della Pieve, though commonly called Perugino from his
long residence at Perugia, who having been commissioned by the guild
of the Cambio (the Exchange) at Perugia to decorate their audience-
hall, had left Florence in 1499, after a residence of six or seven years,
and established himself there with his scholars and assistants. Urn-

24 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
brian in feeling, Florentine in scientific acquirements, and well ac
quainted with the various styles and discoveries of all the great artists
of his day, Perugino, then about fifty years old, seemed in every respect
the best of masters for the young Raphael, who became his pupil in
the following year.35 The fresco decorations of the Sala del Cambio,
then in progress, belong to the period when he had reached the apo
gee of his fame and his success, and were, as we may say, the text
books of his great pupil. They are to Perugino what the frescos of
the Stanze are to Raphael, or those of the Sistine Chapel to Michel
angelo, with this difference, that their mythological and historical sub
jects were less well suited to the peculiar bent of his genius than those
which Raphael and Michelangelo treated were to their special powers.
Perugino had, however, no choice in the matter. The subjects which
he was called upon to represent were selected by a professor of rhet
oric named Matanzio, and submitted to him by the auditors. He was
told to decorate the groined roof with representations of the seven
planets and the signs of the zodiac, and to fill the wall spaces with
personifications of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance, seated
in the clouds above twelve portrait-figures of classic personages emi
nent for these virtues.36 The religious subjects assigned to him were
God the Father with Prophets and Sibyls, the Nativity, and the Trans-
85 That 1500 is probably the correct date appears on grounds clearly stated by A. Springer
in his Rapliaclstudicn (Zeitschrift, 3tes Heft., 1873). As Perugino is known to have re
sided in Florence from 1493 to 1499, in which year he came to Perugia to paint the frescos
of the Sala del Cambio, he cannot have received Raphael as his pupil until the next year.
Further proof that this was the case is furnished by the fact that whereas on the 5th of
June, 1499, Raphael appeared at Urbino as a witness in the suit brought by Don Bar
tolomeo against his step-mother, Bernardina, in the following year, May 13, 1500, Don
Bartolomeo spoke of him in court as absent, "Raffaelle absente," and himself signed the
paper drawn up by the notary "pro dicto Raphaele absente." Raphael must, then, have
gone to Perugia between June, 1499, and May, 1500. Grimm (Lebcn Raphaels) adopts this
date, for which Pungileoni, Passavant, and Robinson had given 1495.
86 Prudence is typified by Fabins Maximus, Socrates, and Numa ; Justice, by Camillus,
Pittacus, and Trajan ; Fortitude, by L. Socinius, Leonidas, and Horatius Codes ; Temper
ance, by Scipio, Pericles, and Cincinnatus.

PERUGINO. 25
figuration. The pilasters and flat spaces of the ceiling and walls were
to be decorated with arabesques. Perugino painted all this work, with
the exception of the ceiling, which he intrusted to Pinturicchio, Lo
Spagna, Alfani, and Girolamo Genga, who also gave him such other
assistance as pupils were accustomed to give to their master. Though
always dignified, correct, and simple in his religious subjects, Perugino
cannot be said, in those treated at the Cambio, to have attained that
serene but deep feeling which marks his best works; while in dealing
with the classical figures, though some are exceptionally noble and dig
nified, he was evidently ill at ease.
Ranged in a formal row, like a set of actors called before the curtain
to receive the plaudits of an audience, these mediasvalized heroes and
lawgivers stand stiffly and timidly below the seated figures which per
sonify their especial virtues. Pericles looks like a Jewish high-priest,
Leonidas like a St. George, Cincinnatus like one of the Magi. But it
will not do to be too critical about historic truth, which we nowadays
consider of the first importance, as Perugino did not pretend to trouble
himself about it. He was neither a scholar nor a poet. We have
only to look at the portrait which he painted of himself in a medallion
on one of the pilasters of this hall, at that in the Uffizi, or at that
which Raphael introduced into the right-hand corner of the School of
Athens, to see that he was a shrewd, sturdy, rather matter-of-fact per
sonage (Plate II.). In all, the face is square and somewhat rugged in
form, the eyebrows are heavy, the expression is intelligent but not at
all poetical. They show but few of the qualities which belong to a
great artist, and in some respects verify what we are told of him by
Vasari, who, however, evidently wrote with a leaven of prejudice against
Perugino, which should make us cautious about accepting his state
ment that the disciple of a school which made the painting of re
ligious subjects its special occupation was an unbeliever. "Pietro,"
he says, "was an irreligious man, who could never be brought to
believe in the immortality of the soul ; on the contrary, with words as
hard as his porphyritic brains, he obstinately refused to follow the

26 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
right path. His every hope was placed in the goods of fortune, and
he was ready to make any evil contract for the sake of money." He
may have been avaricious and keenly alive to his own interests, but
he was quick to resent any show of suspicion as to his honesty : wit
ness the answer which he gave to the Prior of the Ingesuati at Flor
ence, who had accused him of abstracting the greater part of the ultra
marine which he gave him to paint with, instead of using it in his
work. "Here," he said, as he returned it, "take what is your own,
and learn to trust honest men who never cheat those who trust them,
though if they would they could easily deceive distrustful persons like
yourself." To gainsay these accusations made by a writer, who, as he was only
twelve years old when Perugino died, must have got his information
about him from others, we have no other evidence than that of such
pictures as the Adoring Madonna at San Agostino at Perugia, the Cru
cifixion at S. Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi at Florence, the Pieta at the
Pitti, or the Assumption at Lyons. The man who painted these works
can hardly have been an infideL They are the products of a quiet,
calm, self-possessed spirit, troubled with no doubts, though in no sense
ascetic or passionately mystical like that of Fra Angelico. They look
like the work of a sincere and honest man who felt what he painted,
and who was incapable of simulating religious feeling or feeling of
any other sort. On the other hand, letters found in the archives at
Mantua37 do not present Perugino in the most favorable light. He
appears in them as a person not to be relied on, greedy for commis
sions which he hurried over or laid aside if others of a more profitable
nature offered, fond of money, and of a rather matter-of-fact nature.
"He who pays him best for his day's work will be by him best
served" He was mockingly called "el buon cristianaccio " and the
" patriarch " by his contemporaries.
Despite all that has been said, we know of no one amono- the
87 Published by Canon Brughirolli in the Giornale di Erudizione artistica, Vol. II., and
quoted by Springer in the Zeitschrift, Sept. 18, 1874.

PERUGINO. 27
Umbrian artists of his day who is apparently so sincere as Perugino,
or has such depth of expression. Neither Alunno nor Bonfigli, his
reputed masters, nor Pinturicchio or l'lngegno, his fellow-workers, could
have painted a head so full of wistful, tender affection as that of the
St. John in his Crucifixion, or one so full of sympathetic sorrow as
that of the Magdalen in his Pieta. He did not always or even often
attain such excellence. His temperament was phlegmatic, and his emo
tions were not easily stirred. The habitual coldness of his nature showed
itself in the formal arrangement of his compositions, and the indolence
of his genius betrayed itself in his habit of repeating the same subject
with but little variation, for whenever occasion offered he undisguisedly
recurred to a once adopted type. When required to repaint an episode
he took out the old cartoon and applied it afresh, instructing his pupils,
no doubt, to think meanwhile of the original at the Sala del Cambio
or elsewhere. Not only did he repeat whole compositions of the same
subject, but he used portions of the cartoons made for one picture in
painting another subject.38 He seriously injured his position at Flor
ence by this practice of reproducing himself, and gradually lost his pu
pils, who left him to pursue their studies under more prolific masters.
Poverty of inventive genius, or mental sluggishness, can alone explain
such a practice. An artist may repeat himself unconsciously, and may
appropriate the ideas of others without being accused of poverty of in
vention ; but if he is constantly in the habit of plundering himself, we
can hardly avoid the conclusion that he is a man of few ideas. Are
we to suppose that the penuriousness of which Vasari accuses Perugino
in regard to money-matters ran through his whole character and showed
itself even when dealing with art? Was he miserly about his ideas
as he was about his ducats ? This ckn hardly be. Ideas are not like
doubloons, which can be locked up by those who have them, and we
may suppose that Perugino in his long life made use of all he had. An
examination of his works, which, as we have said, are so full of repeti-
88 As, for instance, the six angels in the Assumption at the Servi, painted in 1505 - 1506,
are those of the Ascension painted for S. Pietro at Perugia in 1497-1498.

28 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
tions that it is hardly going too far to say that a tracing from almost
any one out of four of his standing figures will generally be found to
fit the other three, shows clearly that he had, so to speak, but very
few notes in his voice, and yet his song is well worth listening to for
its sweetness, its impressiveness, and its devotional tone.
Though limited in its range of thought, and narrow in its scope,
Perugino's spirit was progressive. He went on steadily improving until,
in his later years, press of work and the habit of mechanical repeti
tion made him somewhat negligent. He was a very careful draughts
man, an excellent colorist, though over-fond of strongly contrasted deep
reds and greens; he understood anatomy and perspective, paid special
attention to his backgrounds, both landscape and architectural, and was
conscientious and diligent in the treatment of accessories. While per
haps no one but Giovanni Santi has ever regarded him as the equal
of Lionardo da Vinci, none have ever denied him that high place among
the artists of his day which he deserves, not only by reason of the
intrinsic qualities of his works, but also because they form a preface to
those of his great scholar, which flow from them so naturally that it is
difficult to point out the moment when they begin to be individual.39
From the absolute correspondence of Raphael's early manner to his
own, we may argue that Perugino was a strict disciplinarian, who re
quired his pupils to copy his style to the letter. Did he take Ra
phael as an apprentice, or, in consideration of his already advanced
knowledge and exceptional gifts, did he give him the position of an
89 The following extract from Moody's lectures is here given, as calculated to show how
Perugino, with all his sameness, managed to escape in some degree an almost inevitable
monotony of effect : "The lines produced by the crossing of the limbs and those produced
by the crossing of the draperies avail to counteract the inevitable parallelism of lines in a
group of standing figures, a parallelism which is further concealed or counteracted by the
great horizontal folds which so frequently envelop the waist in the figures of Perugino, —
an artifice which Raphael was wise enough never to abandon.'' The thin silky hair which
does not break the oval contour of the head, the graceful loops of the banded head-dress,
the radiating and flowing lines of the drapery, the refined and gentle air of the figures, and
their graceful pose, all combine to convey a saint-like and almost heavenly beauty.

PERUGINO.

29

assistant and pay him for his services as Ghirlandajo paid the young
Michelangelo ? This question, which naturally presents itself at the
outset, is one which can only be answered according to probabilities,
though we can have little doubt that the latter is the correct suppo
sition. Raphael was in his seventeenth year when he entered Peru-
gino's studio, and had long before learned all apprentice-work, besides
acquiring great facility in drawing and painting. He doubtless, there
fore, immediately took rank as an assistant, and was employed in such
advanced work as the putting in of skies, draperies, and backgrounds,
from which he soon passed to the painting of heads, hands, and even
whole figures, after his master's cartoons. If this be so, the frescos of
the Sala del Cambio, which were in progress on his arrival at Perugia,
gain in interest and value; for who can say how much in them may
not have been painted by the hand of Raphael?40
40 See "Woltmann on Waagen's Kleine Schriftcn, Note 1. p. 186 ; also Springer's Rapliacl-
studien, Zeitschrift, Vol. VIII. pp. 67, 68.

30

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

CHAPTER II.

'Erfullst du was die Weisheit spricht,
Unci gleicht dcin Eifer deine Pflicht,
So wird der Ruhm ihm folgen mlissen."— Gellert, Der Ruhm.

T the time when Raphael became
the pupil of Perugino, Michelan
gelo was already looked upon as
an artist of extraordinary ability
both at Rome and Florence. With
twice as many years then before
him as those of Raphael's whole
life, he had every advantage in the
race, — the start, the earlier ac
quired strength, and that inborn
self-reliance which leads to rapid
development of power. To under
stand the artistic growth of Raphael without an intimate knowledge
of his predecessors and contemporaries is impossible ; but it is much
less necessary for the comprehension of that of Michelangelo. Not
that his art was uninfluenced by the past, or that he disdained the use
of those appliances and discoveries which it had brought within his
reach, but that from the first he stood on his own ground, and made
use of all things in his own peculiar way. It is for this reason that,
while we can trace the influences which shaped Raphael's development
to their source, and follow those which led him on from style to style,
we cannot do so with his great rival who, though revealing fresh phases
of genius and unlooked-for capacities as he grew older, started almost
on the level which he was to keep, and showed the hand of power —

CHAPTER II.
Michelangelo, 1475-1600.
Born March 6, 1475. Apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandajo, April 1, 1488.
1. Marble mask of a Faun or Satyr, 1489-1490. Uffizi, Florence.
2. Battle of Hercules and the Centaurs, marble bas-relief, 1490 - 1492. Casa Buonarroti,
Florence.
8. Madonna and Child. Marble bas-relief in Donatello's style, 1490-1492. Casa Buo
narroti, Florence.
4. The Madonna and Child with angels, called the Taunton Madonna. A painting in
tempera now in the National Gallery was perhaps painted at this time,
5. Marble statue of Hercules, 1492-1493. Sent to France. At Fontainebleau in the
" Jardin de l'Etang " up to 1642. The garden was destroyed in 1713, and nothing
is known as to the fate of the statue.
6. "Wooden Crucifix sculptured for the Prior of Santo Spirito, 1494. Lost.
7. Marble Angel, 1494-1495. Altar of the Church of St Domenick at Bologna.
8. Marble St. John, 1495. Doubtfully identified as that in the possession of Count
Rosselmini Gualandi at Pisa.
9. A sleeping Cupid, 1495 - 1496. Perhaps the one in the Museum at Mantua.
10. A cartoon of St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, 1496. Formerly at San Pietro in
Montorio, Rome. Not extant.
11. Marble Bacchus, 1496-1500. Uffizi.
12. Marble Cupid, 1496-1500. Identified with that at the South Kensington Museum.
13. The Pieta, 1499-1500. Chapel of St. Petronilla at St. Peter's.

MICHELANGELO. 31
which was by and by to paint the Adam of the Sistine Chapel and
sculpture the Day at San Lorenzo — in the Taunton Madonna at the
National Gallery and the Faun's Head at the Uffizi.
Considering that he looked upon "the rough stone" as including
every possible shape,1 and that sculpture was the art of his predilection,
it is interesting to observe the many ways in which he was associated
with it. The historical stronghold of the Counts of Canossa,. from
whom he supposed himself to be descended, was a mountain fortress ; 2
his birthplace was a castle built on the summit of a rock; and his
wet-nurse was the wife of a stone-mason, so that, as he humorously
said, he imbibed his love for marble with his first nourishment.
Michelangelo was born on Sunday, March 6, 1475, at eight o'clock in
the evening, in the castle of Chiusi e Caprese in Casentino,3 a Tuscan
1 "The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include.'' — Sonnet XV., Symonds's Translation.
2 Situated in the territory of Modena near Reggio. It was the patrimony of the Countess
Matilda, daughter of Boniface, Marquis of Tuscany, the great ecclesiastical heroine of the
eleventh century. It was in the courtyard of this castle that Henry II., Emperor of Ger
many, did penance for four days and nights, bareheaded and barefooted, before he was
pardoned by Pope Gregory VII. for rebellion against the Holy See. Despite his strong
republican tendencies, Michelangelo was proud of his supposed descent from the Counts of
Canossa, and was disposed to take offence when its reality was questioned. It, however,
has no foundation in fact. (See Aurelio Gotti, Vita di Miclielangelo, Vol. II. pp. 3-5.)
The claim was based upon the tradition that Rolandino, Count of Canossa, settled at Flor
ence in 1283, and that his son Simone was Michelangelo's ancestor. The Simone in ques
tion, who lived at Florence in 1284, is mentioned in a contemporary document as Simone
Buonarrota. His family was of Fesulan origin, and his descendants called themselves Si-
moni. Thus before the sixteenth centuiy Michelangelo's ancestors were distinguished as
the Buonarroti Simoni. The Simoni were men of repute at Florence ; one of them took a
principal part as a Guelph in the battle of Montaperti, 1260 ; others filled civic posts of
importance. A letter written to Michelangelo in 1520 by the Count Alessandro da Canossa,
and signed your "bon parente" (see Gotti, op. cit., Vol. I. p. 4), shows that he was, nev
ertheless, recognized as a kinsman by the then living representative of the family.
8 The ruins of the castle crown a height on the left bank of the Tiber. The hill belongs
to the mountain chain which separates the source of the Tiber from that of the Arno.
"W. Davies gives a small woodcut of the ruins in his Pilgrimage to (lie Sources of the

32 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
stronghold on the upper waters of the Tiber, of which his father,
Ludovico di Lionardo Buonarroti Simoni, was podesta. Returning to
Florence when his year of office had expired, with his wife, Francesca
di Neri di Miniato del Sera, Ludovico stopped at Settignano, where he
had a villa,4 to place their infant son in charge of the stone-cutter's
wife. Thus almost the first objects upon which Michelangelo's eyes
rested were the blocks of stone quarried by his foster-father, and the
chisels and hammers which he used in his daily work. Does it seem
altogether fanciful to suppose that such early associations with the
implements of his special art may have fostered those plastic instincts
which nature had implanted in him at his birth ?
As soon as he grew old enough Michelangelo was sent to a school
at Florence, kept by Francesco Venturini of Urbino,5 whom Maffei sup
poses to have been afterwards the master of Raphael.6 If this be so,
their school discipline was the same, though that of their respective
homes was as different as their dispositions. Raphael was blessed with
a gentle and pliant temper, and was the child of an artist who fostered
Tiber, and describes their present condition. The room in which Michelangelo was born
is still shown, and a commemorative tablet has been placed in it.
4 A correspondent of the Academy (January 2, 1875) describes the Buonarroti villa as "a
good-sized house, beautifully situated on the olive-clad slopes of the range of hills stretch
ing east from Fiesole, commanding a noble view over the Val d'Arno and Florence. At
the top of the stairway leading to the kitchen, there is a drawing on the wall of the upper
portion of the figure of a Satyr, attributed by tradition to Michelangelo, as are two chimney-
pieces, though these latter are said by the same writer to be of later date. C. H. Wilson
(Life and Works of Micliclangclo, p. 9) says the Satyr "is evidently by Michelangelo,
but when his powers were matured." There are also some clever heads painted in fresco
upon tiles by Giovanni da San Giovanni. The house is now inhabited by a lineal descend
ant of Michelangelo's old enemy, Baccio Bandinelli.
When Settignano became the home of the child Michelangelo, it acquired a second time
distinction in the annals of art, for Desiderio (da Settignano), one of the most refined and
charming sculptors of the Renaissance, was born there in 1428.
6 Author of the first complete Latin grammar printed at Urbino in 1494 by Master Hein-
rich of Cologne.
" Passavant (Life of Raphael, French translation, p. 41) says that this supposition of
the Marchese Maffei (author of the Verona Ulustrata) is absolutely gratuitous.

GHIRLANDAJO. 33
in every way the development of his dawning powers; Michelangelo,
on the contrary, was the self-willed and quick-tempered son of a man
who looked upon the profession of an artist as derogatory, and who,
so far from putting the pallet or the chisel into his hands, was deter
mined that he should follow the silk and woollen trade like his broth
ers. But Nature would not be thwarted. She evidently intended him
to be an artist, for the boy drew in school and out of school, patiently
enduring the scoldings and beatings which were the consequence,
until in good time he gained his point, and on the 1st of April, 1488,
was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandajo, one of whose pupils, Fran
cesco Granacci, had long supplied him with drawings from the studio
of his master. Thanks to his proficiency, he at once took the ad
vanced position of an assistant, at a progressive salary of six florins
for the first year, eight for the second, and ten for the third. The
discipline of a studio, and the direct supervision of such an artist as
Ghirlandajo, were undoubtedly of great service to one who had so far
been his own master; but Michelangelo's character was so independent,
and there was so little affinity between his talent and that of Ghir
landajo, that he was not at all influenced by him as Raphael was by
Perugino. Domenico Bigordi, who inherited the surname of Ghirlandajo from
his father,7 was born at Florence in 1451. He was taught to paint by
Alesso Baldovinetti, an artist who was noted for his extreme finish, as
also for his love of laying on colors with experimental mediums, whose
deleterious action has destroyed the greater part of his works. Ghir
landajo was of a more cautious nature, and painted in distemper, — a
method about whose durability there could be no question, — with the
same careful minuteness as his master. The rich landscape in his fine
altar-piece of the Adoration of the Magi, formerly in the Sassetti Chapel
at Sto Trinita, and now in the Academy at Florence, is crowded with
7 Tommaso Currado di Doffo Bigordi, jeweller and broker, called Ghirlandajo because
his gold and silver head ornaments or garlands were greatly in favor with the Florentine
women of his day.

34 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
elaborate detail, worked out with a patience and skill which reminds
us of the Van Eycks. The hill to the right of the composition, with
its trees and shrubs and grazing sheep, is a marvel of finish. The
winding road is filled with a procession of men and horses following
in the train of the Magi, who kneel tranquilly to the left in the fore
ground, not in royal garments richly decked with gems of price, but
in the guise of good Florentine citizens, whom Ghirlandajo painted
with all that realistic truth which entitles him to be called the Hol
bein of Florence. The picture is peculiarly interesting as a compen
dium of the best qualities of the Florentine school of the period. Love
of detail shows itself everywhere; naturalism in the heads and hands
of the Magi ; and a classical spirit in the fine Corinthian columns which
support the roof of the lowly cattle-shed, and in the richly sculp
tured antique sarcophagus in the foreground, with its festoons and
elaborate Latin inscription. From one tendency of the time it is, how
ever, happily exempt, namely, that tendency to exaggeration in move
ment which marks the works of the Pollajuoli, Luca Signorelli, and
other noted painters. It rather suggests the influence of Lionardo da
Vinci's school, which also originated in that of Masaccio. Lionardo
himself or Lorenzo di Credi might have painted the Madonna with her
sweet face, veiled head, and clasped hands, and the quaint little child
who lifts at her feet to receive the adoration which is his due.
The frescos of the Sassetti Chapel show the peculiar excellences of
Ghirlandajo even more than the altar-piece, which was painted in 1485,
and prove that, like so many other painters of Florence, he formed his
dignified, noble, and severe style upon the great works of Masaccio, at
the Carmine Chapel. Nothing in portraiture surpasses in truth the
figures of Francesco Sassetti and his wife Nera, kneeling as donor and
donatrix on either side of the altar; and yet heads by the score, of equal
truth and character, may be found in his frescos at S*8, Trinita and Ste
Croce, — heads, purely and firmly drawn, of Florentine men and women
whom the painter, after the manner of Masaccio, introduced as specta
tors of some central incident. In all Ghirlandajo's great compositions

GHIRLANDAJO.

the picture plane represents a stage upon which the actors are arranged
as in a tableau vivant. They generally appear as lookers-on, who take
little or no part in the action ; but in the Death of St. Francis, perhaps
the finest of his works, and in the Birth of the Virgin, at Santa Maria
Novella, they play a more active part. The same love of truth, which
made Ghirlandajo so admirable a painter of portraits, induced him to
represent existing buildings and landscapes in his backgrounds. He
was a realist in the higher sense of the term, who wanted the su
preme grace of Filippino Lippi and the elegance of Botticelli, but who
was never mannered like the Pollajuoli nor hard like Verocchio. Less
scientific than Mantegna, less mystical than Angelico, and incapable
of depicting the serene rapture which Perugino attained in his finest
heads, he was an admirable draughtsman, skilled in perspective, and
master of the laws of composition according to a somewhat formal code.
He had, however, little feeling for color. Perugino was indeed no Ve
netian, but he always used color agreeably and sometimes with special
charm, whereas the flesh-tones of Ghirlandajo are often disagreeable,
and his association of hues is markedly inharmonious. In personal
influence the two cannot be compared; for while the Florentine master
had no pupils of note excepting Michelangelo, who owed him little
in the formation of his style, Pietro Vanucci moulded Raphael, and
counted among his scholars such eminent painters as Lo Spagna,
L' Ingegno, Pinturicchio, Pietro Alfani, and Girolamo Genga.
That Ghirlandajo had so little effect upon Michelangelo, is partly to
be accounted for by his having been sent to study the antique and
modern treasures of art, which Lorenzo de' Medici had gathered together
in the Gardens of St. Mark, within a year after he became his pupil,
and by his having found in them the food which his spirit needed for
its nourishment. Although his work under Ghirlandajo taught him
many desirable and necessary technicalities, it cannot have greatly ad
vanced him in the higher walks of art. It consisted in preparing colors,
fresco-grounds, and panels for tempera painting ; in copying his master's
drawings; in counterfeiting those of other enm^nt artists, which he

36 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
did with wonderfid fidelity, sometimes endeavoring to improve upon
them, as when he painted a picture from Martin Schoen's engraving of
St. Anthony tormented by devils, to whose scales he gave the bright
hues of those of the fishes which he selected at the market.8 It is
impossible to suppose that the ardent spirit of one of the most original
of men of genius can have satisfied itself with such imitative work
as this. It must have tried its strength upon something more con
genial, and though we have no such positive proof of creative effort as
would be furnished by a dated picture, we feel inclined, when we look
at the Taunton Madonna,9 to believe with the best critics, that it was
painted at this rather than at a later time, although if so it is the
most wonderful of juvenile works in any art.
The same difficulty, of assigning a fixed date to this picture, meets
us in all Michelangelo's undated works. While Raphael's three styles
are as distinct and separate as the three sides of a triangle, the works
of Michelangelo show no such marked division, but like the circle
have apparently neither beginning nor end. He painted under Ghir
landajo, and yet, so far as we know, never imitated his manner; he
studied the frescos of Masaccio and Filippino Lippi at the Carmine, and
showed no special trace of their influence upon him; and although he
probably painted the Taunton Madonna while studying the antique, it
shows no signs of such study, but is as Michelangelesque as the un
finished group of the Madonna and Child in the Medici Chapel, with
which it has such strong affinities. The central group of the Virgin
holding the infant Saviour is conceived in the same grand spirit, and
has enough of the maniera terribile about it to recall the Sibyls of the
Sistine Chapel. There is, however, a sweetness coupled with strength
8 The eminent French sculptor, M. de Triqueti, believed himself to be the possessor of
this work.
0 Bought at Rome for a small sum by an English artist, and vainly offered to the di
rectors of the National Gallery, it was sold to Lord Taunton, then the Hon. Henry La-
bouchere. At the Manchester Exhibition in 1857 it attracted great attention. After
Lord Taunton's death it became the property of the nation.

GARDENS OF ST. MARK.

37

Fio. 3.

in the two groups of angels, which may well induce us to believe that
the artist was young when he painted them. They are types of ado
lescence, scions of a vigorous race, with a freshness of youth about them
which is in itself a great charm. They are also eminently plastic,
showing, like all Michelangelo's works, that he was always and before
all a sculptor.10
His opportunities for studying sculpture at the Academy opened by
Lorenzo de' Medici in the Gardens of St. Mark were altogether excep
tional, and Mi
chelangelo seized
them with avid
ity. Many of
the antique and
modern marbles,
bronzes, paintings,
gems, cameos, and
other works of art
there collected
belonged to the
Medici treasures
amassed by Cos
mo, " Pater Pa
triae," and added
to by his grandson
Lorenzo (Fig. 3).

$P

10 -While fully admitting the great beauties of this picture, Mr. C. H. Wilson (op. cit.
p. 66) singularly enough speaks of it as inferior to the Angel on the altar of St. Domenick
at Bologna. The only way in which works of such a totally dissimilar character could be
compared would he relatively to the ideals of each in painting or sculpture. So judged,
the palm must unhesitatingly be given to the picture as being in itself a most noble work
of art, grandly composed, nobly felt, and thoroughly individual. The Angel, on the con
trary, is pleasing, even charming ; but it has so little individuality and so little power,
that were it not known to he by Michelangelo it would never be recognized as such. We
agree with Mr. Wilson in finding a similarity of style between the Taunton Madonna

38

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

Fio. 4.

Some of these are now at the Uffizi, but as no inventory of the Medici
collections exists, it is impossible to identify them with any certainty.11
This is greatly to be regretted, because they exercised an important
influence upon Michelangelo and other artists of the later Renaissance,
after having, at an earlier period, aided in the education of those of
Cosmo's time, some of whose works were to take an honored place with
the antiques from which they had learned so much. That Donatello's
David and his St. John were among these, or that he was otherwise
worthily represented at the Academy, cannot be doubted, since the
director was his old scholar Bertoldo; and that Michelangelo studied
his works is proved by a bas-relief of the Madonna and Child in the
Casa Buonarroti, which is
a creditable imitation of
Donatello's style.
We are told that
Michelangelo had never
taken a chisel in his hand
until he entered Lorenzo's
Academy, and that the
first use he made of it
was to sculpture, after an
antique model, the mask
of a Faun or Satyr (Fig. 4),
which, according to Vasari,
gained him the friendship
of Lorenzo de' Medici At
first he filled the open
mouth with a full set of teeth; but when Lorenzo remarked that old
people rarely kept all their teeth, the young sculptor, we are told, knocked

and certain works in Tuscan sculpture. The angels in the right-hand corner certainly do
recall Luca della Robbia, though they have in them a prophetic seriousness of which he
was incapable.
11 See Appendix A.

LORENZO DE' MEDICI. 39
out some of them with his hammer. The truth of this story is not,
however, substantiated by the head itself, which is preserved at the
Uffizi, as it shows a mouth with side teeth or tusks widely separated,
leaving an imperfect cavity partially filled by the tongue, evidently so
modelled to mark the antique distinction between the Satyr's mouth
and that of man. It was by his diligence and his marked superiority
to his fellow-pupils, and not by any such special act of deference to his
opinion, that Michelangelo attracted the notice of Lorenzo, who took
him to live with him at the Palazzo de' Medici, where he was treated
with marked consideration and kindness by such men as Politian,
Ficino, and Pico della Mirandula, and came in contact with many
persons who were to play important parts in his after life. Among
these were Bibbiena, the future Cardinal, Raphael's relative and chief
protector at the Court of Leo X.; Count Bernardo Castiglione, of whom
so much has been already said in the preceding chapter; and also
Giovanni and Giulio de' Medici, the two sons of Lorenzo, who as Popes
Leo X. and Clement VII. were to have great influence over his future
career.12 The four years which Michelangelo spent at the Medici Palace were
the halcyon years of his life, unclouded by care, full of hope and
promise, and joyful through the consciousness of expanding powers.
They were also the years which did more than any others towards the
formation of his mind and character, in which he learnt to love poetry,
philosophy, and religion. The two first were daily subjects of con
versation between Lorenzo and his associates, and the last stirred the
hearts of all who lived within the range of Savonarola's warning voice.
Michelangelo was not one of those who strove to shut it out, for, as
12 As Giovanni de' Medici was raised to the rank of Cardinal at the age of fourteen, on
condition that he should not assume his rank until three years had elapsed, he entered
the university at Pisa. His investiture took place in 1492 at Fiesole, and immediately
after the ceremony he went to reside at Rome. Michelangelo can therefore have seen but
little of him. Giulio, on the contrary, remained at Florence under the tutelage of Poli
tian, who, being well disposed to Michelangelo, may have brought about some intimacy
between him and his pupil.

40 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
he himself said in his later years, its sound still rang in his ears.
It did not now work with full effect upon his preoccupied mind, while
art held the first place in his thoughts and poetry the next. Phi
losophy was to be the mistress of his mature life, and religion was to
sanctify its end. This succession of guiding influences shows itself
plainly in his poems, which reflect, as in a mirror, the period when
they were composed.13 The Platonic and the more especially religious
sonnets were written during the middle and latter part of his life, but
many of the madrigals seem as plainly to belong to that youthful time
"When blind Desire ran free,
With bit and rein too loose to curb his flight."
Like Dante, who personified theology in Beatrice, and philosophy in
the Lady of the Convito, Michelangelo often speaks allegorically when
he appears to be addressing a living mistress ; but as Dante was inspired
by his love for a real Beatrice, so Michelangelo seems to have been
moved to poetry by the magic power of some fair face.14 Such lines
as these from the third madrigal,- —
"What shall defend me from the grace,
The winning beauties of thy face ;
What, from the living splendor of thine eyes,
Where Love embattled points his airy sorceries ? "
or these from the thirty-ninth: —
"Even when she slays me, my loved Fair
Delights to act a double part :
Her eyes speak passion, whilst her air
And mien strike daggers through my heart " ;
or these from the twenty-fifth: —
18 Guasti, whose admirable edition of Michelangelo's poems has happily superseded the
garbled and revised version published by Michelangelo the younger in 1623, would have us
believe that all were written after the poet was sixty years old; but this, as regards the
madrigals, appears impossible.
14 "La forza d' un bel volto al ciel mi sprona,
E vivo ascendo tra gli spirti eletti." — Sonnet LX XX I.

PLATONIC PHILOSOPHY. 41
"How is it that I seem no longer mine?
Who of myself hath robbed me ? "
can hardly have been addressed to an abstract object. They read like
the outpourings of a lovesick poet, writing in all the fervor of youth,
and not like the verses of a man of sixty, fanning the embers of long-
spent fires. To whom they were addressed we cannot even conjecture,
for no woman's name is coupled with that of Michelangelo by either
of his biographers, save that of the noble Marchioness of Pescara, for
whom his sentiments were of a very different nature. The story of
his attachment to Luisa de' Medici, the youngest daughter of Lorenzo,
has no foundation. Betrothed at a very early age to one of the sons
of Pier Francesco de' Medici, she died unmarried (1494) at the age of
seventeen. She was but twelve years old when Michelangelo came to
live in her father's palace, and though it is possible that he may have
made her the subject of his day-dreams, we have not the slightest
grounds for believing that such was the case. Whoever Michelangelo
loved, we may rest assured that he loved nobly and loftily. No artist
bears a fairer reputation for high moral character. "I have often,"
says Condivi, "heard him speak about love; and others who have lis
tened to him on this subject will bear me out in saying that the only
love of which he spoke was that kind of love which is to be read
of in Plato's works. For my part," he adds, "I do not know what
Plato says, but one thing I, who have lived with him so long and
so intimately, can assert, that I have never heard any but the purest
words issue from his mouth." 15
This reference to the great Greek philosopher brings us to our second
point, that influence of Platonic philosophy upon Michelangelo's mind,
which shows itself so plainly in his designation of ideal beauty as the
true aim of art. It was certainly first brought to bear upon him
while living at the Medici Palace, where he heard the most abstruse
philosophic questions constantly and ably discussed; but he was then
too young and too much absorbed by art — that Jacob's ladder, rising
15 Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo, p. 54.

42 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
from earth to heaven, upon which the angels of his fancy were ever
ascending and descending — to do more than receive an impression
which was calculated to bear fruit in his later years. The tone of his
Platonic sonnets, as compared with that of such madrigals as we have
quoted, proves that they cannot have been written at the same period.
These are poems of youth, while they are the utterances of a soul
which has risen above the perishable, and loves that which is eternal.
"Not thy clear face of beauty glorious ;
For ho who harbors virtue still will choose
To love what neither years nor death can blight."
The poet of the sonnets loves beauty, not for itself, but because
"God hath not deigned to show himself elsewhere
More clearly than in human forms sublime;
Which, since they image him, compel my love."
The third great influence which shaped the character of Michelangelo
was religion. While the guest of Lorenzo, he was wont from time to
time to steal away from the lordly halls of a palace where wit and
unbelief went hand in hand, to the Duomo, where a trembling and
heart-stricken multitude sat at the feet of the prophet monk. As he
listened to the reproaches addressed by Savonarola to Lorenzo de' Medici
and other princes who like him had crushed the liberties of Italy and
corrupted the hearts of Italians, that dormant patriotism Avas stirred
within him which long afterwards gave proof of its vitality by a noble
devotion to his country's cause; and as he heard the earnest appeals
made by the preacher to seek for truth in the Bible only, the religious
instincts of his nature were moved, until like Festus he was ready to
cry aloud, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." The time
when the living Vittoria Colonna added her influence to that of the
dead Savonarola was yet far distant. The seeds then sown in his
heart did not quicken while other and more constant influences absorbed
his time and his thoughts.
It was natural that, living in a palace frequented by ardent lovers

FIRST BAS-RELIEF. 43
of Greek and Roman literature, and filled with treasures of ancient art,
Michelangelo should have selected a classical subject for his first
important work in marble. By the advice of Politian he took that
of the battle between Hercules and the Centaurs, and made a bas-
relief, which is still preserved in the Casa Buonarroti. It is filled
with an intricate web of struggling forms, whose vigor and energy of
expression are eminently characteristic, and though wanting in clear
ness, concentration, and repose, is boldly conceived and executed. As
the work of a boy of eighteen it is a marvel. A critic who of all
the works of Michelangelo knew it and the Taunton Madonna only,
could write a chapter upon his genius without missing one of its dis
tinguishing characteristics. Dealing with nothing but the human form,
and seeking no plastic ideal through the Greek method of selection
and rejection, he took Nature as he found her, with her qualities and
defects, and combining them into a whole, leavened it with the sublime.
It is the impress of this element upon all which he touched that
reconciles us to the exaggerated attitudes, the excessive muscular de
velopment, and the strained and unnatural positions of the head and
limbs of so many of the great master's sculptured figures. Take away
the sublime, and you have the vapid style of his imitators, the husk
without the kernel, the forced utterance of the ranter in lieu of the
impassioned but natural speech of the true actor.
The bas-relief, and more especially the picture of which we have
been speaking, illustrate what has already been pointed out as the most
striking thing about Michelangelo's beginnings in art, that, stepping
at once upon his own ground, he began as he was to go on, ignor
ing the trammels of the schools, paying no attention to architectural
or landscape backgrounds, not busying himself with the realistic imi
tation of objects around him, and disdaining to make a show of his
knowledge of perspective, although he understood it like an Uccello or
a Mantegna, or a parade of finish, although when he saw fit he could
give as smooth a surface to marble or canvas as any artist of his time.
From the first he recognized the human form as the great object of

44 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
study, and strove to represent it in every possible and, we had almost
said, impossible attitude. He shared with Winckelmann the Greek
feeling that "the highest object of art for thinking men is man," and
with this conviction, planting his midnight torch in the breast of a
corpse, he pursued his investigations until he had mastered all the
springs of action and could work them at will.
It was by such researches into the hidden mechanism of the human
form (Fig. 5) that Michelangelo sought to alleviate his deep grief for
the death of Lorenzo
Fio. 5. de' Medici (1492, April
8).16 He was enabled
C* (WL>S$&^. to Pursue these through
the kindness of his
friend the prior of S10
Spirito, who gave him
a cell in the convent,
where he could dissect
dead bodies obtained
from the neighboring hospital, and thus he lay the foundation of that
wonderful knowledge in which he has had few equals.
The loss of his best friend and patron, that first great sorrow of
Michelangelo's life, was all the more keenly felt because his shy, sub
jective nature led him to have little converse with men.17 Lonely and
16 In sculpture he was not altogether inactive at this time. He had a studio in his
father's house, and there made a statue of Hercules, which was bought by Giambatista della
Palla for Francis I. in 1529. Henry V. placed it in the garden park at Fontainebleau in
1594, where it remained until 1713, when the garden was destroyed. What became of it
after this time is not known.
17 Among the artists of his own age Granacci seems to have been his one friend. At the
Gardens of St. Mark he soon quarrelled with his fellow-pupil, Torrigiano, and when they
worked together at the Carmine he received a crushing blow in the face from this Ul-tem-
pered, second-rate sculptor and braggadocio which disfigured him for life.
AVith the older artists, the acknowdedged masters of the time, he sympathized but little.
He did not appreciate the works of Lorenzo di Credi, never had any friendly relations with

THE FRENCH INVASION. 45
dispirited he went back to his father's house, and remained there until
Piero de' Medici induced him to return to the Medici Palace, where he
treated him as a hired servant, and employed him to build up a snow
statue in his courtyard, fit emblem of the then unstable and crumbling
fortunes of liis house (January 20, 1494). 18 Michelangelo's sense of ob
ligation to Lorenzo reconciled him at first to his position, but it was
impossible for him to hold it long under such a representative of the
family. The only way for him to shake himself free of Piero was to
quit Florence, but to do so at this moment was no light matter for an
honorable man, as it was to fly before a danger every loyal adherent
of the family was called upon to share.
In August, 1494, the Alps were black with the gathering masses
of the French army Charles VIII. was leading into Italy, at the
invitation of Ludovico Sforza, with the avowed object of seizing upon
the crown of Naples, which he claimed as the rightful heir of the
house of Anjou. Florence stood in the invader's path, and as the
liberals within her walls, with Savonarola at their head, looked to
Charles to deliver them from the tyranny of the Medici, it was a
foregone conclusion that Piero would be driven into exile. We may
suppose that Michelangelo reconciled his conscience to the step he
was about to take, by reasoning, that to wait for the catastrophe would
be worse than to depart before it happened, since he would then be
obliged to fly with the man whom he despised. This would set him
Lionardo ¦ da Vinci, who became his rival after he returned from Milan, and had a contempt
for Pietro Perugino, whom he must have had frequent opportunities of knowing during
their common residence at Florence.
Js It is generally said that the snow statue was the only commission given by Piero to
Michelangelo. This is not so, for in a letter to his father from Rome, dated August 19,
1497, Michelangelo refers to a commission for a statue for Piero, which he had never begun
because promises made to him had not been kept. "Now,'' he says, "I have bought a
piece of marble and am cutting out a figure for my own pleasure." This was perhaps the
Cupid bought (with the Bacchus) by Jacopo Gallo, which became the property of the Duchess
of Mantua and is now preserved in the Museum at Mantua. See Milanesi, Lettere, Vol.
II. p. 4.

46 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
in a bad light before his fellow-citizens, a result he wished to avoid,
as he fully sympathized with the popular party, to which, if he awaited
the moment of its triumph, he would not be able to adhere openly,
without appearing to be a traitor to the memory of his benefactor.
Nothing, then, remained for him to do but to leave Florence while
Piero still weakly held the reins of power. Having arrived at this
conclusion, he went to Venice, where he remained only a few days,
and thence, being out of funds, returned to Bologna. As Michelangelo's
purse was not a long one, and his luggage was light, he doubtless
accomplished much of his long journey on foot.
In the mean time political events had ripened. Piero de' Medici had
quitted Florence in November, just in time to escape the French, and
before Michelangelo reached Bologna had taken refuge there with his
family and a few adherents, to the great dissatisfaction of the Bolognese.
The city was so agitated, and the general condition of Italy so
unsettled, that a law had been lately made by which any stranger
entering or leaving the gates without having a seal of red wax upon
his thumb-nail by which he could be recognized as such, had to pay
a fine of fifty francs, or go to prison. Having neglected the required
formality, and being unable to pay the fine, Michelangelo would have
been imprisoned, had not a counterpart of the good Samaritan in the
person of a magistrate, named Gian Francesco Aldovrandi, who hap
pened to pass by at the very moment when he was about to be led
away to prison, inquired his name and circumstances, ordered him to
be set free, and offered him shelter in his house. It seems hardly
probable that Aldovrandi's act of kindness was induced by anything
which he had heard of Michelangelo, whose reputation was not great
enough to have preceded him at Bologna; but rather that, being a
cultivated man, fond of literature and the arts, and kindly disposed
to all artists, he felt compassion for one whom he found in distress.
The impulse -was a noble one, and the yielding to it proved a mutual
benefit; for while, on the one hand, Michelangelo gained a home and
a friend, his host secured the society of a man of rare genius, who

WORK AT BOLOGNA.

47

could not only talk admirably upon many subjects, but who could
read Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio aloud to him with the rare
expression and deep appreciation of one who was himself a poet of a
high order. While thus engaged, or when his mind was busy with
the deep problems of art, philosophy, and religion, which were its
habitual subjects of consideration, Michelangelo may have forgotten
his past sorrows and future uncertainties; but there must have been
many hours when they pressed heavily upon one accustomed to the
society of highly cultivated and learned men, and hitherto surrounded
with works of art calculated to stimulate his imagination and cul
tivate his taste. Although Bologna seemed to him a place of exile,
he could not return to Florence until political matters had assumed
a more definite shape. Work of an absorbing character would have
been a boon meanwhile, could he have found it, but all that his friend
could procure for him, and this probably not without much difficulty
on account of the jealousy of the Bo-
lognese sculptors, were commissions
from the monks of St. Domenick to
finish a statuette of St. Petronius,
begun by Niccola da Bari in the fif
teenth century, for the monumental
altar of the titular saint,19 and to
sculpture a kneeling angel holding a
candelabrum, for the altar table. The
angel (Fig. 6), which still keeps its
place in the church, is sweet and
pleasing, but wanting in that strength
and fire which marked Michelangelo's
delrat at Florence, and were it the
product of an unknown artist would
hardly attract attention. Its heavy

Flo. 6.

irrnrirrirwrrm

19 The base of this monumental altar is the Area or sarcophagus sculptured by Niccola
Pisano and his scholar, Fra Guglielmo Agnelli, in 1260, to receive the bones of St. Do-

48 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
draperies remind us of those of Giacomo della Quercia (1425-1433),
whose bas-reliefs upon the doors of the basilica of St. Petronius Michel
angelo undoubtedly studied. We have but to compare one of these —
the Creation of Adam by Quercia, who has been called Michelangelo's
precursor20 — with the far mightier conception upon the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, to feel that, consciously or unconsciously, Michelangelo
must have had it in his mind. The actual similarity of the two com
positions would not, indeed, impress us so strongly as proving Quercia's
influence, for both find their prototype in Ghiberti's rendering of the
same subject, were it not for their analogous feeling and sentiment.
It cannot be said that the time spent by Michelangelo at Bologna
was barren of results if it thus aided in his artistic development.21
On his return to Florence, he found the city at peace under a com
paratively stable republican government. Lorenzo and Giovanni, the
sons of Pier Francesco de' Medici, had given their allegiance to the
new order of things and adopted the title of "Popolani," and Michel
angelo could at last call himself a republican without any appearance
of ingratitude to their family. A complete transformation had taken
place during his absence. Liberty had been regained without the shed
ding of a single drop of blood, and the beautiful city was now governed
by equitable laws, framed with a recognition of individual rights
and of the common dependence of all upon the Creator. The best
menick. Above it rises a lofty structure enriched with statuettes and garlands, the work
of Niccola da Bari, and the front of the altar on which it rests is covered with delicately
wrought bas-reliefs by Alfonso Lombardi, a Ferrarese sculptor of the sixteenth century. For
a detailed description of the whole, see Tuscan Sculptors, Vol. I. Ch. I. p. 19.
20 Giacomo della Quercia, or della Fonte, as he was called from the beautiful fountain
which he sculptured for the Piazza del Duomo at Siena, was bom at Quercia in 1374, and
died at Siena in 1438.
21 Vasari and Condivi both say that Michelangelo stayed at Bologna more than a year ;
but M. de Montaiglon, in his biography of Michelangelo (Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 1,
1876), shows that as he was one of the persons consulted about the construction of the
great Council Hall in the Palace of the Signory at Florence, with which Cronaca was charged
on the 15th of July, 1495, he must have returned home earlier than has been hitherto
supposed.

THE SLEEPING CUPID. 49
citizens, under the guidance of Savonarola and the gonfaloniere Soderini,
ruled the state, order and sobriety were everywhere visible, and the
danger which threatened on all sides served but to bind men's hearts
together, with a firm resolve to maintain the republic at all hazards
against the Medici, whose partisans unceasingly labored to bring about
their return to power. The popular party were slow to believe in the
liberalism of those who had been in any way connected with the
Medici, and looked with distrust upon men who, like Michelangelo,
kept up friendly relations with the " Popolani," whose adhesion to
the republic every one knew to be insincere. In his case these rela
tions did not imply bad faith, for it was natural that Lorenzo de'
Medici, who had inherited the literary and artistic tastes of his name
sake " II Magnifico," should be interested in an artist whose education
had been begun under his fostering care, and that, when he showed
it, his advances should be met with the warmth of a grateful spirit,
which could not forget the past. We have, however, no reason to
suppose that he or his brother Giuliano made any attempt to engage
Michelangelo in their political intrigues. Lorenzo gave him employ
ment,22 and as the story goes, it was by his advice that he sent his
latest work, a sleeping Cupid, to a Milanese dealer at Rome named
Baldassare, with instructions to bury it in the ground until the mar
ble surface had lost its freshness, and then sell it as an antique.
This somewhat unworthy trick having been played upon the Cardi
nal di San Giorgio, who bought the statue for two hundred ducats
and placed it in his palace on the Lungara, Baldassare endeavored to
cheat Michelangelo into believing that the thirty ducats which he
sent him was the whole sum which he had received for it. Not long
after the cheat was discovered, and the statue was returned on the
dealer's hands. The Cardinal sent an emissary to Florence, who iden-
22 A St. John sculptured by Michelangelo for Lorenzo di Pier Francesco, and long sup
posed to be lost, has been lately recognized in a statue attributed to Donatello, belonging
to Count Rossellmini Gualandi of Pisa. The wood-cut of it, given at p. 25 of Mr. Wilson's
Life and Works of Michelangelo, does not incline us to put faith in the new hypothesis.
4

50 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
tified Michelangelo as the sculptor of the Cupid, and having assured
himself that he had not been a party to the fraud, invited him to
Rome in the name of his master.28 Anxious to get his statue, or a
fair price for it, Michelangelo left Florence for Rome, and arrived
there on the 15th of June, 1496. In his first letter to Lorenzo de'
Medici he states that he has been very kindly received at the palace,
but that he has failed in his effort to get possession of the statue.24
He also mentions that the Cardinal sent him to look at certain statues
in his palace, and asked him if he felt able " to make something beau
tiful " for him. " To this," he adds, " I replied that I would do my best
to satisfy his Eminence, and I have since bought a piece of marble
for a figure the size of life, and intend to begin it immediately."25
In reading this letter we cannot but regret that it contains no record
of the writer's first impressions of the Eternal City, though this could
hardly have been expected from Michelangelo,26 whose letters are gen
erally filled with statements of his personal affairs, coupled with ener
getic and laconic records of annoyances and disappointments connected
with works commenced or lately finished, and contain few accounts
of persons or surroundings. His provoking taciturnity in regard to
23 Gotti, Vol. I. p. 15.
24 Baldassare declared that he would rather break it up than exchange it for the thirty
ducats which he had paid him for it. Gotti (op. cit. Vol. I. p. 15) says that the Cupid
afterwards came into the possession of Duke Valentino, who gave it to Isabella, Marchion
ess of Mantua. It may still be seen in the Museum at Mantua. See Gaye's Cartcggio,
Vol. II. pp. 53, 54.
25 This letter to Lorenzo de' Medici is dated July 2, 1496. (See Milanesi, p. 375.) In
it he speaks of his having bought a piece of marble for a statue ordered by the Cardinal,
and in another letter to his father says that he is waiting to leave Rome till he is paid
for it, "for in dealing with such great people 'hisogna andare adagio.' "
26 The mention by Francesco di Sangallo of his going with Michelangelo to see the
Laocobn, a, few days after it had been discovered in the Baths of Titus, is an excellent in
stance of that artistic reticence which we have so much reason to regret. He contents
himself with recording the fact of its discovery, and adds, "When seen, we returned to
dinner." And yet this was one of the finest relics of antiquity, supposed to be the very
group described by Pliny, and of a character which could not but excite the enthusiasm
of Michelangelo and his companion.

THE PIETA. 51
places furnishes us with another illustration of the fact that descrip
tive writing is essentially modern. We have but to glance over the
whole range of literature from ancient times up to the last century,
when it came into vogue, to see that this is the case. What treasures
the books of Pausanius would have been to us, had they been written
in the spirit of a modern traveller; or the Italian letters of Milton,
had they been prodigal of details like those of Goethe in the Ital-
ienisclie Heise !
Flattered by the Cardinal's reception, and sensible of the superior
advantages of Rome as a residence for an artist, Michelangelo took a
studio and remained there for four years,27 during which time he pro
duced two works of an extremely opposite character, one of which, the
famous Pieta at St. Peter's, may be considered as an expression of the
religious feelings which had been awakened in him by Savonarola, and
the other, the Bacchus of the Uffizi, which he sculptured for Jacopo
Gallo, may be taken as a typical representation of the life which sur
rounded him at Rome, then ruled by Alexander VI. Between the
group and the statue there is that wide gap which separates the noble
from the ignoble. The Bacchus represents a drunken youth with a
wine-cup in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, from which
a little satyr is stealthily regaling himself. It embodies the vulgar
idea of the god of wine, who differs from the inspired Dionysos as
the Venus Pandemos from the Venus Urania, and scantily atones for
its want of ideality by skilful modelling and anatomic correctness.
We can only excuse Michelangelo for sele'cting such a subject by sup
posing that he consulted the taste of his employer rather than his
own. In the Pieta,28 on the contrary, we may believe that he found
a theme congenial to his mind.
He must have often wandered under the vast roof of the venerable
basilica, so rich in associations with the purer ages of the Church, and
27 Vasari (Vol. XII. p. 169) says that his first Roman work was a cartoon of St. Francis re
ceiving the Stigmata, for the Cardinal di San Giorgio's barber, who was himself an artist.
28 Sculptured for Jean de Groslaye de Villiers, Cardinal de St, Denis and Ambassador

52 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
so full of tombs of great and good men of past times, whose faith was
a standing reproach to the scandalous unbelief of those in which his
lot was cast. Impressed with the religio loci, and proud to think that
a work from his hand was to be placed within the walls of this central
edifice of Christendom, he determined to make his Pieta worthy of
it, never dreaming that it was to be the first stone of the new temple
which he was destined to raise upon the ruins of the old. Had he
been told that it would stand in a new church planned by himself, and
crowned with a dome which was to be the greatest monument to his
memory, he would have looked sadly upon the venerable edifice whose
last days were numbered.
The Pieta (see tail-piece) represents the mother of the Saviour of
mankind gazing upon the mortal remains of him who is himself the
spring of life, the fountain of faith in things unseen. To behold him
lifeless whom she knew to be divine, was a source of wonder to one
of her mortal nature ; but supposing, as we may, that since the day when
the angel spoke to her, she had walked in the light of knowledge, we
may believe that her feelings were not of a nature to call forth strong-
signs of grief when at last she bent over the lifeless body in which
his divine spirit had deigned to dwell. Her chief office in art at all
periods is to show her divine son to the world. While he is yet a
child he sits enthroned upon her arm, or stands erect upon her lap
like a statue upon its pedestal; and when he has grown to manhood
and has consummated the mighty sacrifice which he came on earth to
make, she lays him reverently across her knees, and sits in calm dig
nity, that all may see the blessed corpse of him who died that they
might live.
Here, more completely than in any other work of modern sculpture,
art and Christianity are allied ; here alone, among the plastic works of
of Charles VIII., between 1499 and 1500, who placed it in the chapel of the kings of France
dedicated to St. Petronilla, at St. Peter's. The contract bears date August, 1498. It is
given by Gotti in his second volume, op. cit. p. 33. The price agreed upon was four hun
dred and fifty ducats.

THE PIETA. 53
Michelangelo, do we find evidence of that religious spirit which he
embodied in his sonnets. In his sublime frescos at the Sistine Chapel
he is a historian of sacred things, who rises to the lofty height of
the inspired Hebrew writers in his own peculiar language, but he is
not, from the nature of the subjects with which he there dealt, what
he is in his Pieta, — an exponent, through form, of the gospel spirit
of absolute submission to the will of God, whose type is the prostrate
figure of the dead Christ. In his sculptured Holy Families and Ma
donnas there is no show of Christian fervor; still less in his mannered
and unmeaning statue of Christ at the Minerva; but little in his half-
finished groups of the Deposition at Rome, Palestrina, and Florence ;
and in the bas-relief at the Albergo dei Poveri at Genoa. Consider
ing how truly religious he was, it seems strange that such slight trace
of it is to be found in that art which, as he loved it -most, would,
we should have supposed, have been that in which his deepest feel
ings would have found expression
Raphael's mind was infinitely less religious than Michelangelo's, and
yet, judged by his works, he was the more Christian artist of the two.
He not only entered into the spirit of the Old Testament, when he dealt
with subjects drawn from it, but also into that of the New, when it
became the fountain of his inspiration. Where is faith in Christ more
fervently expressed than in the St. Peter of the Miraculous Draught of
Fishes ? Where are humility and endurance more fully embodied than
in the Christ of the Spasimo ? Where is the Divinity so wonderfully
incarnated as in the infant Saviour of the San Sisto ? To parallel
these and many others which we might cite among Raphael's works,
we have but the Pieta among those of Michelangelo. Harmoniously
composed, its lines combine admirably from every point of view.
Nor is the inner harmony of parts with each other less remarkable
than that which they bear to the whole. What the Greeks call
¦n-aOov, that is, the unity of feeling which runs through the whole
body of the dead Christ, is wonderfully rendered. The drooping head,
the fallen arm, and the helpless hanging of the feet all tell of death,

54 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
— of death which has not yet stiffened the limbs or robbed them of
their suppleness. Unlike his later works, there is here no turgid
swelling of muscles, or exaggeration of form, but all is simple, true
to nature, and nobly pathetic.
Sculptured in the very last years of the fifteenth century, the Pieta
stands like a boundary-stone on the extreme limits of the quattro
cento. Its devotional spirit marks its connection with the art of the
past, as its anatomical precision and masterly treatment connect it
with that of the future. With it the first period of Michelangelo's
development ends. The curtain falls on Rome, and the scene opens
with the new century at Florence, to which he returned, after an absence
of four years, to begin a new phase of his life, to show a fresh devel
opment of his genius, and to engage with Lionardo da Vinci, who, after
a nineteen years' residence at Milan, had just returned to the banks
of the Arno, in a world-renowned contest under the eyes of the young
Raphael, who in this same year had commenced that course of train
ing at Perugia which laid the foundations of a fame second to that
of neither.

CHAPTER III.
Raphael, 1600-1508.
Title. Date. Owner.
1. The Crucifixion  1502 Lord Dudley, London.
2. Coronation of the Virgin  1502-1503 Vatican Gallery.
Predella. Annunciation, Adoration, and
Presentation  Vatican Gallery.
3. The Staffa Madonna  1503-1504 St. Petersburgh.
4. Virgin between SS. Jerome and Francis  1503? Beriin Museum.
5. The Marriage of the Virgin  1504 Brera, Milan.
6. Fresco at San Severo  1505 Perugia.
7. The Adoration of the Shepherds, Ancajani..l503-1504 Berlin.
8. Madonna Ausidei  1505 Blenheim.
9. Madonna of the Monastery of St. Anthony
of Padua  1504-1505 National Gallery.
' 1. Garden of Olives  Burdett Courts.
2. Bearing the Cross  Leigh Court near Bristol.
3. SS. Francis and Anthony of Padua.. Dulwich Gallery.
i. Pieta  Mr. H. Dawson.
10. Madonna of the Solly Collection?  1504-1505? Berlin.
11. Tobias and the Angel in Perugino's Triptych ? 1504-1505 National Gallery.
12. The Dream of the Knight  1505-1506 National Gallerj'.
13. Christ in the Garden  1504-1505 Mr. Fuller Maitlaud, England.
14. The Three Graces  1506? Lord Dudley, London.
15. The St. George  1506 National Gallery.
16. Madonna di Terranuova  1505? Berlin.
17. Madonna del Gran Duca  1505 Pitti Palace.
18. Madonna Alfani  Formerly at Perugia.
19. Portraits of Angelo and Maddalena Doni.. ..1506-1507 Pitti Palace.
20. Madonna del Cardellino  1506-1507 Uffizi, Florence.
21. Madonna Aldobrandini  1507 National Gallery.
22. Madonna with the Pink  1507 Duke of Northumberland.
23. The Belle Jardiniere  1507-1508 Louvre.
24. Madonna in the Garden  1506 Belvidere, Vienna.

Predella.

25. Madonna of the Casa Tempi  1506? Munich.
26. Madonna Taddeo Taddci  1506
27. Orleans Madonna  1505-1506 Due d'Aumale, Paris.
28. The Entombment  1507 Borghese Palace, Rome.
29. Madonna Canigiani  1506 Munich.
30. Madonna Colonna  1506-1507 Berlin.
31. The Little Madonna of Lord Cowper  1506 Panshanger House, England.
32. The Large Madonna of Lord Cowper (Niccolini) 1508 Panshanger House, England.
33. Madonna del Baldacchiuo  1507-1508 Pitti Palace.
34. Portrait of Raphael  1506 Gallery of the Uffizi
35. Holy Family with the Lamb  1505? Madrid.
36. St. Catherine of Alexandria  1506 National Gallery.
Michelangelo, 1500-1504.
1 . Holy Family. Oil Painting ?  Before 1504 Tribune, Uffizi.
2. Cartoon. Battle of Pisa  1504-1506 Not extant.
3. Statue of David  1501-1504 Bargello, Florence.
4. Bronze Statue of David  1503-1504 Not extant.
5. Madonna and Child. Marble group  Date uncertain. Notre Dame de Bruges.
6. Holy Family. Bas-relief  1503-1504 Uffizi.
7. Holy Family. Bas-relief  1503-1504 Royal Academy, London.
8. St. Matthew  1503-1504 Accademia, Florence.

RAPHAEL.

55

CHAPTER III.

MOM W*

jJSJ

*Ki

~ xxi

"Art is only art when it adds mind to form." — Allan Cunningham.
TYLE, or rather a style, designates
the general character of expression
peculiar to an individual or a pe
riod, and comprises therefore all
that makes special the form in
which thought of any kind is
cast. The characteristic peculiari
ties which mark the styles of Ra
phael and Michelangelo distinguish
them from each other, and fur
nish points of comparison between
them. Formed in all cases by
natural tendencies and dominating influences, a style always expresses
the character of the mind from which it emanated, and therefore may be
excellent or the reverse. No work can, however, have style unless it is
both original and elevated in its character. Noble style is in a work
of art what high breeding is in an individual, — it is the sangre azul
which permeates it and gives it dignity. Adrieu Brauwer had a style,
that is to say, he painted pictures which we know to be his when we
see them, as his friends knew him to be Adrien Brauwer by his face
and person; but his works are wanting in style, in other words, they
are vulgar and ignoble. Great artists like Raphael and Michelangelo
have styles of their own, and give style to their works, which are
therefore both original and noble.
Raphael had three distinct styles, or manners, each one of which

56 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
corresponds to a period during which he was brought under influences
of a totally different character from those which shaped the other two.
His first or Peruginesque style (1500 to 1507) is stamped with the
impress of Perugino ; his second or Florentine (1506 to 1508) shows
individual development under the influence of Lionardo da Vinci and
Fra Bartolomeo ; his third or Roman, though not unaffected by Michel
angelo, is that in which his fully matured powers were nourished by
constant study of nature and the antique, and his work was com
pletely Raphaelesque.
The first of his three styles is the one whose limits it is most diffi
cult to determine, and within which, when these are approximatively
fixed, it is most difficult to ascertain the order in which the works
belonging to it succeed each other. Vasari mentions certain pictures
as painted by Raphael during his apprenticeship ; but as he gives no
dates, unless they can be fixed by collateral evidence, our only guide to
the correct classification of these and other early works is their greater or
less resemblance to Perugino. The shades of difference between master
and pupil are at first mere gossamer films, so thinly spread between
them that we almost doubt whether we are not self-deceived in find
ing a greater tenderness of feeling and a more positive grace of line
in those works which we know to be by Raphael. Gradually, how
ever, the shades become more and more pronounced, until we at last
know that we are in the presence of a greater artist than Perugino,
who is just enough under his master's influence to show who that
master was. Could we see Raphael's first pictures hanging side by
side with some of Perugino's works, we should be struck with the
close resemblance between them, and feel the very gradual develop
ment of the pupil's individuality. The Coronation of the Virgin at
the Vatican,1 for instance, and more especially the Crucifixion in
Lord Dudley's gallery,2 are Peruginesque in composition, in type of
1 Painted for Maddalena degli Oddi in 1502-1503. A drawing of the upper part of
this picture exists in the Musee Wicar at Lille.
2 Painted for the Cappolla Gavari in the Church of St. Domenick at Citta di Castello.

EARLY PICTURES. 57
face, in the arrangement of drapeiy, and in the pose of the figures, nor
can we see that the heads are a whit more spiritual in expression.
Perugino had left Perugia in 1502, when Raphael painted the Coro
nation of the Virgin, so that it may be looked upon as a wonderful
evidence of the rapidity with which he had learned to paint like his
master, who was then established with his beautiful wife, Clara Fan-
celli, and his assistants, at Florence, where, with short intermissions,
he continued to reside for several years, keeping his studio there and
writing " penctore in Firenza " after his name.3 If Raphael followed him
much earlier than is generally supposed, he did not remain with him,
but went wherever work was to be done, as to Citta di Castello to
paint the Crucifixion for the Church of St. Domenick, and another
picture (now lost) for that of San Agostino; to Siena, in 1503, to
assist Pinturicchio; and to Perugia to commence a fresco at San
Severo which he never returned to finish.4
Passavant follows Pungileoni (Elogio Storico) in assigning 1500 as the date of this picture ;
but this, as well as the date 1495, which both give as the year in which Raphael entered
Perugino's studio, is erroneous. Rumohr says the Crucifixion was painted in 1504, but
this, as Grimm (op. cit. I. 58) remarks, is too late. 1504 is the date of the Sposalizio,
whose superiority is too great to allow us to suppose that the Crucifixion was painted in
the same year. Prince Canino bought the latter picture at the Fesch sale for 10,000 scudi,
and sold it in 1847 to its present owner, Lord Dudley, who exhibited it at Manchester in
1857. Although the Crucifixion is allowed to have been painted after the Coronation of
the Virgin, it is even more like Perugino. The drawing by Raphael of the Crucifixion in
the Albertina Collection at Vienna shows, according to Springer (op. cit. p. 69), greater
technical skill than that for the Coronation in the Musee Wicar at Lille.
8 This is proved by the letters to Isabella, duchess of Mantua, about * picture to be
painted for her by Perugino. See Zeitsclvrift, 2te! Heft., 1874.
* After Raphael's death, Perugino was called upon to complete the lower half of this work
which he had left unfinished. This accounts for the affixed date, 1521. (Grimm, op. cit.
p. 101, note 2.) Raphael painted his part of the fresco in 1505. Studies for the hands of St.
John and the head of St. Placidius exist in the coUection of Raphael drawings at Oxford, and
upon the same sheet of paper there is a pen-and-ink sketch of a group by Lionardo da
Vinci, one engraved by Edelinck from the famous cartoon of the Battle of the Standard,
which that great artist executed in the summer of 1504. The persistently Umbrian char
acter of Raphael's work at San Severo, when, as this sketch shows, the young artist was
alive to the vigor and life of Lionardo's style, is curious as proving how slowly he shook
off Perugino's yoke.

58 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
The comparison of these early works of Raphael with others in
which, though still under his master's influence, he shows individuality
of feeling, is interesting, as marking his progress. The Crucifixion, the
Coronation of the Virgin, and the Adoration of the Shepherds at Berlin
(if indeed this latter be the work of Raphael, and not, as seems prob
able, of his fellow-pupil, Lo Spagna), are all works of a school ; but
the Staffa Madonna, lately purchased from Count Connestabile at Perugia
by the Grand Duchess of Russia, is the bud of a new fruit grafted on
the parent stem, in which the germs of the many Madonnas which Ra
phael was to paint lie hidden; for, though in a less degree, it contains
that combination of the motherly and the virginal element in woman,
which is, perhaps, their distinguishing characteristic. In Perugino's
hands the Madonna would have been less sweet, less tender, less hu
man, less divine.
Besides this picture in which Raphael shows us something of him
self, there are others, such as the Tobias and the Angel of the National
Gallery, in which he has quickened and warmed the somewhat cold
and monotonous conception of his master.5
Perugino's drawing at the British Museum proves that he designed
the whole composition ; but one can hardly fail to detect Raphael's work
in the glance of trustful reliance with which the young Tobias looks up
to the guardian angel from under the shelter of his broad wing, in
the firm and yet gentle grasp with which the divine messenger takes
hold of the young hand as it rises to meet his steadying touch, and in
the sympathetic look with which he meets the upraised eye of the
youth, whose attitude is one of absolute reliance and unquestioning
obedience. 5 That Raphael worked upon it is proved by his drawing at Oxford of the head of the
young Tobias three times repeated, once evidently from nature. This head, which is emi
nently lovely, is probably the portrait of a favorite model at Florence, as it is to be met
with in the works of Lorenzo di Credi and other Florentine painters of the time. Springer
(Raphaelsludicn) points out this fact as showing that Raphael worked under Perugino at
Florence earlier than has generally been supposed.

THE SPOSALIZIO. 59
There is, perhaps, no better way of illustrating the difference between
the Florentine and the Umbrian schools than by comparing this lovely
example of the placid and earnest spirit which animated the latter,
with a picture of the same subject, in the same gallery, painted by
Antonio Pollajuolo, one of the most renowned masters of the latter half
of the fifteenth century. In it all is mannered and theatrical; the
angel is affected even to her finger-tips; she hurries onward with her
young protege at a rapid pace, and yet seems to be thinking more
about displaying her elegantly disposed draperies than about helping
him on his journey. Now Pollajuolo was a consummate artist; he
painted with all the firmness and delicacy of one who had been bred
as a goldsmith, and had complete technical mastery over the many arts
which he practised ; but in common with other masters of his time he
aimed at effect, was always self-conscious, and showed it in the figures
which he modelled, engraved, or painted. Art in his hands was run
ning into a mannerism, which was happily counteracted by the Um
brian spirit, and raised to an antique standard by Raphael. Like the
turbid waters of the Rhone, which flow out of the Alpine valley and
are poured forth at Geneva pure from stain, so the river of art passed
through the Umbrian lake, and issued forth at Rome in a clear and
pellucid current.
If it be interesting to trace the growing Raphael in the Staffa Ma
donna and the Tobias, it is even more so to mark his advance in the
Sposalizio and the Knight's Dream. The Sposalizio, which he painted
for the Franciscan monks at Citta di Castello (1504), should be com
pared with the picture of the same subject painted by Perugino for
the Brotherhood of St. Joseph at Perugia (1500). 6 The general arrange
ment of the figures in the two pictures is identical, but that of Raphael
has more grace of line, and shows far greater skill in grouping. In
treating this new subject, Perugino, as was his wont, adapted a cartoon,
which he had prepared for the fresco of Christ's Charge to Peter, to
his present wants, putting the same Bramantesque temple in the back-
6 Now at Caen.

60 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
ground, a number of small figures in the middle distance, and a for
mally arranged row in the foreground. Raphael, at his instance or
that of the monks, his employers, followed this triple division, but he
gave the temple a nobler and more imposing aspect; disposed the
groups in the middle distance with greater variety and a truer feel
ing for balance and effect; and grouped the figures in the foreground
with a certain happy accidence, which shows an intuitive knowledge of
the true principles of composition not to be found in the formal picture
of his master. While Perugino's High Priest is planted sturdily and
stiffly upon his two feet, Raphael's turns his head a little to the left,
towards which the whole upper part of his figure sways, and throws
his weight upon his left foot. The group formed by the modest and
graceful Virgin, the manly and dignified Joseph, and the noble High
Priest, is one of surpassing charm, but it is perhaps in the figure of
the disappointed young suitor breaking his bow across his bent knee,
that the young Umbrian painter shows his exceptional genius. In the
lovely allegory at the National Gallery called the Knight's Dream it
reveals itself plainly. Apart from its real beauties, this picture has a
special interest, as it typifies a moment in the young painter's life
when he was called upon to choose between good and evil. Ad
mitting the world to his confidence, he here reveals the secret strug
gles of his young heart, and tells us how pure that young heart was.
The subject is that choice between a life of effort and a life of pleasure
which every one is called upon to make when he passes from child
hood into manhood. A young knight, sleeping at the foot of a laurel-
tree, sees in his dreams two women standing beside him, the elder and
graver of whom holds in one hand a drawn sword and in the other a
book, and speaks to him of duty, honor, and effort as the price of fame.
The other, who is more gayly dressed, and neither nun-like nor pensive
like her sister, offers him a rose and smiles upon him, promising ease
and pleasure if he will follow her guidance.
Like the two figures, the landscape background is symbolic. Behind
Duty rises a steep, rocky path; behind Pleasure stretches a smiling

THE DREAM OF THE KNIGHT. 61
valley through which a river winds. In the young knight we recog
nize Raphael, who is about to choose between two roads, the one lead
ing upwards over the steep rocks of toil and self-denial to fame and
glory, the other down into the bright valley where pleasure dwells,
wdiich as here typified, and therefore to be taken as his idea of pleas
ure, is no Rubens-like Bacchante, but a modest maiden, who, while she
offers a rose, seems to warn the young knight by her semi-serious expres
sion that it will soon fade in his hands.
Whether Raphael had ever been at Florence when he painted this
charming little picture, which like the Connestabile Madonna, the St.
George, the Three Graces, and other pictures in his first or Perugi
nesque style, is finished with a care befitting a work so full of mean
ing, is a point upon which critics differ.7 If he followed his master
to that centre of art life as early as 1502, could he have retained his
Umbrian manner intact until 1504, the period generally assigned as
that of his first visit ? 8 It is possible that he kept up his connection
7 The Dream of the Knight was brought to England in 1800 by Ottley, who bought it
out of the Borghese gallery, and sold by Christie in 1801 for four hundred and seventy
guineas. It was successively owned by Sir Thomas Laurence, Lady Sykes, and the Rev.
Thomas Egerton, and in 1847 was purchased for the National Gallery at the price of £ 1,000.
(M. Reiset, Gazette des Beaux Arts, March 1, 1877.) The latest of the pictures of Raphael's
Peruginesque period mentioned in this chapter cannot have been painted after 1504. In
that year Raphael went to Urbino to assist at the ceremony which took place when Duke
Guidobaldo was made papal gonfaloniere, and adopted Francesco Maria della Rovere, nephew
of Julius II., as his heir. Passavant conjectures that he then painted for the duke the
admirable little picture of Christ in the Garden, now owned by Mr. Fuller Maitland.
From the convent of the Camaldoli at Urbino, where it remained up to the end of the
sixteenth century, it passed into the hands of Prince Gabrielli of Gubbio, resident at Rome.
In 1829 it was stolen from the prince's gallery by a servant, who sold it to a dealer
with other objects of art for forty scudi. The theft was unknown until one day, as the
prince walked through the room where the frame still hung, the wind blew aside the silk
curtain hanging before it, and showed that it was empty. Steps were immediately taken
for the recovery of the picture, and by the help of the police it was restored to its owner,
who in 1844 sold it for four thousand scudi to Woodburn, a well-known London dealer.
In 1849 it was sold at auction for £787 10*. to Mr. Maitland of Stanstead, Sussex.
8 It is difficult to answer this question. Those who, like Burckhardt, find traces of Flor-

62 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
with Perugino as late as 1506. Meanwhile he had been working at
Siena. No one who has ever visited that picturesque city can have forgotten
the fountain in the great square, from which Jacopo della Quercia took
his surname of "della Fonte." A hundred years before he sheltered
its sparkling waters under a sculptured parapet (1419), they had been
brought to the Piazza, and an antique statue, said to be the work of
Lysippus,9 had been set up over them. In the civil commotions
which subsequently disturbed their city the devout, who were ignorant
of the dictum of St. Augustine that "a pagan statue when converted
to Christian uses merits protection like a human convert,'' saw signs
of the anger of Heaven against a people who, in lieu of the Madonna,
had placed Fonte Gaja under the guardianship of a heathen goddess.
" Remove it," said a member of the Council of Ten, " and our intestine
troubles will come to an end ; and that we may transfer them to our
enemies, let us bury its broken fragments within the Florentine terri
tory." 10 That the descendants of these same Sienese iconoclasts could,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, look complacently upon an
antique marble group of the Three Graces (Fig. 7), which Cardinal
Francesco Piccolomini had placed in his family chapel in the Cathedral,
shows how great a change the Renaissance had wrought in Italy. The
people had become so familiar with the sight of pagan decorations in and
entine influence in his early studies for the Predella of the Coronation of the Virgin will
answer it in the affirmative, as will those who, like Springer, say that he was so completely
under Perugino's influence in 1502, that the inclination to leave him even for such a master
as Lionardo da Vinci could not have been awakened in him. Those, on the other hand,
like Grimm, who find no sign of Florentine influence in the San Severo fresco, which was
not painted until 1505, when he had certainly been at Florence, may well believe that it
tjok a long time to wean him even in a degree from this Umbrian style.
9 The names of the great Greek sculptors were at this time used as synonymes for perfec
tion, and antique marbles found were attributed to Phidias, Praxiteles, or Lysippus without
any knowledge of their styles, of which the archaeologists of the fourteenth century had
no idea.
10 The descent of Henry VII., Emperor of Germany, into Italy furnishes a more natural
explanation of the Sienese disturbances during the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

THE PICCOLOMINI CHAPEL.

63

about Christian churches, that no one thought of being shocked at an
act which in the days of Giotto would have been regarded as impious.
The ceiling of the chapel, called the library of the Cathedral, was deco
rated with mythologi
cal subjects relating to Fm- 7-
Venus, Proserpine, and
Antiope; and in ac
cordance with the hab
it of a time which saw
no incongruity in mix
ing Christian with pa
gan subjects, the walls
were covered with fres
cos relating to the life
of the Cardinal's an
cestor, the renowned
JEneas Sylvius (Pope
Pius II.), by Pinturic
chio, the assistant and
lifelong scholar of Pe
rugino. A highly fin
ished little picture in
Lord Dudley's gallery
at London of three nude
female figures grouped
like those of the an
tique marble, but dif
fering in proportion,
expression, and senti
ment, and a drawing
of two of the Three Graces on a page of one of Raphael's sketch
books at Venice, prove that he visited Siena, and there is no doubt
that while there he rendered very valuable aid to Pinturicchio in the

64 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
preparation of his cartoons.11 The antique group was, perhaps, the first
example of its kind which he had ever seen, and if so, it laid the
foundation of that love for works of ancient art which was afterwards
to contribute so powerfully to the formation of his third manner.12
Its effect upon one hitherto exclusively occupied with religious art
must have been to give new food for thought, to strengthen the long
ing to see other classic works, and to awaken a desire to come in
contact with artists who had formed themselves upon the study of
ancient masterpieces of art as well as of nature. Umbria no longer
satisfied his requirements, the studio of Perugino was too narrow a
field for his capacities, and this conviction brought him, within a year
from the date of his Sienese visit, to the gates of Florence.
The letter of introduction which he brought from Joanna della Ro
vere,13 Duchess of Sora, the sister of the Duke of Urbino, to Pietro
11 Pinturicchio sent for Raphael, who, greatly flattered by such proof of esteem from one
so much older than himself, came to Siena in 1503. Vasari (Vol. V. p. 263, Le Monnier
ed.) says that Raphael designed the whole series. This is probably a very exaggerated
statement, but there are figure drawings at the Uffizi, at Perugia, and at Chatsworth, as
well as studies for draperies for two of the Siena frescos, — the Canonization of St. Catherine,
and the Marriage of the Emperor Frederic III., — which prove that it is not altogether
untrue. The fact that Pinturicchio introduced Raphael as one of the spectators into the
fresco of the Canonization of St. Catherine substantiates the statement of his co-operation.
He is represented in company with an older person, evidently Pinturicchio, who took this
way of showing his gratitude for help rendered.
12 This hypothesis falls to the ground if Castiglione be correct in saying that the palace
of the Duke of Urbino contained many marble and bronze statues which Raphael would have
had frequent opportunities of seeing during his boyhood. There are, however, three strong
reasons for supposing that the author of the Corteggiano drew on his imagination for his facts
in making this statement, the first of which is that among the treasures of the dukes of
Urbino which were removed to Rome and are now in the Vatican there are no statues ;
the second, that none exist in the palace at Urbino at the present time ; and the third,
that no such influence as they would have been likely to exert upon the painters of the
Umbrian school at a time when the minds of all men were absorbed in the study of the
antique, is perceptible in their works.
13 Gaye, Passavant, and Milanesi believe in the authenticity of this letter, but Grimm
(Das Lcben Raphaels, Vol. I. p. 83) doubts it, and postpones Raphael's arrival at Florence
to the year 1506.

LIONARDO DA VINCI. 65
Soderini, its chief magistrate, spoke of him as a highly talented, discreet,
and gentle youth, anxious to take advantage of the great opportuni
ties for improvement open to him at Florence. There can be no doubt
that it secured him a kind reception from Soderini, and as little that
their first conversation turned upon the two artists and the three works
of art, which were of the greatest interest to the new-comer. The two
artists were Lionardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and the three works
of art were their cartoons for the proposed frescos in the great hall
of the Palazzo Vecchio and the statue of David, which had been
lately set up upon the platform in front of that time-honored building.
While Raphael felt but little desire to approach Michelangelo, who dis
liked his master, had no sympathy with the tenets of the Umbrian
school to which he belonged, and represented the very opposite of all
that he had been taught to admire in art, we know that one of his
strongest desires was to see Lionardo and study his works. He had
not only been taught by his father to venerate him as the first of
living artists,1* but he had in all probability met him when, as Cassar
Borgia's military engineer, Lionardo went to Perugia while inspecting
the fortresses of the Romagna. After ten years' absence at Mdan in
the service of Duke Ludovico Sforza, he had taken up his abode at
Florence, and for the past eight months had been working upon his
cartoon of the Battle of the Standard, in the hall of the Popes at Ste
Maria Novella. We cannot doubt Raphael's impatience to see this
master-work, then far advanced, and we can imagine the delight and
astonishment with which he recognized in it the result of a science
such as he had never imagined, and a strength and energy of expres
sion exceeding anything which he could have believed possible.15
14 "Lionardo da Vinci e'l Perusino,
Pier della Pieve, che son divini pittori."
Cronaca Rimata di Giovanni Santi.
15 This representation of a struggle, at the battle of Anghiari, between the Florentine and
Pisan soldiers for the possession of a standard is chiefly known to us by Edelinck's engrav
ing. M. Reiset says, " It is very probable that the Flemish drawing from which Mariette
says Edelinck worked, was hut a poor copy of our Rubens's drawing (now in the Louvre)

66 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Descriptions of the cartoon leave no doubt that it was one of the
most masterly works ever produced, and as it was the one example of
the painter's manner of handling a subject which demanded the utmost
vigor of treatment, its loss is even more to be regretted than that
of the cartoon by Michelangelo, who has left the record of his utmost
strength upon the walls of the Sistine Chapel.16 As it was com
menced in the very month of Raphael's arrival at Florence, and certainly
not finished until the autumn of the following year,17 he had no imme
diate opportunity of comparing the two cartoons ; but we may well
believe that when he did so he was puzzled how to award the palm.
Each master had selected a theme calculated to display his peculiar
powers. Lionardo, who was an accomplished horseman and thoroughly
conversant with equine anatomy, had taken a moment of struggle in
the midst of battle; while Michelangelo, knowing that his greatest
strength lay in the treatment of the nude, had represented a number of
soldiers suddenly summoned to the fight by the sound of the trumpet
whilst bathing in the Arno. Some were in the act of climbing the steep
bank of the river; others who had already gained it were endeavoring
to clothe their dripping limbs.18 Beyond them, either outlined upon
the canvas or finished in black and white, were groups of men in every
variety of attitude, standing, kneeling, lying, struggling. As no subject
could have been more perfectly suited to the genius of the master, we
which successively belonged to Sir Thomas Lawrence and the king of the Netherlands.''
See Le Dipartement des Estampes, par le Vicomte Henri Delaborde, p. 315.
16 For several years the rival works hung side by side in the great hall of the Palazzo
Vecchio, where that of Michelangelo was maliciously cut to pieces during a popular tumult
in 1512. Vasari (Vol. X. p. .296) accuses Baccio Bandinelli of this dastardly act. There is,
however, no proof of his guilt, and for reasons given in Tuscan Sculptors, Vol. II. p. 145,
we are inclined to believe him innocent.
17 Gotti (op. cit. p. 35) cites an order of August 30, 1505, to prove that the cartoon was
then finished ; but as Michelangelo, who began it in October, 1504, was at Rome and Car
rara from early in 1505 until May, 1506, and then spent three months at Florence, it is
possible that he did not finish it until then.
18 See Chapter VII. for an account of the engraving of this episode by Marc Antonio
Raimondi.

THE DAVID. 67
may well believe that he treated it most powerfully. That Eaphael,
like all the young artists of the time, studied this cartoon, we know by
Marc Antonio's engraving from his drawing of one of its groups, but it
had apparently no influence upon his Florentine works. We cannot
wonder that he was so little affected by Michelangelo, if we remember
that he arrived at Florence only a short time before Michelangelo was
called to Rome by Pope Julius II., and that he was working in a circle
of ideas and aspirations with which the sombre Florentine had no sym
pathy. The high finish, the tranquil perfection and deeply subjective
expression of the Mona Lisa made him ready to kiss the hand which
had painted that piece of mystic perfection; but the Holy Family of
the Tribune 19 was too much wanting in religious feeling, and the David
too devoid of grace to please one trained in Umbrian precepts. He
must, however, have felt the one supreme merit of the statue, namely,
its all-pervading life. This gives so wonderful a vitality to the eyes,
that a cast of one of them hung on the wall of a studio is instantly
recognizable. In this respect it corresponds to our ideas of Myron's
art, but otherwise it has little affinity with the works of any ancient or
modern sculptor. It must be judged from its own point of view, and
with reference to the conditions under which it was made, out of a piece
of marble which had been so much cut away by Agostino di Antonio
di Duccio, an incompetent sculptor of the fifteenth century, that no
one less confident in his own powers than Michelangelo would have con
sented to try his hand upon it. To other artists the long thin block
lying in the Office of Works of the cathedral was meaningless ; to him it
suggested the form of a shepherd boy who, like one of the younglings
of his flock, was at that awkward age when the limbs are not sym
metrically developed. So he made a small wax model, still preserved
19 Painted by Michelangelo for Angelo Doni, a wealthy Florentine, whose portrait by
Raphael is one of the treasures of the Pitti gallery. Wilson (op. cit. p. 60) says it is
undoubtedly an oil-painting, though it has hitherto been considered to be in tempera. Of
all celebrated pictures it is the least satisfactory. The composition is strained and un
natural, the color cold and inharmonious, the heads ugly, and the introduction of a number
of naked peasants in the middle distance inexplicable save on the ground of display.

68 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
in the Casa Buonarroti, and then, shutting himself out from curious
eyes, rained sturdy blows upon the mutilated marble until it took the
shape with which all who have been at Florence are so familiar.20
Admiration of the feat performed combined with the real merit of the
statue to rouse popular enthusiasm. The artists and connoisseurs who
were called upon to say where it should be placed decided, probably
by Michelangelo's own advice, to remove Donatello's bronze group of
Judith and Holofernes from the terrace of the Palazzo Vecchio to the
Loggia de' Lanzi in order to make room for it. In placing this image
of one who had courageously saved a people whom he afterwards
wisely governed, at the door of the palace of the Signory, the Floren
tines wished perpetually to remind the city magistrates of their duty
to the people.21
Although the distance from the Duomo to the Palace, over which
the David had to be conveyed, was only about a quarter of a mile,
five days (14th to 18th of May) were consumed in the operation of
moving it upon a ponderous machine dragged by forty men. Stones
were thrown at it by riotous people, and the guards were attacked;
but their animosity ceased after it reached its destination. In 1527
the arm was accidentally broken,22 but from that time up to 1873, when
it was removed to the Academy of Fine Arts, this tutelary genius of
Florence kept its place unharmed, save by wind and weather, until it
had become as much identified with the Square over which it pre
sided as the Palazzo Vecchio and the Loggia de' Lanzi.23
20 The David was begun in September, 1501, and was to have been completed in two
years. It was not finished until January, 1504, and not set up until the 8th of June.
21 That Michelangelo also had this in his mind is very plausibly suggested by M. de
Montaiglon, op cit.
22 During the tumults which agitated the city at this time a band of rioters attacked the
palace. Some one, in order to repel them, threw a piece of furniture out of a window,
which fell upon the arm of the David and broke it into three pieces. They were picked
up by Francesco Salviati and Vasari, then young men, and taken to a place of safety.
Duke Corsino I. had them restored.
'a Michelangelo modelled another statue of David of life-size for Soderini. It was cast

UNFINISHED WORKS. 69
The incomplete condition of many of the works which Michelangelo
executed at Florence, before he bent his neck to the papal yoke, shows
us both the impetuosity of his spirit and his unlimited belief in his own
possibilities of work. Not recognizing limitations of time, strength, or
material, he accepted more commissions than a dozen sculptors could
have executed, and, working with a conviction that he could accomplish
whatever his will led him to undertake, he commenced with the St.
Matthew at the Academy that long series of unfinished works which
stand like milestones along his path from the year 1500 until his death
in 1567. When we look at these marbles, whose grandeur is that
of such semi-defined shapes as are formed by clouds and vapors, and
whose impressiveness, like that of the ancient oracles, is in some de
gree owing to their vagueness of meaning and consequently multiple
possibilities of interpretation, we are tempted to believe that Michel
angelo made use of the undefined with deliberate purpose, laying down
his chisel after he had blocked out a figure, because he knew that
every new stroke would diminish its effect. But even without attrib
uting their unfinished state to press of other work, or to sudden weari
ness of one idea under the charm of a new inspiration, or to inten
tion, it is evident in many cases, that he had committed irretrievable
mistakes through the impetuosity of his attack upon the marble block,
which left him no choice in the matter. Cut away until it could no
longer hold his thought, he threw it aside like a manuscript, which
through manifold corrections and erasures had become iilesnble.
"Disdaining the ordinary methods of the sculptor, he made no plas
ter model; nor did he fix the three points of length, width, and
depth, according to the system of execution practised in his day, of
which he took no heed. When his sketch was finished he placed it
before him, side by side with the block of marble and the living model ;
in bronze and presented by the Signory of Florence to Florimond de Robertet, treasurer
to Louis XIL, king of France. Having been sent to that country in 1508, it was set up
at Robertet's Chateau de Bury. In 1650 it was removed to the Chateau de Villary, after
which nothing is known of its fate.

70 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
he then sought the extreme points of his composition, and having found
them, fixed his attention upon the marble which concealed his statue
from him. Then, after tracing the principal outlines upon it in charcoal,
he attacked the block with violence, dealing blow after blow so as to
strike away the superfluous matter. The fragments flew in showers with
the sound of hail driven by the wind; the point struck sparks from
the stone ; blow succeeded blow  It seemed as if the hot and rapid
breathing of the artist infused the first breath of life into the hard ma-
terial. As by degrees the marble grew in the likeness of his thought,
his ardor increased, and his idea shone with a brighter light .... the
marble seemed to feel the power of its master." 2* Often, alas ! we may
add, did Michelangelo, like Saturn, devour his own children, leaving
them, like his group of the Deposition at the Palazzo Fevoli, but shape
less wrecks.
The above vivid description does not apply to his method of work
ing at that earlier time when he sculptured the Pieta at Rome and
the Madonna and Child in the church of Notre Dame at Bruges.
These show that he at first proceeded with much greater caution. They
are equal in finish, but of the two the first is so superior in compo
sition, in treatment, in mastery over detail, and in correctness of pro
portion that we incline to believe it to be the later work. The con
strained pose of the Madonna, the disproportionate length of her neck,
and the shortness of her figure from the waist downwards betray a less
practised eye and hand than that of the sculptor of the Pieta; but
these defects are condoned by the fine arrangement of the drapery,
which is thoroughly Michelangelesque, the modelling and finish of the
hands, the sweet and virginal expression of the face, and the natural
and pleasing attitude of the infant Saviour who leans against the Ma
donna's knee.26
24 Dupre's discourse before the Florentine Academy in September last. La Nazione, Sep
tember 17, 1875, quoted by M. Guillaume in his Michel Ange Seulptcur, G. des B. Arts,
January 1, 1876.
25 This group was given to the church of Notre Dame by a member of the Mouscron

BAS-RELIEFS. 71
The Madonna at Bruges may be compared with two unfinished cir
cular bas-reliefs of the Holy Family, one of which, now at the Uffizi,
was sculptured for Bartolomeo Pitti; the other, now in the Royal
Academy, for Taddeo Taddei, one of the most generous patrons of art
and literature at Florence. Excellent in composition, and remarkable
for its combined strength and sweetness of feeling, the Taddei bas-
relief is one of Michelangelo's most pleasing works. The Madonna is
gracefully sympathetic, and at the same time grand in style. By her
side the Madonna of the Tribune is hard and uninteresting, the Ma
donna at Bruges a little cold and wanting in feeling, the Madonna of
the National Gallery grandiose but unmotherly, and the Madonna of
the Pieta, somewhat impassive. Michelangelo was called to Rome by
Pope Julius II. while working upon the two bas-reliefs, the statues
of the Apostles ordered for the Cathedral at Florence, and those of
Saints for the Cardinal Piccolomini's family chapel at Siena.26 He
obeyed the summons without delay, leaving them all unfinished.
family, hut not, as is generally supposed, by Peter Mouscron, who was bom in 1514, died
in 1571, and lies buried under the altar above which it is placed. A letter from Bar-
ducci, written from Rome in 1506 to Michelangelo, then at Carrara, about the shipment
of one of his works, not specified, via Viareggio, to Flanders for the heirs of John and
Alexander Mouscron, Gotti (op. cit. Vol. II. p. 51) proves that it was a group, and
not a bronze bas-relief, which two Flemish merchants bought from Michelangelo, as stated
both by Vasari and Condivi. That it was this marble group is evident, since Albert Diirer
speaks of having seen it in the church in 1521. It is also spoken of as there, and as
by Michelangelo, in a history of Belgium written in 1560.
26 In June, 1501, Michelangelo signed a contract with the Cardinal, afterwards Pope
Pius III., by which he engaged to make these fifteen statues, between four and five feet
in height, within three years. A new contract was made on the death of the Pope in
1503, after a pontificate of twenty-seven days, under which the time was prolonged two
years. Four were then finished, namely, those of Saints Peter, Paul, Pius, and Gregory,
and with these the work ended, for in 1537 we find that the heirs of the Pope reclaimed
one hundred scudi on money advanced over and above the value of work done. (Gotti,
Vol. I. pp. 25, 26.) There are four small statues of Saints Francis, James, Pius, and Greg
ory, and a Madonna and Child in the Piccolomini Chapel in the Duomo at Siena. These
represent the result of the Cardinal's commission, but we quite agree with the annotators
of Vasari (Prospetto Cronologico, Vol. XII. p. 388) that they are second-rate works, and not
in Michelangelo's style.

72 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Before Raphael followed him to Rome, three years later, he had
painted the pictures in his second or Florentine manner, which bear
the same relation to those in his third or Roman style that Ghiberti's
first Baptistery Gate does to his second, or Milton's Allegro and Pen-
seroso to his Paradise Lost. Their chronological order, like that of
the Umbrian pictures, is not certain, but internal evidence leads us to
conjecture that the Peruginesque " Madonna di Terranuova " at Berlin,27
and the fresco of the Last Supper at San Onofrio,28 were painted before
the Lionardesque portraits of Angelo and Madalena Doni at the Pitti,29
and these before the Madonna "del Gran Duca" at the Pitti,30 the
" Cardellino " at the Uffizi, or the " Belle Jardiniere " at the Louvre
(Plate III.).31 The first, called the Madonna of the Grand Duke be
cause it was a special favorite with Ferdinand III., was the first of
that long series of Madonnas in which Raphael expressed the tender
ness, dignity, and purity of woman in the loveliest of forms. As the
great English poet who so long dwelt at Casa Guidi described the cre
ative action of the true artist, Eaphael, "holding firmly by the natural,
reached in them the ideal type beyond it"; and through the flower
growing on the earth plucked the flower on the spiritual side,
"Substantial, archetypal, aU aglow
With blossoming causes. " ^
27 Catalogue No. 247. Waagen gives 1505 as the date of this picture. It was bought
from the Neapolitan family of the dukes of Terranuova for thirty thousand scudi.
28 This fresco is now generally attributed to Pinturicchio.
29 Bought by the Grand Duke Leopold II., in 1826, from the Doni estate for 2,500
zecchini. Burckhardt (in the Cicerone, p. 908) says that the influence of Lionardo upon
Raphael shows itself in these portraits, both in the comprehension of character and in that
careful modelling which neglects no detail of form provided it be characteristic.
80 This lovely picture was sold to a bookseller for twelve scudi by a poor widow who
owned it at the end of the last centmy and knew nothing of its value. It was after
wards acquired by the Grand Duke Ferdinand III., and took its name from him.
sl Painted for Messer Filippo Sergardi of Siena, who sold it to Francis I. It was designed
about the same time as the Deposition of the Borghese Palace, that is, during the latter
part of Raphael's residence at Florence.
82 Aurora Leigh, Book VII. Raphael's attachment to Taddeo Taddei, for whom he

THE "CARDELLINO." 73
Owing to their common feeling and character, we can turn from one
to the other of these charming creations, as from the " Cardellino " to
the "Belle Jardiniere," without any shock of transition, for we feel
ourselves to be still in the same pure sphere.
To praise " Raphael's mild Madonna of the Bird " were as unnecessary
as to praise a lily of the valley for its modest loveliness, or a rose
for its odor and color. With no straining after the sublime in form
or attitude, it represents a child standing between its mother's knees,
to whom another little one offers a bird. The forms are human, and
yet so different from those which move around us that we recognize
them as beings of a superior order. In the Madonna, the infant Christ,
and his playmate the little St. John, the beautiful is attained by the
simplest means. A critic disposed to find a blemish even in a work
so perfect might perhaps object that the group is too obviously geo
metric in form. He would compare it and other early works by Ra
phael with the "San Sisto" Madonna, and the Dispute of the Sacra
ment with the Heliodorus, in order to show the difference between
compositions in which the geometrical figure formed by the bounding
lines of the group, whether it be that of the triangle, as in this pic
ture, or of a more complex character, as in the "Disputa," is so evi
dent that we cannot help seeing it, instead of being obliged to seek for
it, as in the "San Sisto" Madonna, and the Heliodorus, where the ele
ment of symmetry pervades the whole like a spiritual essence.
What we have said of the " Cardellino," both on this point and on its
other characteristics, is equally true of the " Belle Jardiniere " (Plate III.),
with which it has the closest affinity. Here also the Madonna sits in the
midst of a charming landscape which, though in itself important, is not
obtrusive, like the landscape backgrounds of Flemish pictures, nor like
those of Lionardo da Vinci, misty and undetermined in form, however
incomparably harmonious and strictly subordinate. Raphael's landscape
painted this Madonna, shows itself in a letter of 1508 to his uncle, Simone Ciarla, in
which he says, "Should he come to Urbino, I pray you to do him honor without stint;
caress him for love of me, and thus make me the most obliged of men."

74 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
backgrounds serve the end of carrying off the delicate outlines of the
figures into space, but do not disturb them. Valleys, mountains, and
rivers are clearly defined, and so managed as to enrich space without
cutting it up, and to give value to the bounding lines of the figures
without interfering with them. The trees are trees of the spring-time
just putting forth tender leaves, so small and delicate that while they
enrich they do not hide the structure of the tree, whose every branch
and twig is visible under a thin veil of strengthening green. It is
in the hollows of the Campagna, by the banks of the small streams
which flow down to meet the Arno or the Tiber, that we see trees like
those in the early pictures of Raphael. Fresh and young and unsullied,
with all the charm and promise of opening beauty, they are in per
fect accord with the spirit of his Madonna groups, as is their tender,
delicate, and sober system of coloring. This has neither the richness,
splendor, nor depth of that of the Venetian painters, nor does it depend
for its effect upon strongly contrasted hues of fiat tint, such as were
favored by the early painters of the school of Urbino, but it is low
and subdued in tone, and therefore in perfect keeping with the quiet
though deep sentiment of the subjects depicted.
Raphael's years at Florence seem crowded with work to an almost
incredible degree. The lovely Orleans Madonna, the Little Madonna
of Lord Cowper (Plate IV), the Canigiani Madonna, the Virgin of the
Palms in the Ellesmere gallery, the Virgin of the Baldacchino at the Pitti,
and many others, belong to this period of his life,33 as does the admi-
88 1. The so-called Orleans Madonna, painted for the Duke of Urbino, and owned by the
brother of Louis XIV., passed into the gallery of the Orleans family, and when this was sold
was bought by Mr. Hibbert for £ 500. After 1835 it was sold from the Aguado gallery
to the banker M. Delessert for 24,000 francs, and in 1868, being once more brought to the
hammer, was purchased by the Duke d' Aumale for 150,000 francs. 2. The Canigiani
Madonna, which was painted about 1506 for Domenico Canigiani, and afterwards belonged
to the Medici, passed to the Dusseldorf gallery, by the marriage of Anna Maria (daughter
of Cosmo III.), to the Elector of the Palatinate, and thence to the Munich Pinacothek.
3. The Virgin of the Palms, probably painted for Taddeo Taddei, was bought at the sale
of the Orleans gallery, by the Duke of Bridgewater, for £1,200, and is now the property of

^»ni

EARLY PICTURES. 75
rable Entombment in the Borghese gallery at Rome. "In composing
this work," says Vasari, " Raphael pictured to himself the grief of near
and tenderly attached relatives when committing to the tomb the body
of some very dear person upon whom depended the prosperity, honor,
and influence of a whole family."
It is clear to those who know the sad story of Madonna Atalanta
Baglione, by whom Raphael was commissioned to paint this picture as
an altar-piece for the Baglione Chapel, in the church of the Fran
ciscans at Perugia, that Vasari believed her to have selected the sub
ject of Christ's burial because it was specially in harmony with her
own sorrows.
At the age of twenty, and within a year after her marriage, her hus
band, Grisone Baglione, was murdered by a follower of the Duke of Sas-
soferrato, leaving her a widow with an infant son, named Grisonetto,
upon whom all her strong affections were thenceforward concentrated.
One of a family whose authority was established at Perugia de facto
if not de jure, "beautiful as Ganymede," says" Matarazzo, a contempo
rary chronicler, and happily married, at the age of seventeen, to Zenobia
Sforza, of the Ducal house of Milan, Grisonetto's life was exceptionally
prosperous, until, in an evil hour, he listened to a villain, who, in order
to induce him to join a band of conspirators, then plotting the massacre
of the Baglioni, falsely accused his wife Zenobia of an intrigue with
Grisonetto's cousin, Gian Paolo Baglione. Moved by jealousy, he con
sented to become an actor in a tragedy whose horrors have few par
allels in history.
On the night of July 14, in the year 1500, the houses of the Baglioni
were entered by the assassins, and four of the intended victims were
murdered in cold blood. Gian Paolo, who was to have been slain by
Grisonetto, escaped as by a miracle, and, having mustered a band of
Lord Ellesmere. 4. The Virgin of the Baldacchino, painted for the Cappella Dei at Santo
Spirito, was bought by Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany, in 1697, from the Bonvicini family
at Peseia. Carried to France during the reign of Napoleon, it was sent to Brussels, and
thence returned to the Pitti gallery in 1815.

70 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
adherents to his cause, returned within twenty-four hours to take dire
vengeance upon his enemies. Meanwhile Grisonetto had in vain sought
to obtain his mother's forgiveness. Horror-struck at his crime, Atalanta
refused to admit him to her presence, and let him ride away to death
with these tragic words upon his lips : " Inhuman mother, nevermore
will I return. The hour is at hand when thou wouldst speak to thy
unhappy son, and canst not."
Wandering through the city, the wretched youth crossed the path
of the man whom he had sworn to murder, and in an instant the
sword of Gian Paolo was at his throat, but it dropped, for he who
held it was not base enough to stain his hand with the blood of a kins
man. Less scrupulous than their master, the soldiers struck Grisonetto
down, but before he breathed his last his mother knelt beside him, and
as she vainly strove to stanch his wounds, murmured in his dying ears :
"0 my son! thy miserable mother, as thou didst foretell, has come to
speak to thee, and thou answerest her not." When he was dead, the
soldiers, at whose hands she vainly sought death, raised the corpse, and
placing it upon the very bier on which that of Astorre Baglione had
lain but a few hours before, left it for many hours exposed to the pub
lic gaze " as a warning and a terror to the enemies of Gian Paolo, and
as a sign of eternal justice."34
As but six years had elapsed since these events, when Madonna Ata
lanta commissioned Raphael to paint the Entombment, they were well
known to him as to all, and it cannot be doubted that they influenced
his work. He made no less than ten different drawings of the com
position and a cartoon before he returned to Perugia to paint the
picture. The cartoon is lost, but the drawings at Oxford, the British
Museum, the Louvre, and in the Malcolm Collection,35 show us by
81 The details of this story are taken from the Chronic 'e of Perugia from 1492 to 1505,
written by Francesco Matarazzo. See Vol. II. of the Baron A. von Reumont's Bcitrage
zur Italienischcn Geschichte, and Sketches in Italy and Greece, by J. Addington Symonds,
pp. 81-87, for a full account of the conspiracy.
85 Nos. 169 and 170. Drawings in bistre, separate studies for the same group. 169 is

THE ENTOMBMENT. 77
their successive changes and ameliorations that men of the greatest
genius do not always reach their great conclusions by a sudden flash
of inspiration.36 In the finished picture the composition is greatly en
riched by the addition of an admirable group of the Virgin fainting in
the arms of her attendant women. The action of the figures in the
principal group is also much more harmonious than in the drawing at
the British Museum, because, as the head of the Magdalen is turned
towards the Saviour, the outline of her figure contrasts happily with
that of Nicodemus. In the drawing the bearers do not seem to feel
the weight of the corpse, but in the picture it appears to tax their
utmost strength, for the head of him who sustains the head and shoul
ders of Jesus upon his breast is thrown back, the muscles of his back,
shoulders, and arms are swollen with the strain put upon them, as
are those of his right leg, upon which the weight of his body is
thrown while he lifts the left so that he may plant his foot firmly
upon the lower step of the platform, and thus balance the action of
the stalwart youth who carries the lower limbs of the Saviour's body.
It would be difficult, even in the works of Raphael, to point out a
group more symmetrical, more truthful in action, more harmoniously
balanced, than this.
Throughout Raphael's career he was always alive to the importance
of availing himself of every means which could enrich and perfect his
compositions. If other artists had treated the same subject, he studied
their work, and did he find in it elements congenial to his nature,
he adopted them without fear of being called a plagiarist, because he
of the Virgin in a swoon upheld by three female disciples ; 170, also of the fainting Virgin
and one of the women who is sustaining her. The two full-length figures in this drawing
are skeletons, whereas those of the previous one are draped. (See the Malcolm Collection.,
by J. C. Robinson, p. 72.) Both drawings are engraved in fac-simile in Vfoodburn's Lau
rence Ga'lery.
36 To take an example from a sister art, we may mention a sheet of music-paper which
we once saw in the house of the Chevalier Landsberg at Rome, upon which Beethoven had
written down some fifty different renderings of the "idee mere," the "Haupt Idee," or
germ-thought of the first movement of the C Minor Symphony.

78 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
felt able to give them a higher development than they had yet received.
His St. Paul Preaching at Athens, which he borrowed from Filippino
Lippi; the arabesques and stucco ornaments which he adapted from
those in the Baths of Titus, are instances in point ; but there is, per
haps, no single work which so strikingly illustrates his power of trans
muting the ideas of others into his own fine gold as this picture
which we have under consideration. The general resemblance of the
composition to Andrea Mantegna's well-known engraving of the same
subjec \ might at first sight appear accidental, for all treatments of such
a subj pt must coincide to some extent, like the living repetitions of
such a . cene ; but we have studies by Raphael of Mantegna's Entomb
ment which prove that he knew it, and there can be but little doubt
that it suggested to him the group of women sustaining the fainting
Virgin, which does not appear in his first designs. Any one, how
ever, who compares the two, will see that Raphael made the episode
his own by a treatment which differs as widely from that of Man-
tegna as the Roman school differs from the Paduan. The similarity
of the attitude of Raphael's dead Christ to that of the Christ in Michel
angelo's Pieta, which lies in the turn of the head and the droop of
the right arm, is so slight that it may very well be set down as
one of those accidental coincidences of conception in the treatment
of an identical subject, which are often met with in the works of
different artists.
Painted at Perugia in 1507, the Entombment remained for a hun
dred years over the altar in the Baglione Chapel, and then, to the great
indignation of the Perugians, was sold by the Franciscan monks to
the Borghese Pope, Paul V. The Tympanum representing God the
Father with angels was left at Perugia, but the picture and the Pre
della were sent to Rome, where the first hangs in the Borghese gal
lery, the other in the Vatican.37
87 The subjects of the Predella, painted en grisaille, are Faith, Hope, and Charity (see
tail-pieee), in medallions, each with its pair of attendant angels. They have been admira
bly engraved by Desnoyer. The Gazette des Beaux Arts, November 1, 1875, contains an

THE ENTOMBMENT.

79

It seems in its proper place at Rome, for it may be regarded as a
prelude to those great compositions at the Vatican which Raphael com
menced within a year after he had finished it. " The Belle Jardiniere "
and the " Madonna del Baldacchino," which close the series of his Flor
entine pictures, are full of sweetness, repose, and dignity, but the En
tombment shows a dramatic power which afterwards reached its climax
in the Heliodorus.
engraving of the Faith by Huot and a woodcut of the Charity. Louis Gonzc, the writer
of the accompanying text, suggests that as the drawing of the Charity in the Albertina
Collection at Vienna is veiy much in Raphael's third manner, the Predella may have
been painted after he went to Rome (1508) ; but there is no reason to suppose this to have
been the case.

80

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

CHAPTER IV.

" When Greek joined Greek, then came the tug of war." — Nathaniel Lee.

UEING the three years of Raphael's
life at Florence, whose fruits we
have described in the last chap
ter, Michelangelo had been work
ing at Rome for the Pope who so
powerfully influenced the destinies
of both artists. Called thither on
the strength of his already great
reputation, to give shape to the
somewhat vaguely imagined ar
tistic schemes of Julius II., Michel
angelo had been kindly received
at the Vatican, and at once charged with a commission which was to
involve him in embarrassments and anxieties so much out of propor
tion with the final result, that could he have estimated them he would
assuredly have refused a work which he prosecuted in alternate hope
and despair for nearly half a century. It is strange to reflect that while
the mausoleum of Julius II., which was to have been the greatest of
his works, has contributed but little to his glory, the frescos of the
Sistine Chapel, which he feared to undertake, have done more than all
else to make his name famous throughout the world.
Michelangelo's first interview with the Pope was a turning-point in
his life, and we can have no doubt that he carried from it the im
pression that he had met his match in strength of will and energy of
character. Julius was a man of war, who would not brook the sliodit-

CHAPTER IV.
Michelangelo, 1504-1612.
Two Prisoners designed for the monument of Julius II., 1505. Louvre, Paris.
Bronze Statue of Julius II., 1506-1508. Destroyed in 1511.
Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 1508-1512. Sistine Chapel.

JULIUS II. 81
est opposition to his wishes. When men stood in his way he set his
foot on them, and when cities rebelled against him, he mounted his
horse and rode in triumph over their ruined walls.1 But one man in
the world, so far as we know, ever dared to oppose him, and that
was Michelangelo, but although infinitely his superior both morally
and intellectually, he did so in vain. Sparks will fly when flint and
steel are brought into sharp contact, and so when their views clashed
fire ensued. Had they not mutually esteemed each other they would
have soon separated; but as vindictiveness was not in the nature of
either, their frequent quarrels were followed by reconciliations, brought
about through such concessions and explanations as each could make
without undue sacrifice of dignity. To Raphael, whose pliant and gen
tle nature provoked no opposition, Julius was kind and gentle; but
when he met Michelangelo he bristled like the fretful porcupine, feel
ing that, though he might compel him to submit, he could not subdue
him. Nevertheless, the truthfulness, sincerity, and honesty of his na
ture commanded the Pontiff's respect; his strength and high endow
ments won his admiration, and bred in him a savage kind of affection,
which was never satisfied unless its object -was in sight and appar
ently content to be so. Michelangelo, on the other hand, was natu
rally in sympathy with resolute natures like his own, and attached to
the Pope, but a disturbing element of mistrust, which was sufficient
to prevent his giving him a full measure of respect, lurked in his mind.
He knew that Julius would not scruple to break his word if he thought
it for his interest to do so. Had he not purchased his election to the
papacy by promising Csesar Borgia to make him gonfaloniere of the
Church if he would lend him his powerful aid, and then, when it was
given, and the prize secured, had he not broken his promise on the
ground that pacts made with Satan are not obligatory, and can be
broken without risk of damnation ?
Julius was neither a libertine like Alexander VI., nor a spendthrift
like Leo X. His sole aim was to increase the temporal power of the
1 As at the siege of La Mirandula, A. r>. 1506.
6

82 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Church as centred in himself He took the name of Julius because
it had been that of Ca;sar, and loved war not as a means but as an
end. The large sum of money which he left in the papal treasury
at his death proved that, despite the ceaseless wars in which he was
engaged during his reign, he had managed the affairs of the state with
remarkable economy. His nature was neither artistic nor studious,
yet he did so much for arts and letters that he stands to Leo X.
in the same relation as the Albizzi to the Medici. Seeing the full
blown flower, we are apt to forget the hand which fostered and trained
the plant, and give credit for its beauty where credit is not alto
gether due. Thus in our admiration for the golden age of Leo we
forget that it owed much of its literary and artistic glory to Julius,
who first patronized and protected Bembo, Sadoleto, Castiglione, Fla-
minio, Bramante, Ariosto, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others to whom
it owed its lustre. It is true that the favor which he showed them
was partly induced by the feeling that they would promote his fame
as a sovereign, and there is no doubt that his disposition to play the
part of a Maecenas was encouraged by the example and advice of Leo
himself, then Cardinal de' Medici, the intimate friend of his favorite
nephew, Galeotto della Rovere, whose early death strengthened the
bonds between them; but while we give these points due weight in
determining the just position of Julius II. among great patrons of
art and literature, we feel that to have given Michelangelo and Raphael
the opportunity of developing their genius by the creation of those
stupendous works which have immortalized their names, is in itself
enough to entitle his name to grateful recollection; though we regret '
that he allowed the destruction of the venerable basilica of St. Peter
to make room for Michelangelo's new church, and that of many mural
paintings in the Vatican to provide place for Raphael's frescos.
During the first years of his reign, Julius II. had little time to
think of anything else than war ; but after the final expulsion of the
French from Italy, and the conclusion of a treaty between Louis
XII. and Ferdinand of Naples, — Caesar Borgia and Piero de' Medici

THE TOMB OF JULIUS II. 83
being both dead, and the succession to the Duchy of Urbino secured
to his nephew, Giuliano della Rovere, — he turned his attention for a
few months to the arts of peace, and conceived the project of erect
ing a monument to himself which should surpass all other monuments
in size and splendor. Michelangelo was commissioned to give sub
stance to this great scheme, and could the design which he produced
have been earned out in all its details, there can be no doubt that the
result would have fully satisfied the ambition of its projector. As no
part of the basilica of St. Peter was capable of receiving a marble struc
ture covering eight hundred square feet, and consisting of three storeys,
the lower one of which was thirteen feet in height, the question of site
had first to be considered. The plan suggested and adopted was the com
pletion of the new Tribune begun by Pope Nicholas V. (1447 - 1455),
and this led to the destruction of the whole church, and its reconstruc
tion on its present magnificent scale. The hand of the destroyer, once
raised, was never stayed till every vestige of the venerable and precious
shrine had been swept away. This act of vandalism was not even
condoned by the carrying out of the scheme which had prompted it.
Executed only in part by Michelangelo, the shrunken monument of
Pope Julius stands at San Pietro in Vincula, and with the exception
of one statue, responds in no sense either to the ambition of the Pon
tiff or the grand conception of the sculptor.
The descriptions of Vasari and Condivi, and a pen-and-ink sketch in
the Casa Buonarroti at Florence, show us that it was to have been an
immense quadrangular structure, thirty-six by twenty-seven feet at the
base, raised upon a platform reached by steps. The lower storey was
to have been decorated with niches, separated by terminal figures sup
porting a projecting cornice, and containing statues of prisoners naked
and bound, symbolic either of the provinces added to the patrimony
of the church by Julius, or of the arts and sciences rendered power
less by his death. Colossal statues of Moses, St. Paul, Rachel, and
Leah were to have been placed above the cornice at the four corners
of the flat surface of the monument, whose centre contained the papal

84 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
effigy watched over by the angels of Grief and Consolation. This effigy,
according to Vasari's account, was to have rested upon the shoulders
of two figures representing Heaven rejoicing and Earth grieving over
the Pope's death.2
Of its forty statues, and its multiple bas-reliefs, cornices, and mould
ings in marble and bronze, but few were even commenced, as we shall
see when we come to speak of that later period of Michelangelo's life
to which they belong.3
Within four months of his first interview with the Pope, Michelangelo
started for Carrara, where he spent eight months in superintending
the extraction of marbles, in blocking out certain figures intended
for this monument, and in planning a colossal work like that pro
posed by Dinocrates4 to Alexander the Great. One of the Carrara
mountain-peaks was to be shaped into a gigantic figure, which could
be seen far out at sea, but what it was to have represented we do not
know. Anxious to return home, he abandoned the idea as soon as
he was no longer needed at the quarries, and after spending a few days
at Florence continued his journey to Rome, which he reached late in
the month of November.5
His one desire was to begin the monument as soon as possible,
and in order that he might do so the Pope gave him a house in
the immediate neighborhood of the Vatican, — too near, as it proved,
for a long continuance of their friendly relations. To find himself
subject to a visit from Julius, whenever the whim seized him to cross
the bridge which had been built between the Vatican and his studio,
must have been intolerable to Michelangelo, who loved privacy and
was unaccustomed to work under supervision. This we suspect was
one of the causes of the catastrophe which the Pope might have
foreseen, had he known the nature of the man with whom he had to
2 Vasari, Arol. XII. p. 181. The body was to have been placed in a sarcophagus within
an oval chamber constructed in the centre of the monument.
8 See Chapter IX.
4 This architect wished to fashion Mount Athos into a statue.
6 Condivi, op. cit. p. 18.

MICHELANGELO'S FLIGHT. 85
deaL Michelangelo does not, however, allude to it in the letter which
he wrote to Giuliano da Sangallo after he reached Florence, the follow
ing extract from which shows, among other things, that the Pope had
begun to count the cost of those great blocks of marble lying in the
square behind St. Peter's, "whose number seemed to the people suffi
cient for the building of a temple rather than a tomb."
" Talking at table with a jeweller and a master of- the ceremonies, I
heard that the Pope had said that he would not spend another bajocco
upon big stones or little stones. Astonished at this, I determined be
fore leaving Rome to ask for a part of the money needed for the con
tinuation of my work. When I did so, his Holiness sent me word to
come again on Monday, and so I did, and also on Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday. At last on Friday the door was shut in my face by an
attendant who said that he knew me very well, but that he must obey
orders  This, however, was not the only cause of my departure ;
there was also another reason, which I do not wish to mention."6 This
reason doubtless was, that Julius had changed his mind about the
monument, and had proposed to Michelangelo to decorate the Sistine
Chapel with frescos. Both Vasari and Condivi tell us that this was
brought about by Bramante, with the desire to ruin Michelangelo and
thus bring Raphael forward. They say that he told his Holiness
that he would hasten his death by building his own monument,7 and
advised him to employ Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel, hoping that he would fail in the attempt and thereby lose all
favor at the Vatican. From these charges Bramante cannot be altogether
exonerated, for it is evident that he had some hand in the matter
from the testimony of Pietro Roselli, who, writing to Michelangelo,
tells him that Bramante, being told by the Pope in his presence that
Sangallo was to be sent to Florence to bring him back, replied, "It
6 Letter CCCXLIIL, Milanesi, op. cit. p. 377.
7 Michelangelo undoubtedly alludes to the Pope's acceptance of this idea, and his sub
sequent change of plan, in the lines of a sonnet addressed to him, —
"Lo, thou hast lent thine ear to fables still,
Rewarding those who hate the name of truth. "

86 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
will be of no use, for I have heard him say several times that he
would not paint the chapel as the Pope had ordered him to do," add
ing, " In my opinion Michelangelo is afraid to try his hand at a work
which is out of his line." " This," writes Roselli, " I denied, and told
the Pope that I would stake my head that you had never said a
word to Bramante on the subject." It is clear that, for some reason
or other, Bramante placed himself in Michelangelo's way, prevented
him from doing what he had set his heart upon, and turned his powers
in a direction in which most men would have said they were likely
to be wasted. If this was his object we cannot characterize his spirit
as other than malignant; and yet we have reason to be grateful to
him, for had he done otherwise, the world would have lost the sublime
frescos of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, for which the monument to Julius
would have been but a poor compensation. Whether Bramante's in
trigues were prompted by jealousy, or, as we are told, by the desire to
clear the way for Raphael, is a matter of consequence only so far as
he is concerned ; but it can hardly have been the latter, as he began
them more than two years before Raphael came to Rome, when the
fame of the young Umbrian was not great enough to give any one
grounds for believing him capable of taking Michelangelo's place.
It was on a Saturday in the month of May, 1506, that Michelangelo,
who had paid for the last shipment of marbles from Carrara out of his
own pocket, took the road to Florence, angry at the ill-treatment which
he had received, and fully determined henceforward to leave the Pope
to shift for himself. Pursued and overtaken by a messenger who used
every argument to induce him to return, he kept on his way, and it
was perhaps well for him that Julius had other rebels to deal with,
and plans for their reduction to turn over in his mind while his an
ger was at white heat, else the towers of Florence, like those of Pe
rugia and Bologna, might have shaken with the sound of his cannon
His demands that the fugitive should be immediately sent back were
so imperious, and his menaces so violent, that Soderini was really
alarmed as to the consequences of delayed compliance. "You have

SODERINI. 87
dared," he said to Michelangelo,8 " to treat the Pope in a way the king
of France would not have done, and as we are not inclined to risk our
independence and go to war on your account, you had better make up
your mind to obey." Answering one of the papal briefs on the sub
ject, he writes, "Michelangelo the sculptor is so frightened9 that, not
withstanding the promise of forgiveness conveyed to him in this brief,
he will not return unless you send us a signed letter promising him
security and immunity." That the gonfaloniere was frightened there
is no doubt, but Michelangelo was not a man to be intimidated by threats,
though, as Soderini wrote to his brother, the Cardinal of Volterra, "if
you speak kindly to him and treat him affectionately, you can do any
thing you please with him." After three months spent in working
upon his unfinished cartoon at Florence, he consented to go to Bologna
" with a halter round his neck," to use his own words, " to ask pardon
of the Pope," not because he was afraid to refuse, but because he did
8 Gaye, Carteggio, Vol. IT. p. 83.
9 The sonnet, written as if from Rome about this time, certainly does not show much
personal fear, and is so very plain-spoken about abuses at the Court of Rome, that if the
Pope, to whom it is addressed, had seen it, it may be doubted whether he would have ever
consented to pardon the writer. It is signed, "Your Michelangelo in Turkey," where our
sculptor, having been invited by the Sultan to superintend the building of a bridge be
tween Pera and Constantinople, seriously thought of taking refuge in case Soderini should
turn him out of Florence. The following excellent translation is one of many from Michel
angelo's sonnets made by J. Addington Symonds, published in the Contemporary Review.
" Here helms and swords are made of chalices :
The blood of Christ is sold so much the quart :
His cross and thorns are spears and shields ; and short
Must be the time ere even his patience cease.
Nay, let him come no more to raise the fear
Of fraud and sacrilege beyond report ;
For Rome still slays and sells him at the court.
Where paths are closed to virtue's fair increase.
Now were fit time for me to scrape a treasure,
Seeing that work and gain are gone : while he
Who wears the robe is my Medusa still
Perchance in heaven poverty is a pleasure ;
But of that better life what hope have we
When the blest banner leads to naught but ill."

88 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
not wish to bring trouble upon his friends and fellow-citizens ; because
he wished to return to Rome as soon as possible; and lastly, because
his Holiness had sent him word by the Cardinal of Pavia, in a letter
addressed to the Signory of Florence, that " he would receive him
kindly and set him to work immediately."
As Perugia and Bologna had submitted to the Pope after his bold
march from Rome, Michelangelo had every reason to hope that he
should find him in a comparatively amiable frame of mind when,
after an absence of fifteen years, he re-entered the gates of Bologna, at
the latter end of November. He was recognized by one of the Pope's
servants while attending mass at the cathedral of St. Petronius, and
conducted to the palace where Julius had taken up his residence.
After the irritation which showed itself in the first words addressed to
him had spent itself upon a meddling Monsignore who proffered an
unasked excuse for the culprit, the papal brow relaxed its frown, and
the papal eyes once more looked kindly on the repentant fugitive, who
was needed for the realization of a new project. This was to make
a colossal bronze statue of the Pope, which, seated above the great
door of St. Petronius,10 would perpetually remind the Bolognese of their
absent master. The clay model, which was immediately begun, was
nearly finished before the 22d of February, when Julius, alarmed at
the movements of Louis XII. of France, who was preparing to make a
descent into Italy to reduce revolted Genoa to obedience, left Bologna
for Rome. His last words to Michelangelo about the statue are char
acteristic of the man Questioned as to whether the left hand of the
figure should hold a book, the right being raised in a menacing atti
tude, he replied, "Rather a sword, for I am no reader."
10 In a letter to his brother Buonarroti, Michelangelo thus records a visit of the Pope to
his studio on the 29th of January: "On Friday evening at 21 o'clock Pope Julius came
to the house where I am working and stayed about half an hour while I was at work ; he
then gave me his blessing and went away. He seemed pleased with what I am doing.
For this it seems to me we have reason to thank God : so do I pray you, and pray for me."
Letter L. Milanesi, Lcttcre, p. 65. In another letter, No. LI., to the same he records a
second visit on the 1st of February, 1507.

THE PAPAL STATUE. 89
At the end of April, when the figure was ready to be cast in bronze,
Michelangelo seems suddenly to have remembered that, as he knew
nothing of the processes of the font, he could not go on further with
out the assistance of a skilled workman. He accordingly wrote to
Florence for Maestro Bernardino d' Antonio, a master of artillery in the
service of the Florentine Republic, much renowned as a bronze-caster,
who, after obtaining the necessary permission, joined him at Bologna
towards the end of May. A month later an attempt was made to cast
the figure, but, as he says in a letter to his brother, " either on account
of the ignorance or misfortune of Bernardino it has faded. Half the
bronze has stuck in the furnace, which must be taken to pieces in
order to get it out. When this is done, all will go well I trust, but
not without great annoyance, fatigue, and expense. So great was my
faith in Bernardino, that I was ready to believe that he could have
cast the statue without fire ; not that I mean to say that he is not
a skilful artist, or that he did not do his best. But those who work
are liable to fail. And he has failed, not only to my injury but to his
own, for he is blamed in such a fashion that he hardly dares to raise
his eyes in Bologna." u
The second casting succeeded much better, but even this seems to
have been less perfect than might have been hoped, as several months
of hard work were afterwards spent in cleaning and polishing the sur
face of the statue. In November it was finished ; but as the Pope had
made Michelangelo promise to remain at Bologna until it was actually
placed above the door of the basilica, he was obliged to restrain his
impatience until the 21st of February, 1508, when the final ceremony
took place with the accustomed rejoicings. Pipes, trumpets, drums,
and bells made the day sonorous, and fetes and fireworks made the
night joyous. Four years later, when the Bentivogli came back to
enjoy their own again, a furious rabble gathered in the square before
the church, bent on the destruction of this effigy of a now detested
taskmaster (December 30, 1511). Lowered to the pavement upon
11 Letter LXIII., Milanesi, op. cit. p. 79. Dated July 6.

90 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
which, despite every precaution, it left the impress of its enormous
weight, it was delivered over to the insults of the populace, and then
broken into fragments which were given, in exchange for some pieces
of artillery, to the Duke of Ferrara, who recast them in the shape of a
huge cannon, fit symbol of so bellicose a pope as Julius II.
The many letters written by Michelangelo to his brother Buonarroti
during his forced and prolonged stay at Bologna, are filled with expres
sions of discontent. "Like everything else here," he writes, "the wine
is dear and bad, so that life is a burden, and it seems to me a thou
sand years before I can come to you"; and again, "I must stick to
my work, else it will detain me another six months"; and again,
" Know that I desire a speedy return even more than you desire it for
me, for I live here in the greatest discomfort and undergo the most
extreme fatigues, working day and night; you would be sorry for me
if you knew how I am situated here." Writing to his younger brother
Giovan Simone, he alludes in a half-joking way to the plague which
had broken out at Bologna. "You tell me that you have heard from
one of your friends, a physician, that the pest is a bad disease which
kills. I am glad that you have heard this, for we have it here, and
these Bolognese have not yet found out that it is a mortal sickness."12
These letters, like many others addressed to his two brothers, his father,
and his nephew, give us a strong impression of the warmth of Mi
chelangelo's natural affections. They show him to have been a most
dutiful son and a kind brother, who gave his money and thought, and
what time he could spare from work, to help his relations. "I wish
you to feel," he writes to his father, for whom he had a never-failing
sense of reverence, "that my labors have always been as much for
you as for myself; that which I have bought was bought to be yours
as long as you live, for if you had not been living I should not have
bought it." When his brother Giovan Simone had ill treated his father,
he wrote to him in the most severe terms : " I have done my best for
many years by kind words and deeds to make you live peaceably with
12 Letter CXXIV., dated April 20, 1507.

LETTERS FROM BOLOGNA. 91
your father and with us, and yet you go on from bad to worse. I will
not call you a rascal, but you are so to such an extent that you no
longer please me or any one else  To speak concisely, I tell you
that all that you have I have given you, believing you to be my brother
like the rest. Now I know surely that you are not, for if you were
you would not have threatened my father; you are a brute, and de
serve to be treated like a brute  If you will behave yourself
decently, and reverence and honor your father, I will help you like the
rest, and will soon establish you in a good trade. But if you con
tinue to conduct yourself ill, you may expect me to come and teach
you what you are better than you ever knew," etc.13
The postscript to this letter is as pathetic as it is energetic. "For
twelve years," says the writer, " I have wandered about Italy, bearing
all sorts of affronts, suffering every extremity, wearing out my body
with overwork and exposing myself to every danger, and this only
that I might help my relations; and now, just as I am beginning to
set my house on its legs, you, with your escapades and bad deeds, are
trying to destroy in an hour the work of years, and toils without num
ber. By the body of Christ you shall not do it, for if need be I am
able to thwart a thousand fellows like you. Be warned in time, and
take care how you again rouse my anger."
The privations and labors to which Michelangelo alludes in this
postscript are not in any wise exaggerated, nor is their object, namely,
that he might assist his relations, incorrectly stated. His personal
expenditure was always extremely restricted, so much so that his
father, while advising economy, warns him against penurious habits.14
His disposition was not miserly, but he allowed himself only what
was strictly necessary, that he might indulge himself in the luxury
of giviug. He was not by nature inclined to self-indulgence of any
sort. Work was his one idea, and recreation a word unknown in
his vocabulary. In this as in every other respect he was unlike
13 Letter CXXVIL, July, 1508.
14 See letter of December 19, 1500. Gotti, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 23.

92 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
the members of his family, who were all men of mediocre abilities.
His father, Ludovico, being both weak and grasping, was constantly
getting into difficulties out of which he was as constantly helped by
his dutiful son both before and after the time when, by a legal act,
he resigned all claim upon him for support.15 The best of his brothers
was Buouarroto, whom he established in business as a cloth merchant,
and to whom he was much attached, despite his frequent ingratitude.
Of Gian Simone we have already spoken, and of his bad and wasteful
habits. Little is known of his eldest brother, Lionardo, who under the
influence of Savonarola became a monk; or of Sigismund, the young
est of the family, who, after fighting under many banners, settled
quietly at Settignano on the family domain. Of his mother, history
tells us nothing save her name. We may therefore suppose that she
was in no wise remarkable, and, as he alludes to her neither in his
letters nor his sonnets, conclude that he had no special reverence for
her memory. He inherited neither his genius, his character, his heart,
nor his intellect from either parent, and in all respects he towers
above his brothers in solitary grandeur, "as the cypress above the
humble vines."
On his return to Florence from Bologna (March, 1508), Michelangelo
took a year's lease of the house in the Borgo Pinti, which had been
built for him by the Board of Works of the Cathedral, at the time
when he accepted the commission for the statues of the Twelve Apostles,
with the intention of completing these and other works which he had
begun before he entered the papal service; but as the Pope insisted
upon his return, not indeed to go on with his monument, which he
would gladly have resumed, but to paint frescos in the Sistine Chapel,
15 March 28, 1508, shortly after the return of Michelangelo to Florence from Bologna,
his father emancipated him at the age of thirty-three, by a legal act drawn up by a notary
(Gotti, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 70). In Italy and the South of France the son did not attain a
legal majority until his father's death. His time and his gains belonged to the parent un
less he voluntarily relinquished his right over them, in which case he could not claim from
him a support in his old age. See Montaiglon, op. cit. p. 259.

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO. 93
which he had no inclination to undertake, he changed his plans, and
taking the road to Rome arrived there before the end of June.
Raphael had either preceded him by a couple of months, or followed
him almost immediately. We know by the date of a letter to his
uncle Simone Ciarla that he was at Florence in April, and by that of
his well-known epistle to Francesco Francia16 that he was at Rome
in September. Italy's two greatest artists were thus established in
her ancient capital in the summer of 1508.
They met in the papal antechamber, or on the steps of the Vati
can; the one walking solitary and alone, "like an executioner," the
other surrounded by a troup of students and friends, " like a prince."
Though seemingly unconscious of each other's presence, each recognized
the other as a king among the artists of his time, and one at least
probably regretted the antagonisms which kept them apart. Not only
were their aims, their views, and their characters absolutely opposed,
but the circumstances connected with Raphael's call to Rome were
such as to prejudice Michelangelo strongly against him, and to render
it impossible for even so amiable a person as Raphael to make any
advances calculated to promote a more friendly feeling between them.
In him Michelangelo saw the relative of Bramante, who had influ
enced the Pope to abandon a work to which he had hoped to dedicate
his best years, and to force him to another for which, in the beginning
16 This letter was accompanied with a drawing of the Nativity (which Francia had already
seen and praised, "as," adds the writer, "you have praised other works of mine in a way
to make me blush"), sent in lieu of Raphael's own portrait, which he had promised, but
had not yet found time to paint for his friend. "Rather than have it painted by one of
my scholars and retouched by myself," he writes, "I prefer to wait until I can find time
to paint it entirely with my own hand." In conclusion, Raphael asks Francia to send
him the drawing of his Judith, which will be one of his choicest possessions. With it
Francia sent him » sonnet beginning thus: —
"O fortunate youth, while yet a child
So far advanced, what will thy powers be
When older grown and more in skill affirmed?
Nature, outdone by thy deceits.
Will loud proclaim thy worth,
Declaring thee the Prince of Painters."

94 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
at least, he had no mind. This was in itself enough to make him
shrink from contact with one whom he was already inclined to shun
as the scholar of Perugino, whose person and art were alike distasteful
to him.17 While then we can fully understand the motives of Michel
angelo's dislike to Raphael, we are sure that he was incapable of the
petty jealousy which so often blinds the eyes of little men to the talent
of those who belong to their own profession. "To recognize their
equal, even their better, when they meet him," says Swinburne,18 " must
be the greatest delight of great men." "All the gods," says a French
essayist, " delight in worship. Is one lesser for the other's godhead ?
Divine things give divine thanks for companionship; the stars sang
not one at once, but all together." Thus Michelangelo, though he said
but little about the genius of Raphael, must have acknowledged it to
himself, and have watched its growth and culmination with interest.
As for Raphael, we know that so far from feeling jealous of his great
contemporary, he "thanked God that he had been born in the same
century with him." Outside causes for Michelangelo's antagonism to
Raphael are easily to be found in the partisan spirit of his followers,
to whose innuendoes and disparaging criticisms he did not always shut
his ears, as a man of an equally noble but of a less morose disposition
would have done. Living much by himself, and shunning the contact
of all who did not actually thrust themselves upon him, he believed
many things which Sebastiano del Piombo and Lionardo di Compagno
said against Raphael, and took no pains to verify the truth of their
statements. When they first met at Rome, he was completely absorbed by the
17 Vasari (Vol. VI. p. 46) relates that Michelangelo told Perugino publicly that he was
qoffo nell' arte, for which insult the enraged Umbrian cited him before a magistrate. In
note 2 to thLs passage, the editor justly remarks that as Michelangelo was angry at the
time his opinion is of no value, and adds that he who does not appreciate Perugino can
not appreciate RaphaeL He cites the pithy remark of an English critic on seeing the two
pictures by Perugino and Raphael at S. Giovanni in Monte at Bologna : " lo vedo nel
quadro di Pietro, Raffaelle che ha da venire, e nel quadro di Raffaelle, Pietro ct'e7 state''
13 William Blake, A Critical Essay, p. 100.

THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 95
many perplexities and anxieties growing out of his new task ; and, save
when his papal tormentor shook him rudely by the shoulder and forced
him to raise his eyes in sorrow or in wrath, he moved in a world of
his own, peopled only with the gigantic shadows whose images he was
about to represent upon the roof of the Sistine Chapel. On his return
to Rome he had urged to wilfully deaf ears that he was no painter,
that sculpture was his art, and that he wished to go on with the
Julius monument, until wearied with combating a will even stronger
than his own, he accepted the work, and bravely commenced it before
the close of the year 1508, which was indeed what the Germans would
call a "wonder year" at Rome. With Michelangelo at work in the
Sistine Chapel, and Raphael in the Stanze of the Vatican, the Pope's
ambition to be regarded as the pivot of artistic activity must have
been fully satisfied. Maximilian had his Albert Diirer, and Ludovico
Sforza his Lionardo da Vinci, but since the days when Lysippus the
sculptor and Apelles the painter served Alexander the Great, no sov
ereign had kept the two greatest artists of his time simultaneously
employed. After he had unwillingly accepted the task of decorating the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo did not immediately begin to work
upon so grand a scale as that which he afterwards adopted. Like a
ship putting to sea against head-winds, forced to tack from side to
side, he seemed uncertain what course to take. He first proposed to
paint figures of the Twelve Apostles in the lunettes, and to fill the
rest of the space with ornamental work; and then, dissatisfied, told the
Pope that this would lead to a poor result, and would not be content
until he was told to do what he liked. The scaffold which Bramante,
as papal architect, had been ordered to prepare, did not suit him,19
and again he complained, and again was allowed to have his way.
19 Bramante's scaffold was suspended from the roof, into which holes had been bored,
and Michelangelo shrewdly asked how was he to fill them up. The scaffold which he
designed and used was like the deck of a ship, and upon it stood portable scaffolds of
different altitudes, which enabled him to reach the unequal surface of the vault. Tho

96 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Then he doubted his capacity to paint in fresco,20 and sent to Florence
for skilled men to paint under his direction. Among them came his
old friend Francesco Granacci,21 whom he welcomed at first, but being
soon vexed and disappointed with the slowness and dulness of his
work, as well as that of his associates, he destroyed what they had
done, and single-handed grappled with the difficulties of his herculean
task. It is not, however, to be supposed that he performed the man
ual as well as the artistic labor connected with it, or that he refused
to keep a workman to prepare his colors, as stated by Vasari. With
the Pope ever grumbling at his back because he did not get on fast
enough to satisfy his impatient spirit, we may be sure that Michel
angelo wasted no time in unnecessary work. There was more than
enough of a kind which he alone could do to occupy him unceasingly,
not only for twenty months, as Vasari would have us believe, but for
four years,22 during which he worked in the chapel or for it, when not
dimensions given by Mr. Wilson as those of the great scaffold are one hundred and thirty
feet long and forty-five feet wide. It stood fifty feet above the pavement. The 10th of
May is given by Michelangelo as the day on which he began to work, but this expression
undoubtedly refers to the preparation of designs, working drawings, etc., and not to the
actual commencement of painting in fresco. See Wilson, op. cit. p. 121.
25 Mr. Heath Wilson (op. cit. p. 11) points out that, as Ghirlandajo was occupied in
painting the frescos of the choir of S1" Maria Novella when Michelangelo entered his studio
in 1488, he must have assisted in the process of fresco-painting like other pupils, and may
have "been employed in painting decorative portions of the frescos, which was also the
duty and work of assistants.'' The drawing which he made of the scaffold with the
artists at work upon it " strengthens the supposition that nothing was lost upon so acute
and careful an observer."
21 Granacci left Rome for Florence before May 24th to engage assistants, and Michel
angelo followed him in August to make a final arrangement with them, returning almost
immediately. At the end of the month they followed him, and work was begun early in
September. 22 The papal chamberlain, Monsignor Paolo de' Grassi, states that the chapel was not
open to the public in March, 1513, when Julius II. died. When the ceiling was half com
pleted the scaffold was removed that the Pope might judge of the effect, and the doors
were thrown open on All Saints Day, 1509. It was then again put up, and, if the cham
berlain be correct, not removed until 1513, though it is generally supposed that the frescos

THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 97
compelled by physical and mental exhaustion to take rest in a change
of occupation. He spent month after month shut up in a gloomy and
solitary space between the ceiling of the chapel and the top of the
scaffold erected to reach it, now painting, now poring over the writings
of the Prophets and the sermons of Savonarola, living, says Michelet,
" like Elias in the cave of Carmel."
Day after day he sat with his head thrown back and his eyes turned
upwards, or lay on a couch placed on a movable scaffold, until his eye
sight was so much affected that for months afterwards he could neither
read letters nor look at drawings without holding them above his head.
In a sonnet to his friend Giovanni da Pistoja, he thus graphically
describes the troubles and inconveniences incident to his position: —
"I've grown a goitre by dwelling in this den,
As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they hap to be,
Which drives the belly close beneath the chin :
My beard turns up to heaven ; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine ; my breastbone visibly
Grows like a harp ; a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin ;
My loins into my paunch like levers grind ;
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight ;
My feet unguided wander to and fro ;
In front my skin grows loose and long, behind
By bending it becomes more taut and straight:
Backward I strain me like a Syrian bow,
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye :
For ill can aim the gun that bends awrry !
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succor my dead pictures and my fame ;
Since foul I fare, and painting is my shame.23
were completed in 1512. The letter in the British Museum in which Michelangelo says,
"I have finished the chapel which I painted," is without date. Wilson, who quotes it
(p. 187, op. cit), says "evidently 1512" (note 1).
23 No. 5, p. 158 of Guasti's edition. Translated by J. Addington Symonds, Renaissance
in Italy, Vol. III. Appendix 2.
7

98 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
If we consider the state of the chapel when Michelangelo began to
paint in it, we shall realize how large an area of wall-surface had
yet to be covered. The side walls had been decorated with a series
of frescos painted before the death of Sixtus IV. by Luca Signorelli,
Perugino, Eoselli, Pinturicchio, Botticelli, and Ghirlandajo (some of
which were afterwards destroyed to make room at the end of the
chapel for the Last Judgment), and with a continuous row of dra
peries directly under them filled the space between the floor and the
cornice, with the exception of that occupied by six round-headed win
dows on each side of the chapel, and by two at the upper end.
Michelangelo divided the vaulted ceiling into compartments, within
which he painted scenes from the Book of Genesis. In the penden-
tives he represented the sublime figures of the Sibyls and Prophets,
and in the lunettes scenes from the Old Testament. All these he
bound together by a simulated architectural framework, vivified by
figures representing the genii of architecture.
On entering the Sistine Chapel for the first time, the mind receives
a somewhat confused impression, owing to the multiplicity of composi
tions and figures. Gigantic forms are strewn with an unsparing hand
over the great vaulted space, like stars in the firmament, — a galaxy
of human shapes, forming separate constellations, whose limits are de
fined by architectural divisions, and ornaments painted in relief. It
is as if the historical scenes and prophetic aspects of the Old Testa
ment had been suddenly unrolled before our eyes, and we were called
upon to take in their double meaning at a glance. Seeking the key,
we naturally begin by looking at the frescos of Ghirlandajo and Peru
gino on the side walls, representing incidents belonging to the old and
the new dispensation, — the law of Moses and the law of Christ, —
but, admirable as we might think them elsewhere, we have here eyes
for Michelangelo only. Compared with the lyric grandeur of inspira
tion which animates his work, the spirit of the older masters seems
cold and lifeless. In looking at their work we can talk about the laws
of composition and form, and coldly analyze, but when we look upwards

THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 99
we are swept along by the resistless current of {jhe artist's inspiration.
Throwing aside traditions, precepts, maxims, laws, canons of proportion
and of taste, and all other weapons of criticism, we give ourselves up
to the master-spirit to do with us as he will.
The theme of the great poem which he has spread before us is man
and his redemption. The separation of light from darkness, the cre
ation of the sun and moon, and of man and woman by the hand of
God, the Fall and Expulsion from Paradise, the Deluge, the Sacrifice
and Drunkenness of Noah, and many typical incidents of Jewish history
are represented in it, and the compartments which contain these com
positions are separated from each other by nude figures seated upon
pedestals, placed on either side of the spaces filled bj' the sublime
forms of the Prophets and Sibyls, whose names, as foretellers of the
coming of Christ, are inscribed upon tablets held aloft by genii. Painted
in dark tones of stone or bronze, they serve to bind the whole to
gether, to divide space into clearly appreciable masses, and to give the
ceiling that aspect of solidity which is attained in real construction by
material means. The nude figures which have been called the genii of
architecture, though more properly, perhaps, they might be called the
genii of decorative art, have a faun-like character expressing exuberance
of life. They show us that the human form was so absolutely all in
all to Michelangelo, that he used it decoratively in lieu of grotesques,
arabesques, and conventional foliage, and thus imparted a unity of effect
to his ceiling which could not have been attained in any other way.24
Before he had proceeded far with his work Michelangelo was thrown
into a state of despair by the appearance of mould upon the freshly
painted surface. "I told you," he said to the Pope, "that I was no
fresco-painter ; what I have done is ruined. If you doubt it, send some
24 " Discarding all pictorial accessories, such as costume, landscape, picturesque group-
in ", etc., Michelangelo, taking the human form as his one theme, relieves it by no ele
ment of variety save that of attitude, and yet avoids monotony. He gives us no lovely
natural objects, like Lionardo, but only blank ranges of rock, and dim vegetable forms
as blank as they ; no lovely draperies and comely gestures of life, but only the austere
truths of human nature. " — Studies in Hie History of the Renaissance, Pater, p. 66.

100 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
one to look at it." When Giuliano da Sangallo came, he consoled
the alarmed artist by telling him that it arose from the peculiar qual
ity of the Roman plaster, and would disappear as that gradually
became dry.25 With his mind set at ease, he began to paint the
Deluge, but finding that, on account of their small size, the figures
produced no effect when looked at from the floor of the chapel, he
adopted in the remaining compartments that far grander scale of pro
portion which met all requirements, and gave him a much greater
opportunity for the display of his powers. This is not at all incom
patible with his having prepared a general design before he began to
paint,26 for in this there would have been no question of relative scale
to height of ceiling from floor. The great crowd of figures in the
Deluge, as he designed it, necessarily limited their size, and may
have led him into an error which he might have avoided, had he duly
considered the dimensions of the compartment in which it was to be
painted, and expressed his subject by a group.
If we were asked to point out the finest figure in the Sistine Chapel,
we should unhesitatingly select the Adam, perhaps the grandest single
figure to be met with in the whole range of modern art. The fresco
to which it belongs represents God the Father, as a venerable old man,
stretching forth his right hand until it touches that of Adam, which
rises to meet it, as if compelled by a magnetic power. Reclining upon
his mother earth, and but half awakened to consciousness, the first man
draws his first breath, and receives the gift of life from the Divine
Hand. His attitude recalls that of the Theseus, and like it the Adam
is a noble abstract of form, — an abstract less pure, less in accordance
with the higher laws of sculpture than the Parthenon marble, but yet
nearer to the Greek standard than any modern figure with which we
are acquainted.
25 Vasari, Vol. XII. p. 191. Mr. Wilson does not find the reason given satisfactory,
hut offers no explanation. See p. 158, op. cit.
26 Mr. Heath Wilson, p. 145, gives as a reason for believmg that Michelangelo made no
such mistake in the size of the figures, "that he prepared a general design for the entire
vault before he began to paint."

THE SIBYLS. 101
The Creation of Eve, like that of Adam, is one of those compositions
which establish a type. God here calls the mother of mankind into
existence, and she comes at his command, bending forward with clasped
hands, her first act one of adoration. The Temptation and the Expul
sion from Paradise, which fill the next compartment of the ceiling,
represent progressive stages of the story of the Fall in one composition,
a common practice in earlier times, of which it will be sufficient to
cite the reliefs by Ghiberti upon the second gate of the Baptistery,
and the frescos by Masaccio and Filippino Lippi in the Carmine Chapel
at Florence as typical examples. The skill with which Michelangelo
has combined two actions in this fresco, so as to keep them distinct
and yet give a single impression to the eye, is such that he who can
quarrel with the result must be overstrict about the unities. Few
works are finer in composition, and few more powerful in expression,
and yet the impression left upon the mind is somewhat distasteful.
The Preparation for a Sacrifice and the Drunkenness of Noah, repre
sented in the two other compartments of the ceiling, as well as the
Judith and Holofernes, the David and Goliath, the Brazen Serpent,
and the Hanging of Haman, in the pendentives, are conceived in the
same grand spirit as the rest, but we shall not treat of them in detail,
as we prefer to dwell upon the general character of the frescos rather
than to repeat descriptions given abundantly elsewhere.
One of their most striking and admirable characteristics is their
thoroughly Biblical nature. They are the work of an artist who has
so imbibed the spirit of Sacred Writ, that even when dealing with the
Sibyls, whose connection with ancient life might have led him out of
the sphere of the Scriptures, he treats them as seers filled with the
spirit of prophecy* and occupied only with the Messiah's advent.
The Delphic Sibyl, once Apollo's mouthpiece (the eloquent virgin
who died and was buried in the wood sacred to the Sminthian Apollo
in the Troad), has revived to announce the coming of the Saviour.
With raised head, and hands which hold the sacred scroll, she looks
out with noble confidence upon a world whose future is assured. The

102

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

Fio. 8.

Cumacan Sibyl, who foretold the greatness of Rome and the end of
the world, is poring over the pages of a book, as if not yet mistress of
the greater secret which
her sisters have mastered.
The Libyan, daughter of
Jupiter and granddaughter
of Neptune, forgetting the
fables of classic days, sits
in strangely contorted atti
tude like a Delphic priest
ess upon her tripod, while
she recounts the future
miracles of Christ, and
speaks of the virgin who
shall nourish him in her
bosom. The Erythraean
Sibyl (Fig. 8), who sees the
Saviour, and the Persian,
who talks of the Deluge
and calls herself a Chris
tian, appear more calmly
before the world, the first
with her hand resting upon
the open pages of a book,
the second intently reading in a volume which she holds in her up
lifted hands.
These grand female figures alternate with those of the Prophets in
the pendentives of the ceiling. Isaiah (Fig. 9), Jeremiah, Daniel, and
Ezekiel, who starts forward as if he saw the celestial vision which he
has recorded, are all here, together with three of the lesser prophets,
Jonah, Joel, and Zachariah,27 each one attended by a familiar spirit
who prompts his utterance.
27 Neither in his Sibyls nor his Prophets, with the single exception of the Jeremiah, has

THE SIBYLS AND PROPHETS.

103

Fid. 9.

" Seeing on all sides these terrible faces," says Michelet,28 " one does
not know who first to listen to, nor from whom to ask an explana
tion. The gigantic crea
tures are so intently ab
sorbed that one does not
dare to address them. Eze
kiel is engaged in a furi
ous dispute; Daniel copies,
copies, without stopping
even to breathe; the Ly-
bica is about to rise from
her seat; Zachariah, aged
and bald, in his eagerness
to read is unaware of the
fatiguing attitude which
he has taken ; the Persica,
with pointed nose, wrapped
in her old woman's man
tle which covers her head,
humpbacked through age
and through centuries of
reading, miserly and envi
ous, wears out her eager eyes over a little book written in illegible
Michelangelo adopted the language of mediaevalism. In the Middle Ages, the Persian Sibyl
is represented as holding a lantern, she having announced the coming of Christ, the light
of the world ; the Libyan u, torch, because she predicted the manifestation of Christ to the
Gentiles ; the Delphic a crown of thorns, as she announced the humiliation of the Son of
God ; the Erythraean a naked sword, as being the prophetess of divine vengeance ; the Cu-
ma:an a manger or a cradle, because she announced that Christ would be born in a stable.
In mediaeval art, Daniel appears seated in the lion's den or clothed with the robe of a
Babylonian noble ; Jeremiah sits like Michelangelo's prophet mourning over the ruins of
Jerusalem ; Isaiah holds the saw, instrument of his martyrdom, or the burning coal which
purified his lips ; Ezekiel is absorbed in reading, with the four animals and the flaming
wheels which he saw in his vision near him. See Crosnier's Iconographie Chrelicnne.
28 La Renaissance, par J. Michelet, pp. 401, 402.

104 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
characters. She doubtless reads late into the night, for I see beside her
the beautiful Erythrcca, who has relighted her smouldering fire and
trimmed her lamp, that she may write. Studious and learned Sibyls,
ye belong to the sixteenth century. The youngest, the Dclphica, who
thunders from her tripod, is the only ancient one among you. Virgin
and fruitful, overflowing with the spirit of prophecy, with swollen breasts
and dilated nostrils, she launches a bitter glance from her eyes, — that
of the Virgin of Tauris."
All these Sibyls and Prophets form the chorus to the great drama of
humanity upon the ceiling. Their inspired voices ring out the noble
lines of Virgil which announce the return of Astrsea and the sending
down of a new progeny from high heaven, but with a deeper meaning.
As we listen to them we seem to hear such prophetic words as these
in which the Celtic bards predicted a better future:29 —
"1. Three things diminish day by day, as day by day antagonism
grows, — hatred, injustice, and ignorance.
" 2. Three things strengthen day by day, as day by day the world
tends toward them, — love, science, and justice.
"3. Three things continually diminish, — obscurity, error, and death.
"4. Three things continually grow, — light, truth, and life.
" These things will in the end predominate over all the rest, and then
evil will be destroyed."
Michelangelo did his part as man and as artist in the great work of
which that consummation will be the result. He fought perpetually
against hatred, injustice, ignorance, and error. He grew in love, at
tained science, and had a high sense of justice; he conquered death
by a strong faith, and walking with truth and aiming at the life eternal,
advanced steadily to the light.
To have conceived and executed such a work as the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel demanded a man who Avas all that he was. He here
showed himself as architect in construction, as sculptor in form, as
painter in design and color, as poet in imagination. Perhaps no
29 Arclioeologie Celtique, par Henri Martin, p. 424.

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. 105
other man ever lived who could have grappled successfully with such
an enterprise, for even if we could name one who had the requisite
knowledge of all the arts of design, and the poetical genius, this knowl
edge and that gift would not have been sufficient for the task with
out his titanic boldness of spirit. To Michelangelo the blank wall and
the shapeless marble from the quarry were full of illimitable possibilities ;
the brush and the chisel were the keys with which he opened the doors
of the temple of humanity, out of which came prophets and kings and
prisoners at his bidding. To will and to do, to think and to act, to
attempt what seemed beyond human power and to succeed, to materialize
the creatures of his imagination, however abstract, in marble or color
— this he did through that self-reliance which gave him courage to
undertake what no one else could have carried through.
It is precisely on account of his daring contempt of limitations, that
the painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling seems to us far greater than
the sculptor of the Medici tombs. The same power, the same maniera
terribile, shows itself in both, but in the one its use is much more
legitimate than in the other, for of all the arts sculpture is the most
limited in its range of expression.
In the " Laocoon," which treats of the proper limits of painting and
poetry, Lessing sustains the just theory that the arts can only be
brought to perfection by rigorously confining each to its separate do
main This domain is more or less wide according as the art in
question is more or less fettered by the material which forms its
avenue of expression. The range widens for painting and music, and
attains perfect freedom of expression in poetry. That of sculpture is,
then, the narrowest of all, for its office is to represent form in marble.
That of painting, with all the resources of grouping, color, perspective,
and light and shade, is wider, though even it is far less free than
poetry. The poet, "not being obliged, like the painter, to limit his
subject to a moment of time, takes any subject which pleases him, and
follows it up from its source through every change. Each phase, which
would cost the painter a separate work, costs him but a single stroke

106 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
of the pen ; and lest this stroke, taken by itself, should trouble the
imagination of his auditor, it may be so prepared by what goes
before, or so softened and improved by that which follows, as to leave
the happiest impression upon his mind."30 If we accept the above
reasoning as sound, we see why Michelangelo sinned least against
canons of taste in the art which allowed him most freedom, namely,
in that of painting, though here, too, he often overstepped legitimate
bounds. Better than any other artist he could have signed his statues
"Pictor," and his pictures "Sculptor," for he used the chisel like a
brush and oftentimes the brush like a chisel.81 In the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel the sculptor everywhere shows his face behind the
painter's work, and yet Michelangelo was greater as a painter than as a
sculptor, because painting allowed his thoughts quicker expression, since
it placed fewer material obstacles in his way. It was because he would
not acknowledge to himself that the sculptor is more or less enslaved
by material exigencies that he has left us so many half-finished statues.
Had he followed in his art the advice which he gave to his father,
"Do what you have to do without getting into a passion about it,
for there is nothing which we are called upon to do, however great,
that will not appear small if approached calmly," these would have
been fewer, and had he applied it to circumstances, half the troubles
and annoyances of his life would have been avoided. They were
manifold while he was painting in the Sistine Chapel. In June, 1508,
when preparing to commence his work there, he writes, " I am sick at
heart, ill, and worn out with fatigue, helpless and penniless. For thir
teen months the Pope has paid me nothing." A year later, he com
plains, "the Pope has given me no money for a twelvemonth; but I
do not ask for it, for I feel that I have not earned it, and this because
painting is not the sort of work which I am fit for. I waste my time
81 Lessing's Works, Vol. III. pp. 37, 38, ed. Carlsruhe.
81 In a letter to Varchi, Michelangelo says, "a me soleva parere che la scultura fosse
la lanterna della pittura. " Vasari says that he was wont to model the figures for his car
toons in clay or wax (as Correggio is known to have done), that he might study perspec
tive and effects of light and shade.

PAPAL TYRANNY.

107

and perfect nothing." In one of these moments of despair and discon
tent he wrote that powerful sonnet in which he protests against the
uses to which papal tyranny has subjected him. What bitter words
are these of his to Julius : —
"I am thy drudge, and have been from my youth.
Thine, like the rays which the sun's circle fill ;
Yet of my dear time's waste thou think'st no iU :
The more I toil, the less I move thy ruth."82
82 No. III. Guasti, Le Rime, etc., p. 156. Sonnet written in 1506. Translated by
J. Addington Symonds, op. cit.

108

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

CHAPTEE V.

"Es wachst der Mensch mit seinen grosseren Zwecken." — Goethe.

HILE Rome, with all its associations
and its myriad objects of interest
and beauty, had comparatively little
effect upon Michelangelo, who there
as elsewhere seemed clad in a men
tal armor of proof which blunted
all weapons directed against him,
it quickened the genius of Raphael
and affected his style. Michel
angelo copied the Faun's mask at
Lorenzo's Academy, imitated the antique in his Cupid for a spe
cial purpose, restored several antique statues, and is said to have
admired the Torso of the Vatican;1 but, unlike Raphael, he expressed
no enthusiasm for classic art, either by word of mouth or pen, and
certainly showed but little trace of its influence in his works. The
causes of his development are difficult to discover, whereas those of
Raphael's growth may be followed up to their point of departure as
clearly as the folds in the drapery of a fine statue. His works suc
cessively reflect the faces of Giovanni Santi and Perugino, of Lionardo,

1 In M. de Chantelou's journal of the visit of Bernini to France in 1665 (see Gazette des
Beaux Arts, February 1, 1877, p. 203), the sculptor relates that Cardinal Salviati, bishop
of Ferrara, one day found Michelangelo on his knees before the Torso, so absorbed in con
templating it that for some time he returned no answer to the questions addressed to him.
When at length he recovered himself and perceived the Cardinal, he said, "This is the
work of a man who knew more about nature than any one ; it is u great misfortune that
it has been so mutilated."

CHAPTER V.

Vatican frescos. First chamber,
called "della Segnatura."

Raphael, 1608-1513.
' 1. The Dispute of the Sacrament.
2. The Parnassus.
3. The School of Athens.
4. The Jurisprudence.
The Heliodorus.

¦ 1508-1511.

Vatican Frescos. Second chamber, ( 1. The Heliodorus. )
"S > 1512 — 1513
called "of the Heliodorus.'' ( 2. The Mass of Bolsena (in part) f •
Single figures and groups in the medallions and pendentives of the ceiling in both cham
bers, connected with these frescos. Before 1513.
1. The Madonna of the Hermitage?  1508
2. The Esterhazy Madonna  1508
3. Madonna of the Veil  1508

10.
11.
12.13.14.15.

Five repetitions,

4. Portrait of a young man (Eaphael?)  Date?
5. The Fornarina  1509
6. Portrait of Pope Julius II  1512
7. The Madonna Alba  1510-1512
8. The Madonna Aldobrandini  1510-1512
9. The Madonna of the Diadem  1510-1512
Portrait of Bindo Altoriti  1512
Madonna of the Palm  1511
Madonna of the Eogers collection  1511
Madonna del Foligno  1511
Isaiah (fresco)  1512

St. Petershurgh.
Pesth.
( 1. Brocca collection, Milan.
2. Amsterdam.
3. Pesth.
4. Blenheim.
.5. Westminster Gallery, London.
Louvre, Paris.
Barberini Palace, Eonie.
Pitti Gallery, Florence.
Hermitage, St. Petersburgh.
National Gallery, London.
Louvre, Paris.
Pinacothek, Munich.
Lord Ellesmere, London.
Mrs. E. I. Makintosh, London.
Vatican, Eome.
San Agostino, Eome.
Uffizi, Florence.

The Fornarina (so-called)  1512
(Attributed to Giorgione and to Sebastiano del Piombo.)
16. Portrait of the Duke of Mantua  1513 Charlecote Park, England.
17. Madonna of Loreto  1513 Lost. Copy at Louvre.
18. Holy Family of Naples  1513 Eoyal Gallery, Naples.

RAPHAEL AT ROME. 109
Fra Bartolomeo, and Michelangelo, as a running river reflects the ob
jects upon its banks.
Umbria, Florence, and Rome each play their part in the shaping of
his art, and yet his individuality is unaffected, like that of the river
whose tributary streams increase its volume as it flows on to the sea,
but do not otherwise change it. Precisely because he was so quick to
feel and respond to external influences, Rome, during the reigns of
Julius and of Leo, was the most desirable residence for RaphaeL She
took possession of him, and from the day when the Pope received him
in the Camera della Segnatura2 to that of his death he was "civis
Romanus " in thought, word, and deed.
The restoration of Rome to her ancient glory was the ruling idea
which he shared in common with other distinguished men at the papal
court, over which the Sovereign Pontiff presided, dispensing life and
heat to all around him, like the sun in the centre of the heavenly
system. To restore the walls, the palaces and temples of the ancient
city, to rebuild the ruined basilicas, to raise new churches of stately
dimensions beside them, and to undertake art enterprises upon a hith
erto unequalled scale of magnitude, had been the wish of Charlemagne
the Frank, Theodoric the Goth, and Theodolinda the Lombard queen ;
when the long night of the Dark Ages had passed away it prompted
the Countess Matilda to give her lands and money to Pope Gregory
VII., and in the fourteenth century it stirred the heart of Petrarch.
The letters of the poet, who, though not a Roman by birth, was the
most Roman of the Romans, are filled with passionate appeals to the
recreant pontiff who lay sleeping at Avignon under silken hangings,
while the Lateran, mother of all churches, was roofless and abandoned,
and the streets of Rome were grass-grown and desolate. When at last
Urban returned from his voluntary exile, the poet rested in the hope
that a new era of prosperity was about to dawn upon the city of his
2 So called from a tribunal held in it under the presidency of the Pope. It and the
adjoinino- rooms, known as the Stanze of Eaphael, are situated in a part of the Vatican
built by Pope Nicholas V., about 1450-1455.

110 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
affections. The power of the Renaissance to redeem her waste places,
which showed itself in all that was accomplished by Eugenius IV,
Nicholas V, Pius II., Sixtus IV, and Innocent V, was not, however,
fully felt until the days of Julius II. and Leo X., when all those great
schemes for the embellishment of Rome were entered upon, which added
the noblest works of modern art to her ancient treasures, and by forg
ing a link between the past and the present made her mistress of both.
The past was even more real to the minds of men than the present,
in the Rome which Raphael and Michelangelo knew. Men wrote,
thought, and talked in a pagan spirit, mingling the old wine with the
new, heathen philosophy with Christian theology. The orgies of the
Empire had been renewed under Alexander VI., the suppers of Trimal-
chion surpassed, the crimes of Nero and Caligula equalled, and now
some of the nobler phases of her ancient life were to be revived under
Julius and Leo.
The growing influence of the antique upon Raphael after his arrival
in Rome is clearly traceable in his great works. Although he had
perhaps seen and studied statues and gems at Urbino, and certainly
at Florence, he began to work at the Vatican in a mediaeval spirit,
showing himself still the disciple of a school whose chief aim was to
glorify the Church, to illustrate her dogmas, and incorporate her types.
In the "Disputa" he illustrated her power, displayed the splendors of
the celestial hierarchy, and portrayed the wise, the learned, the gifted, —
popes and scholars, poets and artists, — acknowledging the light from
heaven transmitted through her to be the only guide to truth. In the
Parnassus he stepped from the mediaeval world into that of the Renais
sance, and represented the green summits of Helicon shaded with laurel
groves, beneath which the great poets of every age meet in friendly
converse at the court of Apollo. Possessed by a new spirit, he ut
tered words not to be found in the dictionary of Holy Mother Church,
and talked in a language whose idioms are not in her grammar. The
ideas which he expressed were in the air, and he gave them utterance
in form and color. It was to Rome that he owed this change of aim

RAPHAEL AT ROME. Ill
and transformation of style, this widening of the boundaries of his art,
this casting off the shackles of system, by which he gained a. strength
which enabled him to wear the chains of art so lightly, that though
controlled by them he yet walked in perfect freedom. The originality
of his mind saved him from falling into that slavish imitation of antique
forms which the incessant study of ancient art might otherwise have
induced, so that when he repeated an antique group, such as the Three
Graces at Siena (Fig. 7), or a statue, such as the Ariadne of the Vatican,
or treated a classical subject, such as the Lucretia or the Galatea, or
used an Apollo or a Minerva to decorate the niches of the great Hall of
Assembly in the School of Athens, he did so with modifications and
changes which made them his own.3
Leo X. appointed Raphael chief inspector of all marbles dug up at
Rome,4 and commissioned him to make plans and elevations of ancient
3 It would be very interesting, if it were possible, to know exactly what antique works
were gathered together at Eome in Eaphaei's time. Poggio Bracciolini states that in the
middle of the fifteenth century — sixty years before — there were but six statues of bronze
and marble to be seen at Eome. This was during the papacy of Nicholas V. As the
tiistes of this pope were scholastic, while those of his successor, jEneas Sylvius (Pius II.),
were archaeological, probably neither of these popes added much to the artistic treasures
of the city. Here and there only do we hear of ancient marbles as seen and admired
by such men as Ghiberti, Bruuelleschi, and Donatello, most of which were probably sold
to enrich the collections of the Medici at Florence. But few of the statues which Julius
II. collected in the Gardens of the Belvidere to form the beginning of the Vatican Museum
are known to us. The Laocoon, discovered in the Baths of Titus in 1506, the Torso of
the Belvidere, and the Ariadne, were certainly among them, for we know of Michelangelo's
examination of the first to identify it with the group described by Pliny; of his admira
tion for the second ; and we are assured of the presence of the third by Marc Antonio's
en»raving after Eaphaei's drawing. There, too, was the Apollo Belvidere, then lately dis
covered at Porto d' Anzo. Doubtless many other statues might be added to this list, but
still the collections formed by Julius and Leo cannot have been very extensive, as one
division of the Vatican Gallery (the Museo Pio Clementino) not only contains them all,
together with those added by Clement VII. and Paul III., hut also more than two thou
sand statues brought together during the reign of Pius VI. (1769-1775). Michelangelo
restored the arm of the Dying Gaul (Gladiator), both legs of the Hercules (Farnese), and
the head and right arm of the Nile.
* This was in order that inscriptions and all marbles used in the building of St. Peter's

112 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Roman buildings, but how far he had accomplished this gigantic task
at the time of his death is not known, though he had certainly made
many drawings, as the letters of his contemporaries testify.
Among them is one written by Marc Antonio Michiel de Ser Vet-
tor, a noble Venetian, to a friend at Venice, in which, after giving
an account of Raphael's last moments, he says : " He had drawn the
ancient edifices of Rome in a book, with their proportions, forms, and
ornaments, so faithfully, that any who had seen his drawings could in
some sort say that he had seen ancient Rome."5 In a letter written
by Calcagnini he says : " By digging down accumulations of earth, and
making restorations according to the descriptions of ancient authors,
Raphael has so greatly excited the admiration of Leo X. and of the
Roman people that they regard him as a god sent from heaven to
give back her ancient glory to the Eternal City."6
The following passage from Raphael's report of his work to the Pope 7
gives an idea of the spirit in which he prosecuted this great enterprise,
and of the depth of his feeling about Rome. "Some people," he says,
"believe that the stories told about the wonders of Rome are fables,
but my study of her ancient remains has brought me to the conclusion
that many things which are impossible to us were mere child's play to
the ancient Romans. By long and careful inspection of ancient mon
uments, by reading ancient authors and comparing their descriptions
should be saved. The papal brief orders all persons who find marbles and other stones
at Eome, or within a circuit of ten miles around it, to report the same to Eaphael within
three days, under a penalty of three hundred ducats in case of non-compliance. This pen
alty applies to any one who, without Eaphaei's permission, breaks or cuts any stone bavin1*
an inscription upon it. The brief is printed in the first edition of the French edition of
Passavant's Life of Raphael, pp. 506, 507.
• Dated April 11, 1520. Kolizia d' opcre di discguo scritta da-un Anonimo. Bassano,
1800. p. 210, note 128.
6 "Nunc Eomam in Eoma quterit reperitque Eaphael. Quferere, magni hominis: sed
reperire, Dei est."
7 This report was formerly attributed to Count Castiglione, but both Morelli (I' Anmimo,
p. 213) and Passavant (op. cit. p. 263), who admits the possible co-operation of Castiglione
as a literary man, declare that it wa3 written by Eaphael.

FRESCOS AT THE VATICAN. 113
with the existing ruins, I think that I have acquired some knowledge
of ancient architecture. To know anything so excellent is a source of
great pleasure to me, but at the same time I am filled with the deep
est grief when I behold the dead body of this noble city, once queen
of the world, but now so miserably lacerated." Raphael then points
to the Goths and Vandals as the authors of her present state of ruin,
blames those popes who permitted the destruction of so many fine
buildings, statues, and triumphal arches, as well as the people who
have undermined edifices to extract "pozzolana," and have made lime
out of marble cornices and statues, and asserts his belief that all the
buildings of modern Rome are built of mortar made cat of pulverized
marbles. "Since I have been in Rome, now less than twelve years,"
he adds, "I have witnessed the destruction of many fine monuments,
such as the Meta Sudans in the Via Alexandrina, the arch which stood
at the entrance to the Baths of Diocletian, as well as of many splen
did columns, architraves, and friezes, — acts which Hannibal himself
would have been ashamed of."
Postponing what we have to say about Raphael's education as an
architect, which was begun under Bramante and perfected by his own
subsequent studies of ancient buildings, we turn to consider those frescos
at the Vatican which he was commissioned to paint at his first in
terview with Julius II., to whom he was presented by his compatriot
Bramante, and from whom, as Vasari tells us,8 he received many ca
resses.9 The Camera della Segnatura, in which he shortly after began to
paint the Dispute of the Sacrament, has been well called the Chamber
8 Vol. VIII. p. 14.
9 Tischbein (Aus meinem Lcben, I. 186) gives this somewhat theatrical account of Ea
phaei's reception by the Pope : " Presented by his uncle, Bramante, the young artist,
whose Ion" fair hair fell upon his shoulders, knelt before his Holiness, who, struck with
his beauty, raised him up, saying, 'Here is a pure and blameless angel; he shall have
Cardinal Bembo for his master, and he shall cover these walls with paintings.' " Grimm
(op. cit. p. 195) ridicules this story. He would like to know how many young paint
ers with flaxen hair, much enthusiasm, little talent, and less knowledge, have travelled

114 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
of the Faculties,10 because the subjects depicted represent the sum
of knowledge through which man arrives at Divine truth. Theology,
poetry, philosophy, and jurisprudence are there illustrated by the
Dispute of the Sacrament, the Parnassus, the School of Athens, and
the Jurisprudence (called also the Three Virtues), and by four symbolic
figures in medallions, and four compositions representing the Tempta
tion, the Apollo and Marsyas, the Astronomy, and the Judgment of
Solomon. Of the four kinds of knowledge, that of the Divine is illus
trated by the " Disputa," the Theology, the Temptation, and by the
Apollo and Marsyas, which is indirectly connected with it, for when
Dante prays Apollo to
"Enter into my bosom then, and breathe
As at the time when Marsyas thou didst draw
Out of the scabbard of those limbs of his," n
he expresses the hope that, thus freed from fleshly bonds and filled with
the Divine spirit, he will be better able to describe the celestial scenes
which are about to open before him during his journey.
Human knowledge is illustrated by the School of Athens, and by
the single figures of Philosophy and Astronomy, which latter stands for
the sciences.
Judicial knowledge, or the knowledge of truth and right, is figured
in the Jurisprudence, the Justice, and the Judgment of Solomon, which
is the type of human justice inspired by God, whilst knowledge of the
beautiful is set forth by the Parnassus, the Poesy, and the Apollo and
Marsyas, which illustrates the victory of true over false art.
to Eome under its influence only to find that they have mistaken their vocation. In a
more legitimate strain of argument he points out that Bramante was not Eaphaei's uncle,
that Bembo was neither Cardinal nor at Eome in 1508, and that Eaphael, when he fin
ished the frescos of the first chamber, was twenty-nine years old.
10 Passavant, op. cit. p. 113.
11 "Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue,
Si come quando Marsia traesti
Della vagina delle membre sue." Paradiso, Canto I. v. 19.

THE "DISPUTA."

115

That the "Disputa" (see Fig. 10) was the first fresco painted by
Raphael at the Vaticau is clearly indicated by its obviously sym
metrical arrangement, its puristic treatment, and its Umbrian spirit.
It represents a discussion about church symbols and doctrines between
many men of many minds, upon which a miraculous vision sheds its
light; and symbolizes, through the mystery of the Eucharist, the re-
Fio. 10.

lation established between God and man by the redemption. It is an
image of the agreement between the saints of the Old and New Tes
tament in heaven, and the theologians, poets, and artists upon earth.
It is not a discussion so much as the closing by a vision of a discus
sion upon points of faith. Opinions and arguments having been ad
vanced and sustained, and human intelligence having proved itself
inadequate to the task of solving heavenly mysteries, the clouds sep-

116 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
arate and the celestial hierarchy appears in all its glory. Rays of
light like golden harp-strings illumine the sky, and between them
countless cherubim are seen surrounding the Trinity.
"In fashion there as of a snow-white rose
Displayed itself to me the saintly host,
Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride."
"0 Trinal light, that in a single star
Sparkling upon their sight so satisfies them,
Look down upon our tempest here below."12
Christ sits below God the Father, between the Madonna and St. John
the Baptist, under an overarching rainbow, with saints, patriarchs, proph
ets, and martyrs ranged on either hand. On his right are St. Peter
with the Bible as guardian of the faith, and the keys as holder of the
power to bind and to loose ; Adam, father of the human race ; St. John,
revealer of Divine truth in the Apocalypse; David with crown and
harp, of whose house Christ in his human nature was a member; and
St. Stephen, the first martyr, with a companion saint. On his left are
St. Paul with the sword, emblem of his martyrdom, as also of the pen
etrating nature of his doctrines ; Abraham with the knife of sacrifice, first
symbol of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God; St. James, third witness
of the Transfiguration and type of hope, as St. Peter is of faith, and
St. John of love; Moses with the tables of the law, St. Lorenzo, and
St. George.
This saintly host, sitting in light above the earth upon a great
bank of clouds, is, as it were, reflected by another host, in the lower
part of the fresco, as objects are reflected in a lake.
12 "In forma dunque di Candida rosa
Mi si mostrava la militia santa,
Che nel suo sangue Cristi fece sposa."
"0 Trina luce, che in unica stella
Scintillando a lor vista si gli appaga,
Guarda quaggiuso alia nostra procella."
Paradiso, Canto XXXI. vs. 1-3, 28-30.

THE "DISPUTA." 117
"And as a hill in water at its base
Mirrors itself, as if to see its beauty
When affluent most in verdure and in flowers,
So ranged aloft all round about the light,
Mirrored I saw in more ranks than a thousand
All who above there have from us returned.
And if the lowest row collect within it
So great a light, how vast the amplitude
Is of this rose in its extremest leaves."18
The crowding disputants, some sunk in thought, some absorbed in read
ing, and others casting away their books as if suddenly illumined
with truth from on high, are grouped around an altar upon which the
Eucharist is exposed in a pyx. On either side sit the four great
fathers of the Latin church. To the left is St. Jerome, type of con
templative life, absorbed in meditation of the sacred unity, with the
Vulgate and his letters lying near him ; to the right St. Ambrose,
representing the church militant, with his eyes and hands raised as if
ravished by celestial harmonies. Near him are his great convert, St.
Augustine, in the act of dictating his Confessions to a scribe, Pope
Anacletus, martyr, and San Bonaventura, "Doctor Seraphicus," reading
in a book. Opposite St. Augustine is St. Gregory the Great, in pon
tifical robes, with his Commentaries on the Book of Job {Liber Mo-
ralium) lying near him. St. Bernard, with his hands stretched out
towards the altar, is next to St. Jerome ; then comes Petrus Lombardus,
" Doctor sententiarum," founder of scholastic theology, who first wrote
13 "3 come clivo che in acqua de' suo imo
Si specchia, quasi per vedersi adomo,
Quardo e nel verde, e ne' fioretti opinio ;
Si, sopustando allume intorno intorno,
Vidi specehiani inpiu di mille soglie,
Quanto di noi lassu fatto ha ritorno.
E se l'infimo grado in se raccoglie
Si grande lume, quant' e la larghezza
Di questa rosa nell estrerae foglie ? "
Paradiso, Canto XXX. vs. 109-117.

118 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
a discussion on the Sacraments; Duns Scotus, "Doctor subtilis," and
Thomas Aquinas, "Doctor Angelicus."
The Pope seen in profile, who is pointed out by a philosopher to the
notice of a young man leaning upon a balustrade in the foreground, is
generally said to be Innocent 111., author of the Veni Creator and the
Stabat Mater, but the face is the face of Sixtus IV, the uncle of Julius,
to whom he owed his success as an ecclesiastic. Behind him are Dante
and Savonarola.14 The two bishops to the left of the altar represent
the clergy, and the noble figure turning towards it, with his discarded
books lying at his feet, is a scholar, convinced that wisdom is to be
found in the teachings of the Church only. The three young men who
do homage to the Eucharist stand for the people, the priests and laics
for the schismatics, and heresy is typified by a sectary interpreting a pas
sage from the Scriptures to a crowd of auditors. It has been plausibly
suggested15 that the church on the hill in the landscape to the left of
the altar, is the old basilica of St. Peter, whose destruction was begun
about a year before Raphael's arrival at Rome; and that the archi
tectural base to the right typifies the new church, of which Julius,
whose name is inscribed upon the jiala of the altar, was the founder.
While the composition of this noble work is not exempt from the
formalism of Perugino's school,16 there is no trace of it in the forms,
attitudes, or draperies of the single figures. These were not surpassed
in easy grace of movement or in expressive gesture by Raphael in his
later works, nor did he ever paint a finer group than that of the he-
resiarch and the disputants, or a more vigorous and characteristic head
than that of Dante.
The Temptation and the figure of Theology on the ceiling of the
14 The representation of the martyred Dominican in such company is a protest against
the sentence of Alexander VI., which declared him to be a heretic. In the reign of Julius
II., who honored him, this judgment was reversed. He was already looked upon as a
saint, though he was not canonized until 1751, by Benedict XIV.
15 Das Lebcn Raphael, H. Grimm, p. 355.
16 The upper portion of the " Disputa " resembles the fresco by Eaphael in the Church of
San Severo at Perugia in general arrangement.

THE TEMPTATION. 119
room, which are connected with the "Disputa," strike us not only by
their beauty, but also by their fitness as a part of the general scheme.
Biblical stories like the first could not have been introduced into a
composition intended to illustrate man's need of enlightenment about
matters too deep for him to fathom without aid from on high; nor
could allegorical subjects like the second have been combined in it
with the representation of historical persons who had labored for the
faith and done their part to defend and sustain it,17 and as neither
could be ignored, it was necessary to use each separately, outside of
and yet dependent upon the great fresco. This Raphael accomplished
by treating them as a part of the decorations of the ceiling. The
Temptation, which illustrates the necessity of redemption through
Christ, is one of these detached parts of a great whole. In Michel
angelo's composition of the same subject in the Sistine Chapel, the
woman-headed serpent, having wound herself with the vigorous coils
of an anaconda about the trunk of a tree, forces the forbidden fruit
into the hand of a dark-haired, ox-eyed, passionate-looking Eve, who
seems fitter for the life which is to follow the expulsion than for that
which preceded it. Adam, eager to receive the fatal gift, cannot even
wait until Eve offers it to him, but thrusts out his brawny arm to
pluck it for himself. The passion which here agitates each of the actors
in the drama is unknown to the gentle creatures depicted by Raphael.
His tempter is apparently but a timid worker of evil. His Eve, with
her golden hair and ingenuous face, offers the apple with a gentle
courtesy, while Adam turns to the serpent with an inquiring look, as
if he asked, "Is it lawful for me to eat?" It seems impossible that
two such beings could have been tempted to disobey, for they are
apparently destitute of that leaven of original sin which in ordinary
human beings offers a point of attack to Satan.
17 The idea of separating the allegorical figures from the wall pictures is entirely origi
nal and most admirable, as it completely avoids the confusion consequent upon mixing
up sjTnbolic with real persons, as Eubens did in the Marie de' Medici series of pictures at
the Louvre.

120 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Worthy indeed is the single figure of Theology to resume this tri
une work within itself.
"Over her snow-white veil with olive cinct,
Appeared a lady under a green mantle,
Vested in color of the living flame." 18
Seated upon a throne of clouds, and attended by two lovely genii, this
image of calm and dignified beauty holds a book in one hand and
points with the other to the scene where those momentous questions
which concern her are under discussion.
The Pope's interest in Raphael's work led him not only to watch
its progress, but to offer suggestions which, even when not of the hap
piest kind, could not well be disregarded; but more valuable counsels
were given him by such learned men as Bibbiena, Castiglione, Bembo,
and Sadoleto. He was not, like Michelangelo, a poet and a reader of
great poems, accustomed from his early youth to ponder over the mas
terpieces of Italian literature, and was, therefore, somewhat dependent
upon others for help when dealing with subjects whose adequate treat
ment demanded no little book learning. Before he painted the School
•of Athens his literary friends read such books as Diogenes Laertius to
him, and when he was making ready for the Parnassus, they fed his
spirit upon the Paradiso of Dante and the Triumphs of Petrarch.
From Petrarch's Triumph of Love, in which Alcseus, Pindar, Anacreon,
Virgil, Ovid, Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus wander in a flowery and
verdant meadow discoursing of love, he may have derived some valu
able hints for the general treatment of his Parnassus ; but in the Di
vina Commedia he found far richer sources of inspiration. The Homer 19
18 "Sovra candido vel cinta d' oliva
Donna m' apparve, sotto verde manto
Vestita di color di fiamma viva." Purgatorio, Canto XXX. vs. 31-33.
19 "Four mighty shades I saw approaching us;
Semblance had they nor sorrowful nor glad.
To say to me began my gracious Master :

THE PARNASSUS. 121
of the fourth canto of the Inferno is like the painter's Homer, and the
people "with solemn eyes and slow,"20 whom Dante and Virgil saw
when they "came into the meadow of fresh verdure," are like his
Apollo, the Muses, and the great poets of every period, who sit under
the shade of the laurel-trees upon the summit of the double-headed
mount, with the Castalian fount at their feet,21 and the yawning Corycian
cave figured in the great window below them. Of the sisters nine
this is Calliope, clad in a white tunic, who stands looking towards
Homer, Virgil, and Dante; and this Polyhymnia, seated upon the grass
with a lyre in her hand, and these farther in the background are Terp
sichore, Euterpe, and Erato grouped together, in company with Mel
pomene, Urania, Thalia, and Clio.
This lovely woman reclining in the foreground is Sappho, with book
and lyre, and the poets near her are Alcteus leaning against a laurel-
Him with that falchion in his hand behold,
Who comes before them, even as their Lord.
That one is Homer, Poet sovereign ;
He who comes next is Horace, the satirist ;
The third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan." Inferno, Canto IV. v. 83.
20 "We came into a meadow of fresh verdure.
People were there with solemn eyes and slow,
Of great authority in their countenance ;
They spake but seldom and with gentle voices.
Thus we withdrew ourselves upon one side
Into an opening luminous and lofty,
So that they all of them were visible.
There opposite upon the green enamel
Were pointed out to me the mighty spirits
Whom to have seen I feel myself ennobled."
Inferno, Cauto IV. v. 110 et seq.
21 In the original design engraved by Marc Antonio, Apollo plays upon the lyre, and
not, as in the fresco, upon the violin. The change was made, it is said, by the Pope's
suggestion, as a delicate compliment to Giacomo Sanssecondo, an eminent virtuoso of the
time, whose music was greatly admired at the papal court. The Violin-Player by Eaphael
at tho Palazzo Sciarra is said to be a portrait of this same person.

122

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

tree, Petrarch, Corinna or Laura, and Ariosto, or the Tuscan poet, Fran
cesco Berni. Those sons of song on the other side of the sacred hill
are Pindar, who has Horace for his listener, Sanazzaro the Neapolitan
poet, Anacreon (Ennius or Ovid), Aristophanes and Ariosto holding
converse together, and not far from them are Terence and Plautus,
Boccaccio and Tebaldeo, the latter a Ferrarese poet of Raphael's time.
Though less imposing than the " Disputa," and from the very nature
of its subject less interesting than the School of Athens, the Parnassus
(Fig. 11) has a serene beauty of its own. It is to the other frescos of
Flo. 11.

Raphael what the Pastoral Symphony is to the other symphonies of
Beethoven. Few figures are more stately than its Homer, more in
spired than its Pindar, more lovely than its Urania, more graceful than
its Sappho. They are the first-fruits of the classical influences so lately
brought to bear upon the painter at Rome, and have a peculiar interest
in our eyes, as with them Raphael ceased to be exclusively a painter of
religious subjects, and thenceforward treated Christian or pagan themes
indifferently. In the single figure of Poetry upon the ceiling he caught

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 123
the spirit of the lyric poets of antiquity. Seated in a noble attitude,
and wearing a laurel crown upon her head, she spreads her wings as if
about to soar aloft. Her robe border is spangled with stars, and her
deep blue mantle falls upon her crossed feet. With her dreamy eyes
she seems to be watching the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, in
which the god, representing true art, receives the laurel crown of vic
tory, while the poor faun, suspended to a tree, hangs ready to be pulled
"out of the scabbard of those limbs of his."
Raphael probably painted all the medallions and pendentives of the
ceiling in this chamber after he had finished the four large frescos, for
otherwise we should see a similar difference in style between them.
This is not the case, for not only the biblical compositions, with per
haps the single exception of the Adam and Eve, but also the allegorical
figures, — the Poesy, the Philosophy, the Theology, and the Jurispru
dence, — are alike in style.
Theology and Poetry having been thus nobly illustrated, Philosophy
next received a still nobler treatment at Raphael's hands. Looked at
without reference to the subject, its apparent freedom from formal
arrangement gives the School of Athens the appearance of a real scene
in which accident has played a happy part ; but on closer examination
we see that the groups are wonderfully varied and logically combined,
that the action of every individual is true to character and singularly
appropriate, and that while the coloring is harmonious and vigorous, it
is not obtrusive. Like that of autumn woods, which have
"On sunless days
A sunshine of their own,"
it has a subdued brilliancy of tone which gives grandeur to the whole.
The church of S*3, Maria degli Angeli, on some day when crowds of
people are moving about the nave, presents a sight like that repre
sented in the School of Athens. Similar sights were often offered to
Raphael's observation at Rome, where church ceremonies constantly
brought large crowds together under the roof of some great building,
whose arches had as wide and majestic a span as those under which

124 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
he assembled his Greek philosophers and their followers. The ruins
of ancient Rome, such as the Basilica of Constantine or the Baths of
Caracalla, filled his mind with images of architectural grandeur suited
to his purpose, and while he had these silent models around him, which
he could transform into a fitting stage, the Romans themselves fur
nished him with living models for the actors. The characteristic atti
tude of his Diogenes was doubtless suggested to him by that of some
Beppo of the sixteenth century who lay basking in the sunshine, and
the cripple asking alms at the beautiful gate of the Temple is evi
dently a carefully studied portrait of one of that class of mendicants
whose modern representatives whine out their plea for charity before
St. Peter's or on the Spanish steps. To select and to combine, to pick
out single types and to unite them in one great whole, to measure all
by that "certa idea" which he had in his mind, as a gauge of the
fitness of each for the setting to which it was destined, was Raphael's
occupation while conceiving and working out his frescos at the Vatican.
So complicated a subject as that of the School of Athens (Fig. 12)
demanded the aid of scholars and of books, and the perfect adaptation
of gestures and bearing to character shows that he used both to advan
tage. No one ignorant of the general history of Greek philosophy
could have planned a work which exhibits its development, its double
tendency, and its decline.
Its general scheme may be explained in a few words. Plato and
Aristotle, its leaders, occupy the centre of the composition with their
disciples. Socrates, who stands to the right of Plato, forms a bond
between his school and that of Pythagoras. The Stoics, the Cynics,
and the Epicureans move about the steps to the left and in front of
Aristotle, and the masters of exact sciences, Archimedes, Ptolemy, and
Zoroaster, occupy the foreground. The different tendencies of Plato
and Aristotle are indicated by their gestures. While the first points
upwards, the second spreads out his hand significantly above the earth.
"Plato's relation to the earth," says Goethe, "is that of a superior
spirit, whose good pleasure it is to dwell in it for a time. He pene-

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 125
trates into its depths more that he may replenish them from the ful
ness of his own nature than that he may fathom their mysteries.
Fia. 12.

He scales its heights as one yearning after renewed participation in
the source of his being. Aristotle stands to the world in the relation
of a great architect. Here he is, and here he must work and create.
He collects materials from all sides, arranges them, piles them up in
layers, and so rises in regular form like a pyramid toward the sky,
while Plato seeks the heaven like an obehsk, or, better, like a pointed
flame." As the attitudes of the two great leaders are suited to the nature
of the doctrines which they profess, so also are those of their disciples,
Speusippus, Menexenus, and Xenocrates, who follow Plato and listen
reverently with bowed heads, as befits men whose philosophy is ideal-

126 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
istic ; while Theophrastus, Eudamus, and Dicaearchus, who are guided by
Aristotle, have a more inquiring air, being rather men of action than
of reflection, who tend to positivism rather than to idealism. Outside
of these quiet groups of listeners are Stoics, Cynics, Sophists, and
Sceptics, imperfect disciples of both, restless and inquiring investigators,
ill satisfied with their conclusions, having grasped less of truth and
wandered farther into error than the genuine Platonists or Aristotelians.
One of the most characteristic figures is that of Socrates, the expressive
action of whose hands indicates the close reasoner, the subtle exposer
of sophistry. He is talking to the splendid Alkibiades, who loved him
and whose life he saved, and is listened to by an artisan, one of a
class with whom he delighted to converse. Just behind him, leaning
on his elbow, is Xenophon of Athens, one of the older disciples of
Socrates, who, in his Cyropcedia, illustrated the Soeratic principle that
" authority is the prerogative of the intelligent, they alone being qualified
to wield it." iEschines, who like Xenophon reverently followed Socrates
with the hope of attaining the beautiful and the good (KaXoicdyaOia)
through intercourse with him, stands behind Alkibiades, stretching out
his hand towards the Sophists, Gorgias, Kritias, and Diogenes of Melos,
who is running forward as if eager to engage in a discussion. Euclid
of Megara, not the mathematician, but the philosopher, who founded a
school after the death of his master, in which the ethical and dialectical
principles of Socrates were blended with the doctrines of the Eleatics,
completes the Soeratic group. His attitude is characteristic of his in
dolent and procrastinating disposition.
Directly below this group is that formed by Pythagoras, his son
Telanges, his wife Theano, and his pupil Archytas. The harmonic tablet
which Telanges holds at once tells us that he belongs to that school of
philosophy which was based upon the science of numbers, a school
whose founder, Pythagoras, first used the name of philosophy, taught
that everything owes its existence and consistency to harmony, which
he considered to be the basis of all beauty,22 and found music in the
22 Aristotle defines harmony as the union of uniformity and variety, contrary principles

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 127
revolving spheres. The turbaned head seen over the shoulder of Py
thagoras is said to be that of Averroes, the initiator of the Arabians
into Greek philosophy, whose garbled translation of Aristotle was the
only one known in the West until the time of Chrysoloras. Anaxago-
ras, the master of Pericles, stands between Pythagoras and Heraclitus,
for, as he placed the spirit above matter in his system, he forms the
bond between them. The latter sits apart, absorbed in thought, clothed
in sombre gray, indicative of the obscurity of his principles, which
obtained for him the surname of the Obscure. The standing figure of
Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, nephew of Julius II.,
who was at Rome when Raphael was painting the School of Athens,
forms the apex of the group, and the child behind Averroes is Federigo
Gonzaga, future Duke of Mantua. The stout philosopher, to whom an
old man has brought a child that he may judge of his disposition, is
Plato's contemporary, Democritus of Abdera, the laugher at the follies
of men, who has been called a Pythagorean, though he was really a
disciple of Leucippus, the founder of the atomistic theory. The head
of Nausiphanes, his scholar, appears above his shoulder.
While the left side of the fresco is thus occupied by the Pythagoreans,
the Platonists, and the Sophists, the right is filled by the Aristotelians,
Cynics, Stoics, Eclectics, Epicureans, Mathematicians, and Sceptics. Be
hind the first are the Peripatetics, who found bodily action conducive
to thought, and Aristippus, the scholar of Gorgias the Sophist. The
figures of Epicurus, a noble and graceful person, ascending the steps
with his back turned to Diogenes, who has rolled out of his tub to lie
where no man can come between him and the sunshine ; of a youth
hastily leaving the Hall of Assembly (who typifies the end of the
old Greek school) ; of a young Eclectic writing on his knee, overlooked
by Pyrrhus of Elis (who represents the transition from eclecticism to
scepticism) ; and of Archesilaus, the founder of the new Academy,
having a ratio to each other, of which the first produces symmetrical, the second pictu
resque beauty. Every kind of beauty springs from the predominance of one or the other
of these principles.

128 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
towards whom one of the later Cynics advances with a staff in his
hand, — are varied in action, and eminently characteristic.
The group representing speculative mathematics, in the foreground
to the left, of which Pythagoras is the centre, is balanced on the right
by that representing practical mathematics, figured by Archimedes (said
to be a portrait of Bramante) and his pupils. The great Syracusan mas
ter stands, as in Petrarch's Vision of Fame, col viso basso, bending over
the slate upon which he is working out a problem for the instruction
of four lovely youths, three of whom follow his demonstration intently,
while the one in the middle with raised hand seems to be listening to
Ptolemy the geographer,23 and to Zoroaster (who represents the Oriental
origin of Greek philosophy), as they converse together with globes in
their hands.24 Near them Perugino and Raphael are introduced as
spectators.25 The Triumphs of Petrarch, which were suggestive to Raphael when
painting the Parnassus, seem to have served him also for the School of
23 The crown upon the head of Ptolemy suggests that some confusion existed in Ea
phaei's mind between the geographer and one of the later kings of Egypt.
24 The Abbe du Bos says that the fifteenth carmen of Sidonius Appolinaris was useful
to Eaphael in suggesting the grouping of these philosophers.
25 This portrait of Eaphael (aged 27) and that at the Uffizi (aged 23), which he is sup
posed to have painted at Urbino in 1506 for his uncle Simone Ciarla, are the only unques
tionable likenesses of the great artist. The claims of two other portraits to authenticity
are, however, not to be disregarded. One of these is a drawing at Oxford in black chalk
heightened with white on tinted paper, representing a youth about sixteen years old,
with long hair falling on his shoulders, wearing a cap (berretta) of the well-known
Eaphaelesque pattern. This drawing belonged successively to the Wiear, Ottley, Harman,
and Woodburn collections. The other is an admirable and rare engraving by Marc An
tonio after Eaphael (Bartsch, No. 496, Vol. XIV. p. 369) of a young man seated on the
ground in a meditative attitude, wTapped in a cloak. It has no date.
C. J. Eobinson catalogues a portrait-drawing, No. 167, in the Malcolm collection, drawn
with the silver point heightened with white, as >¦ possible portrait of Eaphael. The en
graving which forms the title-page of the French edition of Passavant's Life of Raphael
is taken from a picture bought at Venice in 1807 by Prince Adam Czartorysky. Passa-
vant refers to it in Vol. II. p. 97, as probably a copy of the lost original which Eaphael
painted for Francesco Francia in 1508.

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 129
Athens, judging by a passage in the Triumph of Fame which reads
like a description of the central group: —
"Then turning to the left I Plato saw,
Who in the troop of great men nearest came
Unto that goal which those alone by Heaven endowed
Can hope to reach. And with him Aristotle,
Familiar with all turns of deepest thought.
Pythagoras, too, who haply first
Did call philosophy by worthy name.
With these were Socrates and Xenophon and Zeno,
Who did show an open palm and a clenched fist."
It is difficult to set a limit to the study of classic authors which may
have helped in the creation of this vast subject, a study not indeed
undertaken with that special end in view. The learned men with
whom Raphael lived were proud to offer him the fruit of their researches
in fields which he had neither the time nor the education to explore.
Not long after Raphael's death doubts were raised as to the real
subject of this fresco. Vasari says it represents the union of Theology
and Philosophy through Astronomy, and points out St. Matthew in the
so-called Pythagoras. Giorgio Mantovano (1550) engraved it with the
title of St. Paul disputing with the Stoics and the Epicureans, and
another engraver gave halos to Plato and Aristotle in order to identify
them as St. Peter and St. Paul, while certain writers have maintained
that the two Apostles are here represented as preaching at Athens.
Grimm, in his late Life of Rapliacl, discusses this extraordinary theory at
length,26 though to little purpose, but Raphael's adherence to once adopted
types — as, for instance, to those of St. Paul and St. Peter, which he
borrowed from the frescos of" Filippo Lippi at the Carmine — sufficiently
refute it. Their features were individualized to him as much as those
of Julius and Leo, and we recognize them as portraits, while his Plato
and Aristotle are purely imaginary types, for which he could not recur
26 As neither Eio nor Gruyer, both ardent Eomanists, who never lose an opportunity
of seizin^ any allusion to the Church, however recondite, refer to it at all, we may safely
dismiss it as a delusion. 9

130 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
to antique busts, though he did so in other cases when it was possible,
as the well-known features of Socrates attest. Again, Raphael, who is
always true to history in his surroundings, never would have repre
sented Taul as preaching in a Roman temple. He would have put
him on the hill of Mars, the Areopagus, as he did in his cartoon.
The grand figure of Philosophy, in the medallion which belongs to
this fresco, also indicates its subject. Seated on the clouds in a
throne-chair, the jambs of which are decorated with the effigy of Diana
of Ephesus, who personifies the three kingdoms of nature, she wears a
robe with four zones of color which typify the four elements. The blue
zone with its stars is the air; the red, fire; the green, with its fishes,
water ; the brown, with plants, the earth. Her two books treat of na
ture and of ethics, and upon the tablets borne by her attendant genii
are inscribed the words " cognitio causarum."
Religion, Poetry, and Philosophy having been illustrated, one wall
of the chamber still remained a blank, intended to be filled with a
composition representing Jurisprudence. To treat this subject histori
cally, without in some measure repeating the School of Athens, would
have been difficult if not impossible. This reason probably induced
Raphael to symbolize it by its attributes, Prudence, Force, and Tem
perance, whence the fresco is called the Three Virtues, and by two sep
arate historical compositions, one of Justinian giving the pandects to
Tiburnianus, and the other of Gregory IX. delivering the decretals to an
advocate. The Pope in this latter fresco is Julius II., and the three
cardinals are his uncle Antonio del Monte, Giovanni de' Medici, who
afterwards became Pope Leo X., and Alexander Farnese, the future
Pope Paul III. As the Swiss guards in attendance are also evidently
painted from life, the composition really represents a scene at the court
of Julius II.
The three Virtues in the lunette over the window are noble and
graceful figures identified by attributes and significant gestures. Pru
dence has two faces, as in mediaeval symbolism, — the one, aged, looks
back into the Past; the other, young and beautiful, into the mirror of

THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON. 131
self-knowledge, which a lovely little genius holds before her. Force
wears a helmet and corselet, and has an olive-branch in her hand to
indicate that she is a wise Bellona, whose office it is to enforce peace;
and Temperance has a bridle, emblematic of moderation and self-control.
Justice, their sister, sits apart from them in one of the medallions of
the ceiling, with Poetry, Theology, and Science, represented by Astron
omy, a celestial maiden whose graceful form is partially veiled by the
transparent globe over which she leans to spell out the constellations,
to number the stars, and to call them by their names.
In the fourth and last pendentive of the ceiling Raphael painted the
Judgment of Solomon (Plate V.), which, as a philosophical judgment
based not upon the written law but upon a profound knowledge of
human nature, links the School of Athens and the Philosophy with
the Jurisprudence. The athletic figure of the executioner with the
dead babe lying between his feet and the living child struggling in
his grasp ; the real mother who at any cost to herself would save him ;
the infallible judge who, with a significant gesture, pronounces the right
eous sentence ; the false mother who appeals to him with a coldness
which strikingly contrasts with the energetic action of her whom she
seeks to defraud, — are. here set before us in a feeastifei composition
of the utmost beauty with the utmost conciseness of pictorial language.
Between the arrival of Raphael at Rome in 1508, and the death of
Julius II. in 1513, he had completed all the frescos in the first chamber;
the Heliodorus and a part of the Miracle of Bolsena in the second;
and had painted the Isaiah (1512), the "Madonna del Foligno" (1511),
one of the Orleans Madonnas, and the " Madonna di Casa Tempi," besides
making an infinite number of more or less carefully elaborated designs
and drawings. Such fertility of invention and rapidity of execution,
coupled with transcendent artistic excellence, can hardly be paralleled
in the recorded work of any other artist during a similar space of
time. It would seem as if, in view of the short span of life allotted
to him, Heaven had quadrupled his comparative ratio of possible pro
ductiveness, for it was not only during these four years, but during the

132 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
whole of his Roman life, that he poured forth an unceasing stream of
works at the same rapid rate. For many of his great frescos he gave
the design only, committing the execution, in great measure, to his
able scholars and assistants, but the easel pictures were for the most
part painted by his own hand.
Among these one of the finest, executed during the period under
consideration (1508-1512), is the admirable portrait of Julius II., for
merly in the church of S. Maria del Popolo at Rome and now in the
Pitti gallery, which not only portrays the Pope's outward form, but
reveals the indomitable spirit which dwelt within it.27
Another portrait of a very different character, that of the Fornarina
in the Barberini Palace at Rome, was probably painted about the
year 1509. Though admirably drawn, and modelled with peculiar
skill, it is hard and dry in tone; the face has but little expression,
and is wanting in depth of sentiment, which seems not a little strange
if it be the portrait of the baker's daughter whom Raphael loved and
to whom he addressed the three love-sonnets which are his sole title
to the name of poet. When coupled with the facts that no allusion
is made to her in any of Raphael's letters or papers; that the name
of Margarita, as her real name, is only known to us by an anonj^mous
manuscript note on the margin of a page of Vasari's Lives (ed. of
1568); and that the surname of the "Fornarina" was first heard of in
the last century, its character would tempt us to class the so-called
mistress of Raphael among the mythic personages of history. The
splendid portrait in the Tribune of the Uffizi, also called the Forna-
rina, and generally attributed to Raphael, would fill our ideal of the
baker's daughter28 far more satisfactorily than that at the Barberini
27 Burckhardt (Der Cicerone, p. 919) and Miindler consider the replica of this portrait
in the Tribune of the Uffizi to be an old copy. Passavant (Vol. I. p. 94) declares the
picture in the Pitti to be the original.
28 This portrait, which is probably that of Beatrice of Ferrara, is now believed to he
the work of Fra Sebastiano del Piombo, who came to Eome in 1512 at the invitation of
Agostino Chigi, the rich Sienese banker, for whom Eaphael painted the fresco of the Far-
nesina at a later date. Miindler, one of the most keen-sighted of modern critics, finds the

THE "MADONNA DEL FOLIGNO." 133
Palace, were she less of a great lady and more like the daughters of
the Trastevere, ox-eyed as Juno, low-browed and straight-featured as a
classic bust.
When we sweep the heavens with a telescope, the especial brilliancy
of certain stars arrests the eye, and we pause to observe them, though
not unmindful of their countless sisters which sparkle in the wide
expanse; so when we enter the picture-gallery of Eaphael, the superior
beauty of certain works absorbs us, and we pass over others which, if
less numerous, would receive equal attention. Even in those selected
for study the attempt to analyze detail to any great extent is futile,
for its variety is endless. The arrangement of the hair, for instance,
in the thousands of female heads drawn and painted by Raphael, though
identical in no two, is beautifid in all. Equally varied are draperies
and backgrounds, groups of figures and myriads of minor accessories.
An exhaustive account of the works of Raphael being impossible, we
shall select a few for consideration in each category of subjects.
Among those painted during the reign of Julius II. one of the most
famous is the " Madonna del Foligno," which was ordered by the Pope's
private secretary, Sigismund Conti, in fulfilment of a vow made to the
Madonna, in gratitude for his escape from injury during the siege of
Foligno by the papal forces, as also when a thunderbolt fell upon his
house. If in looking at this picture we feel that it wants somewhat
of that naive purity and freshness which distinguishes the works of
Raphael's Florentine period, we feel that it shows greater mastery over
technical details. The forms are rounder, the lines more boldly drawn,
the composition more freely treated. The scheme of color is brilliant
by force of contrasted reds and greens, like that of Perugino, rather
than rich through subtle gradations from deep tones to bright lights,
ennobled traces of the Fornarina in a beautiful portrait at the Pitti of a lady in a white
dress (No. 896) which he unhesitatingly attributes to EaphaeL See Beitriige zu Burck-
hardt's Cicerone, p. 41.
Passavant (Vol. I. p. 150) thinks that the golden crown upon her hair indicates that
this princess was an improvisatrice. The female kneeling in the foreground of the Trans
figuration is said to be a portrait of the Fornarina.

134 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
like that of the great Venetian masters. In Venetian pictures, as in
the flower or the gem, diffused color radiates from some central focus,
and passes insensibly from depths to heights, while in those even of
the later Umbrians the colors are juxtaposed rather than blended. In
them, as in the " Madonna del Foligno " the line triumphs over the
tone, and the figures, though united by their concurrence in a simul
taneous action, are separate to the eye. Titian would have fused them
together by rich harmonies of tone, and thus would have appealed to
the sensuous rather than to the intellectual parts of our nature. Sit
ting before a Venetian picture, we can deliberately set aside its subject,
and enjoy its color as we enjoy the perfume of a flower or the flavor
of a cordial; but this cannot be done with the works of painters like
Raphael, in which form and thought predominate. Drop the subject
and its treatment through lines, and little remains to charm us, for
these are all important, and the appeal is first to the mind. While
then the Assumption of the Virgin by Titian especially enchants the
eye, the "Madonna del Foligno" of Raphael addresses itself to the
cultivated perception of beauty of form through the gracefully disposed
group of the Madonna and Child ; to the artistic appreciation of beauty
of outline by the bounding lines of the whole composition and by those
of its component parts; and, lastly, to the intellectual apprehension
of truth to character by such a life-like head as that of the donor
kneeling in the foreground, who contemplates the beatific vision
Raphael's progress in the use of color, which is so noticeable in this
and in other pictures of the same period, shows how alive he was to
his own shortcomings, and how, when contact with other artists who
excelled him in any respect made these visible to him, he straightway
labored to bring himself up to a higher level. Thus under the influ
ence of Michelangelo, he aimed at grandeur of style, as in the Sibyls
of the "Pace," which we look for vainly in his earlier works. Being
of all men best capable of appreciating the great qualities of his rival,
he could not see the frescos of the Sistine Chapel without having a
new light break in upon him which never would have shone through

THE ISAIAH. 135
the narrow windows of Perugino's studio. Recognizing what separated
him from complete excellence, and ever aiming to attain it, he gradually
rounded out his being until it attained the figure of a perfect sphere.
The marvel was, that being so receptive he could yet remain original.
Great men acted upon him as the sunlight and the rain, the moonlight
and the dew, act upon goodly ground, causing it to bring forth abun
dantly. When, therefore, as in his Isaiah at San Agostino, he worked
in the spirit of Michelangelo, we may suppose that he did so inten
tionally. Raphael possessed this Protean power in an eminent degree,
while Michelangelo, shut up within himself as in a strongly walled
fortress, was wholly wanting in it. His artistic sympathies were dead
to works however excellent which were produced by modes of thought
different from his own, and even his appreciation of beauty in man
was limited to one period of life. Enamored of the adult human form,
he lost the perception of those differences which distinguish man at
different periods of life, and gave the same muscular forms to the bodies
of young and old. Eaphael, on the contrary, had a true standard in
his mind for each type of beauty. His children are the very essence
of childhood, with all its graces and charms, even when as in Him of
the San Sisto the tender face is freighted with Divinity. His young
men are ideals of manly strength and beauty, his virgins of purity and
delicacy, his matrons, like Juno, of nobility and dignity, his old men,
like the sages of antiquity, of venerable wisdom. His lyre was fitted
with many strings, and he played it like one who was master of all its
infinite resources, while that of Michelangelo gave forth but one sub
lime unvarying strain.
Before Raphael had terminated the frescos in the Camera della Seg-
natura, he had planned those which were to be painted in the adjoin
ing room, generally known as the Chamber of Heliodorus from the
only one of the four terminated before the death of Julius II. Con
sidering himself as the divinely appointed defender of the Church
against her enemies whether spiritual or temporal, this Pope desired
to be so represented and remembered. Raphael had already illustrated

13G

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

the overthrow of the first by Divine interposition in the "Disputa,"
and now he was to symbolize the vindication of the truth of Church
doctrines in the Miracle of Bolsena, to show how God chastised the
spoiler of her temporal possessions in the Heliodorus, and how he ar
rested the march of a barbarian who came to plunder the city of his

vicegerent in the Attila.
O

To one ignorant of its intended allusions, the Heliodorus (Fig. 13)
simply represents the attempt made by the captain of Seleucus IV. to

Fig. 13.

seize the treasure amassed in the Temple at Jerusalem for the succor of
widows and orphans, when, in answer to the prayer of Onias, the Jewish
high-priest, a celestial warrior attended by two angelic messengers over
threw the robber and trampled him under his horse's feet. But when
we remember that Julius II. claimed to have cleared the patrimony of
the Church of French and German invaders and regarded himself as
the savior of Italy, that he chastised the Bentivogli of Bologna and
the Baglioni of Perugia for revolting against his authority, we see the

THE MIRACLE OF BOLSENA. 137
Pope typified as priest in Onias, as warrior in the avenging angels,
and as the deliverer of his people in the group of terrified Jewish
women and children clustered together in the foreground. He also
appears in person, borne upon his sella gest.atoria, whence he calmly
overlooks the scene. This glaring anachronism is defensible on artistic
grounds, as by the opposition of repose to tumult the effect of agita
tion is increased within the Temple, an effect which is further carried
out by the contrast between the rapt stillness of the high-priest pray
ing at the altar, and the swoop of the angelic messengers which is
like that of vultures upon their prey. The focus of interest is the
group formed by the archangel with a gryphon-crested helmet, who
tramples the plunderer under the feet of his ponderous charger, and
two wingless messengers of vengeance, whose wonderful lightness, bird-
like swiftness of motion, and grandly impassioned action reveal beings
of a nature superior to man, who, moving by a Divine impulse, are
as certain to reach their aim as arrows shot from the bow of an un
erring marksman. Exaggerated neither in action, limb, nor muscle,
they are yet filled with irresistible power, and belong to that highest
class of artistic creations, in which effect is produced by hidden causes.
The brawny muscles and massive limbs of a giant prepare us for feats
of strength; but those of the stripling who overthrows him awe us,
for we recognize them as produced by an invisible power against which
material force is as naught. The mute terror of those who witness
the punishment of Heliodorus proceeds from this cause. They feel that
all mortal effort is superfluous, whereas the crowd in the "Inceudio del
Borgo" is roused to meet and to combat a fully understood peril pro
ceeding- from a natural cause.
As in the Heliodorus, the most dramatic of all his works, Raphael
had symbolized the triumph of the Church over those who would rob
her of her material wealth, so in the Miracle of Bolsena (Fig. 14) he
showed her power over those who would loosen her spiritual hold upon
the minds of men. Here Heaven again interferes to convince an un
believing Bohemian priest who had impiously doubted the truth of

138

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

transubstantiation while celebrating mass in the church of Santa Chris
tina at Bolsena, by causing blood to flow from the sacred wafer.29 A

Fie. 14.

thrill of wonder at the miracle runs through the multitude thronging
the steps behind the praying Priest, whose disbelief has given way
before tangible proof.
The division of the composition into two parts was in some measure
necessitated by a large window which pierces the wall surface, leaving
an upper space occupied by the altar, on either side of which kneel the
Priest and the Pope, and two side spaces filled with their respective
followers, — men, women, and children to the left, cardinals, prelates,
and attendants to the right. The cardinals are Eaphael Riario, cousin
to Julius II., and the Cardinal di San Giorgio, Michelangelo's early
patron; the prelates and their attendants are also portraits. Idealism
and realism have indeed rarely been more strongly contrasted and
29 The Corpus Domini festival was instituted in 1310 to commemorate this miracle, and
the Cathedral at Orvieto, commenced in 1280, was built as a shrine for the sacred wafer.

DEATH OF JULIUS II. 139
more justly balanced than in the corresponding parts of a composition,
which is admirably balanced, varied in line and attitude, and most
harmonious in spirit.
It was not completed when Julius II. ended a life whose ruling idea
was expressed in his dying words, "Fuori d' Italia, gli Francesi e gli
barbari." His last years had been full of anxiety and disappointment,
but before his death the tide had turned in his favor. In 1511 he
besieged and took Mirandola, but within a twelvemonth he lost Bo
logna, and heard with inexpressible anger that his statue had been
overthrown and broken up by the Bentivogli on their restoration to
power through French aid. To combat Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, and
his powerful supporters, Maximilian, Emperor elect, and Louis XII.,
King of France, who were arrayed against him with half the Chris
tian world at their backs, and to awe the heretic council which had
assembled at Pisa to call him to account for his high-handed acts,
Julius formed the Holy Alliance with Ferdinand of Arragon and the
Venetians, and by their aid endeavored to restore the Medici, in order
to punish Soderini, the Florentine gonfaloniere, for having consented
to the assembling of the council. The battle-field of Ravenna was
indeed gained by the French ; but with the death of their hero, Gaston
de Foix, the dissolution of their alliance with Maximilian, and the
arrival of the Swiss, they were obliged to stand on the defensive, and
the Pope had the consolation of knowing that their departure was only
a question of time. The submission of Ravenna, Parma, and Piacenza,
and finally of Bologna, which had most of all sinned against him, gave
him further causes for rejoicing, and this was greatly augmented by the
overthrow of popular government at Florence, and the final restoration
of the Medici to power (August, 1512). Among the Italian prisoners
taken by the French at Ravenna was the Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici,
who in his efforts to succor the dying upon the battle-field nar
rowly escaped with his life, and lost his liberty. He, however, soon
regained it, for when the French began their hasty retreat across the
Alps he effected his escape and returned to Florence, where he re-

140

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

mained until early in the new year, when news came of the death of
Julius II. Hastening to Rome, he arrived there on the 6th of March,
1513, and found the papal conclave assembled which, on the 13th, sa
luted him as Pope under the name of Leo X.
"Olim hahuit Cypris sua tempora ; tempora Mavors
Oliin habuit ; nunc sua tempora Pallas habuit."
Or, as another transparency put it, even more pithily, on the night
when the city was illuminated in honor of his election, —
"Mars fuit. Pallas est. Cypra semper ero.''

""^j^TF

CHAPTER VI.
Raphael, 1513-1517.
1. Portrait of Bindo Altoviti  1513 Pinacothek, Munich.
2. Portrait of Phsedra Inghirami  1513-1514 Pitti Gallery, Florence.
3. Portrait of Julius II  1512-1513 Pitti Gallery, Florence.
4. Portrait of Cardinal Bibbicna  1513-1514 Eoyal Gallery, Madrid.
5. Eaphael and his Master at Arms (so called)  Louvre, Paris.
(N. B. Probably by Sebastiano del Piombo.)
6. Portrait of Count Castiglione  1515 Louvre, Paris.
7. Portrait of a young man leaning on his elbow 1517 Louvre, Paris.
8. Portrait of a lady in a Florentine dress. No. 229 ?x Pitti Palace, Florence.
9. Portrait of Johanna of Aragon  1517 Louvre, Paris.
10. Galatea. Fresco  :  1514 Farnesina, Eome.
11. St. Cecilia  1516 Pinacothek, Bologna.
12. The Madonna della Seggiola  1516-1517 Pitti Palace, Florence.
13. The Madonna della Tenda  1516-1517 Pinacothek, Munich.
(N. B. Eepetition in the Eoyal Gallery at Turin.)
14. ThePerla  1517-1518 Eoyal Gallery, Madrid.
15. The Visitation  1517 Eoyal Gallery, Madrid.
16. The Spasimo de Sicilia  1518 Eoyal Gallery, Madrid.
17. The small Holy Family  1517-1518 Eoyal Gallery, Madrid.
18. The Violin Player  ? Seiarra Palace, Eome.
19. Prophets and Sibyls. Fresco  1514-1519 Santa Maria della Pace, Eome.
$ Formerly in the gallery of Mr.
Munroe, London.
21. The Cartoons  1515-1516 S. Kensington Museum, London.
22. The Martyrdom of St Cecilia. Fresco  Villa Magliana, Eome.
23. The Liberation of St. Peter. Fresco  1516 Vatican, Eome.
Michelangelo, 1516- 1521.
1. Facade of San Lorenzo (never finished)  1516-1520 Florence.
2. Statue of Christ  1518-1521 S. Maria sopra Minerva, Eome.
3. Medici Chapel. First designs  1519-1520 San Lorenzo, Florence.
1 This picture, one of the gems of the Pitti Gallery, is marked "Anonimo" in the Cata
logue, but Passavant and Otto Miindler (see Beitrage zu Burckhardt 's Cicerone, p. 41) declare
it to be an undoubted Eaphael. Miindler recognizes the same head in the Magdalen of the
St. Cecilia picture at Bologna, and in the Madonna of the San Sisto. He thinks it may be
the ennobled type of the real Fornarina.

20. The Madonna of the Candelabra  ? {

LEO X.

141

CHAPTER VI.
" Ma ben tempo e mirar che se raccolti
Son i costumi in lei degni di loda,
Degni di biasmo ancor ve ne son molti." — Ariosto.

HE elevation of Cardinal Giovanni de'
Medici to the papacy dispelled all
fears lest the splendid projects initi
ated by his predecessor might be nipped
in the bud, and was hailed with delight
by artists and men of letters. He had
long lived a life of elegant ease in his
palace on the Piazza Navona, which,
like that of his grandfather Lorenzo the
Magnificent at Florence, was the resort
of scholars, painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians, who found in
their host a man capable of discussing the special subject of each.
Splendid in his tastes, lavish in his expenditure, and quick to discern
those qualities in others which would render them apt instruments for
carrying out his purposes, Leo X. was admirably qualified to make
Rome attractive to the wise, the accomplished, and the pleasure-loving,
and to be himself the centre of a court where wit, learning, and rev
elry combined to make life a perpetual feast. Sadoleto and Bernbo,
distinguished Latin scholars, were his secretaries; Lascaris, renowned for
his knowledge of Greek, presided over a college in which young men
were taught both Latin and Greek, and directed the printing of many
rare classic authors ; while the learned scholars Inghirami and Beraldus
the younger had care of the Vatican Library. All looked up to Leo

142 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
as a leader and an adept, and each could have written like Erasmus,
" 1 must drink the waters of Lethe ere I forget Rome. What agreeable
liberty, what rich libraries, what learned savants, what hospitable in
habitants ! Where else are such literary reunions to be met with,
where is such a galaxy of eminent men to be found, where are such
antique monuments to be seen ? "
As a secular prince Leo has had few equals. In his style of living,
his tastes, his accomplishments, and his amusements he was a worthy
scion of the Medici, but like other rulers of his race he was not troubled
with a very tender conscience. His idea of his duty towards his sub
jects was summed up in the obligation to dazzle them by the splendor
of his court, to amuse them with shows and pageants, to make Rome
beautiful, and to exercise a munificent patronage of arts and letters.
Content with this, the Romans troubled themselves very little about
his shortcomings as Head of the Church, and were neither scandalized
by the license nor shocked by the extravagance which he not only
permitted but encouraged.1 They did not see the writing on the wall
1 Among the "documents" published by the Marchese Campori from the archives at
Modena, there is a letter written by Pauluzzi, the minister of the Duke of Ferrara at
Eome, to his master, March 8, 1518, which gives an idea of the manners of the time,
and the sort of amusements in which Leo and his courtiers, clerical and lay, alike in
dulged. The letter relates in part to the representation of a comedy entitled the Sup-
positi, whose subject was as scandalous as that of the Calandra, a play often repre
sented before the Pope and his "young and most reverend Cardinals, which," says the
Marquis, "would not, on account of its obscenity, be tolerated upon any European stage
at the present day." The scenery painted by Eaphael "was very beautiful," forming a
superb coup cTceil. The prologue spoken by the Nuncio threw the Pope and his attend
ants into fits of laughter; but, adds Pauluzzi, "the French were not a little scandalized
by the subject of the comedy." The day before its representation was signalized by
races between two troops of Spanish horses, one led by a Monsignore dressed in Moorish
costume, and the other by Serapico, the Pope's chamberlain, in Spanish garb. The next
day was marked by a bull-fight, in which three men were killed and five horses wounded.
In the evening a comedy written by a monk was performed, and as it failed to please,
the Pope amused himself by causing the unfortunate author to be tossed in a blanket up
to the ceiling, after which he was set on horseback and whipped with such violence
"that he had to be leeched and put to bed. It is said," adds Pauluzzi, "that the Pope

PORTRAITS OF JULIUS AND LEO. 143
which foretold dire consequences. Julius had aggrandized the temporal
power of the Church, while Leo undermined its spiritual power by that
wholesale traffic in indulgences throughout Catholic Europe which so
weakened her hold upon the minds of men, that the trumpet blasts
of the Reformer, like those of Joshua before Jericho, were able to over
throw her strong defences and detach half the Christian world from
its allegiance. Thus he prepared the way for the material humiliation
of Rome by Charles V. Burdened with an enormous debt, much of
which had been contracted in feasts, shows, and buffooneries, his sub
jects were left at his death in no condition to resist their enemies, to
whom they fell an easy prey. All who would understand the character
of Leo X. and the contrasts which it presents to that of his predeces
sor, should compare his portrait painted by Raphael in 1518 with that
which he painted of Julius II. about nine years earlier. The large head,
purple-hued complexion, protruding eyes, double chin, and generally
amiable though somewhat stolid expression of Leo indicate the refined
voluptuary ; while the thin features, the sallow complexion, the nervous,
excitable expression of Julius, tell of a restless spirit, ever ready for
precipitate action. Both are admirable for their truth to character,
their technical treatment, and their color; but that of Leo is the most
important, because the picture also contains portraits of his successor,
then Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, and of his nephew the Cardinal de'
Rossi. Hanging in the Pitti gallery, this picture holds a foremost place
amid masterpieces of its kind of every school. The portraits of Titian
and Giorgione may surpass it in color, those of Holbein in minute
rendering of detail, and those of Rubens in freedom of touch ; but as
combining fine color, admirable drawing, truth to character, and high
finish, it ranks above them all.
That the court of such a pope as Leo X. could be no fit place for
thus punished the monk in order to make an example of him, so as to frighten those of
his brethren who might hereafter be inclined to exhibit their monkish inventions." The
stories told about Querno, Baraballo, and other buffoons of the court of Leo, are equally
extravagant and absurd. See Eoscoe's Life of Leo X., Guigneri's Histoire de la Liltera-
turc Italienne, and Sismondi's Italian Republics.

144 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Michelangelo will be evident to those who understand his character.
While Raphael led a life of immense activity, and achieved brilliant
success during his Pontificate, the stern Florentine lived for the most
part at a distance from Rome, engaged in fruitless labor, under skies
now bright with hope, now gloomy with despair. By the death of
Julius and the accession of Leo, Raphael had exchanged one kind and
admiring patron for another ; but these events were of far greater con
sequence to Michelangelo, who having lost a friend found no new one
to take his place. He had but one hope to console him for a greater
grief than any which he had felt since the death of Lorenzo de' Medici,
and this was that he would now be allowed to complete the mon
ument which the late Pope's superstitious fears had caused him to
abandon. This hope was indeed authorized by the provision made in
the will of Julius, that it should be finished on a somewhat reduced
scale, and confirmed to an apparent certainty by the signing of a new
contract with his executors. The payments made by them to Michel
angelo during the next two years2 show that no opposition was made
to the prosecution of this work until Leo X. visited Florence in 1514,
and, seeing the unfinished condition of the church of San Lorenzo in
which the chapel of the Medici was situated, conceived the idea of
doing honor to his race by completing it. He accordingly solicited
designs for the faqade of the church from Baccio d' Agnolo, Giuliano
da Sangallo, Andrea and Jacopo Sansovino, Eaphael, and Michelangelo,
the most distinguished architects of the day. Why the latter, who
was no practical architect, did not decline to compete if he really
wished to be left undisturbed, we cannot understand, for he must
have foreseen that if his design was accepted he would be called
upou to carry it out. We cannot, therefore, pity him for the embar
rassing position in which he found himself when this happened. He
had lately signed a second contract with the executors, which bound
him not to undertake any work of importance until he had completed
2 Through Bernardo Bini he received 6,100 ducats on account in 1514 and 1515. See
Appendix to Gotti, op. cit. No. 8.

THE QUARRIES. 145
that which he had on hand for them, and was at Carrara when the
Pope recalled him to Rome, forced him to accept the commission, and
then sent him back to the quarries to procure the necessary materials
for the facade.3 In this occupation nearly three years of his life were
wasted, years imbittered by pecuniary embarrassment, uncongenial toil,
and those ceaseless annoyances which made the Tragedy of the Facade
only second to the Tragedy of the Sepulchre.
They were spent in tedious journeys to and from the mountains of
Carrara, and in building a road to the quarries of Seravezza, hitherto
approachable only by footpaths.4 The ground was both marshy and
rocky, and a long time elapsed before it could be made solid and
smooth enough to admit of the transportation of marbles to the sea
shore. Long before this happened the Pope's ardor had begun to cool,
and his supplies of money to decrease in proportion. The weight of
tedious labor, the heartsickness of exile, the impatient fretting of a
proud and haughty will against a power which it could not resist,
would have shaken and unnerved a less resolute spirit and crippled
its powers completely. But Michelangelo was strong enough to bide
his time. He had long ago learned that his destiny was to struggle
and to be temporarily overcome, and though defeated could yet hope
for ultimate victory. He believed that he had been sent to Carrara
to get him out of the way, and although he was well received when
he went to Rome for a few weeks in the autumn of 1517 to present a
model of the faqade to the Pope, this belief was in no wise shaken.
At the end of February he was again sent back to the mountains,
nor was it till another twelvemonth had elapsed that he was liberated
by the final abandonment of the enterprise. The fruit of all his toil
and anxiety was certainly not sufficient to console him. Only six col-
8 Leo obliged the executors to consent to his wishes, promising them, however, that
Michelangelo should do what he could for them when not otherwise employed.
4 As the Marchese Malespina, Lord of Massa and Carrara, derived a. considerable por
tion of his income from the quarries at Carrara, he looked with a jealous eye upon the
attempt to make those of Seravezza accessible. Obstacles were thrown in Michelangelo's
way, and the hostility of the Carrarese workmen was excited against him.
10

146 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
umns had been extracted from the quarries, four of which were never
carried farther than the sea-shore. One still lies at La Vincarella
amid a mass of chips and blocks of Seravezza marble, and one may
be seen at Florence at the base of the bare brick-wall which it and
its fellows were to have rendered beautiful, forming a silent but im
pressive memento of the wasted years of one of the greatest among
men of genius. "Ah me ! ah me ! when thinking of the years,
The wasted years, alas, I do not find
Among them all one day that was my own !
Fallacious hopes, desires of the unknown,
Lamenting, loving, burning, and in tears
(For human passions all have stirred my mind),
Have held me, now I feel and know, confined
Both from the true and good still far away.
I perish day by day ;
The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary,
And I am near to fall, infirm and weary. " 6
In the following letter, written from Florence in 1520 to Sebastiano
del Piombo,6 Michelangelo gives a complete account of his transactions
with the Pope, and of his work at Seravezza : "In 1516, while I was at
Carrara occupied in getting marbles to be sent to Rome for the monu
ment of Pope Julius, Pope Leo sent for me to confer about the faqade
of San Lorenzo, which he wished to erect at Florence. Accordingly,
on the 5th of December I left Carrara for Rome, and there made a
. design for the facade for which Pope Leo directed me to have marbles
quarried at Carrara. After my return there from Rome, in the latter
part of December, he sent me a thousand ducats by Jacopo Salviati
and his servant Bentivoglio. I received this sum of money on the
8th of January, and gave a receipt for it. In the following August,
the Pope having requested me to make a model of the faqade, I went
6 This hitherto unpublished translation of one of Michelangelo's canzone, as revised by
Michelangelo the younger, which is as literal as it is beautiful, was made by H. W.
Longfellow in 1874, and is here printed by his kind permission.
6 Milanesi, Letter CCCLXXIV. p. 414.

THE QUARRIES. 147
to Florence for the purpose, constructed it of wood with figures of wax,
and sent it to him at Rome. As soon as he had seen it, he sent for
me, and I obeyed, and agreed to build the facade after this model, as
is proved by the contract drawn up with his Holiness ; 7 and as I was
obliged, in order to serve his Holiness, to send the marbles for the
monument of Pope Julius to Florence, and after they had been sculp
tured to send them to Rome, he promised to pay the freight and
transport, an expense of about eight hundred ducats, though this is not
mentioned in the contract. On the 6th of February, 1517, I returned
from Rome to Florence, and having taken upon myself the whole charge
of the facade of San Lorenzo, for which, according to the contract, Pope
Leo was to pay me four thousand ducats in Florence on account, about
the 28th of the month I received eight hundred ducats from Jacopo
Salviati, gave a receipt for them, and went to Carrara. As the contracts
and stipulations previously made there for marbles for this work were
not observed, and the Carrarese persecuted me about them, I went to
quarry marbles at Seravezza, a mountain of Pietrasanta, near the Floren
tine boundaries, and there having caused six columns to be roughed
out, together with many other marbles, and having constructed the
road to the quarries which still exists, after which nothing more was
excavated, I, on the 20th of March, 1518, went to Florence to obtain
money to carry on the work, and there, on the 26th of March, 1519,
the Cardinal de' Medici paid me five hundred ducats by the bankers
Gaddi at Florence, for which I gave a receipt. At the same time the
Cardinal, by order of the Pope, told me not to go on with the work,
because he said that they wished to save me from the trouble of trans
porting the marbles by giving them to me at Florence. For this a new
contract was to be made; and there the matter has rested up to the
present time.
" At this time, having sent a number of marble-cutters to Pietrasanta,
or rather to Seravezza, to occupy the road and take away the marbles
' Contract dated June 19, 1518, by which Michelangelo bound himself to complete the
work in eight years for the sum of 40,000 gold ducats.

148 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
quarried for the facade, and for the pavement of the Cathedral of
Florence, and the Cardinal de' Medici having given the commission
for the facade marbles to others than to me, and without considering
my claims, having authorized those whom he employed to make use
of my road, I felt myself very much aggrieved, because neither the
Cardinal nor the directors of the Cathedral works had any right to
interfere in my affairs without my consent and that of the Pope. If
I had previously agreed with him to abandon the facade, after set
tling all accounts as to expenses and moneys paid to me, the said road
and the marbles and the tools would have become his or my property,
and we should have had the right to dispose of them as we saw fit.
The Cardinal now requires me to give in a statement of my accounts,
saying that he wishes to bring the matter to a conclusion, and obtain
possession of such marbles as he may wish to take from the above-
mentioned road at Seravezza. I have therefore shown that I have re
ceived twenty-three hundred ducats as herein specified, and that I have
also spent eight hundred, about two hundred and fifty of which I paid
for the transportation of marbles to this city for the monument to
Pope Julius; this makes a total expenditure of more than five hun
dred ducats. I say nothing about the wooden model for the facade
which I sent to Rome, nor of the three years which I have lost in
this affair ; nor of the fact that I have ruined myself by it ; nor of the
great disgrace which I have incurred by having the commission taken
back after it had been given to me, and I know not what else. Nor
do I mention the leaving of my house at Rome, which has suffered
during my absence, and entailed upon me a loss of more than five
hundred ducats for marbles and tools and work prepared. Not count
ing all these things, there remains to me only five of the twenty-three
hundred ducats. Now we have agreed that the Pope shall take the
road and the marbles already quarried, and I with my fifty ducats am
to be free. I believe that his Holiness will not object to sign a brief
to this effect. As you are now put in possession of the facts in the
case, I beg you to make a copy of the said brief, to so specify the

MICHELANGELO'S LETTERS. 149
sums received by me that no further account may ever be asked, and
also to make . the agreement that the Pope shall take the above-
mentioned road, marbles, and tools, as an equivalent for all claims."
The letter here quoted may be taken as a fair sample of Michel
angelo's letters. Ex uno disce omncs. Records of work, of money
details, of personal grievances, are all that they contain. It would be
difficult to find a passage in the four hundred and ninety-five letters
printed by Milanesi, indicative of that deep and poetic nature which
shows itself in his sonnets, his sculptures, and his frescos. Letter-
writing with him was absolutely restricted to affairs of business or
charity. His genius spent itself in artistic utterance, leaving neither
strength nor will to speak to his correspondents upon any other subject
than that which immediately concerned them and him. Valuable as
they are as sources of information concerning dates, and as giving indi
cations of character and of feelings of a more or less transitory kind,
they stand among the letters of great men as showing less of the higher
nature of the writer than perhaps any other ever written.
From time to time, during his exile at Carrara, Michelangelo had
visited Florence and had employed himself with long iutermissious
upon the monument to Pope Julius. To this he returned when he
was finally freed from his engagement to Leo, nor would he suffer him
self to be enticed back to Rome, although certain inducements were
held out to him which seem to show that the reigning pontiff was
not as hostile to him as he believed him to be. Thus, after the death
of Raphael he was invited, through his friend Sebastiano del Piombo,
to paint the Hall of the Pontiffs at the Vatican. As Raphael had left
drawings or cartoons for the mural decorations of this hall, his scholars,
Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni, laid claim to the commission, and
it is just to suppose that Michelangelo's refusal to interfere was at least
partially prompted by a loyal respect for the memory of the great
painter, whose wishes, could they have been expressed, would have un
doubtedly been that his designs should be carried out by his scholars.
Other reasons against the acceptance of the offer are not difficult to

150 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
conjecture, such as that he wished to complete the monument, and that
painting was not an art to which his nature inclined him. At this
time he was working upon a statue of Christ which he had long before
commenced for his friend Metello Vari. After he had brought the
marble to an advanced stage of completion he sent it to Eome under
the care of one of his workmen, Pietro Urbano, whom he charged to
finish it according to his design. But Pietro had the vanity to suppose
that he could improve his master's work, and after doing mucli mis
chief was dismissed in disgrace. "He has spoiled everything," writes
Sebastiano del Piombo to Michelangelo, " especially the feet and hands,
— so at least says Federigo Frizzi, a Florentine sculptor of repute, in
whose judgment I have greater confidence than in my own, as I do
not pretend to understand how to work marble. As for the beard, my
studio boy would have known better how to do it; indeed, it looks as
if a blunt knife had been used in the operation. I have put it into
Frizzi's hands, and he will do his best to finish it satisfactorily."8 In
October of- this same year the statue was set up in the church of S"
Maria sopra Minerva, where it still stands. Evidently the sculptor was
not himself when he conceived it, for of all his works it is the most
insipid. " He was at this time," says Condivi, " in a despondent frame
of mind, unable to apply himself to anything, or, when so doing, working
without enthusiasm." Suddenly a hope dawned in his mind that an
object worthy to call forth his best powers would be set before him.
A petition was about to be sent by the Florentine Academy to the
Pope, urging that the bones of Dante should be brought back to Flor
ence, and among the eminent names appended to it he thus wrote his
own : " I, the sculptor Michelangelo, ask the same of your Holiness,
8 This letter is dated September 6, 1521. The statue was begun at Eome in 1514 at the
request of Bernardo Cenci, Canon of St. Peter's, Maestro Mario Scuppiani, and Metello
Vari, but the block of marble proving unsatisfactory it was abandoned. In 1521 Michel
angelo again blocked out the figure and worked upon it between the months of April and
August. (See Wilson, op. cit. pp. 200, 264.) The name of the workman employed by
Michelangelo to finish it is incorrectly given by this writer as Pietro d' Urbino. Gotti
(Vol. I. p. 140) calls him Pietro Urbano, as does Vasari.

EAPHAEL AT ROME. 151
offering myself to make a worthy monument for the Divine Poet, and
to give it an honorable place in this city."9 To this petition and to
this offer Leo paid no attention, and the project was left to be carried
out in our own day by the sons of a united Italy.
In the autumn of 1519 the Pope determined to build a family chapel
in the church of San Lorenzo, where monuments to the most distin
guished members of his house should be placed. The Cardinal Giulio
de' Medici, then Governor of Florence, and afterwards Pope Clement
VII., was instructed to ask Michelangelo to make designs for the chapel.
These were sent to Rome in 1520, and are referred to in a letter from
the Cardinal with expressions of satisfaction, but preparations to carry
them out were hardly begun when they were temporarily suspended
on account of the death of Leo X.
The contrast which Michelangelo's life at Carrara and Florence dur
ing the Pontificate thus closed affords to that of Raphael at Rome is
most striking. The year after Leo's accession the latter thus wrote to
his uncle Simone Ciarla at Urbino, " I have three thousand gold ducats'
worth of property at Rome, and a revenue of fifty ducats a year. Be
sides this, his Holiness has made me overseer of the works at St. Peter's
with a salary of three hundred gold ducats for life. But this is not
all; people pay me what I choose to ask for my pictures, and I shall
receive twelve hundred gold ducats for the frescos which I am now
painting at the Vatican. Thus, dear uncle, I do honor to you as well
as to my other relations and my country. I carry you always in my
heart, and your name sounds like that of a father in my ears. To
quit Rome now that I fill Bramante's place would be impossible, and
what place in the world is nobler than Rome, or what enterprise greater
than that of building St. Peter's Church, which is the first temple in
the world and will be the grandest edifice ever seen ? I return to the
subject of my marriage,10 in order to tell you that Cardinal Bibbiena

9 Gotti, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 84.
10 Simone Ciarla had proposed to marry Eaphael to one of his own countrywomen, with
the hope of inducing him to return to Urbino, a project to which Eaphael refers in the

152 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
has offered me the hand of his niece Maria, and that I have consented
to accept it provided you and my uncle the priest give your ap
proval." n
It is clear, from the manner in which Raphael alludes to this pro
posed matrimonial alliance, that his affections were not at all engaged.
He could not very well have refused a proposition so honorable, and
doubtless hoped to find some timely loophole for escape, when he ac
cepted it; but the reason given by Vasari, that he was reluctant to
marry because he hoped that the Pope would recompense him for hiu
still unpaid work at the Vatican, by making him a Cardinal, is too
absurdly out of character to be believed, even if it were not shown by
records of the time that Leo X. was not in his debt. So far as we
know, artistic genius has never been so acknowledged, nor do we re
member any case in which the elevation of an artist to ecclesiastical
rank was proposed, save that of Fra Angelico, who was both a monk
and a saint. Although, for the time in which he lived, Raphael was
a person of well-conducted life, he made no pretension to exceptional
devoutness or austerity. These qualities were not, indeed, de rigucur
among church dignitaries at Rome during "the golden age," and would
not have been considered as special titles to preferment; but we im
agine that there were other things wanting to Raphael, such as family
influence and ecclesiastical ambition, which would have prevented the
Pope from even considering his eligibility. That he himself urged it,
it is impossible to believe. He had in fact but one ambition, namely,
to excel in his art. He was not a person of deep feeling like Mi
chelangelo, liable to be diverted from his work by noble objects of
another kind. So little was he affected by the struggles and catas
trophes of his time, and so unbroken was his serenity in the midst of
the most tragic events, that he has been taxed with insensibility.
beginning of this letter, saying that he is very glad that it has come to naught, as had it
been carried out he would never have held his present position.
11 It is hardly necessary to mention that the marriage never took place. The Cardi
nal's niece was an invalid at the time, and died before Eaphael.

THE ATTILA. 153
"Do his impassive Madonnas know," writes the eloquent Michelet,12
"what Caesar Borgia has made their living sisters suffer at Forli and
Capua ? Can these philosophers of the School of Athens reason and
calculate while Brescia is delivered over to the horrors of war? Are
the ears of Psyche deaf to the frightful cries of the Milanese, tortured
by those Spaniards who will be at Eome to-morrow ? " This is impas
sioned, but unjust. Raphael was no humanitarian like Michelangelo,
though he was the kindliest of human creatures, affectionate to his
relatives, full of consideration for his pupils, to whom he endeared
himself in no common degree, and ready to aid the poor and suffer
ing who came in his way. Did he not take the poor and aged savant,
Fabius Calvius, into his own house, and care for him with a filial ten
derness, although the old man's only claim upon him was that which
the destitute have upon all kind hearts ? " He is," writes his con
temporary, Calcagnini, "a young man of great goodness, and possessed
of an admirable intelligence, eminent for his rare gifts, the first of
painters in theory and in practice. Nevertheless, he has so little pride
that he meets every one as a friend, and shuns no man's criticism.
No person likes better than he to discuss opinions, to be instructed
as well as to instruct, considering as he does that the great end of life
is to obtain knowledge.''
Appreciating the advantages which he enjoyed at Rome, and strain
ing every nerve to make the most of them, Raphael was able to
accomplish an amount of work which in quantity as in quality far
surpasses what the most extravagant belief in his capacity would have
authorized. Soon after the accession of Leo X. he began to paint the
fresco of Attila (Fig. 15) in the chamber of the Vatican where he had
already painted the Heliodorus and the Miracle of Bolsena. The sub
ject was doubly pleasing to Leo, as representing the king of the Huns
arrested before the walls of Rome by the miraculous intervention of
St. Peter and St. Paul, in answer to the prayer of his patron saint,
Leo the Great; and as symbolizing the expulsion of the French from
12 Michelet, Histoire de la Renaissance, p. 389.

154

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

Italy, in which he had played his part on the battle-field of Ravenna,
when Cardinal Legate.

Wearing the features of Leo X., Leo I. tranquilly advances with
his cortege under the protection of the Apostles, to meet the barba
rians and their chief, who, struck with terror at the vision which
he alone sees, shrinks before it with a gesture of terror. In vain
do his followers sound their trumpets, wave their banners, and urge
forward their wild steeds, whose advance is checked by a barrier
against which they break their strength like waves beating upon a
rock-bound coast. Meantime the papal group moves steadily forward,
as if it had left the gates of Eome on some holiday errand, and thus
forms the most striking opposition to the agitated Huns, who swarm
about their awe-stricken monarch like a flock of bees just issuing from
the hive. The Attila is perhaps the least pleasing of the Vatican
frescos, on account of the multiplicity of local tints, which, not being
controlled by the predominance of a general hue, give it a disinte-

THE LIBERATION OF ST. PETER. 155
grated effect. Its vivid yellows and reds strike the eye separately, and
produce a consequent want of repose. As it is the only one of the
four in this chamber which represents a scene in the open air, its
brighter scale of color is, however, perfectly in keeping with its sub
ject, and it may be that its present want of harmony is the effect of
time. The Liberation of St. Peter from Prison (Fig. 16), Raphael's next
Fia. 1&

great work at the Vatican, has suffered even more than the Attila from
this cause. The cold shining of the moon, the ruddy flash of the
torch, and the soft golden splendor of the aureole are so far quenched
that we can form but little idea of its original beauty, and but faintly
appreciate the skill with which the painter managed these varied effects
of light. The attempt to deal with chiaroscuro upon so monumental
a scale was a daring novelty, not again attempted until Rembrandt
painted the Night Watch at Amsterdam, where, however, the sources
of light are less numerous. As Raphael divided his composition into
three parts, each of which he made the scene of an episode, it was

156 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
much easier for him to separate the effects of light than if he had
treated them in one unbroken wall space. In that directly over the
window he painted the Apostle sleeping in his cell, behind the iron
bars, which stand out darkly against the miraculous light emanat
ing from his angel visitor. To the left he represented the same ce
lestial messenger standing with the liberated Apostle at the top of a
flight of steps, upon which lie two soldiers whose slumber is unbroken
by the angelic radiance which shines upon their armor with striking
effect; and to the right the guards sleeping upon the stairway outside
the prison, who, roused by a soldier with a torch in his hand and in
formed of their prisoner's escape, hastily make ready to follow him
to Jerusalem, whose walls and towers are seen in the background illu
minated by the moon. The solemn and unearthly beauty of the angel,
the passive, dignity of the Apostle, the varied and expressive attitudes
of the soldiers, and the skilful distribution of light proceeding from dif
ferent sources, are all features of this admirable work which in turn
impress those who study it. To make one great picture out of three
progressive incidents in the same story would now be regarded as a
violation of the law of unity, though it is authorized by Masaccio in
the frescos of the Carmine, by Ghiberti in the panels of the second
gate of the Baptistery, by Michelangelo at the Sistine, as by Eaphael
at the Vatican ; but the case is one where approval waits upon success.
If this be attained, as here, through consummate skill, we may well
drop our scruples and enjoy the result. To discuss its legitimacy would
be as futile as to revive the time-worn argument against painting as
inferior to sculpture because it deceives the eye. But we are not dis
posed to do this, or to quarrel with those who charm us so deeply,
or dispute their right to treat as many episodes as they please in one
picture, or to deal with color and form after their own magical fashion.
We love them too much for that, and as every-day life gives us enough
of things which can be tested by touch, we may well rejoice that
the eye can so readily be cheated into accepting the lovely fictions of
the painter with no other sense than that of enjoyment.

CEILING OF THE SECOND CHAMBER. 157
As Raphael had decorated the ceiling of the first chamber with paint
ings whose subjects were intended to epitomize those of the large frescos,
so did he that of the second which we have just described. In the
Burning Bush above the Heliodorus, he alluded to the deliverance of
the States of the Church by Julius II., who was appointed to free the
Italians, as was Moses the children of Israel, from bondage. In the
Sacrifice of Abraham he gave an example of faith leading to unques
tioning obedience, and in the Miracle of Bolsena of unbelief subdued by
undeniable evidence. In the Noah leaving the Ark, which saved man
and beast from perishing in the flood, he symbolized the Church, whose
power, wielded by Julius, as in the Attila, repelled the barbarians and
saved civilization. Finally, in the Jacob's Ladder he alluded to the
Pope's hope that as Jacob's seed inherited the land of Canaan, so
should the Medici become masters of a united Italy. We who study
these frescos for their beauty care little for such secondary meanings,
which the Pope and his court considered of great importance. We
see them and admire them as scriptural illustrations of a thoroughly
biblical character, and forget the artist in his work. This we can
never do in the Sistine ChapeL The frescos of Michelangelo are like
Dante's great poem, which cannot be appreciated without an intimate
knowledge of the poet. The key to them is what he did and felt
and suffered, so that the better we know the history of his life the
better we are able to understand works whose spirit is personal, sub
jective, or, in other words, essentially modern As a rule, his frescos,
statues, and poems are susceptible of two interpretations, one of which
invariably refers to the artist. The Jeremiah, for instance, not only
represents the prophet mourning over the future ruin of Jerusalem, but
the artist brooding in sadness over the evil destinies of his country
and the thwarted purposes of his life, so that, were it carved in marble,
it might fitly crown his monument.
The work of Eaphael, on the contrary, like that of Shakespeare, was
little affected by his personal circumstances, and therefore does not
demand for its appreciation so intimate a knowledge of his life and

158 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
character. Its spirit is impersonal, objective, antique, in short. It is
not a record in form and color of his own struggles and hopes and
deceptions, but an expression of his idea of the beautiful. Thus his
pictures have an independent existence, like bubbles bright with pris
matic hues which float into the air when detached from their source.
On this account the record of Raphael's life is vastly less interesting
than that of Michelangelo, whose every pen or pencil stroke is con
nected with himself and his times. Obeying an irresistible impulse,
he from time to time took part in public events from which Raphael
stood aloof, living solely in and for his art.
While working upon the frescos in the Heliodorus chamber he com
menced and completed many other works. Among these is that love
liest of his altar-pieces, the " Madonna del Pesce," painted for a chapel
in the church of St. Dominick at Naples, to which, as being the resort
of persons afflicted with ophthalmia, the subject of Tobias was admir
ably adapted. In his treatment of this touching story, which gained
a deeper significance by its association with suffering, the infant Christ,
who seems so eager to grant the prayer of the graceful and modest
suppliant, the beautiful angel who has been his guide, the noble Ma
donna, and the aged St. Jerome, are each perfect types of life at suc
cessive ages. This masterpiece of composition, expression, and color
is another proof of Raphael's inexhaustible resources in dealing with
a subject of which he seems never to have grown weary. Although
his Madonnas and Holy Families are more in number than the years
of his life, each has a peculiar beauty of its own. The Virgin and
Child with St. John and attendant saints are to him what the notes
in the musical scale are to a musician, materials by whose combina
tion he creates infinitely varied melodies, now grave, now gay, now
graceful or sublime. In the "Seggiola" and the "Tenda" (Plate VI.)
the Divine infant nestles in his mother's arms like a bird in its nest;
in the " Cardellino " and the " Belle Jardiniere " he plays like a child
with the infant John ; in the " Pesce " he listens graciously to prayer ;
in the " Palma " he accepts the flowers gathered for him by St. Joseph ;

AGOSTINO CHIGI. 159
in the "Vela" he sleeps under the watchful eyes of his mother; in
the " San Sisto " he is awake and as it were transfigured by a Divine
spirit which irradiates his brow, beams from his eyes, and like a light
set in a vase of alabaster, shines through his human form. It is by
comparing these pictures, identical in subject but differing so widely
in individuality and character of charm, that we get the best idea of
the richness of Raphael's fancy. When we tell every bead of the rich
chaplet, beginning with the Connestabile Madonna, and ending with
the "San Sisto," which combines in itself all the graces and ideal
beauties of the whole series, we find that though every one was fash
ioned by the same hand and with the same material, there is neither
repetition nor sign of exhaustion. Such fertility of invention within a
narrow circle is shown in the works of no other painter of any coun
try or time. Beyond it he revealed hitherto unsuspected powers which,
when awakened through contact with the antique at Rome, first gave
signs of life in the Parnassus and the School of Athens under a papal
protector. They were now to find a still greater opportunity for their
development under a secular patron, noted alike for his munificence,
his love of arts and letters, and the protection which he extended to
all who were distinguished in either. This was Agostino Chigi, a Sienese
banker of immense wealth, the Rothschild of Alexander VI., Julius II.,13
and Leo X., whose name will not pass out of remembrance so long as
the frescos of the Farnesina, the Sibyls of Santa Maria della Pace,
and the mosaics at Santa Maria del Popolo exist.14
The Farnesina15 palace, built by this merchant prince, stands on the
13 This pope showed his gratitude to Agostino Chigi for lending him large sums of
money at critical moments, by conceding important privileges to him, and by giving him
and his brother Sigismund the right of bearing the arms and name of Della Eovere.
14 In 1510 Eaphael designed two bronze salvers for Agostino Chigi, and the receipt for
payment given by Caesarino di Francesco, a goldsmith from Perugia settled at Eome, who
made them, is the earliest proof which we have of any relations between the painter and
the great hanker. — Sistoire des plus cilebrcs Amateurs Italicns, par M. I. Dumesnil, p. 97.
15 From the Farnese family, into whose possession it passed at the end of the sixteenth
century.

160 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
right bank of the Tiber, directly opposite the Farnese palace, with which
Michelangelo at one time proposed to connect it by throwing a bridge
over the river. Beautiful as a piece of architecture, surrounded by
spacious gardens, and decorated with frescos by several of the greatest
artists of the sixteenth century, it had few rivals even in Eome, when
Agostino Chigi made it the scene of banquets whose luxurious splendor
recalled those of Lucullus under the Empire. These were doubtless
given in the great portico or "loggia" where Baldassar Peruzzi, who
built it, and Sebastiano del Piombo, whom Agostino Chigi brought from
Venice to decorate it, painted mythological subjects in fresco, and Ra
phael with his pupils represented the fable of Psyche, the Triumph
of Cupid, and the Council of the Gods. Beyond this "loggia" lies a
gallery of equal length, whose walls are divided into compartments, in
one of which Raphael painted his justly celebrated Triumph of Galatea.
As Philostratus described 16 the lovely maiden sailing across the sea in a
shell drawn by dolphins, surrounded by nymphs and tritons, holding her
purple robe above her head to catch the zephyr and to shield herself
from the sun's rays, so Raphael painted her, with such slight changes
as suited his purpose. Standing in an attitude of consummate grace,
with her mantle fluttering in the wind, she holds the reins loosely in
her hands, leaving the guidance of her dolphin steeds to a lovely
"amorino" who lies like a sunbeam upon the water before the shell
which bears her. His fellows, with arrows fitted to their bowstrings,
circle in the air like swallows on the whig, and a crowd of burly
tritons, sounding their conch-shells, and bearing nymphs in their
strong arms, splash through the blue waves in all the pride of exuber
ant life.
There was a time when those who saw the Galatea could praise it
for its coloring as well as for its composition; but we who know it
in its faded state see only that it is as classical in spirit as the frescos
of the Loggie are biblical, and admire the versatility of a genius which
could enter into and identify itself with thoughts so widely separated.
16 Imagines, Lib. II. Ch. XVIII. p. 381. Ed. Didot.

THE GALATEA. 161
The following passage from a letter written by Eaphael to his friend
Count Castiglione17 shows the modest and self-depreciating spirit with
which he received the praises wliich were his due. "Could I believe
half the fine things which you say to me about my Galatea, I should
think myself a great painter. I am forced, however, to recognize that
they are chiefly dictated by your friendly sentiments, and I feel obliged
to say, that to paint one beautiful woman I must see many models,
and have you at my side to point out the special beauties of each.
In default of good judges and good models, I follow a certain ideal
(una certa idea) which I have in my mind, and though I cannot cer
tify that my work is full of an elevated artistic sentiment, I do my
best that it shall be."
The reader conversant with the Platonic definition of ideal beauty as
"an aggregate of selected beauties," who knows that Apelles, taking
no single maiden as a model for his Venus Anadyomene, made up
from many virgins an ideal more beautiful than any one, will recognize
that Raphael here worked in a spirit consonant with Greek canons of
art. Like Philostratus, he felt that Imagination is a greater artist
than Imitation, for while Imitation can only represent that which she
has seen, Imagination can represent that which she has not seen, by
figurine- it to herself on the basis of the real."18
The date of the completion of the Galatea is approximatively fixed
in Raphael's letter to Castiglione, by his reference to his late appoint
ment as head architect to the Pope, but although he did not design
17 Passavant, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 502.
18 The whole passage is worth quoting in the original text. Apollonius when in Egypt
talks with a certain Nilus upon the different way in wliich the Egyptians and the Greeks
represented their gods in art. To his objections urged against that of the first as un
seemly, Nilus answers by asking, Did Phidias and Praxiteles ascend to Olympus and
bring back models of the gods to be used in making their statues, or in what other way
did they set about their work? Not so, answers Apollonius, but by another means full of
ingenuity. And this, says Nilus, must have been by imitation, (pam-atrla " (<fn) (Apol
lonius) raDr eipyaaaro, ao(pwripa /ufiriaeas Syiuovpybs. /dfirj<ns fi£i> yap dyfuovpyrio'ei, o eWev,
(pavraaia di Kal 5 /irj elSep • airodficreTai yap aiirb Trpbs rqv avacpopav toO 6Vros." — Philostratus,
Life of Apollonius, Lib. VI. Ch. XIX.
II

162 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
the other frescos at the Farnesina until four years later, he probably
accepted the commission for them at this same time. Pressed with
work, he was.obliged for the most part to intrust their execution to his
pupils, Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni. The hand of the master
shows itself, however, in the female figure sitting with her back to
the spectator in the compartment where Cupid presents Psyche to the
Graces, in the vigorous, noble, and graceful figure of the flying Mercury,
and in the masterly group of Jupiter and Ganymede. The two last
especially may be pointed out as the most perfect examples of modern.
work in the antique spirit. They remind us of designs cut upon the
surface of ancient gems, being in themselves complete, compact, noble
and unexaggerated in style, and grand in feeling. Both were engraved
by Marc Antonio Eaimondi, to whom the world is indebted for the
reproduction of so many of Raphael's frescos and drawings in the very
spirit of the originals, with a purity of style and delicacy of feeling
which have never been surpassed.
This celebrated engraver, who identified himself so closely with Ra
phael after he came to Rome at the solicitation of Giulio Romano,
was born at Bologna, in the same year as Michelangelo, and at an
early age was apprenticed to the renowned goldsmith, niellist, medallist,
and painter, Francesco Raibolini, commonly called Francia. Craving a
deeper insight into the art of engraving than he could obtain from the
works of his own countrymen, he studied the works of Schongauer,
Lucas van Leyden, and Albert Diirer, which, having found their way
across the Alps, were highly appreciated in Italy as showing a skill
in the use of the graver to which neither Baldini, Roberta, Pollajuolo,
nor any other Italian engraver had yet attained. Marc Antonio may
possibly have met Albert Diirer during his visit to Italy in 1507, and by
personal contact have strengthened his predilection for the manner of
the great Nuremberger, but his early engraving of Pyramus and Thisbe
shows that he had come under his influence long before he made those
copperplate repetitions of Diirer's woodcuts of the Life of the Virgin,
about which he complained to the Signory of Venice as interfering

MARC ANTONIO. 163
with the sale of the originals. Up to 1510, Marc Antonio's style was
eclectic, Italo-German ; but in that year he went to Rome, where he
devoted himself exclusively to the task of engraving the works of
Raphael, in an original style founded on the excellences of the north
ern and southern schools. The group from Michelangelo's cartoon of
the Battle of Pisa, which he probably engraved soon after his arrival
at Rome, if not before he left Florence,19 although executed in his
Roman manner, gives proof of his acquaintance with German masters,
•for the background is a repetition of that in Lucas van Leyden's
print of the monk Sergius killed by Mahomet,20 save that a big tree
and a stump are omitted in the Italian engraving, and four Tuscan
soldiers are substituted for the four peasants of the German. Admit
ting that Marc Antonio worked from a drawing made by Raphael from
Michelangelo's cartoon, there can be no reasonable doubt that it was
simply a group of figures, and that Marc Antonio, being unable to
compose a background for them, utilized Lucas van Leyden's.'21 Such
a course naturally suggested itself to one who had by long habits of
eclecticism become insensible to the antagonisms of German and Italian
art, and who, though deservedly ranked as the first of Italian engravers
for his technical skill, had little or no inventive genius. It was pre
cisely because he had few ideas of his own, that he was so excellent
an interpreter of those of others. His manner of working was changing
and uncertain until he knew Raphael, to whom he gave his allegiance
and henceforward adopted a style wonderfully suited to the reproduc
tion of that master's works.
Like the earlier Italian engravers, Marc Antonio generally worked
from drawings, and was therefore not tempted, like the engravers of
the seventeenth century who worked from pictures, to attempt peculiar
combinations of lines in order to render effects of color. His method
19 It is dated 1510.
20 Engraved in 1508.
21 The real background of Michelangelo's cartoon is probably that engraved in Agos
tino Veneziano's group of five soldiers, A. D. 1523, at least five years after the original
had been destroyed.

164 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
was as perfectly suited to the interpretation of a Raphael, whose
highest beauties were those of form and expression, as the methods of
Vorsterman, Pontius, and Bolswert afterwards were to that of a Ru
bens, whose greatest excellence, color, could only be translated into
black and white by rendering relative values or the effect of tints.22
In many cases the engravings of Marc Antonio and his scholars were
made from sketches in pen and ink, sometimes from mere outlines, or
at best from drawings in which the draperies and accessories were in
dicated only by absolutely essential lines,23 but this was not always the
case, for the -drawings of the Massacre of the Innocents in the private
collection of the King of Saxony, and many others in the Archduke
Charles's collection at Vienna and the Royal Collection at Windsor,
which they engraved, are very highly finished. If the drawing was
slight, the master was at hand to advise and to explain his intention.
It is impossible to suppose that without such help even Marc Antonio
22 "Considering colors as more or less luminous, more or less dark, they engraved a yel
low drapery with lighter and wider spaced strokes than a blue drapery, so that the latter
should form a darker mass than the former in the engraving. With all such attempt
Marc Antonio had nothing to do. To him,'' says Ch. Blanc, "engraving is a concise
translation of the essential, a process which knows how to indicate everything, to say
everything, and which, deprived of the language of color, insists upon the supreme beauty
of outlines, accentuates the character of heads, selected forms, the force or the delicacy of
joints and extremities. His facile graver turns with the muscles, and by its movements
indicates the bones, the depressions and swellings of flesh, while by reserving broad lights
upon his plate he obtains simple and powerful effect. He is par excellence an engraver of
style, — style in engraving being the pre-eminence of drawing over color, and of beauty of
form over richness of detail. Albert Diirer had shown how every variety of matter could
he imitated bj' variety of work ; Lucas of Leyden, how effects of aerial perspective could
be produced by diminishing the strength and power of the strokes of the graver accord
ing to the relative distance of objects from the eye ; Marc Antonio came to show how
suppleness of the hand in the management of the "burin" could avail to interpret the sub
tler indications of the master's spirit as manifested in his drawings ; and the pupils of
Eubens finally inaugurated the modern system of engraving, which aims at giving the
effect of a picture, that is its coloring by light, an idea which never entered into the
heads of the engravers of Marc Antonio's school." — Grammaire des Arts du, Dessin, Ch.
Blanc, pp. 661 and 666.
23 Passavant, Vol. VI. p. 6.

MARC ANTONIO. 165
could have so identified himself with Raphael, as to be able to fill in
outlines often made up of repeated and ever-varying pen-strokes, crossing
and recrossing each other as the artist approached nearer and nearer
to his ideal. His unequalled "burin" has preserved for us many of
Raphael's designs which would otherwise have been lost, such as the
Dido, the Dead Christ, and the Lucretia, which, though it was the first
of his Roman engravings, was not surpassed in purity of line, in firm
ness and delicacy of contour, and in subtlety of modelling by Marc
Antonio during the ten years which he devoted exclusively to the master
service.24 It was followed by the Judgment of Paris, which astonished
everybody, — " ne stupi tutta Roma," says Vasari. The engraver's fame
was noised abroad, and his studio was soon filled with troops of schol
ars, Italian, German, and Flemish. Men like Beham, Binck, and Pencz
abandoned Albert Diirer, and crossed the Alps to study under the man
who had himself learned so much from their old master.25 Probably
no engraver ever enjoyed a greater measure of success until Raphael's
death, when his fortunes deservedly changed. He was imprisoned in
the castle of St. Angelo for having engraved a series of licentious de
signs after Giulio Romano, and eventually liberated through the inter
vention of the Cardinal de' Medici, and of his friend Baccio Bandinelli
the sculptor. A few years later, when Rome was besieged by the Con
stable Bourbon, he fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who reduced
him to a state of poverty by the heavy ransom which they exacted
from him. He then returned to Bologna, where he died about 1534.
The influence of Michelangelo upon Raphael is nowhere so percep
tible as in the Sibyls and Prophets of the Chigi Chapel at " Ste Maria
della Pace"; but, though they are conceived in a grandiose spirit,
which may properly be called Michelangelesque, they are none the less
24 The impressions were taken off the plates by one Baviera, who had long done service
in Eaphaei's studio as a. color-grinder. They were sold "wholesale and retail" to all who
wished to buy them, and there is no doubt that a. large sum of money was thus realized.
25 Marc Antonio's best Italian scholars were Agostino Veneziano and Marco Denti da
Eavenna.

166 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Raphaelesque, for while they are the best examples of the way in which
genius develops under all noble influences, they are still individual.
In a conversation between Julius II. and Sebastiano del Piombo,26
the Pope is reported to have said, "Look at Raphael, who, when he
saw the works of Michelangelo, suddenly abandoned the style of Pe
rugino, and as far as he was able approached them in manner." This
remark has perhaps led many to consider that the influence of Michel
angelo upon Raphael was far greater than we think it was. In making
it the Pope referred to works executed at Florence and Rome during his
Pontificate, hut the former, as we have seen, show the effect produced
upon him by the works of Lionardo da Vinci and of Fra Bartolomeo,
while the latter, with the exception of the Isaiah at San Agostino,
which we suppose to have been an intentional imitation, cannot be
called Michelangelesque. Raphael's style continually grew broader and
nobler, but it was always strictly controlled by that distinguishing
love of purity in line and form which kept him from excess or ex
travagance. Even the Sibyls at Sta Maria della Pace remind us of
Michelangelo only by their peculiar character, but they are not imita
tions like the works of Marco Venusti, Pontormo, and Montorsoli.
The genius of Raphael was nourished by study of nature and of the
antique, and by observation of the works of the greatest of his con
temporaries; and yet he neither imitated nature slavishly like Denner,
nor copied the antique elegantly like Canova, nor made himself the
slave of any one master like Pinturicchio. He was too original and too
great for that, but at the same time he was so receptive and so eager
to take advantage of every means of improvement, that he opened his
mind to all good influences, and assimilated that part of them which
was suited to nourish his spirit. Between the Sibyls of the Chigi
Chapel and those of the Sistine there is an affinity proceeding from
identity of subject, but in the conception there is this characteristic
difference, that although both are busied with the coming of Christ,
the first work out the momentous problem in company, while the last
26 Letter to Michelangelo, dated October 15, 1512. See Gaye's Carteggio, Vol. II. p. 489.

RAPHAEL AS SCULPTOR. 167
seek singly for its solution.27 Again, the feeling is different, for while
the first are more strictly beautiful, the last are specially lyric and
impassioned, and as the higher nature of these semi-divine beings is
expressed by different means, the resemblance between them, where it
can be detected, is purely superficial
Raphael's individuality as sculptor and architect28 is no less marked
than as painter. We say as sculptor, because we believe that he
modelled the Jonah of the Chigi Chapel 29 at Sta Maria del Popolo. It
is too Raphaelesque in its grace to have been designed by Lorenzo
Lotto, by whom it was put into marble,80 and though we have but
slight proof31 that Raphael knew how to model in clay, we may be
lieve that he did so on the general ground that in his time all great
artists were acquainted not only with their special art, but also with
all those with which it might be associated. In their eyes art was
a unit. Painters fully appreciated how important a knowledge of
modelling would be to them in dealing with shadows, in treating effects
27 The Prophets, Daniel, David, Jonah, and Hosea, were painted by Timoteo Viti after
the cartoons prepared by Eaphael ; but the Sibyls, the Cumfean, Persian, Phrygian, Ti-
burtine, as well as the Angels and Genii, were in all probability painted by the master's
hand. 28 As poet he is hardly to he considered, for, as the Greek proverb hath it, " /xia yap
XcXiSibv lap ov iroiei" (Nicomotliean Ethics of Aristotle, Lib. I. Ch. VIII.). Hence our
common saying, "One swallow does not make a summer." Eaphaei's poems consist of
three love-sonnets in no wise remarkable.
29 The Chigi Chapel at Sta Maria del Popolo was designed by Eaphael, as were also the
nine mosaics representing the Creator, the celestial globe, the sun and moon, and the five
planets. These mosaics were executed by a Venetian named Luigi de' Pace in 1516.
80 This artist probably modelled the companion statue of Elias in the Chigi Chapel,
and executed the group called the Madonna del Sasso, which is placed over the tomb of
Eaphael at the Parthenon. Judging from these works, his powers were not such as are
shown by the sculptor of the Jonah, who can have been none other than Eaphael himself.
81 The only proof, indeed, is that furnished by a letter written by Count Castiglione to
his intendant at Eome, on the 8th of May, 1525, in which he inquires "whether Giulio
Romano still possesses the young child in marble sculptured by Eaphael." This is iden
tified with the figure of a dead child lying on the back of a dolphin, now at Down Hill
in Ireland.

168 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
of aerial perspective, and in leading them to comprehend the springs
of action. They were aware that he who had modelled a figure in
the round before representing it upon a flat surface was likely to
give it a more natural air, to make it appear to move with greater
ease and dignity upon the canvas, than he who had studied only that
side of it which was turned towards the spectator. The interdepend
ence of the arts which obliged the painter to know something of
architecture, that he might be able to represent buildings in his back
grounds correctly, compelled the architect to study the laws of light
and shade which more especially concern the painter, so that when
designing a building he might know how to mass its parts in a way
to produce effective and picturesque shadows. In the same way the
sculptor had to make himself familiar to some extent with architecture,
for he was constantly called upon to enrich the plane surfaces of build
ings with bas-reliefs, and to design statues to be placed about porticos,
in pediments, or above cornices. Lastly, the goldsmith, who made
cups and platters adorned with statuettes, bas-reliefs, architectural de
tails, and enamels, needed to understand the three arts of sculpture,
architecture, and painting, as he had to practise them on a reduced
scale, and this general knowledge of the arts of design fitted him pre
eminently for the position of a teacher. Nine tenths of the artists of
the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries began their edu
cation in the goldsmith's workshop, and what they learned there was
of the greatest advantage to them in whatever branch they afterwards
adopted as a profession. Raphael was an exception to the rule, but
he obtained a deep insight into other arts than his own by being
constantly brought into contact with artists of all kinds.
Of architecture he made a special study. Long before he came to
Rome he had paid attention to it, at least as a draughtsman, and at
the age of twenty his knowledge of it was deeper, and his taste far
more refined than that of Perugino, as any one may see by comparing
the temple in the background of his Marriage of the Virgin with that
from which he copied it, in his master's picture of the same subject,

RAPHAEL AS ARCHITECT. 169
now at Caen. After his arrival at Rome, three years later, he pursued
his architectural studies under Bramante, and by this means, as well
as by his measurements and drawings of ancient buildings, acquired
a thorough knowledge of the art. The classical character of the build
ings which he designed at Rome and Florence prove him to have
been a true child of the Renaissance, and their excellence entitles him
to an honorable place among Italian architects. Only a small portion of
the basement of the palace which he built for himself at Rome in the
Borgo Nuovo remains, but we know, through an engraving of the time,
that the faqade was Doric above a rustic base, and that the basement
storey was pierced with five arched doorways, to which as many win
dows with balconies and triangular pediments corresponded in the first
storey. These windows were separated from each other by Doric col
umns in groups of two, and the whole facade was crowned with a
classic entablature in a severe style. Its principal details are distinc
tive of Raphael's architecture. In the " Casa " Berti and the " Palazzo "
Vidoni at Rome, as in the Pandolfini and the Uguccioni palaces at
Florence, we find a like alternation of circular and triangular pediments
over the windows, as well as balconies, coupled columns, and bold
cornices. Having for the most part studied ancient Roman edifices, it
is not surprising that Raphael did not scruple to superpose different
orders in the same facade; as, for example, in that of the Casa Uguc
cioni at Florence, which has Ionic columns in the first storey and Co
rinthian in the second, and, had it ever been finished, would have
been crowned by a Corinthian entablature.
The architectural manner of Raphael is distinguished from that of
Bramante by a greater boldness of projection in the details of doors
and windows, and of the entablatures, cornices, and balconies. By
these means he aimed at producing picturesque shadows, but although
he thus showed his painter's nature, he never allowed his inclination
for the picturesque to interfere with that just feeling for harmonious
form and fine proportion which make his buildings worthy to be classed
among the most perfect of the sixteenth century.

170 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
In the winter of 1515-16, Eaphael was summoned to meet the
Pope at Florence, in order to compete with other distinguished archi
tects for the facade of San Lorenzo. The Pope's wish was that those
whom he had invited should agree together upon a plan, but Michel
angelo, who was among them, would have no yoke-fellows, and his
design, still preserved in the "Casa" Buonarroti, was finally accepted,
though never executed.82 The facade is treated as a field for the dis
play of statues and bas-reliefs rather than as a model of fine architec
tural form and proportions. Instead of using sculpture as a decoration
when he coupled it with architecture, Michelangelo always used archi
tecture as a background to sculpture ; witness the Medici Chapel, the
tomb of Julius at San Pietro in Vincoli, and other examples which
might be mentioned. As he tells us in one of his letters, he was never
so truly himself as when he had a chisel in his hand; and this is so
true that even when he took up the compasses or the brush he showed
how completely he was a sculptor by nature. The use of that most
detestable of all architectural details, the broken pediment, is frequent
with him ; an error in taste which it is hard to pardon. When he does
not offend by such eccentricities, he is generally cold and uninterest
ing as an architect. Except the dome of St. Peter's, which has no
rival save that of the Cathedral at Florence, none of his architectural
works entitle him to rank with his great Florentine predecessors, while
all contain the seeds of that decadence in form and style which marred
the works of his successors.
In a late treatise upon him as an architect, written by a professional
brother33 who has proved his knowledge of the science by works
which, though in questionable taste, give evidence of great constructive
skill, we read that though he has "the stroke, the force, the breadth,
the will, the personality, which make the great composer, Michelangelo
82 Eaphaei's design, » simple sketch, in the Albertina collection at Vienna, is less grand
than that of Michelangelo, hut more harmonious in the relation of its parts.
83 Michel Ange, Architect, par Ch. Gamier. Gazette des Beaux Arts, January 1, 1876,
pp. 192-194.

MICHELANGELO AS ARCHITECT. 171
is ignorant of the language of architecture, does not know its grammar,
and can hardly write. Having conceived the leading lines of his de
sign, it would seem as if he had written upon his drawing, Here place
a cornice, there a capital. This being done, the result is more or less
satisfactory, according to the capacity of the workman employed to
carry it out." We leave the question as to whether M. Gander's criti
cisms are too severe, to be discussed by practical architects, but with
the exception of the Dome of St. Peter's, which his French critic
acknowledges to be a coup de ge'nie, "one of the marvels of art," his
architectural works seem to us false in taste and wanting in vital
interest.34 His architectural sketches show us by their inaccuracies
that he drew them like any pictorial composition, without any attempt
at measurement. He said himself that he was no architect, as he said
he was no painter; but in the first case he spoke the truth, while in
the second, as the event proved, he had no just estimate of his
wonderful power. To be a great draughtsman and a master in com
position is to be two thirds a painter; and when, as in Michelangelo's
case, color is also used harmoniously if not with any especial charm,
the right to that name is indisputable: but to have a right to be
called an architect, though all the knowledge demanded by Vitravius
in his famous definition may not be needed, does at least require an
intimate acquaintance with line and rule, a laborious accuracy which
no amount of genius can supply, and which early training alone can
give. Those who study Michelangelo's design for the Laurentian Li
brary, for instance, will be satisfied that M. Gamier is right when he
says that he who made it was not an "architect, properly speaking.
He did indeed do an architect's work, which is very different, and
most frequently in the manner of a painter or a sculptor, which may
have color, breadth, and imagination, but which bespeaks insufficient
study and an incomplete education. The thought may be great and
strong, but the realization of it is always feeble and naive." This being
34 Michelangelo was not heard of as an architect until 1515, when he was forty years
old.

172

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

admitted for truth's sake, it does not follow that one of the four crowns
which Michelangelo's contemporaries awarded him is undeserved. " Gare
qui la touche ! " for it belongs to him by right of genius, as do those of
sculpture, painting, and poetry. With special truth, though in a sense
not intended by the poet, was it said of him who "rounded Peter's
Dome,'' "He huilded better than he knew."

CHAPTER VII.
Raphael, 1516-1520.
The " Incendio del Borgo." Fresco  1516-1517 Vatican, Eome.
Portrait of Leo X  1518 Pitti Palace, Florence.
(Copy by Andrea del Sarto in the Naples Museum.)
The Holy Family, caUed, of Francis 1  1518 Louvre, Paris.
The Archangel St. Michael  1518 Louvre, Paris.
St. Margaret  1518 Louvre, Paris.
The Madonna di San Sisto  1519 Dresden Gallery.
St. John the Baptist  ? Louvre, Paris.
The forty-eight Frescos of the Loggie  1516-1519 Vatican, Eome.
Frescos in the Salle des Bains of Cardinal Bibbiena.  1519 Vatican, Eome.
The Transfiguration  1520 Vatican, Eome.

/
ST. PETER'S.

173

CHAPTER VII.

'How shall I then begin or where conclude
To draw a fame so truly circular?
For in a round what order can be shewed
Where all the parts so equal perfect are ? " — Dhtden.
INCE, besides the art of painting, in which
all men acknowledge your excellence, you
were considered by Bramante to be so
skilled in architecture that he, when dying,
spoke of you as worthy to succeed him
as head architect of St. Peter's Church,
we .... do hereby appoint you to that
office with a salary of three hundred golden
scudi a year." The brief addressed by Leo
X. to Eaphael on the 1st of August, A. D.
1514, of which these are the opening words,
was issued at a time when he was alread}r
so overwhelmed with commissions and bur-
thened with responsibilities, that he might
well have shrunk from accepting a charge
so onerous; but apart from the fact that the offer was tantamount to
a command, it was too honorable to be refused, and he not only took
it, but retained it for the remainder of his life with all its obligations
of superintending the carrying out of accepted plans, and suggesting
advisable departures from them.
His work at St. Peter's, which will be spoken of in a later chapter
in connection with that of Bramante, Michelangelo, and their successors,
was begun in the year when he painted the Galatea, the "Madonna

174 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
del Pesce," the Vision of Ezekiel, and an altar-piece typifying the
triumph of celestial over terrestrial music, for the Duglioli Chapel in
the church of " San Giovanni in Monte " at Bologna.1 In this picture
the patron saint of the divine art is represented as a young and beau
tiful woman, listening with a rapt expression to a choir of angels in
a glory of light above her head. They are
' ' Pouring forth music like the scent of fruit,
And stirring all the incense-laden air,"
while St. Cecilia stands amid broken instruments of music, with a
small organ in her hands, having on her right and left the nobly
draped and grandly conceived figures of Saints Paul, John, Augustine,
and the Magdalen,2 patron saints of the donatrix, a noble Bolognese
lady named Elena Duglioli dall' Olio,8 who had been commanded in a
dream to build and endow the chapel
Raphael sent this beautiful picture to Bologna in 1517, with a letter
to his friend Francesco Francia, asking him to repair any injuries which
it might have received during its journey from Eome, and to retouch
it in those parts which he considered defective. The general admira
tion which it excited when it was put in its place over the altar had
hardly spent itself, when it was again roused by the Vision of Ezekiel,4
a picture painted for Count Ercolani of Bologna, which, though but of
cabinet size, seems of vast dimensions, so colossal is its spirit. Floating
1 It was carried off by the French in 1796, and when restored to Bologna was placed
in the Pinacotheca.
2 In the art of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries certain holy persons were thus grouped
together in altar-pieces, either because they were objects of special devotion to the donor
or donatrix, or because one or more of them bore his or her name. Thus, for example,
Saints Eaphael and Jerome were perhaps introduced in the " Pesce" at the request of the
donor, named Eaphael Jerome. See Quatremere de Quincy, Vie de Raphael.
8 The Beata Elena Duglioli, wife of Benedetto dall' Olio, was canonized by Pope Clement
VII. The years of her birth (1483) and death (1520) are identical with those of Eaphael.
The Cappella Duglioli, after the extinction of the family, passed to the Bentivogli, who
were connected with it by marriage. See Gualandi's Memorie, etc., 1st Series, p. 51.
1 Now at the Pitti Palace.

THE "INCENDIO DEL BORGO."

175

in space with his arms extended and sustained by angels, with a
brightness round about him "as the appearance of the bow that is
in the cloud in the day of rain,"6 the Creator (whose Jove-like
character betrays a classic influence which in all other instances
Raphael carefully shunned when treating Biblical types) sits enthroned
upon the mystic symbols of the Evangelists.
As in this small masterpiece Raphael equalled Michelangelo in
grandeur of style, so in his next great work, the fresco of the "In-
cendio del Borgo" (Fig. 17) at the Vatican, did he rival him in the

Fig. 17.

-^"Jfacenefo; ckl*

treatment of the nude. In many of Michelangelo's works the display
of the naked human form is purely arbitrary. Tempted by the delight
which he felt in treating what he best understood, he often took occasion
to display his knowledge of anatomy where it was not demanded by
the nature of the subject. Raphael, on the contrary, never introduced
« Ezekiel, Ch. I. v. 28.

170 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
undraped figures into his compositions unless their presence was fully
justified, as in this case, where the victims of a conflagration fly from
their beds in an unclothed or hall -clothed state. The Borgo, a quarter
of Rome near the Vatican, had been saved from complete destruction in
the eighth century by the prayers of Pope Leo IV., and it was to per
petuate this tradition, and to commemorate a similar disaster in the
same quarter of the city during the reign of Leo X., that Raphael
represented the Pope interceding with Heaven for the lives and prop
erty of his subjects from the window of a palace in the background.
The scene is laid in a city square sunounded by houses out of which
the temfied inmates escape as best they may. Some hurry to extin
guish the flames, some address themselves to the task of saving those
who are too young or too infirm to save themselves, and others
are paralyzed with fear. A new pious iEneas, followed by another
Ascanius, carries another aged Anchises on his back to a place of safety ;
a woman from the top of a high wall confides an infant in swaddling-
clothes to the upstretched arms of a young man who stands on tiptoe
to reach the precious burthen; while a naked man grasping the top
of the same wall hangs against it as he drops to the ground, showing
all the muscles of his body in extreme tension. As the boy, the youth,
the full-grown man, and the aged father represent the male nude figure
at four different periods of life, so do the infant, the young woman,
the mother, and the aged matron illustrate four periods of woman's life,
and thus every variety of human existence is depicted. The most
striking figure in the composition is that of a young woman huraedly
descending a flight of steps to the right, with a jar of water on her
head and another in her hand. The wind blowing violently from
behind has loosened her hair, and as it drives the folds of her dress
close against her limbs, fully displays the grand lines of her figure.
Turning her- earnest face towards a group of terror-stricken women
kneeling in the foreground, she seems to cry, " God helps those who
help themselves ; this is a time for action, not for prayer."
In dramatic . power the " Incendio " is surpassed by the Heliodorus,

RAPHAEL'S PUPILS. 177
but it surpasses it in the greater variety of emotion displayed by the
actors in the drama. Agitation pervades both, but in the Heliodorus
it proceeds from a supernatural cause which all feel to be irresistible,
whereas in the "Incendio" it is excited by a material enemy, whose
presence, as it calls forth the active resistance of some and causes help
less despair in others, produces strong contrasts in the expression of a
common sentiment of alarm which are taken advantage of to give variety
to the composition. Raphael's work in the Vatican chambers ended
here; for although he designed the other frescos in this same room, as
well as those in the Hall of Constantine, they were executed after
his death by his pupils, whose weakness when deprived of his guidance
is manifest. The Justification of Leo III. and the Coronation of Char
lemagne are mural decorations, which show how wide is the gulf that
separates talent from genius, but taken with the four circular pictures
by Perugino in the ceiling, and the "Incendio" by Raphael, they have
an historical value as representing the decline of a school of which
the first illustrate the source and the second the culmination
Knowing as we do that while Raphael lived he was constantly as
sisted by his scholars in all his great works to an extent which, judging
from the immense number of commissions which he accepted and nom
inally executed during his Roman period, must have been even greater
than is generally supposed, it is interesting to compare their work under
his eye with that which they did when it was no longer upon them;
but the first is not always easy to identify. Many pictures pass as
Raphael's which were for the most part painted by his pupils. After
he had drawn a composition on wall or canvas, Giulio Romano perhaps
sketched it in colors and left it for Raphael to complete. Copies were
then made of it, which he retouched, and these eventually passed as
his work.6 His letter to Francia about a portrait of himself which he
had promised to paint for him clearly indicates that this was the or-
6 "For though some meaner artist's skill were shown
In mingling colors or in placing light,
Yet still the fair designment was his own." — Dryden.
12

178 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
dinary practice. "I have as yet," he says, "been too much occupied
to paint it myself, as I promised to do. I might have had it painted
by one of my pupils, and then have retouched it, but this under the
circumstances would not have been right." It is hardly necessary to
say that the above remarks apply only to pictures painted after Ra
phael left Elorence, for up to and including the Borghese Entombment
he can have had no such assistance, for the simple reason that he had
no pupils under him. When the great works which he had on hand
after he came to Rome rendered his need of assistance pressing, he
received many young artists of talent into his studio, and the skill
which they acquired in the work confided to them made them every
year more and more competent to carry out his ideas up to that point
beyond which none but the mind which had conceived them could ad
vance. No argument is needed to convince us that such a picture as
the Sistine Madonna is the work of Raphael from first to last. Its
improvised character, its wondrous beauty, and its absolute unity of
thought, feeling, and execution preclude any other supposition; and
for the reason that division of labor in portraiture is less possible than
in any other branch of art, we may also believe that he only painted
upon such portraits as those of Leo X., Julius II., Inghirami, and
Castiglione. On the other hand we cannot doubt that in many of Raphael's most
celebrated easel pictures, frescos, altar-pieces, and cartoons, he was
greatly assisted by Giulio Romano, Francesco Penni (II Fattore), Gio
vanni da Udine, and Polidoro Caldara (da Caravaggio), all of whom
could be safely intrusted with a great deal of preparatory and even
advanced work. The generally reddish hue of the " Spasimo di Sicilia "
at Madrid,7 for instance, suggests the collaboration of Giulio Romano,
7 Painted for the nuns of the convent " dello Spasimo " (at Palermo), whence it derives
its name, this masterpiece of composition, drawing, and expression has a peculiar interest
owing to its almost miraculous recovery from destruction. The ship in which it was em
barked for Sicily having been wrecked off the Italian coast went to pieces upon the rocks,
and the box containing the picture floated upon the waves as far as the coast of Genoa,

CHRIST THE TEACHER. 179
but no other hand than that of his master could have painted the face
of Christ, in which exalted dignity and complete resignation to physi
cal suffering are so marvellously blended as to make it perhaps the most
touching of all representations of the "man of sorrows" in pictorial
art. It is in such episodes from the life of our Lord, where the divine
element is veiled, that the highest triumphs of art have been achieved.
In their representations of the Passion, the Deposition, the Entomb
ment, as well as of the child Jesus, the greatest painters of the Italian
and German schools have approached the ideal of attainment ; but since
the days when rude images of our Lord were painted on the walls of
the Catacombs, down to our own time, no artist has fully realized that
conception of Christ as teacher which is conveyed to us in the noble
simplicity of the sacred text. Something which lives only in its words
is wanting even in the heads of Christ in the Last Supper, by Lio
nardo da Vinci, in the Tribute Money by Titian, and in the cartoons
by Raphael. Nothing, indeed, could be nobler in style or more perfect
in composition than the cartoon of the Charge to Peter, in which the
Saviour stands pointing to the flock which he commits to the kneeling
Apostle, or than that of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, in which
our Lord's dignified form is clearly defined against the evening sky;
and yet in neither does the central figure satisfy us as the complete
rendering of a type which would seem to be beyond the reach of art.
That this should be so does not appear strange if we reflect that the
love, the goodness, the sympathetic pity, the justice, the tenderness, in
short, all the elements of Christ's divine and human nature, would
have to be concentrated into a single form, endowed with a more than
manly strength and a more than feminine gentleness, adequately to
represent him as he appeared in the fulfilment of his mission upon
earth. The words which fell from his lips in pregnant sentences ex-
where it was found with its precious contents uninjured. Leo X. caused it to be returned
to Palermo, whence Philip IV. of Spain removed it to his own country. Mengs (Opere,
Vol. II. pp. 182 et seq.) has devoted many pages of criticism to it, lauding it from every
point of view, and making it the basis of a judicious eulogy of the prince of painters.

180 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
press all his qualities and attributes, but the pictures and statues which
represent him as uttering them, limited as they are to the expression
of a single thought, fail to satisfy us who know how much remains
unexpressed. Eaphael seems to have felt that even his powers were
inadequate to treat the Gospel narrative in which Christ the teacher
constantly figures, for in his cartoons designed for tapestries, to be hung
upon the lower part of the walls of the Sistine Chapel on festal occa
sions,8 he continued the cycle of Scripture subjects already painted
there by others taken from the Acts of the Apostles.9
The survival of seven of them after the unparalleled vicissitudes10
8 The tapestries, ten in number, were woven at Arras, in Flanders, under the direction
of Eaphaei's pupil, Bernhard von Orley. They reached Eome in 1518, and were hung in
the chapel on St. Stephen's Day, December 26, 1519. In 1527, and again in 1789, they
were stolen from the Vatican, and, falling into the hands of some Jewish traders, the
"Descent to Limbo" was destroyed for the sake of the gold-thread which it contained.
In 1808 Pius VII. purchased the remainder at Genoa and restored them to the Vatican.
An eleventh tapestry, representing the Coronation of the Virgin, which was used for the
decoration of the high altar, has lately been discovered by M. Paliard in a chamber con
nected with the private apartments of the Pope. Paris de Grassis valued each of the
tapestries at 2,000 ducats, making that of the eleven 22,000. Vasari estimates them at
70,000 ducats, or about $105,000; others again at 50,000 ducats. (See Waagen, op. cit.
Vol. II. p. 379.) The same writer (at p. 371) states that according to the account-books
of St. Peter's, Eaphael had, on the 15th of June, 1515, received the sum of three hundred
ducats on account for his cartoons, and that on the 20th of December, 1516, he was paid
one hundred and thirty-four ducats, the remainder of the amount due to him.
q Dr. AVaagen (Treasures of Art in Great Britain, Vol. II. p. 371) points out how in
genious was the selection of the subjects for the cartoons from their connection with those
by the earlier painters, which represent in the advent of the Saviour the work of redemp
tion and the founding of the new covenant. "By the principal events from the lives of
the two chief Apostles, Peter and Paul, is represented the spread of Christianity ; in the
death of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church, is exemplified the triumph of a
Christian's faith."
10 After they had been cut up into strips and pricked with pinholes by the weavers at
Arras, they remained rolled up in the factory until 1630, when Eubens, then Ambassador
to England, purchased the only seven which could be found, for King Charles I., who
placed them at Whitehall. On the death of the royal martyr they would have been
sold at auction with his other art treasures, had not Cromwell interfered and secured

THE CARTOONS. 181
which they have undergone seems almost miraculous. Of all the count
less treasures of art which England holds in trust, other nations may
with most reason envy her the possession of these precious works, which
in style, in composition, in the cast of draperies, in attitudes, and in
the rendering of character approach perfection. Let us look at them
for a moment under each of these heads, that we may realize how
justly they merit their great reputation; and first as regards style,
which being throughout noble raises us at once into a pure atmos
phere of thought and feeling. Diverting our attention for the moment
from the significance to the rendering of the subjects, we recognize
them as the creations of a richly cultivated intellect, whose mode of
expressing the most important parts and the most trivial details in
pictorial language is lofty, natural, and unexaggerated.
In composition they fulfil the highest requirements; for while the
arrangement of the forms represented and their surroundings are regu
lated by the most profound knowledge of the laws of art, these are so
kept out of sight that the result appears as unstudied as that of scenes
in real life, where the actors have grouped themselves with accidental
picturesqueness. In the cast of draperies they are no less admirable.
These are related to the forms which they cover but do not conceal,
their purchase by the government for three hundred pounds. Under Charles II. they
would have been bought by Louis XIV. had it not been for the vigorous opposition of
Lord Danby, first Lord of the Treasury, who induced the king to break off the negotia
tions entered into with the French ambassador. See Passavant, Vol. II. p. 205.
In 1521 the cartoon of the Stoning of St. Stephen was in the possession of Cardinal
Grimani at Venice. The three cartoons representing the Conversion of St. Paul, the St.
Paul in Prison at Philip; d, and the Coronation of the Virgin, were probably removed from
Arras about the same time. These four have disappeared, and no trace of them exists.
The seven now in Englanl were first hung up during the reign of William III., in a room
built for them by Sir Christopher Wren at Hampton Court. Thence they were removed
for safety to the Kensington Museum, where they are at present. They were painted in
size colors upon paper, and in the first instance with a light preparation in brown. "The
application of the local colors upon this is in the highest degree broad and masterly ; and
in the lights as well as in the depths of the often hatched shadows, the color is laid on
in full body." Waagen, op. cit. VoL II. p. 374. See Appendix C.

182 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
as are musical melodies to the underlying harmony which sustains them.
Their folds are broadly treated and carefully disposed; they have their
raison d'etre in the forms beneath them, and falling in lines of con
summate beauty which contradict no facts of nature, are no less logical
than graceful. The attitudes of the persons represented singly or in
groups are natural, appropriate, and infinitely varied. Everywhere the
outlines are contrasted with the happiest effect, while the action of the
figures always expresses the feeling incident to the situation, whether
it be quiet like that of the Christ pointing to his flock, or energetic
like that of the St. Peter kneeling at the Saviour's feet. The heads
are of every variety of type, from the highest ideal to the most real
istic, and so absolutely are the Apostles, the groping Elymas, and the
squalid and repulsive beggar at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple indi
vidualized, that they become identified in our minds with the persons
whom they represent. To thus create final types is what none but the
most exalted genius can do. More than any other artist, Raphael has
so filled out the ideal of Prophets, Saints, Apostles, heroes, kings, and
beggars. If we read in the Acts how Paul preached on Mars Hill, the
image which we see is that which he painted; or if of the Sacrifice
at Lystra, we see it as he has represented it, with the pagan altar and
the two lovely boys who stand beside it, and the victims ready for
the sacrifice, and the surging multitude who take Paul and Barnabas
for gods. So is it with the Death of Ananias, the Charge to Peter,
the Elymas struck with Blindness, the Miraculous Draught of Fishes,
and the Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple.11
11 Dr. Waagen (Treasures of Art, Vol. II. pp. 369-460) gives a detailed description of
the cartoons with critical comments, and states the probable share which Eaphaei's pupils
had in their execution. He assigns the Death of Ananias to Luca Penni and Giulio
Eomano, the Charge to Peter, with the exception of a few touches by the master, to Luca
Penni, whose hand is also traceable in the Sacrifice at Lystra, where, however, the heads
are probably Eaphaei's own work ; Penni, he says, also assisted in the Elymas, and was
helped by Giulio Eomano in the St. Paul at Athens. The fishes and cranes in the Mi
raculous Draught suggest to him the co-operation of Giovanni da Udine, who was a re
nowned master in natural subjects, and in the Healing of the Lame Man he traces the
hand of Giulio Eomano.

BACKGROUNDS. 183
No one can study the cartoons without being struck with the ex
ceeding beauty and fitness of their landscape and architectural back
grounds, whose character is always in perfect keeping with the subject
of which they are an integral though properly subordinate part. This
perfect balance between that which though important should from its
nature be accessorial, is kept by Raphael in all his mural and easel
paintings, and justly forms one of his titles to renown, for there is
perhaps no part of a picture in which a master shows himself more
clearly. At the height of his fame, Rubens rebuked a rash pupil who
had made light of the difficulties involved in painting a background,
by proposing to take lessons of him, knowing full well that it may
utterly mar a picture, or enhance its beauties a hundred-fold. But
although the Flemish painter was eminently skilful in this part of his
art, he did not give his backgrounds a real importance in themselves
and yet keep them subordinate. It was rather by gradation of tones,
and cunning artifice in the use of shades of color, that he led the eye
off into space, whereas Raphael used clearly defined forms of trees and
hills and buildings for the same purpose, — a much more difficult feat
because these are more likely to interfere with the main action. His
special excellence in this respect shows itself from the first. In his
early pictures his landscapes, though not exempt from the formalism of
Perugino's school, are lovely in line and elaborate in detail. Valleys,
mountains, green hills clothed with verdure, meadows carpeted with
flowers and studded with slender budding trees, are painted in them
with scrupulous care and fidelity. In the works of his Roman time,
as, for instance, in the cartoons, the backgrounds are broader and bolder
in treatment, but not a whit less admirably composed. The quiet lake
and wooded shore in the cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes,
the hill and far-stretching plain studded with trees and buildings in
that of Christ's Charge to Peter, are instances in point, and many more
might be referred to in the frescos of the "Loggie." In the Sacrifice
at Lystra, where the masses of buildings disposed on either hand are
broken by an open space enriched with a statue of Mercury standing

184 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
in the square beyond, in the Death of Ananias, the Elymas, and the
Healing of the Cripple, the backgrounds are necessarily architectural,
as the scenes depicted take place in city squares or the interior of
buildings, and in these, as in the School of Athens, the Miracle of
Bolsena, and the Heliodorus, Eaphael shows equal mastery.
The "Loggie" (open galleries looking into the court of the Vatican,
built by Raphael after the death of Bramante) are decorated with
forty-eight frescos, sometimes called the Bible of Raphael, representing
incidents taken from the Old and New Testaments, and with arabesques
and grotesques in color and in stucco. When these were in all the
freshness of their beauty it must have been difficult for the most en
thusiastic lover of nature to turn his eyes from them, even to look
over Rome to the Campagna and the distant mountains, but at pres
ent no such temptation exists, for not only have the arches been
filled with glass, but the building has been continued round the two
opposite sides of the court, thus shutting out much of the splendid
view then visible.
These frescos are so well known through drawings and engravings
that it seems unnecessary to describe them. Look through the series
and see how naturally they relate in forms the histories which all
know in words; observe how knowledge of every sort is displayed in
them with so little parade that they seem to have been improvised;
mark how there is not one composition wliich does not contain some
exquisite group, such as that of the women who cluster around Pha
raoh's daughter like a flock of doves just alighted on the river-bank
(Plate VII.) ; or that of Rachel and Leah, who, meeting Jacob at the
well, turn their modest eyes upon the stranger as he recognizes in
them those whom he has come to seek. Raphael must have watched
his pupils closely while they were painting these frescos, so thoroughly
are they filled with his spirit. We may fancy that often while he was
painting upon one of the great frescos in the " Stanze " he laid down
his brush and wandered into the "Loggie" to see what progress they
had made. To correct an outline or the expression of a face, he would

THE "LOGGIE." 185
take the pallet from the hands of Penni or Buonaccorsi, and this done
would forget himself and paint in a figure or a group, working for
hours until interrupted by a summons to attend the Pope in the Borgia
chamber, or to receive him at the door opening into the "Loggie"
which he was coming to inspect. Since his last visit some one or more
of the thirteen arcades had perhaps been cleared of its scaffoldings,
and we may imagine the satisfaction felt by his Holiness as its com
bined historical, allegorical, and ornamental decoration was offered to
his view.
It was by that union of the classical with the modem spirit which
gives what we call the Renaissance its peculiar character, that Raphael
made these galleries so uniquely beautiful. Inspired by those admir
able examples of antique mural decoration lately discovered in the
Baths of Titus, he designed grotesques and arabesques12 for the
"Loggie" as full of rich invention as their prototypes.
Grotesques may be compared to waking dreams; for although fan
ciful and bizarre in the highest degree, they are systematized and con
trolled by the reason. In them the artist rearranges the elements of
nature as his fancy dictates, associating realities in strange though logi
cal combinations. He lays the world of nature and art under contri
bution, and works out new and strange forms. Architectural elements,
plants, flowers, leaves, fruits, sirens, griffins, tritons, centaurs, hypogriffs,
and other combinations of animal forms are the materials with which
he works, making them orderly in their disorder, so that the sense of
fitness may not be shocked by the violation of fundamental principles
of growth and arrangement. Raphael not only did this, but he often
gave an interest to his fanciful creations by associating them in mean-
12 Grotesques, as they are called from the grottos or subterranean places where they were
used as wall decorations, or arabesques, as they were called from the Arabs who made use
of them, are of Oriental origin. The Greeks used them soberly, the Eomans profusely.
The followers of Mohammed adopted them from Byzantium as being strictly within the
requirements of their creed. The Moors brought them from Africa to Spain, and Chris
tian Europe employed them in a modified form for mosaics, pavements, and painted
windows.

186 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
ing with the historical subjects. Thus, for instance, around the Temp
tation and the Fall he painted genii fighting with harpies, lions, and
tigers, symbolic of the struggle between Divine love and the passions
of our fallen nature ; and about the destruction of Sodom and Gomor
rah he represented a combat of fantastic monsters. Many of the ara
besques are simple overflowings of poetic imagination without ulterior
meaning, as, for instance, Chimeras bearing baskets of flowers on their
heads ; Loves with vases ; Fauns placed as Telamones on either side of
a temple, supporting a semicircular frame filled with a little landscape ;
swans, and fantastic animals, such as the phoenix or the hypogriff, in
the midst of flowers, leaves, and festoons.
Many of these capricious expressions of artistic fancy were designed
and executed by Giovanni or Nanni, called da Udine from his birth
place, an artist of distinguished talent as an ornamentist, who had
studied the old Roman decorations in the Baths of Titus with Raphael.
He came to Rome after the death of his first master, Giorgione, bring
ing as his credentials a letter to Count Castiglione, and a book full
of animals, birds, plants, and flowers painted from nature in the rarest
perfection ; and as his talent exactly fitted him for the work then in
hand, — the decoration of the " Loggie," — he was employed in it with
the happiest results. Time and restoration have dealt so cruelly with
his decorative paintings in the lower gallery that we can have but a
faint idea of their original excellence; hut there are other works of
his, such as the arabesques in the ceiling of the so-called Borgia
chambers, and above all the stuccos in the second storey of the
"Loggie," which fully justify his great reputation. In these he stands
in the position of a reviver of one of the lost arts. The secret of
preparing a white, durable, and perfectly plastic stucco wliich like
that of the ancients would preserve its sharpness of outline for cen
turies, was unknown, and the young artist directed his efforts to its
discovery. Undeterred by the fruitless result of many experiments, he
persevered until he found the desired material in a mixture of white
marble dust and travertine, and in this he modelled an infinite number

THE MADONNA DI SAN SISTO. 187
of gods and goddesses, amorini, centaurs, tritons, and nereids in low re
lief upon the ceilings and pilasters of the " Loggie," and many subjects
illustrative of the work going on around him. The mason preparing
the wall for the fresco-painter, the pupil pouncing the outlines of a
design, and the modeller fashioning his reliefs, all served him in
turn, and even the Pope, as he passed through the gallery and paused
to give his blessing to a kneeling penitent, did not escape his quick
eye and ready hand.
Animated by the presence of Raphael, the work of decoration went
on with wonderful speed and success in all its branches. Since Phidias
directed the labors of his skilled assistants at Athens, no such many-
handed and one-minded enterprise had been attempted, nor can any
one see the result, even in its present state of ruin, without feeling
that the old system — under which talent served genius, and the clever,
of whom the world is full, became mediums for inspired artists, of
whom there are but few — was the true system. It matters little if
many lesser lights are swallowed up in one great light; the stars are
invisible while the sun shines in the heavens. It was right that such
a master as Raphael should absorb the artistic capacities of all around
him, because his productive power, limited by the shortness of his life,
could only have attained its maximum through the aid of pupils so
trained in his style that their individuality was merged in his. As
they became the agents of his will, and the workers-out of his thoughts,
the world lost what they would have produced without his aid, — a
mass of second-rate work by which it would have profited little; but
this was a light loss as compared with the great gain obtained by
the subserviency of inferior men who were most useful when employed
in giving material aid to their superior through such measure of techni
cal skill as it was possible for them to reach.
From these reflections let us turn to consider the Madonna di San
Sisto and the Transfiguration, with which Raphael crowned his short
and wonderful career. He was commissioned to paint the first of these
great masterpieces by the monks of the convent of St. Sixtus at Pia-

188 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
cenza, about the year 1518. They wanted an altar-piece, and in it he
gave them what generations of painters had failed to attain, the ideal
expression of that belief in the divinity of Christ which is the corner
stone of the Christian faith. He painted the infant Jesus of more than
earthly beauty in the arms of the Madonna. The picture seems like
a vision, — too beautiful to last.
A curtain has been drawn aside, and the mother and her Divine
Son are revealed. No halo or external attribute indicates his divinity,
nor are his features and limbs other than those of a mortal child.
Only by his celestial beauty and his inspired look is his real nature
made known. A heavenly light from within illumines his brow and
shines in his eyes. Their glance is soft and yet awe-inspiring, for it
is that of the Redeemer and the Judge combined. It fills us with
opposite emotions of trust or dread, and according to our mood im
presses us with the tender mercy of a nature which though divine
could stoop to relieve the needs of sinners, or gives us a sense of its
pure justice. In many pictures before and after Raphael there are
heads of beauty, of power, heads noble, saintly, and inspired, but in
none is there one so divine as this of the infant Saviour; none which
so fully realizes the type of an incarnate Godhead. So also the rep
resentation of her who, as his mother, was blessed among women,
is unsurpassed in beauty, in modesty, in dignity, and in grace. Pope
Sixtus and Santa Barbara, kneeling on either side of the central group,
and the two beautiful cherubs below it gazing upwards as if to lead
our eyes with theirs to the celestial vision, form the human links by
which our connection with the Christ-child is established.
The spontaneous flow of line, and the seemingly unstudied ease with
which this picture is painted, give it the effect of an improvisation.
As it now hangs in a gallery, removed from its proper atmosphere,
which is that of a church, where the silence is broken only by the sound
of the organ or the subdued accents of prayer and praise, its power is
due to itself alone. Even the thoughtless are hushed to silence; and
is a voice raised above a whisper, a low Hush ! runs through the room

THE TRANSFIGURATION. 189
to recall the offender to a sense of the respect due to its majestic
and divine beauty.
As the series of pictures in which Raphael represented the infant
Christ is here closed by his glorification, so is that in which he portrayed
the Redeemer closed by his transfiguration. The Transfiguration (Plate
VIII.) was long regarded as Raphael's masterpiece and the greatest of all
pictures; but although its transcendent merits are in some respects
still fully acknowledged, it does not occupy so high a place among his
works as it once did, and this on account of certain defects of com
position, and the want of transparency in its shadows. For the latter
Giulio Romano may be considered responsible. It is evident that he
painted a great deal upon this picture, as he was paid two hundred
and twenty-four gold ducats out of the six hundred and fifty-five origi
nally agreed upon as the price for it. Had Raphael lived to finish it,
there can be no doubt that it would have had a very different appear
ance. He was aware that when Cardinal Giulio de' Medici commis
sioned him to paint the Transfiguration for the church at Narbonne of
which he had been made bishop, he had also ordered a picture of the
Resurrection of Lazarus 13 from Sebastiano del Piombo for the high
altar of the church of San Pietro in Montorio at Rome, and knowing
that he would have to compete not only with the Venetian painter in
effects of color, but with Michelangelo in drawing,14 he endeavored to
meet the first on his own ground by throwing a broad light on the
upper part of the picture, and contrasting it with masses of shadow
below ; and the second by giving it the utmost nobility of style. This
he did with wonderful effect, and had the shadows been painted
with a Venetian transparency and depth, the Transfiguration would
have surpassed the Resurrection of Lazarus in this as in all other
respects. ** Now in the National Gallery at London.
14 According to Vasari, Fra Sebastian had direct assistance from Michelangelo in this
picture, working, as he tells us, "sotto ordine e disegno in alcune parti di Michel Agnolo."
Amono- Michelangelo's drawings at Oxford are the figure of Lazarus rising from his tomb
supported by two of the disciples, studies of the feet, etc.

190 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Surrounded by a brilliant light, our Lord is transfigured before the
eyes of the Apostles, and floats in the air between Moses and Elias,
above the summit of Mount Tabor. Peter, James, and John lie pros
trate, as if unable to support the glory of the apparition, and overcome
with awe at the sound of the voice which says to them, "This is my
beloved Son, hear ye him." Strongly contrasted with this beatific vision
is the scene of human suffering below the Mount. A boy possessed
by a devil is brought by his father to the Apostles that he may be
cured. They point upwards to Christ as the only helper ; hut this con
nection of the terrestrial with the celestial is so imperfect that the
mind does not at once seize it, and unity, that first and greatest qual
ity of a composition, seems wanting. Each episode being complete in
itself appears to be a separate subject, and the line of the hillock
wliich cuts the picture makes this conspicuous. Of the two that
which should be dominant is not so. The eye wanders from the Vision,
which should be the chief centre of interest, to the group formed by
the boy, the Apostle, and the majestic woman kneeling in the fore
ground,15 and the picture seems faulty when judged by Raphael's own
canons, because the touching scene of human suffering below the mount
so completely absorbs our attention, as it does that of those who take
part in it, that, despite the outstretched arm of the Apostle, we also
forget the wondrous spectacle in the heavens. Generally when a
celestial and a terrestrial scene are represented in the same picture,
both are in repose, or one only is in action, as, for instance, in Ra
phael's Dispute of the Sacrament, where the foreground is filled with
moving figures, while those which form the celestial hierarchy are mo
tionless. This is not the case in the Transfiguration or in Titian's
splendid picture of the Assumption; but for the most part great
painters have felt the importance of keeping the attention undivided
by concentrating movement, which attracts the eye, into one half of
the picture. These violations of a reasonable law by two of the great-
15 Said to be a portrait of the Fornarina. Eaphael Morghen engraved it as such upon
* piece of silver.

RAPHAEL'S DEATH. 191
est painters the world has known may be set down as exceptions to be
met with in the productions of men of genius, which prove nothing
against its soundness.
The Cardinal de' Medici evidently considered the Transfiguration
superior to the Resurrection of Lazarus, since, contrary to his original
intention, he placed the first over the high altar of San Pietro in
Montorio, and sent the last to Narbonne. There was, it is true, a
reason quite independent of the question as to which was the finer
picture of the two, which may have influenced his decision, namely,
deference to and sympathy with the popular feeling, which would have
asserted itself against the removal of the last and as many thought
the finest work of the great artist. Thousands of persons of all ranks
had seen it suspended above the couch upon which Raphael's body
was exposed in the room where he died, on Good Friday, April 6,
1520, and had it been taken away from Rome all would have felt as
if the -painter himself were a second time snatched from them.16
When Castiglione wrote to his mother, "Rome is no longer Rome
now that my dear Raphael is dead," he expressed a feeling which was
widely shared, for he had as much identified himself with the ancient
city by reconstructing the plans of her temples and palaces from their
great ruins, as with the modern by decorating her palaces with frescos
which she then counted and still counts among her greatest treasures.
A malignant fever had snatched him away at the early age of thirty-
seven, in the midst of projects half formed and plans half carried out,
and when Castiglione wrote he had just been buried at the Pantheon
" "And when all beheld
Him, where he lay, how changed from yesterday,
Him in that hour cut off, and at his head
His last great work; when, entering in, they looked
Now on the dead, then on that masterpiece,
Now on his face, lifeless and colorless,
Then on those forms divine that lived and breathed,
And would live on for ages, — all were moved,
And sighs burst forth, and loudest lamentations." — Bogers's Italy.

192 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
in a tomb which he had himself selected and prepared. Although his
last resting-place was marked by a marble group17 sculptured by Lo-
renzetto in accordance with directions given in Raphael's will, it was
believed by many persons that his body lay at Santa Maria sopra
Minerva, in a chapel belonging to the Urbinese residents at Rome.
The doubt was not solved until 1833, when the tomb at the Pan
theon was opened and found to contain his skeleton in a good state
of preservation. "As you read these lines," wrote the painter Over-
beck on this occasion to his friend Philip Veit, "you will feel some
what of the pious emotion which penetrated us when we looked upon
the bones of the dear master."
For a whole month after their discovery they were, exposed to public
view, in a coffin raised upon a catafalque, surrounded with lighted can
dles. Again, after an interval of three hundred and thirteen years, a
Roman crowd pressed around them and witnessed the imposing cere
monies attendant upon their reburial in the tomb which they had so
long occupied, and where it may be hoped they will henceforth lie
undisturbed. It is perhaps in some measure because these "spoglie immemore di
tanto spiro" have been seen and touched by men of our own time,
that the death of Raphael is brought very near to us. The death of
any man of genius brings with it a sense of personal regret. We
mention the year and the day when it took place with a certain
emotion, for his works have made us his friends. We know that we
are so much the happier. and better for his existence, and are grateful
to him because he has planted our standard of the beautiful so much
nearer the ideal. Identified with his works in our minds, known to
us in his personal appearance and in all the incidents of his career,
he is often more really our acquaintance than nine tenths of the people
with whom we live, especially if we sympathize with the peculiar
character of his mind and love the kind of work which he did in the
world. Living with, and actively influenced as we are by those with
17 Called the Madonna "del Sasso," from the stone on which she rests her foot.

QUALITIES OF A GREAT PAINTER. 193
whom we come in contact, the links which bind us to the men of the
past are in many cases stronger than those which hold us to those of
the present, for the foundations of our intellectual being were laid
before we were born; and as in old family mansions we value the
pictures, books, chairs, and tables left us by our grandsires far more
than those which we have added to them, so in our minds we most
value those treasures which we have inherited. Again, between us and
living men of genius there is often a material barrier, which only death
can break down. Excepting in rare cases, we do not know them at
their best, nor can we take in their lives at a glance, but see them
partially and incompletely. Their peculiarities of temper or disposition
perhaps prevent free intercourse, and a sense of our own inferiority
keeps- us at a distance from them ; but when nothing is left upon the
earth but the fruits of their labor, we approach these freely, and know
no bounds to our enjoyment save that which is imposed by the limits
of our appreciation. All may know Michelangelo now that he is dead,
whereas while he was alive this was possible but to few. Raphael was
more accessible to his contemporaries, and yet as an artist they could
not appreciate him as we can, because they could not like us compare
him with his successors. We who know what followed in Italy after
his death and that of Michelangelo, can better measure their greatness ;
and though change of taste and fashion has so obscured the judgment
of some men of our time that they permit themselves to speak of the
common estimate of Raphael as exaggerated, he still ranks in the judg
ment of the world at large where his own time placed him.
To substantiate his claim to the highest rank, we need only define
the qualities of a great painter, and then measure him by the stand
ard thus formed. A great painter is one who through the medium of
line and color so expresses the sentiments excited in him by Nature
as to raise others to that perception of her perfections of which they
would be incapable without his aid, and who so portrays the passions
and feelings of humanity through human forms as to inspire those
who see his works with the same measure of enthusiasm which filled

194 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
his own mind when he delineated them. To do this he must have
the poetic temperament which sympathizes with and assimilates all
good things; he must have au eye trained to perceive beauty where
soever it exists, a hand which through discipline has become the obe
dient instrument of his every thought, a profound insight into character,
and a comprehension of the ideal with a grasp of the actual, which
will prevent him, while giving rein to his imagination, fiom overstep
ping the bounds of truth and falling into exaggeration and manner
ism. His technical knowledge, which includes that of the laws of
composition, of design, of light and shade, of color, of drawing, and
of perspective, must be complete, and with a fine feeling for form
he must have that perfect comprehension of the just relation between
hues and forms which will enable him to associate them harmoniously.
Finally, all his powers must be under the steady control of an en
lightened judgment, which will guide him as if by intuition in selecting
those materials in nature best suited to the perfect accomplishment of
his purpose. Neither Raphael nor any other man ever had all these
gifts and acquirements in equal proportion Titian and Giorgione ex
celled him in color, Michelangelo in grandeur of style, and Lionardo
in subtle delicacy of handling; but even in these particulars he was
surpassed by such artists only, and none of them had the sum of qual
ities which he possessed in such admirable balance. No one among
artists is more full of variety than Raphael, and yet the very evenness
and perfect level of his genius makes him appear wanting in it to
superficial observers. To such as they the summer sea is tame, the
cloudless sky uninteresting. Take one of his great compositions, such
as the School of Athens, and see if among the many figures which
it contains there be one which resembles another in attitude, in physi
ognomy, in drapery, in action. Look through his Madonnas and Holy
Families, and see if there be any two which, barring a certain una
voidable sisterhood, are alike in expression or in arrangement of pose,
coiffure, or drapery ? Again, in respect to character, who has rendered
the men of his day with greater fidelity, or created ideal types of his
torical persons more perfectly in keeping with what history tells us of

ESTIMATE OE RAPHAEL. 195
them? It would be hard to say which are the more real to us, the
Saints Peter and Paul whom he drew from his imagination, or the Ju
lius II. and the Leo X. whom he painted from life. Unlike Rubens,
whose eye was "rather a mirror than a penetrating instrument,"
calculated to reflect the exterior rather than to seize the inmost spirit
of those whose faces he painted, Raphael saw and revealed the inner
man to observers of all time. He was not one of those who softened
physical defects to please his sitters or their friends, — witness the
cross-eye of Inghirami, the sallow, shrivelled cheeks of Julius, and the
sensual features of Leo ; nor did he in his ideal heads depart from
truth lest he might shock the over-sensitive, — witness the head of the
beggar asking alms at the gate of the Temple, and the distorted fea
tures of the possessed boy in the Transfiguration. The wide range
between such heads as these and those of the Madonnas and Angels
and Saints in which he expressed his highest conceptions of female
beauty, shows complete mastery over every kind of human type. We
recognize the fertility of a genius which, though dealing with the same
subject, is ever new in its expression, when we separate the heads of
beauty from those of character, and contrast like with like, such as
his Madonnas in the " Cardellino " and the " San Sisto " ; his infant
Christs in the "Belle Jardiniere" and the "Seggiola"; his Saints in
the Saint Catherine and the Saint Cecilia; and his angels in the
"Pesce" and the Liberation of St. Peter.
We cannot close this enumeration of Raphael's excellences without
dwelling for a moment upon his just perception of the limits beyond
which the expression of a sentiment or a passion cannot be< carried
without risk of exaggeration, and the consequent weakening of effect.
The terrible beauty of the angel who rushes as on the wings of the
wind to chastise Heliodorus, is the beauty of supernatural strength
which has limitless power in reserve, and cannot like mortal energy
exhaust its forces by any effort; but to express this reserve, and yet
give the impression of irresistible power, was a problem which none
but an artist who had the keenest sense of just limitations could have
solved. Throughout all his works there is not an expression of face

196 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
or a contour, whether of muscle or drapery, which is not exactly suited
to its end ; . nor in the thousands of figures which he drew or painted
can we recall an ungraceful or a mannered line or pose. This was
because of all artists since the Greeks he had the most perfect feeling
for true beauty. The beautiful was his special field, and hence he is
first among his kind. Lionardo had more depth, Michelangelo more
grandeur, Correggio more sweetness; but none of them approached
Eaphael as an exponent of beauty whether in young or old, in mortals
or immortals, in earthly or divine beings. In the Sistine Chapel we
are stirred as with the blast of a trumpet, carried out of ourselves as
by the sound of a language more powerful than the speech of men;
but in the "Stanze" of the Vatican we feel the influence of a genius
of which grace was the essence, moderation the principle, and beauty
the guiding star. Raphael was in truth the greatest of artists, be
cause the most comprehensive,18 blending as he did the opposing ten
dencies of the mystics and the naturalists into a perfect whole by
reverent study of nature and of the antique. Bred in a devotional
school of art, and transferred to an atmosphere charged with classical
ideas, he retained enough of the first, while he absorbed enough of
the second, to make him a painter of works Christian in spirit and
Greek in elegance and purity of form and style.19 The epitaph in
scribed upon his tomb, here given in the version of Pope, is a fitting
conclusion to this record of his life.20
"Living, great Nature feared he might outvie
Her works ; and dying fears herself may die."
18 "If," says M. Ollivier (La Chapelle des Medicis), "we call Lionardo, Correggio, Mi
chelangelo, or Titian king, a, part of the artistic world is excluded. Not so when we
salute Eaphael with such a, title ; each one can say, You are my son or my father."
19 War ein Kiinstler mit personlicher Schonheit, mit Empfindung des Schbnen, mit Geist
und Kenntniss des Alterthums begabt, so war es Eaphael ; und dennoch sind seine Schbn-
heiten unter dem Schbnsten in der Natur. Erinnerung iiber die Betrachtung der Werke der
Kunst. § 12. Winekelmann. 20 "Ille hie est Eaphael, timuit, quo sospite, vinci
Eerum magna parens, et moriente mori."

CHAPTER VIII.
Michelangelo, 1520-1634.
The Chapel of the Medici, commenced 1520. San Lorenzo, Florence.
The Library of San Lorenzo in progress, 1523. San Lorenzo, Florence.
Picture of Leda for the Duke of Ferrara, 1529. San Lorenzo, Florence.
Statues of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, the Day, Night, Aurora, and Twilight, for
the Medici tombs, 1525-1529. Work resumed and continued, 1530-1534. Medici
Chapel, San Lorenzo.
Successive contracts for the tomb of Julius II., 1500-1542. The two Prisoners intended
for this monument were already blocked out in 1815. Louvre.
The Moses for the same monument was finished before 1534. Tomb of Julius II. "San
Pietro ad Vincula," Eome.
Madonna and Child. Group. 1542. Tomb of Julius II. "San Pietro ad Vincula," Eome.
Leah and Eachel. Tomb of Julius II. Before 1545. " San Pietro ad Vincula," Eome.
Unfinished Statue for Tomb of Julius II. ? Grotto of Boboli Gardens, Florence.
Adonis. ? Uffizi, Florence.
Bas-relief of the Pieta. ? Hospital for the Poor, Genoa.

FRA SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO.

197

CHAPTEE VIII.

"Im ganzen, guten, wahren, resolut zu leben." — Goethe.

ET us hope that when Fra Sebastiano
del Piombo wrote to Michelangelo
(April 12, 1520), "You have probably
heard of the death of poor Raphael
of Urbino, and I am sure that the
event has caused you much sorrow,"
he felt some regret for the unworthy
role which he had played between
them. But although these words
seem to indicate it, we cannot feel
sure that he did, for he had reason
to dread lest the survivor would re
gard his treatment of an artist so eminent in a new light, now that
death had broken down the petty barriers which his hands had helped
to construct between them.
Together with his devoted admirer, Lionardo Sellajo di Compagno,1
he had systematically depreciated Raphael both as an artist and a man,
and we who read their letters to Michelangelo can only wonder that
the malevolent spirit displayed in them did not rouse his indignation.
In a letter written by Sebastiano in 1518 2 he says, " My more than
1 A Florentine, who as cashier at the Borgherini bank frequently transacted business
with Michelangelo.
2 Dated July 2, 1518. No. 12. Gotti, op. cit. VoL II. p. 56. The two pictures re
ferred to are those painted for Francis I. now in the Louvre, namely, the so-called Holy
Family of Francis I., and the St. Michael. The portrait of Giovanna of Aragon was
sent by the Pope as a present to the king at the same time.

198 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
father and most beloved, I am sorry that you -were not at Rome to
see two pictures by the Prince of the Synagogue, which have just been
sent to France, for I believe that nothing more opposed to your views
could be imagined. I need only say that the figures look as if they
had been smoked, or were made of polished iron, all bright and black,
and that they are drawn in the way which Lionardo [Michelangelo's
brother] will describe to you." To call Raphael Prince of the Synagogue
was to call him a Jew, which at Rome in the sixteenth century was
the most contemptuous of all names. This was bad enough, but more
remains behind, for in the latter part of the same letter Sebastiano
charges Raphael with stealing. "I wish," he says, "that you could
persuade Messer Domenico [Buoninsegni, for whom he had painted a
picture] to have his picture gilded at Rome, and to let me gild it,
because I wish to prove to the Cardinal that Raphael robs the Pope
of at least three ducats a day in the process of gilding." Is it going
too far, we would ask, to suppose that a man capable of uttering such
a calumny was himself plotting fraud of the same sort against Messer
Domenico in case his request should be granted ?
Sellajo did not indeed proceed to such lengths, but contented himself
with praising the works of Fra Sebastiano at Raphael's expense. Writ
ing to Michelangelo about the Resurrection of Lazarus3 (now in the
National Gallery), he says, " Sebastiano has nearly finished his picture,
and in such a manner that all good judges exalt him far above Ra
phael. The Chigi ceiling [Farnesina] which has just been uncovered
is a disgrace to a great master, worse than the last chamber which he
painted at the Vatican [that of the " Incendio del Borgo "], so that Se
bastiano fears nothing. Take note of it." A year later Sebastiano
himself writes about this same picture, "I consider that it is better
drawn than the tapestries which have been sent from Flanders," mean
ing those woven at Arras after Raphael's cartoons.4
Having failed in their endeavor to induce the Pope to dispossess
s January 1, 1518. Letter given by Gotti, Vol II. p. 56.
4 December 29, 1519. Gotti, Vol. I. p. 126.

FRA SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO. 199
Raphael and employ them to complete the decoration of the Vatican
chambers, Era Sebastiano and his friends redoubled their efforts after
his death to get a foothold in the Palace. It was undoubtedly at his
request that Michelangelo wrote to Cardinal Bibbiena (June, 1520) : " I
beg your most Reverend Signory, not as a friend and a servant, for I
am unworthy to be either, but as a man vile, poor, and crazy, to get
Sebastiano, the Venetian painter, some share in the works at the Pal
ace, now that Raphael is dead. If your Signory thinks that in grant
ing my request you are wasting labor, I would remind you that there
is the same sort of pleasure in serving madmen which men surfeited
with capers feel when they take to eating garlic."5 This oddly ex
pressed letter (whose apparent jocoseness is intended to veil the writer's
bitter sense of Leo's neglect) failed to secure its desired end, for Se
bastiano writes in answer that when he took the letter to the Cardinal
he was told that the decoration of the Halls of the Popes6 was as
signed to Raphael's scholars, and that they had already painted upon
the wall a figure in oil of such beauty "that no one will ever again
care to look at the frescos in the other chambers. Nevertheless," he
adds, "I have been secretly assured by Baccio Bandinelli that the
Pope is not satisfied with their work." In another letter he tells
Michelangelo that the chamberlain had proposed to him in the Pope's
name to decorate the lower hall, leaving the upper one to be painted
after the designs of Raphael. "This," he says, "I refused, on the
ground that after having been offered half the upper hall by the Pope
himself, it was not fitting that I, who do not consider myself inferior
to them, should paint the cellars and they the gilded halls." He then
urges Michelangelo to undertake the work, "than which there is none
more honorable in the world. Thus you will have an opportunity of
avenging all your wrongs, and of so stopping the mouths of the
crickets that they will cease their chirping once and forever."
6 Milanesi, op. cit. Letter CCCLXIII. p. 413.
6 The two halls then called of the Popes, which were distinguished as the lower and
the upper, are now called the Sala Borgia and the Sala di Constantino.

200 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Michelangelo turned a deaf ear to this appeal, either because he
knew that he had no chance of success, or moved, as we prefer to
believe, by the honorable feeling that Giulio Romano and Giovan Fran
cesco Penni ought to be allowed to paint the Hall of Constantine after
the designs prepared by their master. Thus the matter ended ; but it
is important to note that while lately published letters furnish no
proof that Bramante had formerly endeavored to persuade the Tope to
allow Raphael to paint half the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as alleged,
they clearly show that during his lifetime Michelangelo's friends did
what they could to obtain for themselves a portion of the work as
signed to Raphael, and to prevent the carrying out of his designs when
death had removed him from the scene of his labors. The blame for
these transactions, as we have already said, rests upon them and not
upon Michelangelo, who, if left to himself, would never have meddled
with the work assigned to another. His appreciation of his rival's
work, and his frankness in acknowledging, its merit when occasion
offered, is illustrated by the following story, which appears to be- au
thentic. After Raphael had finished the Prophets in the Chigi Chapel
at S,a Maria della Pace, for which he received five hundred scudi on
account from Giulio Borghese, the paymaster of his employer, Agostino
Chigi, he asked for the remainder of the sum, to which he considered
himself entitled. Upon this Michelangelo was called in to set a price
upon the work, and, filled with admiration, declared that every head
"was worth a hundred golden scudi."
Having now enabled the reader to judge for himself how little one
of these great artists was influenced in his judgment of the other by
the disparagement of interested parties, we may resume the thread of
our history.
Michelangelo can hardly have grieved at the death of Leo X., for
there had been no friendship lost between them from the first. The
way in which the Pope had made him waste his precious time at
Carrara and Serravezza, and condemned him to exile, rankled in his
soul. Freed from the contract for the facade of San Lorenzo, he was

ADRIAN VI. -201
soon buithened with another Papal commission, and again obliged to
return to Carrara for marbles to be used in building the chapel and
sculpturing the monuments of the Medici.7 A few months later his
taskmaster died, and this new enterprise was interrupted.
The election of Adrian Boyers, Cardinal Bishop of Tortosa, and whilom
tutor to Charles V, left Michelangelo perfectly free to work upon the
Julius monument, for the new Pope cared as little for the Medici as
for the Delia Rovere, and was absolutely indifferent as to how he or any
of the artists who had been so long the glory and pride of the Vatican
were employed. An excellent man, of a most devout temper, and versed
in scholastic theology, the successor of Leo X. frowned upon profane
literature, and regarded the arts with an aversion which he did not
attempt to conceal. He looked upon antique statues as "pagan idols,"
and things of evil, like all that contributed to the delight of the eyes.
To the disgust of the Romans, who had been trained by a long series
of Popes into thinking that the Vatican was a place for worldly amuse
ment, and that the chief duty of the occupant of St. Peter's chair was
to amuse them by feasts and pageants, Adrian VI. cut down the num
ber of his retainers, reduced the salaries of those employed at the court,
and, as far as he was able, put a stop to all license and extravagance.
It was not in the designs of Providence, however, that Rome should
escape, by any permanent reform within her walls, from the Nemesis
who was soon to avenge the past, and so Adrian of Utrecht died, after
a short reign of less than two years, and was succeeded by a man
of a very different stamp, — the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, known in
history as Pope Clement VII.
To be a Medici was in the eyes of the literary and artistic world to
be another Leo, and the fact that the new Pope belonged to that re
nowned house sufficed to recall both the lovers of wisdom and the
lovers of pleasure who had absented themselves from Rome during the
short reign of the Reformer. They came at his call to inaugurate
7 This was his tenth and last journey to the quarries since 1505, when he visited them
for the first time in the service of Pope Julius.

202 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
the new "regime" with befitting splendor, little dreaming that within
live years the vacillating policy of their new master would cause the
city which they loved to fall into the hands of a brutal soldiery, and
bring such destruction upon her high places as they had not known
since the days of Alaric and of Attila Like the rest, Michelangelo
hailed the elevation of Giulio de' Medici as an auspicious event. " All
the world is rejoiced," he writes to Domenico (a marble-worker at
Carrara) on hearing the news, "and I am of the opinion that much
will now be done in the way of art." His own anticipations of find
ing favor in the new Pope's sight were founded on the past. Ever
since the days when they had lived together in the Medici palace at
Florence, Giulio de' Medici, then a boy under the tutelage of Politian,
had shown an interest in him, and now that he had become Pope he
had an opportunity of proving it. What he did was not what Mi
chelangelo desired, although he must have anticipated that Clement,
who had given him the commission for the Medici monuments while
he was Cardinal, would not allow him to go on with the monument
to Pope Julius, and thus forego the realization of a project calculated
to aggrandize the prestige of his own family, which, Eke Leo X., he
had much at heart.
Julius or Leo would have commanded him to do their bidding with
out any preliminaries, but Clement first tried to tempt him by the
offer of a pension, and hinted that he had better enter a religious
order, a course which wTould have taken away from him even that
shadow of independence to which he had held fast under former Popes.
Although Michelangelo rejected both propositions, Clement was none
the less master of the situation, as he showed by ordering him to go
on with the Medici Chapel, build a library to contain the books and
manuscripts of his family,8 and decorate the piazza of San Lorenzo with
8 Cosmo Pater Patrise built a room for them in the Convent of St. Marks. After the
death of Lorenzo and the expulsion of Piero de' Medici, the monks, being embarrassed
pecuniarily, sold them to Leo X., who, when he became pope, took them to Eome, installed
them at the Villa Medici on the Pincian, and made many precious additions to them. In
1522 Clement sent them back to Florence, where the Laurentian Library had meanwhile
been prepared to receive them.

A COLOSSAL STATUE. 203
a colossal statue sixty feet in height. This last scheme was evidently
taken by Michelangelo in the light of a joke, — an exceptional way of
looking at anything with him, — for in a letter to Fattucci he ridicules
it with a grim smile. " Let us put it," he writes, " where the barber's
shop now stands, opposite the square on the other side of the street;
and in order to save Figaro from displacement, I will make the seat
hollow upon which the figure is to be seated, and give it to him as a
convenient place to shave his customers in. The cornucopia in the
hand of the statue can be used as a chimney, and the head being
empty can serve as a dovecot. Another plan would be to treat the
figure as a campanile for San Lorenzo, putting the bells inside the head
and having the sound come out of the mouth, so that when they are
rung it will seem as if the figure cried ' Misericordia.' " This humor
ous letter seems to have killed the project altogether, and Michelangelo
might have settled down to work upon the library and the chapel in
comparative peace, had he not been worried by a lawsuit which the
heirs of Julius II. proposed to bring against him, because he had failed
to fulfil his last contract for that monument which was the intermit
tent torment of his life for forty-five years, and accused him of having
received money on account which he had spent in other ways than
those for which it was advanced. Filled with righteous indignation,
and firm in the consciousness of his innocence, Michelangelo demanded
and obtained an examination of the accounts ab initio, which resulted
in proving that so far from having plundered others he had robbed
himself by spending more money than he had received for buying
marbles and transporting them to Rome.
The following letter,9 written to Giovan Francesco Fattucci10 by
Michelangelo, contains many interesting details concerning the oft-
9 Milanesi, Letter CCCLXXXIII. p. 126, written in 1524 and first published by Ciampi
in 1834. Gaye (Carteggio, Vol. II. p. 83) doubts its authenticity ; hut although interpo
lated and transcribed, there is no doubt that it represents a real letter of Michelangelo's.
— Springer, p. 8, note 1.
10 Until 1522 chaplain in Santa Maria del Fiore at Florence, and afterwards in the
service of Clement VII. at Eome.

204 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
mentioned monument and other artistic commissions given him by
Julius II.
"Messer Giovan Francesco, you ask me, for certain reasons of )7our
own, to tell you about my relations with Pope Julius. I can assure
you that an examination of the accounts, if it could be made to-morrow,
would rather prove me to be his creditor than his debtor. At the time
when he sent for me to Florence, — I think it was in the second year
of his Pontificate, — I had undertaken to paint the half of the Hall
of Council in the Palazzo Vecchio for three thousand ducats, and had
finished the cartoon, as all Florence knows, which in my estimation
was worth half that sum. One of the twelve Apostles, commissioned
for Santa Maria del Fiore, was then roughed out, and the greater part
of the marbles for the others were in hand. As the Pope obliged
me to go away, I gained nothing by either commission. When I
reached Rome he requested me to make his monument, gave me one
thousand ducats to pay for the marbles, and sent me to Carrara to
procure them. I spent eight months there in roughing them out, and
then brought the greater part of them to Rome, where some were
placed in the square of St. Peter's and some remained at the Ripa
Grande.11 The money which I had received was exhausted in paying
for these marbles; but as I counted upon getting more from the com
mission for the monument, I furnished my house on the square of
St. Peter's with beds and other furniture, and sent to Florence for
assistants, some of whom are still living, to whom I advanced money
out of my own pocket. At this time the Pope changed his mind, and
no longer wished to go on with the monument: and when I, not
knowing this, went to ask for money, and was driven out of the Vat
ican, I felt myself insulted and quitted Rome immediately. Every
thing which I left in my house suffered, and as the marbles which I
had brought remained on the square of St. Peter's until the election of
Pope Leo, both matters turned out as badly as possible. Among other
11 Vessels arriving at Eome from Fiumicino at the mouth of the Tiber discharge their
cargoes at the Eipa Grande opposite the Aventine, or directly below it.

STATUE OF JULIUS II. 205
losses which I could prove by witnesses and demand compensation for,
were those of two pieces of marble each four and a half braccie in
length, which had cost me more than fifty gold ducats. These were
earned away from the 'Ripa'12 by Agostino Chigi. During the year
which elapsed between the time when I went to Carrara for the mar
bles and my expulsion from the palace, I received no money and spent
ducats by the tens.
"After that, the first time that Pope Julius went to Bologna I was
forced to go there and ask his pardon with a halter round my neck,
wherefore he commissioned me to make his seated statue in bronze
about nine braccie in height. When he asked me how much it would
cost, I answered that it could probably be cast for one thousand ducats,
but that, as I was no expert, I did not wish to bind myself to do it
for that sum. Hearing this, he replied, ' Set to work, and cast it until
it succeeds, and I will pay you to your satisfaction.' To speak briefly,
the statue was cast twice, and at the end of two years, which it took
to finish it, I found that I had advanced four ducats and a half. From
that time I received no more money, and that which I spent in the
said two years was taken from the one thousand ducats at which I
had said the statue could be cast, and these were paid to me at in
tervals by Messer Antonio Maria da Legniame of Bologna.
"After I had set up the statue upon the facade of St. Petronius and
had returned to Rome, the Pope still refused to allow me to make his
monument, and set me to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at
the stipulated price of. three thousand ducats. At first I proposed to
put the Twelve Apostles in the lunettes, and to fill the rest of the
space with ornaments after the usual fashion. Afterwards, when I had
begun the easel-work, it seemed to me that it would turn out a poor
thing if the Apostles only were painted, and I said so to the Pope.
He asked me why : I answered because they also were poor men. He
then gave me permission to do what I liked, saying that he would pay
12 The Eipa Grande on the left hank of the Tiber, below the Aventine, where marbles
are discharged.

206 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
me well for it, and that I might paint down to the Scripture subjects.13
When the ceiling was nearly finished the Pope went back to Bologna,
whither I twice followed him to ask for money due to me, but
without success; besides which, I lost all my time until he returned
to Eome. After my own return, I made cartoons of the heads and
faces to be painted in the Sistine Chapel, hoping to be paid, and to
complete the work. In this I was disappointed, and one day, when
talking with Messer Bernardo Bibbiena and Atalante,14 I complained
of my fruitless efforts, saying that as I could not get any money I
must leave Rome, and trust in Heaven to help me. Hearing this,
Messer Bernardo told Atalante to remind him of what I had said, as he
was determined to get the money for me. Thanks to his intervention, I
received two thousand ducats from the Papal treasury, of which I gave
one hundred to Messer Bernardo and fifty to Atalante to recompense
them for their good offices. These two thousand ducats and the one
thousand previously paid to me made up the amount expended for
the marbles, wherefore I supposed that I had received them in rec
ompense for lost time and the works completed.
"' Then came the death of the Pope ; and as in the early part of Leo's
pontificate Aginensis15 wished to increase the size of the monument,
we made a new contract. When I objected to have the three thou
sand ducats which I had received credited to the new account, because,
as I showed, I ought to have received a much larger sum, Aginensis
called me a cheat."16
13 Meaning those already painted by Pinturicchio, Eoselli, and Perugino.
14 Atalante, natural son of Manetto Migliorotti, a Florentine, born in 1466, accompanied
Lionardo da Vinci to Milan at the age of sixteen, and was taught by him to play on the
lute. In 1513 he became one of the superintendents of the works at St. Peter's.
15 Son of a sister of Sixtus IV., made Cardinal of San Pietro ad Vincula by Julius II.
in 1505. His real name was Lionardo Grosso della Eovere. Wilson, op. cit. p. 195,
note 1, and Milanesi, op. cit. p. 128.
16 Springer (Michelangelo in Rome, 1508-12, p. 15) points out that this letter fixes
the date of Michelangelo's call to Eome in the winter of 1504-5. As he stayed eight
months at Carrara, and in April, 1506, returned to Eome, he can have worked but little
on the monument. During the remaining years of the Pontificate he was confessedly kept
from so doing, nor was the work resumed until 1513, after the Pope's death.

THE MONUMENT OF JULIUS II. 207
It is evident that Aginensis, who acted for the executors of the
Pope, made no allowance for time wasted in fruitless journeys and in
waiting for money with which to carry on work. For these delays
Michelangelo was in no wise answerable, and we cannot wonder that,
having suffered so much from them, he was indignant at being called
a cheat. The reader will remember that according to the first design the
monument was to have been an immense quadrilateral structure, three
storeys in height, decorated with forty statues and many bas-reliefs.
The second design, made under the new contract, shows but three
sides, the fourth being set against the wall;17 but from Michelangelo's
own words in the letter just quoted, and from the fact that instead of
ten thousand ducats, stipulated by the first contract, the executors
agreed to allow him sixteen thousand five hundred, it is evident that
they proposed to make it even richer and grander than it would have
been according to the first design. The arrangement of niches, statues,
architectural enrichments, etc., seems to have been very much the same,
but a chapel adorned with five statues was to be built against the
wall, at the rear end of the platform, which would certainly have con
tributed greatly to the grand and imposing effect of the whole.
In 1515 Leo X. obliged Michelangelo to break this second contract
in order that he might work for him upon the facade of San Lorenzo ;
but the next year he permitted him to make a third, by which the
design for the monument was again modified, and the number of statues
considerably reduced. Nine years of incessant occupation, during which
little was done towards carrying it out, ended with those threats of
prosecution of which we have already spoken, and brought about an
examination of the accounts which cleared Michelangelo from the
unjust accusations of fraud with which he had been charged. Seven
years after he signed his name to a fourth contract, by which he
bound himself to finish six statues with his own hand for the mon
ument, which, on a greatly reduced scale, was to be set up, not in
17 Milanesi, Appendix, pp. 635-637, gives this second contract in extenso.

208 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
St. Peter's, but in the church of "San Pietro ad Vincula," of which
Julius II. had at one time been Cardinal. For recompense he was to
receive two thousand gold ducats, and the whole was to be completed
in three years; but this agreement was broken like the rest, nor was
it until the year 1542 that a fifth and final contract was made be
tween Pope Paul III., the Duke of Urbino, and Michelangelo, under
which the monument received its present form. As all the world
knows, it has one statue finished by the great sculptor himself, and
two other statues, the Rachel and Leah, for which he furnished the
designs. Before concluding this final arrangement, Michelangelo stipu
lated that he should be allowed to pay back a sum of money already
advanced for the three other statues agreed upon by the contract of
1532, and he accordingly deposited fifteen hundred and eighty ducats
to the Duke's credit in the hands of his bankers, the Strozzi, at Florence.
The monument in its final shape would hardly have satisfied the
ambition of Julius II., whose statue, reclining upon a sarcophagus (the
work of Maso del Bosco, a third-rate sculptor), is one of its most in
significant features. It has been called a monument to Moses, and
such it appears, for when looking at it we see only this mighty figure
relieved against an architectural background, whose tasteless lines dis
turb rather than enhance its effect. Painfully out of harmony with its
surroundings, which are quite disproportioned to it, it is seen at a great
disadvantage on a level with the eye, instead of being grouped with
other statues of corresponding size at a considerable elevation. It is
but the disjointed part of an unexplained whole, a giant among pygmies,
a huge block of marble set against a tasteless architectural background.
Our opinion of it as a work of art depends very much upon whether
we judge it from an ancient or a modern point of view. Winckelmann,
who regarded Michelangelo's works from the Hellenic standpoint, speaks
of him as one of those artists "in whose mind Heaven did not per
mit the soft feeling of pure beauty to ripen," 18 and perhaps we could
ls "In andern hat der Himmel das sanfte gefuhl, der reinen schbnheit nicht zur reife
kommen lassen," etc. — Von der Kunst unter den Gricelien, § 14, p. 129. Winckelmann's
Works, Vol. I. Stuttgart. 1847.

THE MOSES. 209
not better show how he differs from men less imbued with the antique
spirit, than by an imaginary dialogue between an Athenian of the fifth
century b. c and an Italian of our own time. Meeting before the
Moses, the Greek thus addresses the Italian: —
Greek. I pray you, 0 man of the modern world, of which I know
nothing, as I have dwelt in Hades since Charon ferried me over the
Styx some two thousand years ago, tell me who is the Deity enthroned
in this temple ? I must confess myself sorely puzzled, for while the
budding horns on his forehead would lead me to think him Pan or
one of his satyrs, his flowing locks remind me of Zeus or Poseidon,
and his gigantic limbs of Hercules. Yet he can be none of these, for
he has neither the satyr's feet, nor the thunderbolt of Zeus, nor the
trident of Neptune, nor the club and the lion's skin of Hercules.
Italian. You are right, my antiquated friend ; this is neither god nor
demigod. Our sculptors seldom waste their chisel-strokes on repre
sentations of those unsubstantial phantoms with which your brilliant
Greek imagination peopled the heaven, the earth, and the sea. Old
Pan is dead with all his fellows, and when we dig up ancient statues
of him or of them, we use them to adorn our gardens or our museums ;
but never put them into our churches, lest the ignorant should fall
down and worship them. This is no god, but a great Jewish lawgiver
called Moses, to whom the God of the Christians — the unknown God
whom your descendants worshipped at Athens — gave certain tablets
of stone graven with the laws which they were to obey. The projec
tions on his forehead, which you mistake for horns, are rays of light,
" twin beams that from his temples start," brilliant signs that he is the
leader of God's chosen people. Now that I have told you who is here
represented, do you not see how admirably this great and powerful
figure realizes the idea of an inspired medium between the Supreme
Being and man ? Is he not really great ?
Greek. Yes, if size is to be taken as a standard of greatness ; but
we Greeks do not consider it such. " Ovk ev to> fteyaXa to ev icei/ievo?
elvai, aWa ev too ev to /j.eya, says Athenseus.
14

210 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Italian. That means, as I understand it, for I am not ignorant of
your admirable language, " the excellent does not lie in the great, but
the great in the excellent."
Greek. Precisely so. Now to me it seems as if the sculptor of this
figure took an absolutely opposite point of view. I cannot deny that
his lawgiver has a certain grandeur, but of a sort which is inadmissible
in sculpture according to our ideas. He seems to have taken as his
model one of those vapor figures which lie about the track of Helios
as he plunges his fiery chariot at evening into the sea. Had he
studied nature after our fashion, and known how to reach the ideal by
winnowing the wheat from the chaff, under which head our Greek
sculptors classed the unfit as well as the unseemly, he would have
striven to attain purity and elegance of line, and to diffuse that serene
energy throughout his figure which is alone consistent with the ideal
whether of god or prophet. There is, however, one thing for which I
must give him credit, and this is that he has sought to identify the
personage represented by grandeur and dignity of demeanor rather than
through distinctive attributes. So Phidias in the frieze of the Parthenon
distinguished gods from mortals by giving them the impress of a su
perior nature.
Italian. I rejoice that you are candid enough to admit this excel
lence, and have all confidence in the independence of your judgment
up to a certain point, but beyond this I do not trust you, for you can
not free yourself wholly from the trammels of a system which you
were educated to regard as perfect. Still, I woidd ask you once more
whether the plenitude of form, grandeur of pose, majestic presence, and
expressive dignity of this statue, do not in some measure condone those
departures from Greek canons of taste which you have pointed out?
Greek. To speak frankly, no. What looks to you like dignity seems
to me self-consciousness. I see the sculptor so plainly that I cannot
lose the sense of his personality, as I do in presence of a really great
work of art, which, like a work of nature, should suggest no interme
diate hand between the thought and the thing. Here I trip over the

THE MOSES. 211
artist at every step. He seems to be working to display his knowl
edge and skill rather than to embody a great ideal. Again, his forms
are redundant and his use of means ill-proportioned to his end. So
our sophists at Athens used to address the multitude with loudly pitched
voices, covering up the shallowness of their reasoning with sounding
phrases, and blinding the judgment of those among their audience who
had any grain of common-sense by rapidity and energy of gesture,
forced enthusiasm, and exaggerated diction. The true orator, like the
true artist, speaks calmly and to the purpose, with no crowing or flap
ping of wings, but with just so much of warmth as is necessary to keep
the attention of his listeners alive, until the moment comes to launch
forth a telling phrase or a withering sarcasm. As in a speech, so in a
work of art nothing is so important as to give the impression of reserved
power. If the speaker or the sculptor tells us all he knows, our imagi
nations have no room for play. We tire of him and his work, and
will not acknowledge him as our master unless he knows how to inti
mate that far more lies behind than that which he has given us.
Thus only can he keep our respect while he awakens our admiration.
Italian. Alas, poor Michelangelo ! I see that his chance is small
with such ultra-purists as you Greeks. And yet I could show you
certain Greek statues made after you were dead and buried, which are
quite as open to criticism as his Moses, and for like defects. Such are
Glycon's Hercules at Naples, and the bronze Hercules in the Vatican,
whose semi-divinity shows itself in the display of mighty muscles and
sinews ; and the Laocobn, a group of three figures writhing in the coils
of the snakes sent by Apollo to punish him, and ¦ —
Greek. Softly, my friend ; your examples are ill chosen, for they have
no bearing on the question. I have never seen the works of which
you speak, but it is evident from your description of them that the
degenerate Greeks who sculptured them had lost the lofty ideal of
Phidias, and had fallen into the faults of your modern schools. In
my day, which closed soon after that exquisite Balustrade was added
to the Temple of Victory at Athens in commemoration of the trium-

212 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
phant return of Alkibiades from Asia Minor, ideal beauty was the great
object of art, and any distortion of the features or twisting of the limbs,
would not have been tolerated. , Phidias and his scholars considered
that the highest beauty was the beauty of the Eternal, which being
the expression of perfect goodness and almighty power must be serene.
Their aim was to embody it in human forms of perfect proportion
and exquisite outline, absolutely harmonious as units, and relatively so
in the relation of their parts to each other.i. Our greatest sculptors
were always careful to adapt form to subject; so were our architects,
by using different styles for the temples of each of the great gods;
and our composers, by employing different modes for hymns in honor
of Zeus or Athena or Aphrodite. This precious observance, which is
indispensable to harmony in a work of art, seems to have been set aside
by the sculptor of this statue, which, as representing a seer among his
people, should neither have had the limbs of an overgrown giant nor
the swollen muscles of a pugdist.
Italian. "Per Bacco," my friend; if you go on in this way I half
fear that you will convert me to your way of thinking, and this, to
tell you the truth, I cannot run the risk of. After all, I am a man of
the nineteenth century, who, like my fellows, have not been brought
up to hold such strict notions about art as were held by the Greeks
of your day and generation, and so had perhaps better keep to my
faith in Michelangelo's Moses, which, to tell the truth, now that I look
at it again, does not seem to me quite what it was before you filled
my brain with ideas which I do not more than half understand. I
feel already that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; so "Addio,
caro mio." By and by, when I have forgotten you and your antiquated
ideas, I shall come back here again with the hope of seeing this statue
as I used to see it.
Here we may dismiss our disputants, persuaded that no amount of
reasoning could reconcile them, or, in other words, that the Moses, if
judged by antique canons, is open to criticism. If, however, we drop
the Phidian ideal, and look at it from a modern point of view, we

THE MOSES. 213
feel its power and grandeur.\ In judging it we should not forget that
we see it under the greatest disadvantages, on a level with the eye,
instead of at a height of fifteen feet from the pavement, as the artist
intended. It is as if an orator standing within a few feet of us should
pitch his voice as if he were addressing us from a distance. Stunned
and perplexed, we should lose all power of appreciating his ideas.
This remark applies, however, solely to the pose, proportions, and gen
eral effect of the figure, for it cannot be denied that, as Michelangelo
meant that it should be seen at a considerable distance, the elaborate
finish of its surface was a waste of labor, calculated to diminish its
effect. The greatest of ancient sculptors, Phidias, and the most scien
tific of modern sculptors, Donatello, avoided this error, into which
Alcamenes at Athens and Michelangelo at Florence both fell It was
not until the latter grappled with the same question in treating the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that he learned after one failure to cal
culate finish and expression in correct ratio to the fixed distance be
tween the spectator and the object offered to his sight. With all its
defects the Moses is, however, original, grandiose, and thoroughly char
acteristic of the master; but this is not the case with the statues of
Rachel and Leah, or Active and Contemplative life, which fill the
niches to its right and left.19 The original suggestion for these figures
is to be found in Dante (Purgatorio, c. XXVII. v. 101), but his beau
tiful verses roused no corresponding image in the artist's mind. Dante's
Leah culls flowers to make a garland. "For the sake of that enjoy
ment which I shall have in beholding my God face to face, I thus
exercise myself in good works." Her delight is in admiring in a mir
ror, that is, in the Supreme Being, the light or knowledge that he has
vouchsafed her. Thus she combines in herself active and contempla
tive life, a double subject which Michelangelo divided between Leah,
who holds a mirror and a wreath of flowers, and Rachel, who gazes
19 There is no doubt that Michelangelo modelled and finished these statues. "Ne forni
due di mia mano, cio e la Vita contemplation e' l'attiva." Letter dated February, 1545,
written to M° Salvestro da Montanto, No. CDXLV.

214

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

Fro. 18.

upwards as if in prayer. Like the figures of the Medici monuments,
but without their redeeming qualities, these statues fail in precision of
idea; nor have they any of that grandeur about them which elevates
the mind, even if it i'ails to enlighten it.
A Prophet and a Sibyl by Raffaele da Montelupo, with both of which
Michelangelo was greatly discontented, four terminal figures, the Papal
arms, and other details not necessary to mention, complete the decora
tion of a sepulchre conceived by ambition, nursed in disappointment,
and finished when the will and power of him who had planned it on
a mighty scale were weakened by age and
trouble. Take away the Moses which be
longed to the original design, and there
is nothing which any second-rate sculptor
could not have designed and carried out.
And for this poor result what a world
of trouble, annoyance, humiliation, and pain
had one of earth's greatest and noblest sons
suffered. It was a cross long borne upon
those strong shoulders of his, never wholly
lifted off, and sometimes pressing upon
them with crushing weight. Condivi calls
the history of this monument a tragedy,
and with ample reason, for it is not only
unutterably sad as studied in its result,
but in its every detail. With it are con
nected the delays and hesitations of Julius,
varied by outbursts of anger and threats of
punishment; the opposition of Leo, leading
to months of exile at Carrara and Seravezza,
to endless journeys and troubles with the
Duke of Massa and the quarrymen and the
boatmen ; the accusations of dishonesty, the delays in payment of dues
for work commissioned and completed, the constant change of plans,

THE PRISONERS. 215
and a thousand other painful circumstances more easily imagined than
described. Among the statues known or supposed to have been intended for
this monument, the two finest are the Prisoners at the Louvre. The
sleeping prisoner (Fig. 18) perhaps symbolizes its sculptor's grateful
recognition of that one avenue of escape which Nature offered to him.
Thus to forget the burthens of life, the impediments of circumstance
and the obstacles which stood between him and his lofty ideal, was to
him an infinite relief. When himself a prisoner at Carrara, he wrote
those lovely lines to Night, which one should have in one's mind whilst
looking at this statue which embodies their spirit.20
"0 Night, thou sweet though sombre space of time
(All things find rest upon their journey's end),
Whoso hath prized thee well doth apprehend j
And whoso honors thee, hath wisdom's prime.
Our cares thou canst to quietude sublime,
For dews and darkness are of peace the friend.
Often by thee in dreams upborne I wend
From earth to heaven, where yet I hope to climb.
Thou shade of Death, through whom the soul at length
Shuns pain and sadness hostile to the heart,
Whom mourners find their last and sure relief,
Thou dost restore our suffering flesh to strength,
Driest our tears, assuagest every smart,
Purging the spirits of the pure from grief."
In the waking Prisoner struggling to burst his bonds, Michelangelo
may have symbolized those moments when the sun roused him to a
consciousness of his own hopeless bondage. This, too, he expressed to
Pope Julius in the bitter words, —
"I am thy slave, and have been from my youth."
Four other writhing captives in the grotto of the Boboli Gardens at
Florence are supposed to belong to the monument, but they are so
roughly blocked out in the marble that it is impossible to determine
20 Pocsie di Michelangelo, ed. da Casare Guasti. No. XLIV. p. 205. Translated by J.
Addington Symonds. See his Renaissance, Vol. II. Appendix 2, p. 525.

216 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
whether they are not young men bearing garlands, intended to decorate
the never erected facade of San Lorenzo.21 In the pen-and-ink sketch
of a portion of the monument at the Casa Buonarroti there is a winged
Victory, which resembles the marble Victory at the Bargello, another
powerful, half-defined shape which sets conjecture at defiance. She
stands over the prostrate body of a man whose constrained attitude is
similar to that of the so-called Adonis at the Uffizi. If, however, this
statue is also one of the prisoners22 and not an Adonis, why is the
Boar's head thrust under his bent knees? The sculptor might per
haps have answered this question, but in default of his aid we must
leave it unanswered, with many other inexplicable things in his
statues. When he puzzles us, as he often does, we must remember
that where other artists would have used a lump of clay, he used a
block of marble, and if his idea did not afterwards seem worth work
ing out clearly, turned from it with as little thought as if the mate
rial had been equally worthless. This reckless indifference to the value
of a substance which had been quarried and brought within his reach
at great expense, shows a mind disposed to rise above those reasonable
but somewhat vulgar considerations by which most men are influenced.
At the bottom of it lay that love of overcoming obstacles which was
natural to Michelangelo. The soft and ductile clay wearied him by
its very obedience to his will, whereas the resistance with which the
solid block met his vigorous attack was an excitement and a stimulus
to exertion, in itself a joy to his strong nature. Is it not possible
that he also found some slight consolation for the constant opposition
which he met with from his Papal masters, in the effort to overcome
them, as he would have done had not their hearts been harder than
marble ? That, indeed, he could fashion as he would, but these were
21 This is suggested by Mr. Heath Wilson, op. cit. p. 242. M. Guillaume (Michel
Angc, Sculpteur, Gazette, p. 79), on the contrary, thinks the Boboli statues belong to the
monument. 22 So far as I am aware the idea that the Adonis is really one of the monument statues
belongs to Mr. Wilson. (See p. 243, op. cit.) Not so the Victory, however, which he
says (ibid.) is much too large.

CLEMENT VII. 217
made of a stuff against which the chisels of his will soon became
blunted and useless. When he perceived this he obeyed their behests,
and, throwing himself into the work which they gave him to do, tem
porarily forgot his disappointments.
Scarcely less magnificent as a scheme than the monument to Pope
Julius, the Chapel of the Medici offered him an equally congenial field
for the exercise of his powers. Already in 1524 the cupola had been
raised upon the building, and in the following year the four reclining
figures of the sarcophagi were in hand and somewhat advanced. The
two monuments of which they form a part were not intended to be the
only ones in the chapel, as they now are. Besides these of Lorenzo,
Duke of Urbino, and of Giuliano, Duke de Nemours, there were to
have been others, to Lorenzo the Magnificent (for which the Madonna
and Child by Michelangelo, and the two statues of SS. Cosmo and
Damian by his pupils, were destined), to Julian de' Medici his brother,
to Leo X. and to Clement VII. The last three remained, so far as we
know, entirely in nubibus, and the completion of the first two was long
delayed by the political events which convulsed Italy and absorbed so
much of Michelangelo's time and thoughts. He had already played
many parts in his life, for some of which he had had but little prep
aration, but circumstances now forced him to undertake a new rdle for
which he was even less ready than he had been for former experi
ments in untried fields of action.
The events connected with the siege of Florence, in which Michel
angelo played an heroic part, were brought about by the crooked and
vacillating policy of the Pope, which reduced him to dire straits, en
tailed inconceivable misery upon Rome, and eventually brought about
the fall of the Florentine Republic and the restoration of the Medici.
Clement was one of those men who are incapable of adhering to a
line of policy, because they want faith in their own judgment, however
deliberately formed. Instead of seeing that Charles V. was master of
the situation, and that his own interests would be best forwarded by a
firm alliance with the Imperialists, he repeatedly played fast and loose

218 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
with the Emperor, and at last joined the league formed against him
between Francis I., the Venetians, and the English. When he found
that the Papal States were exposed to invasion, and that his allies could
give him but little material aid in such case, he patched up a too tardy
truce with the Imperial Viceroy. It happened, however, that the Con
stable de Bourbon, who had shortly before gone over to the Emperor,
had under him a fierce and undisciplined horde of Spanish and German
freebooters clamorous for pay, and on fire with the idea of enriching
themselves by plundering Florence or Rome. Unable to pay them
otherwise, the Constable marched straight for Florence, but finding that
city strongly fortified, and being, as it would seem, fully aware that
Charles V. would not be sorry to see his slippery ally, the Pope, pun
ished for his numerous tergiversations, he pushed on to Rome, and on
the 5th of May, 1527, led his troops over the heights of Monte Mario
and encamped in the valley of the Tiber.23 Shut up in the castle of
St. Angelo, and unable to move a finger in defence of the unfortunate
city which was given over to the tender mercies of a pack of demons
under his very eyes, the Pope, after a long imprisonment, eventually
made his escape and took refuge at Orvieto. As soon as the news of
these events was received at Florence, the republicans rose against the
Papal authority, forced Cardinal Cortona the governor to abdicate, and
joined the league. So strong was their determination not to submit to
the restoration of the Medici, that they determined to resist single-handed.
The League of Cambray formed between Charles V. and Francis I., and
the truce between the Pope and the Emperor, left them no choice be
tween the return of the Medici, and single-handed resistance. This
they heroically decided to make, and in October, 1529, the city was
invested by the Imperial troops. As this event had been for some
time anticipated it did not find them wholly unprepared, and had all
addressed themselves to the defence with the same single-hearted pur-
23 Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography, gives a graphic account of the siege, which
has been elsewhere so often described that we need only refer to it in order to recall its
horrors to the reader.

THE SIEGE OF FLORENCE. 219
pose as Michelangelo, who had been appointed commissioner-general
on the first signs of danger, the siege of Florence might have been
indefinitely prolonged if not eventually raised. There were, however,
enemies within as well as without the walls. Malatesta Ba<dioni,
captain-general of the Florentine forces, who should have been their
shield and buckler, was a traitor at heart, and Michelangelo recognized
him as such long before he actually betrayed his trust. Niccolo Cap-
poni, the gonfaloniere, was also suspected of some understanding with
the Pope, and although he lost his office on this account, had still great
influence, which he used to oppose plans deemed of vital importance
to the safety of the city.24 Carducci, who succeeded Capponi as chief
magistrate, was thought loyal to the Republic, but he disapproved of
fortifying the hill of San Miniato; and thus dissension prevailed even
among those who wished to do their duty.
Had Michelangelo been a trained military engineer his opinion would
have had weight on this point; but he knew nothing of the science
of defence, and had not even that sort of experience as a practical
soldier which might have helped him to calculate the probabdities of
attack or the best methods of repelling an enemy. His patriotism,
his bravery, and his knowledge of military architecture which enabled
him to draw plans of ditch and rampart well suited to the nature of
the ground, were his only qualifications for the responsible office which
his fellow-citizens had conferred upon him. These gave him courage
to accept it, and once having accepted it, he felt that he had a right
to have his plans considered. That, however, which distressed him
more than all was his want of confidence in the good faith of some of
those in power. He firmly believed that the Council of War desired
to get rid of him when he was directed to go to Ferrara in order to
study its fortifications and consult with the Duke Alfonso d'Este, who
had a great military reputation; but this does not seem to have been
the case. The Signory urged his immediate return, which was delayed
about a month by a secret mission to Venice, of whose purpose we
24 Gotti, Vol. I. p. 184.

220 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
have no record. After its accomplishment he returned to Florence and
resumed his work upon the fortifications. But hardly had he done so,
when he suddenly abandoned his post, and with one companion fled
to Venice, firmly intending to go thence to France and seek a posi
tion under Francis I. No one who knows the character of Michelan
gelo can for an instant believe, what indeed his subsequent conduct
entirely refutes, that his flight was caused by personal fear. It is
evident that, having vainly striven to convince the Council of the
treasonable intentions of Malatesta Baglioni, he shook the dust of
Florence from his feet, and with bitter feelings of despair and disap
pointment left her to her fate. In a letter which he wrote from
Venice to Battista della Palla he clearly states that his departure from
Florence had been suddenly resolved upon. The answer was an appeal
to his patriotism which he could not resist, especially as it followed
close upon the heels of a messenger who brought him a passport
from the Signory of Florence, and letters which showed him that not
only his personal friends, but many of his fellow-citizens, had unshaken
confidence in his ability to help them in their hour of need. Eeturn-
ing to the post of danger, he was received with a general joy which
must have soothed and fortified his wounded spirit;25 but, though he
was now allowed to fortify San Miniato as he had wished to do from
the first, his mind was ill at ease. The traitor was busy at his work,
and the end was not far distant. On the 12th of August, 1530, Bag
lioni, throwing off the mask, admitted the Imperial troops within the
Eoman gate, and shortly after, the despicable Alessandro de' Medici
was appointed Governor of Florence by Imperial decree.
For some time after the raising of the siege Michelangelo, knowino-
that little mercy was to be expected from the Pope towards a rebel
like himself, lay concealed in the house of a friend; but when Clem
ent's need of him got the better of his anger, and a promise of pardon
25 Unlike that of other persons who had fled from Florence, his property had not been
confiscated after the decree of banishment had been issued against him. This was repealed
on his return, and the only penalty which he incurred was the loss of his right to sit in
the Grand Council for three years to come.

THE MEDICI MONUMENTS. 221
in case of reappearance and submission, was circulated, he issued from
his hiding-place and resumed his work upon the Medici monuments.
He had employed his rare moments of leisure during the siege in paint
ing a picture of Leda for the Duke of Ferrara, in sketching a group
of Sampson smiting a Philistine, and a young Apollo drawing an ar
row from his quiver; but it is morally certain, from what we know of
him, that his loyal hand had dealt no chisel-stroke for the Medici while
he was working to prevent their return to power. In 1527, when he
ceased to work upon the Chapel monuments, the four recumbent fig
ures were blocked out and a portion of this architectural background
was completed; but when he again took them in hand after the siege,
a great deal remained to be done, and his state of health was such
that it seemed more than doubtful whether he would ever do it. "He
is so ill," writes his pupil, Antonio Mini, " that he cannot live unless
he can be persuaded to take care of himself." " Suffering from loss of
sleep and appetite, subject to headache and attacks of vertigo, and dis
tressed by the condition of his beloved Florence," his feelings would
have broken his heart had they not found an outlet in poetry and
sculpture. In these so-called figures of the Medici he embodied his
vown moods and thoughts, and this is the reason why they are so dif
ficult of interpretation. It is difficult to conjecture why Giuliano,
titular Duke de Nemours and brother of Leo X, who was an insignifi
cant person, and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, son of Piero and father of
Catharine de' Medici, who was a dissolute and unprincipled man, were
chosen to represent the family of Clement VII., unless because both
had governed Florence.26 Neither of them was a representative man in
any sense. Of the two, Giuliano was the more interesting to Michel
angelo, as he had elevated tastes, which led him to cultivate the society
of literary men and of artists; but his statue gives no indication of
this side of his character. It is that of a mditary hero, although he
did nothing as a soldier or a leader to entitle him to be so regarded.
26 Giuliano, from the restoration of the Medici until the elevation of Leo X. to the
Papacy ; and Lorenzo, from 1513 until his death in 1519.

222 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Can we come to any other conclusion than that Michelangelo, who
knew him thoroughly, failing to find in the real man any element of
greatness worthy of embodiment, substituted an abstract being in his
place ? If he did so when dealing with Giuliano, we cannot wonder
that he also ignored Lorenzo's personality as being even less worthy of
his regard.27 We may, then, dismiss both Giuliano and Lorenzo from
our minds when we enter the Medici Chapel, and regard their statues
as purely abstract conceptions. The finer of the two is well called " II
Pensoso," — the Thinker (tail-piece, Chapter VI.), — for, as he sits with
the forefinger of his left hand pressed upon his lip as if to command
silence, with his face darkened by the projecting visor of his helmet,
he looks the very personification of all-absorbing thought. Thus when
the struggle was over, brooding in silence over those evil times for his
country and himself, which he had in vain striven to set aright, did
the sculptor sit, groaning in spirit as he remembered the wrongs of
Florence, or thought bitterly of the hard fate which doomed him to be
the puppet and slave of popes and dukes, or pondered over the great
problems of life, — Whence do we come ? Whither do we go ? Why must
we suffer? then, wearied with the effort to solve the unsolvable, he
would turn to the conception of a statue or a picture or a sonnet,
seeking rest and finding none.
Select whichever subject you will as that which may have weighed
upon him at such times, and it will suit the Thinker at San Lorenzo.
27 This unprincipled and ambitious man, whose influence over his brother Leo X. was
altogether for evil, desired, like Csesar Borgia, to carve out a principality for himself in the
heart of Italy, by uniting Siena, Lucca, and the Duchy of Urbino under his rule ; but fail
ing to induce the Pope to favor the rash attempt, he returned to Florence, where he died
of his excesses in 1519, leaving a daughter known in history as Catharine de' Medici, and
an illegitimate son, the infamous Alessandro, who was to die by the avenging dagger of
his cousin Lorenzino, and be buried in the same sarcophagus with his father in the
Medici Chapel. The statues of Dawn and Twilight were not placed upon the lid until after
Alessandro's assassination (March, 1536) and burial. The sarcophagus was opened in
March, 1875, and found to contain the two bodies, which, having been fully identified,
were shamelessly treated, and thrown back "a confused pile of bones." See Wilson, Ap
pendix, p. 565.

THE MEDICI MONUMENTS. 223
You ask what he is thinking of. If you would know, read the life
of Michelangelo. He was an artist, and he was ever thwarted in his
work; he was a patriot, and he saw his country crushed; he was
religious, and he lived among scoffers ; he was full of kindly affections,
and he lived alone in sadness until, to use his own words,
" Par cho amaro ogui mio dolce io senta."
Thus interpreted, the Lorenzo has a far greater interest and signifi
cance than the Giuliano, which has too little distinctive character to
give us any clue to the artist's meaning.28 The head is spirited and
handsome, the pose effective, but there is little depth in the face, or
significance in the attitude (tail-piece, Chapter V). The magnificent
figures of Day and Night upon the sarcophagus below it, would seem
better suited to the Thinker, waiting in a night of doubt and per
plexity, for the coming of the day, than to the warrior, with whom
they seem to have no connection. Taken with the Dawn and Twi
light, they are commonly interpreted as a pale allegory of the flight
of time, which, as touching the interests of Florence, Avas to pass from
the twilight and night of her evil days to the dawn and full day of
better times. This interpretation would be satisfactory as connecting
the four figures with Florence and her fate, did we not know that all
four figures were blocked out four years before the siege began, so that
they cannot allude in any way to events resulting from it.29 Equally
unsatisfactory is the explanation which makes Lorenzo, as represented
in- the " Pensoso," a victim to remorse.30 Machiavelli had indeed, at one
time, counted upon him to effect the national deliverance, but this was
an idea which certainly never crossed his brain. Had Michelangelo
28 Wilson says that Giuliano is here "represented as an incompetent leader, the face
mindless ; the hand with the baton of command listless and feeble, the other filled with
the purchase money of treason," — a coin held in the left as if to bribe the enemy. — Op.
cit. p. 391.
29 In a letter of 1525, dated October 24, and addressed to Messer Giovanni Fattucci,
Michelangelo speaks of the four figures as blocked out, but not yet finished. He began
them in February, 1524.
81 Niccolini, Essay on tlie Sublime and Michelangelo.

224 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
supposed him capable of regretting that he had not merged his selfish
aims in so noble an enterprise, he would have given his face a re
morseful expression, instead of making it depressed and melancholy, as
it is, and we therefore return to our previous idea, — that the statue
is a personification of the artist's desolate and brooding spirit, that the
Night expresses his longing for repose, and the Day (see tail-piece to
this Chapter) that reaction against despair which proved that, though
sometimes cast down by all the evils which surrounded and oppressed
him, he had within him an undying energy. The figure is that of a
Titan rousing himself for action. With superhuman strength it lifts
itself above the lid of the sarcophagus, as the sun at dawn above the
horizon. While by its vague grandeur it reminds us of such shapes as
we sometimes see in cloud-cumuli towering against the evening sky,
the undefined nature of its forms allows free play of the imagination,
and gives us a certain sense of companionship with the sculptor, with
whom we seem to be working towards completeness. Often, as in this
statue, Michelangelo stayed his hand when approaching his ideal, be
cause with every fresh stroke he feared to lose ground. He had dealt
his sturdy blows upon the marble without placing a point, or stopping
to calculate whether it was broad enough or long enough to hold his
thought; then he paused to reflect, doubt followed, and as his
"Fears, like the needle verging to the pole,
Trembled, and trembled into certainty,"
his ardor cooled, and he turned away a sadder if not a wiser man.
The quarries of Carrara and Seravezza must have been as exciting
to him as the sound of a trumpet to a war-horse, for their white blocks
offered him a limitless range of possibilities ; but his enthusiasm cooled
with possession, and he often dropped the chisel before he had half
worked out the intended form. The exceptions are such highly finished
works as the "Pieta," the Moses, and the Night of the Medici Chapel.
Unlike the Day, this sleeping giantess is completely and most elabo
rately worked out in the marble. She lies upon the opposite end of
the sarcophagus with her head drooping towards her left shoulder in

THE MEDICI MONUMENTS. 225
an attitude which, were it possible, would hardly allow repose. A star
between two moon-horns (cornua noctis) rests above her forehead; a
mask, the symbol of dreams, lies near her left arm; and a bunch of
poppies at her feet.
"The Night which thou beholdest, hound in deep
And sweet repose, an angel's hand did hew
Out of this rock, and, though she is asleep,
Breathes : doubt' st thou ? Wake her, she will speak to you.
Whereto, in language we may never match,
The grief- worn patriot gave sublime reply:
' 'T is well to slumber, best to be of stone,
While shame endures and Florence is not free ;
So lest I waken, ah ! subdue thy tone :
Methinks 't is blessed not to hear nor see.' " 81
These lines to the Night were written in 1531, the year after the
submission of the city to the Medici, and it is to the grief which he
feels for her slavery that the sculptor plainly alludes in his answer;
but the statue expresses that desire for repose, that love of the dark
hours which bring "Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,"
which he felt when he wrote the Sonnet to the Night, and sculptured
the Prisoner at the Louvre. In presence of the Thinker and the
Day, the Night, grand as it is, pales its fires ; but all three so far sur
pass the Aurora and the Twilight that where they are we cannot
think of them. In the unfinished group of the Madonna and Child
Michelangelo is himself again. It reminds us of the Taunton Madonna
in the National Gallery, but it is stamped with a grander and more
mature feeling.
Splendid as are the powers displayed in the Medicean monuments,
81 These well-known lines, left by Giovanni Strozzi in the sculptor's studio during his
absence, and the reply of Michelangelo, are here given as translated by Dr. T. W. Parsons
at the conclusion of a short poem called the " Birthday of Michelangelo," written for the
celebration of its four hundredth anniversary by the Women's Club at Boston, and re
printed in Appendix B by the kind permission of its author.
15

226 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
they explain the deleterious influence of Michelangelo upon the rising
generation of artists. Unable to seize his spirit, they attached them
selves to those qualities of exaggeration which impair his style, and,
like the frog in the fable, burst from over-dilation. The pretentious
grandeur of their works makes their weakness conspicuous. After a
Michelangelo, a Bandinelli was inevitable. His Hercules and Cacus,32
with its blustering vulgarity, its swollen muscles, and its back which
Cellini compared to a sack filled with chestnuts, is an epitome of
Michelangelo's defects. The immediate scholars of Michelangelo were
not men of remarkable talent, like Bandinelli. Their best works, the
SS. Cosmo and Damian, which flank the Madonna in the Medici Chapel,
were executed under the master's eye, and with his direct assistance.
He retouched the St. Cosmo of Fra Giovan Angelo Montorsoli, and
modelled both the head and hands in clay,33 and may have done as
much for the St. Damian of Eaffaelle da Montelupo,34 whom he em
ployed to finish the statues of Eachel and Leah for the tomb of Julius
II. The dissatisfaction with which he regarded them is not to be
wondered at, considering what they are as compared with what they
might have been had he fulfilled his promise of finishing them himself,
•which he was prevented from doing by stress of occupation. In accept
ing them, Michelangelo drained the last drops of the bitter cup which
Julius II. held to his lips.
Architecturally, the Medici Chapel is cold and uninteresting. Such
effect as it has, is derived from the skill with which the monuments
are connected with the architecture by the great sarcophagi, which are
so placed that the heads of the grand allegorical figures upon them
82 The block of marble which Bandinelli used for this group had been assigned to Mi
chelangelo in 1528 by the magistrates of Florence for a group of Sampson slaying a
Philistine. 88 Montorsoli's bas-reliefs and statues at Genoa, Naples, and Messina have little indi
viduality. See an account of them in Tuscan Sculptors, Vol. II. pp. 93-103.
. M Other works of E, da Montelupo are the Prophet and Sybil on the tomb of Julius
II. at San Pietro in Vincoli. For this artist's autobiography, see Tuscan Sculptors, Vol. II.
pp. 72-85.

THE MEDICI MONUMENTS.

227

rise just above the line of the surbase running round the walls, and, by
their combination with the portrait statues in the niches above them,
form pyramidal compositions on either side of the chapel. It is unfair,
however, to judge it from its present appearance. When the dome
was decorated with arabesques, and it and the panels below it en
riched with stucco-work by Giovanni da Udine, it doubtless wore a
very different aspect.

228 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

CHAPTER IX.
"O noble statuaire!
Toi qui dans l'art profond, comme en un sanctuaire
Entras bieu jeune pour n'en sortir jamais." — Victor Hugo.
MONG Michelangelo's works is an un
finished bust of Brutus 1 (Plate IX.).
The shape of the head fully corresponds
to the expression of the face, which is
stern, defiant, and resolute. The exact
date of this work, and the circumstances
under which it was commenced and
abandoned, are not known,2 but it was
probably begun shortly before the assas
sination of Alessandro de' Medici, as a relief to feelings under whose
influence the artist thought of Brutus only as a passionate lover of
liberty, and given up when the dagger of the "Tuscan Brutus" laid
that ignoble Caesar low, and brought before him the nature of such
a deed in all its heinousness. We know what Michelangelo thought
of tyrannicide as a remedy for political evils by the words which he
addressed to certain Florentine exiles at Eome a few years later, as re
ported in one of the dialogues of Giannotti.3 They were discussing
1 The bust, which is at the Uffizi, bears the following inscription : —
" Dum Bruto effigiem sculptor de marmore ducit
In mentem sceleris venit et abstinuit"
2 Wilson (op. cit. p. 234) says it was begun for Cardinal Eidolfi.
8 Donato Giannotti was a Florentine exile, a poet, and a great student of Dante, whose
poetry often formed the subject of conversation between him and his friend Michelangelo.
His dialogues written in 1545 (not included in the one edition of his works), from which
Gotti (op. cit pp. 251-254) gives long extracts, are about to be published, for the first

CHAPTER IX.
Michelangelo, 1534-1547.
Bust of Brutus  1536 ? Uffizi, Florence.
The Last Judgment  1534-1541 Sistine Chapel, Eome.
Cornice, windows, and doorway  1546 Palazzo Farnese, Borne.
Works carried on at St. Peter's  1547-1560 St. Peter's.
Frescos in the Pauline Chapel  1549-1550 Pauline Chapel, Vatican, Eome.

THE BEUTUS. 229
the question as to why Dante consigned Brutus and Cassius to the
jaws of Lucifer, and Michelangelo suggested that "perhaps the poet
may have thought that Csesar, had he lived, would have grown weary
of absolute power, and, like Sulla, have reorganized the republic. If
time, by Le Monnier at Florence. They turn upon the question "whether Dante spent the
night of Good Friday and all Saturday in visiting hell, and thence ascended from the centre
of the earth to the surface of the other hemisphere ; or whether, having consumed three
whole days in his journey, he completed it on the evening of Easter Sunday." Michel
angelo and Petreo, who is one of the interlocutors, are of the latter opinion. Michelangelo
winds up his argument by reciting this, his first Sonnet to Dante, wiitten in 1545, which
we give in the excellent translation of Mr. J. A. Symonds, printed in his Renaissance in
Italy, Vol. II. Appendix II. p. 515.
" From heaven his spirit came, and, robed in clay.
The realms of justice and of mercy trod,
Then rose a living man to gaze on God,
That he might make the truth as clear as day.
For that pure star, that brightened with his jay
The ill-deserving nest where I was born,
The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn ;
None but his Maker can due guerdon pay.
I speak of Uante, whose high work remains
Unknown, unhonored by that thankless brood
Who only to just men deny their wage.
Were I but he ! born for like lingering pains,
Against his exile, coupled with his good,
I 'd gladly change the world's best heritage."
To this sonnet we add its companion (No. II. ed. Guasti, p. 155) translated with equal
skill and elegance by Professor Charles E. Norton: —
" What should be said of him is past all count,
For too bright on the blind his splendors flame ;
'Tis easier for the folk who wronged to blame,
Than for great wit to his least praise to mount
He went down to the punishment of sia
To do us service ; then to God arose ;
And while her gates to him doth Heaven unclose,
Hers doth his country shut, nor takes him in.
Country Migrate 1 I say ; nurse of her own
Fortune to her harm ; wherefore is truly sign
That to the best she most abounds in scom.
'Mong thousand instances take this alone, —
That there was never exile so malign
For equal man, or greater ne'er was born."

230 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
so, those who killed him caused an irreparable evil, for his successors
proved to be greater tyrants than himself, thus showing that tyranny
does not always perish with a tyrant, and that assassination is often
as fruitless as it is criminal. Something good," he added, "may be
hoped for from a living prince, but no one can say whether any will
result from his death. I detest those who think an evil deed can be
the source of good. Times change, new chances arise, wishes vary,
men grow weary, and thus beyond all reasonable hope the desired end
may come about in the natural course of things, without the criminal
agency of any one."
It was with some such reasonings as these that Michelangelo prob
ably endeavored to comfort himself while residing at Florence during
the latter part of Clement VII.'s reign. Alessandro de' Medici regarded
him with suspicion and dislike, and had it 'not been for the Pope's
protection might have proceeded to some overt act against him,4 and
anxious as he was to return to Eome on this account, and because he
wished to fulfil his contract with the Duke of Urbino, it was impos
sible to do so, as the Pope ordered him, under pain of excommunica
tion, to remain and devote his time wholly to the Medici Chapel and
the Laurentian Library.5 He was allowed to pay only one or two flying
visits to Eome until September, 1534, when, having completed all neces
sary arrangements for the prosecution of the work at Florence by his
assistants, he hurried to Eome and arrived there only two days before
Clement breathed his last.6 Condivi says that it was well for him that
he was out of the Duke's reach ; but it is clear that he was not afraid
to trust himself within it, for he returned to Florence almost imme
diately to look after his workmen, who were thrown out of employment
when within a fortnight of completing the ceiling of the Medici Chapel.
* The Duke was especially angered with Michelangelo because he refused to select a site
for a fortress which he wished to build at Florence, with the view of overawing the people,
and strengthening his government. To forge chains for tyrants' use was no work for a
man like Michelangelo.
6 A brief to this effect was issued on November 11 1531 .
0 September 25, 1534.

THE LAST JUDGMENT. 231
The new Pope, Paul III., whose election took place in December, was
a Farnese, and indifferent to the posthumous glory of the Medici. As
little did he care for that of the Della Rovere, so that when he sum
moned Michelangelo back to Eome it was not to bid him finish the
monuments of Lorenzo and Giuliano, and the Laurentian Library, nor
to allow him to work upon the monument of Julius II., but to carry
out a scheme conceived by his predecessor, which would reflect glory
upon his own reign. He knew that designs for a fresco of the Last
Judgment, to be painted in the Sistine Chapel, had beeh prepared for
Clement's acceptance, and when he went to Michelangelo's studio to
see them, it was with the determination that they should be used
immediately. Among the cardinals Who accompanied him was his Eminence of
Mantua, who, on beholding the Moses, declared it to be in itself a
sufficient monument to Julius II. Seizing this idea, the Pope over
ruled the plea of Michelangelo that he must complete his contract
with the Duke of Urbino before he could undertake to paint the Last
Judgment, and promised to make the Duke content himself with the
Moses and two other statues as a final arrangement. Preparations for
the fresco were actively carried on during the following year, and he
commenced it in September, 1534, as chief architect, sculptor, and
painter to the Pope, with an annual salary of twelve hundred golden
florins.7 For the next seven years it occupied his thoughts, and formed
the chief object of his labors. Regarded as his masterpiece by con
temporary critics, those of our own time place it lower in the scale
of his works than the stupendous frescos of the ceiling above it. Not
that any sign of waning power is shown in it, either in conception or
execution, but that the subject is one which demanded incompatible
qualities for anything approaching adequate treatment. The Last Judg
ment, by Fra Angelico iu the Academy at Florence, is the work of a
painter who could conceive the joy of the redeemed, the rapture of the
t The brief by which he was nominated is dated September 1, 1535. The text is pub
lished by Gotti, op. cit. Vol. II. p. 123.

232 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
blessed, and the bliss of meeting between those whom death had parted
for a season, and represent them in a technically imperfect manner
which rather adds to the spiritual effect, but who was incapable of
imagining, and still less of depicting, the terror and despair of lost
souls, and the cruel joy of fiends who claim them as their rightful
prey. In Michelangelo's fresco, on the contrary, the inconceivable raptures
of the last day, upon which the painter monk dwelt with an all-
absorbing devotion, are incompetently treated, while its dread horrors,
which Fra Angelico could not grapple with, are made so prominent that
we think of them only when looking at it.
" Who is there," wrote Pietro Aretino, " that would not tremble and
fear to dedicate his pencil to such a subject ? "
"And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and
the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.
"And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened :
and another book was opened which is the book of life -. and the dead were judged out of
those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
" And the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death and hell delivered up the
dead which were in them : and they were judged every man according to their works.
"And Death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
" And whosoever was not found written in the hook of life was cast into the lake of
fire." — Revelations, xx. 11-15.
Never for a moment did Michelangelo propose to himself to translate
these words of the Apocalypse into color and form. He neither trem
bled nor feared when he undertook to paint the Last Judgment, because
it presented itself to his mind only as a subject which would afford
unlimited opportunity for dealing with the naked human form in every
variety of attitude, and swayed by every variety of emotion. No idea
of the impropriety of stripping the angels of their robes of light oc
curred to him, and we are convinced that the outcry which was raised
against the nudity of his figures as scandalous in a consecrated place
— an outcry so general that Paul IV. at one time contemplated their
destruction — only roused his contempt. To paint the human form

THE LAST JUDGMENT. 233
was his joy and delight. He filled the vast space with forms alike
athletic, whether they belonged to the hosts of heaven8 and the re
deemed, or to the cruel, sensual, and powerful demons and their terror-
stricken victims. "Down they fall,
Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down into the deep,"
like the rebel angels in Paradise Lost. No words could more accurately
describe the central figure of the upper portion of the Last Judgment
than those of Milton, whose Christ resembles the Christ of Michel
angelo so closely that reminiscences of the Sistine Chapel would seem
to have been floating in his mind when he called him
"The angry victor [who] hath not yet recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of heaven."
He is "an angry victor," in every respect the antithesis of the dignified
and stately Judge represented by the earlier masters, incapable of wrath
even when meting out justice to sinners.
As a composition the Last Judgment is wonderfully clear. Though
it contains an infinite number of figures,9 all confusion to the eye
is avoided by its division into four appreciable masses skilfully con
nected by isolated groups. The uppermost portion contains two
groups of angels, one bearing the column of the Flagellation and
the other the Cross of the Crucifixion. Below these are Christ and
the Madonna with hosts of angels, holy men who died before His
advent, saints and martyrs carrying the instruments upon which
they suffered death for His sake. The blessed, who are caught up
into the air to the right, connect this great host with that of the
lost sinners who vainly struggle with demons to escape their doom.
8 " When we consider that these frightful giants are representations of Christ and his
saints, it does appear the greatest dereliction of propriety ever committed in art." —
Haydon's Correspondence and Table- Talk, Vol. II. p. 152.
9 Three hundred and fourteen figures, counting heads, and most of them are heads, or
heads and shoulders only. — Wilson, op. cit. p. 431.

234 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Qthep victims rise froin their, graves, to the fight Pf the cavernous
mouth of Hell, while Charon,1*' standing in the stern of the Stygian
boat, drives his trembling crew headlong oyer its prow into the, bot
tomless, pit.
Even when Milton visitecl Rome, about a century after the death
of Michelangelo, the fresco had greatly suffered under the brushes of
restorers," and the smoke of torches and of incense; and with the
lapse of two more centuries, a. far greater degradation has taken place.
Stains, and spots and retouched portions haye destroyed all unity of
tone, and made it but the shadow of its former self. Agisted as we
are by Michelangelo's drawings of groups and single figures, we trace
leading lines, and here and there make out forms and faces, ; but in
many parts this is impossible. It is for the most part a ruin or a
palimpsest. We can excuse those mediaeval scribes wlp, ignorant of
the value of a manuscript, bnried its precious characters under their
own worthless rubbish ; but we can only cry shame upon the men who
obliterated forms and outlines, of whose excellence they were fully
aware. Owing to them and to other deleterious though irresponsible
agencies, it is rather, as we have said, from drawings that we receive
an impression of the power of Michelangelo's work than from what we
can see of it in the chapel. Among these one called the Lost Soul
(Plate X.) belongs to the same train of thought, and although not
used in it, epitomizes its spirit. The eyes glare as if they saw "the
10 "There was a time, it is said, when the eyes of Charqn were the principal light in
the picture, but now the spots in the sky eclipse them-" — Sin Charles Easti,ake. Hay-
don's Correspondence and TablczTalk, VoJ. II. p. 152.
"The sky behind the demons is almost reduced to white by decay in some parts, while
the devils retain their tremendous depth of tqne, and are rendered, if pqssible, more ter
rific." — Ibid., p. 152.
11 During the reign of Paul IV. (1555^1559), Daniel of Volterra (Ricciarelli) was em
ployed to drape certain figures, and thence got the nickname of "II bragghetone," or "the
breeches-maker." About 1566 Giulamo del Fano retouched the fresco in parts. In 1762,
under Clement XIIL, some ''very mediqoro painters" were employed for the same pur
pose under the direction of Pozzi, whqse baroque frescqs in the churoh of the Josuits at
Borne prove how unfit hs WW for such a itask, — Paul Mantz, op. cit. p. 170,

THE LAST JUDGMENT. ' 235
grisly Terror," 12 which is Death, "the offspring of Satan and Sin." The
hair rises like flames from the head, which seems ablaze with them. A
wind-swept mantle enframes the countenance, which is full of fear, rage,
and agony. The mouth opens to give forth a cry of pain, and the
muscles of the throat stand out like whipcords. This is one of those
souls which, tormented by the fall of "the dilated flakes of fire which
rain down upon the sand-waste like flakes of snow on Alps, without a
wind," live where ''Sighs, complaints, and ululations loud
Resound throughout the air without a star,"
and speak '¦Languages diverse, horrible dialects,
Accents of agony, words of agony." 18
It would seem as if Michelangelo, when he first painted in the Sis-
12 "On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Opphiuchus huge,
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war." — Paradise Lost, Book II.
13 A drawing in red chalk of this head exists at the Uffizi. The heliotype plate is
taken from a drawing in black chalk belonging to the author. The following letter re
ceived from Messrs. Paul and Domenico Colnaghi, from whom it was purchased in 1847
gives its history so far as it was known to them. "We bought the drawing by Michel
angelo (of which we enclose the engraving by the celebrated Sharp), with the collection
which belonged to the late Sir Thomas Lawrence of the proprietor, Mr. William Coning-
ham, a well-known collector resident in England. The drawing has been celebrated for
many years, it having belonged to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, about a year or two before
his death, lent it to Sharp, who desired to engrave it. The drawing was not claimed by
Sir Joshua's executors, and remained with Sharp. After Sharp's death, it came into the
hands of a dealer in London who purchased all Sharp's property, and by that man it was
sold to Mr. Coningham, who, having just before become proprietor of the Laurence collec
tion, wished to add the work in question to it  The Rev. Mr. Wellesley, who with
Dr. Cramer is at the head of the committee appointed by the University of Oxford to pur
chase drawings for the University, gave us a most confident opinion of the originality of
the drawing, — an opinion the more valuable as he is acquainted with the drawing at Flor
ence. In conclusion we beg to add that this is the identical drawing engraved by Sharp,"
eta, etc.

236 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
tine Chapel, foresaw that twenty years later he would be called upon
to paint the Last Judgment, for directly over the space which it was
to occupy he placed Jonah, the type of the Resurrection.14 As the
pendeutive divides the top of the fresco into two arches, this colossal
figure strikes the eye as belonging to it, and the connection between
them is thus made apparent. No other prophet could so well have
occupied this place, for, as has been well remarked, the real subject
of the fresco is the Resurrection and not the Judgment.15
Its prototype is the Last Judgment by Luca Signorelli at Orvieto.16
Both painters made their subject a pretext for anatomical display, and
both gave preponderating importance to that side of it which allowed
of an almost exclusive treatment of the nude. Both lost sight of the
merciful qualities of the judge, and inadequately conceived the joy
of the redeemed; both sacrificed the spiritual to the material. Great
as are the analogies between the two works in these respects, they
are in others superficial, and in point of style null. Where Signorelli
is meagre in his treatment of form, vehement in utterance, and man
nered in action, Michelangelo is rich, powerful, and sublime. So abun
dantly did he endow the dry bones of his predecessor with life, that
he can in no sense be said to have imitated him; and yet, as Signo
relli gave the key-note to the conception of a subject which both
treated, it is a question whether Michelangelo's originality is not more
gravely compromised by the Last Judgment, at Orvieto, than Raphael's
by the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. This criticism is, however, of no
other value than to remind us that Michelangelo would have done well
to remember what he himself owed to Signorelli when he said, "All
that Raphael knows he owes to me." 17
We do not wish to exaggerate Michelangelo's debt to Signorelli, or
14 As Jonah lay for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, so did the body of
our Lord lie in the rock sepulchre of Joseph of Arimathea for a like space of time.
15 Pater, op. cit. p. 65.
16 Painted in 1499.
17 "Che cio che aveva dell' aerte, 1' aveva da me." — Lettera a Monsignore . . . . di
Roma, Ottobre, 1542. Milanesi, No. DCXXXV. p. 494.

THE LAST JUDGMENT. 237
to accuse him of conscious or unconscious imitation. We consider the
coincidences between their two representations of the Last Judgment
as due to an equally strong passion for representing the nude, which
led them to conceive the subject in the same way, and this despite
the great admiration which Michelangelo expressed for Signorelli 's work,
— an admiration which, as Vasari 18 naively expresses it, " led him
courteously (gentilmente) to make use of some parts of it, such as
angels, demons, etc., and even to imitate Signorelli's manner, as any
body may see." 19
A closer critic might have noted that in his Last Judgment Michel
angelo began to imitate himself. Instead of constantly recurring to
nature to verify and correct his ideas after the living model, he often
trusted to his memory, which, however prodigious, could not always be
safely relied on. In the next decade of his life, though it had grown
weaker both by reason of his greater age and diminished health, he trusted
to it still more absolutely, and in the frescos of the Pauline Chapel be
came the mannered shadow of his former self. We shall not pause to
search for veins of gold in this lump of quartz, we who have handled
wellnigh unalloyed bars of the precious metal as it came forth from
the mine of the artist's genius. Better write a volume upon the Prophets
and Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel than five lines upon the Conversion
of St. Paul, — " Guarda e passa." Michelangelo accomplished other
work while he had the Pauline frescos in hand, and after he completed
them, which showed that his mind could work vigorously in new di
rections if not as strongly in the old. As painter, his work has but a
retrospective interest after the Last Judgment, and so also as sculptor,
is Vasari, Vol. VI. p. 142.
» That Michelangelo ever saw the fresco of Signorelli is not a matter of record. The
two artists met at Rome about 1521 under circumstances which did not leave a very pleas
ant impression upon Michelangelo's mind. In a letter which he wrote to the Captain of
Cortona (Gotti, op. cit. Vol. II. App. 9) he asked his assistance in recovering a sum of money
which he had then been unwise enough to lend to Signorelli, who had borrowed it under
the pretext that he was out of funds on account of his devotion to the cause of the
Medici.

238 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
after the Moses and the tombs of the Medici; but as architect and
poet, he rose in his latter years to new heights of distinction, and as
a man grew daily in all qualities calculated to command respect and
veneration. In 1546 Michelangelo succeeded Antonio da Sangallo as head archi
tect of St. Peter's Church, and completed his commenced restoration
of the Palazzo Farnese by adding a fine cornice of classical design,20
by building the great windows over its principal doorway, and by
projecting a bridge across the Tiber to unite the Farnese with the
Farnesina. These works were carried on simultaneously with those
at St. Peter's, of which he received the official charge by papal brief
issued on New Year's Day, 1547, when he was seventy-six years old.
He accepted it, without salary, so that he might act with absolute in
dependence, and he kept it until a few months before his death at the
age of eighty-four, never faltering in the discharge of a duty which
he looked upon as sacred. Neither the pressing invitations to visit
Florence which he received from the Duke of Tuscany, nor the solici
tations of his friend Vasari, availed to turn him from it. "I should
20 Michelangelo's claims to the honor of having designed this cornice, which is rivalled
only by that of the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence, are somewhat summarily dismissed by
M. Ch. Gamier (op. cit. p. 196) on the ground that the details are too pure as compared
with those of his other architectural works, and the effect too majestic. He thinks that
Michelangelo did no more than indicate the mass of the entablature, leaving it to a
more practical architect to work out the design. "If he did more, then it would have
been impossible for him to have designed the Porta Pia, and the masks and mouldings
of the Lanrentiana." Might we not as well argue against the Validity of his claim to
have painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by saying that, if he did more, then it
is impossible to suppose that he painted the frescos of the Pauline Chapel? That he
did design the cornice and all its details is, we think, certain, front the fact that he
had a full-sized model in wood made at the request of the Pope, which was put in place
in order to judge of the effect. This is mentioned in a letter written by Giovan Francesco
Ughi (Gotti, op. cit. pp. 294, 310). So early as 1544 Michelangelo criticised Sangallo's
design for this cornice, in « letter to Paul III., as ill-proportioned and inharmonious, and
so convinced his Holiness of the fact that, to the great displeasure of Sangallo, he was
appointed, together with Perino del Vaga, Fra Sebastiano del Piombo, and Vasari, to fur
nish designs, among which his own was preferred. See Gotti, op. cit. p. 290.

ST. PETER'S. 239
love," he writes to him, " to lay my bones near those of my father, as
you urge me to do; but did I leave Rome at present, I should be
the cause of great harm to St. Peter's, bring disgrace upon myself, and
commit a grievous sin." 21
Michelangelo's chief desire was to finish the building so far that no
one could alter the design. Abused and opposed as he was by the
Sangallo sect, he had no little reason to fear that this would happen
in case he was removed by death before he had made a change of
plan impossible; and he therefore remained at his post firm and un
moved, like a rock amid the breakers.
The position of an architect who is called upon to cany on a work
projected by others and already far advanced, is at the best beset
with difficulties. If the plan has been mapped out in all its details,
and meets with his approval, he has, if he chooses to follow it, a
comparatively easy task; but if, as was the case with St. Peter's, four
eminent architects have preceded him, each one of whom has taken
individual views in many respects opposed to his own, the endeavor
to bring what has been done into harmony is a task of no little dif
ficulty. This was increased in Michelangelo's case by the intrigues and
unending hostility of Sangallo's partisans, against whom he could hardly
have maintained his ground had he not had the Pope on his side, and
had he not, by his refusal to accept money for his services, taken a posi
tion from which all their efforts could not dislodge him. To explain
what he did for St. Peter's, it will be necessary to say a few words
about what had already been done by his predecessors, Bramante, Ra
phael, Peruzzi, and Antonio da Sangallo. In his design, Bramante gave
to his successors a masterly programme of an immense building adorned
with niches and decorated with pilasters, which was to them an inex
haustible mine for study.22 He established a new relation of niches
21 See Letters CCCCLXXIII., LXXV., LXXVL, LXXXIL, Milanesi, in all of which
the same expressions occur.
22 The medal struck by Caradosso, a. Milanese goldsmith, in 1506, and a medal which
commemorates the election of Leo X., give Bramante's facade.

240 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
and pilasters to each other and to the edifice of which he marlc them
an integral instead of an accidental part, and — as in all the buildings
of his second style, such as the Palace of the Cancellaria at Rome, and
the little temple on the Janiculum, showed that feeling for harmony
of proportion and elegance of line which gives his works a first place
among those of the great Renaissance architects.23 The ground-plan of
St. Peter's as he designed it was a Greek cross, and it is not quite
clear who among his successors first suggested the prolongation of the
nave which fixed it in the Latin form; but if a drawing in the Bar
berini Library, attributed to Raphael, be really his work, the mistake
is his. His reverence for Bramante, to whom he owed his knowledge
of architecture and with whom he always maintained the most friendly
relations, would rather incline us to believe Serlio's statement that he
adhered to the Greek cross in his own design, as did Balthasar Peruzzi
who succeeded him, and Michelangelo when he became chief architect
of the building. Antonio da Sangallo had made other changes which
Michelangelo regarded as meretricious and faulty, such as the adding
of a vast vestibule, and the placing of a double row of superposed col
umns around the base of the proposed cupola. Writing to Ammanati
the sculptor 24 soon after his own appointment, he denounced Sangallo's
plan, and in a somewhat exaggerated strain said that two hundred
thousand scudi and three centuries of time would be saved by a re
turn to that of Bramante, who was " as great an architect as the world
has seen since the days of the ancients."25 Holding this opinion, Mi-
23 This celebrated architect was a. native of Urbino or Castel Ducante. His work is
divisible into two distinct styles, the so-called Bramantesque and the Roman, correspond
ing to two periods in his life, the first of which was passed in the North of Italy (1476-
1500), and the second at Rome (1500). Among the best examples of his first style, at or
near Milan, where he filled the office of engineer to the Duke Galeazzo Sforza, are the
choir, the cupola, and the transepts of Santa Maria della Grazie, the church of San Satiro,
which show how greatly he was influenced by the brick architecture of the Lombard
period in the use of bold, ample, semicircular projections and high-standing cupolas.
24 Milanesi, op. cit. Letter CDLXXIV. p. 535.
25 "Any one," he writes, "who departs from Bramante's plan, like Sangallo, departs
from the truth, and that this is so those whose eyes are not prejudiced can see in his

'%-'*-«

ST. PETER'S. 241
chelangelo conformed, as far as possible, to the intentions of Bramante
in the construction of the pilasters, niches, cornices, and vaulted roof,
and, as we know from the painting after his design at the Vatican
Library, would have shaped it as a cross with equal arms; but Carlo
Maderno, who completed the church in 1616, prolonged the nave, and
thus caused the lofty attic to hide the dome from the view of those
who approach the church from the Piazza. He also is responsible for
the party-colored marble decoration of the interior which so greatly
detracts from its grandeur of effect.
Three years after Michelangelo had assumed the direction of the
works, the naves and transepts had been roofed in, the external eleva
tion fixed, the two great stairways completed, and the foundations of
the great piers under the dome, as well as the four arches upon which
it rests, strengthened.26 This was necessary, as his dome, instead of
being a half-sphere, as projected by Bramante, was a double drum com
posed of two thin shells connected by interposed bands, like the fa
mous dome of Bruuelleschi at Florence.27 " lo la faro piu grande si,
model." This model is preserved in the so-called octagon of St. Gregory, which is situ
ated in the upper part of the basilica of St. Peter's. Gotti, note, p. 307. The facade
shows an Ionic above a Doric order fifty-eight feet in height, crowned with a lofty attic.
23 A rare engraving, representing a tournament in the court of the Vatican under Pius IV.,
not mentioned by Bartsch, but attributed to Jacob Binck by Passavant (Le Peintre Graveur),
Vol. IV. p. 96, Appendix No. 3, shows the condition of St. Peter's about 1555. The
arches and piers under the dome are visible through the open walls at the apsidal end of
the church. The drum of the dome is about two thirds finished, the cupola not yet com
menced. See Plate XII. Also Appendix E.
27 So late as 1556, on his return to Rome after a short absence at Spoleto, Michelangelo,
yieldino- to the solicitations of his friends, who feared that he might die and leave behind
him neither drawing nor model of the cupola, made a small model of it in clay, and some
working drawings. By the help of these Giovanni Franzese, one of his workmen, con
structed the wooden model, sixteen feet high and twelve feet eight inches in diameter, now
preserved at Rome in the Archivio della Fahbrica di San Pietro. Gotti (op. cit. Vol. I.
p. 324) says that subsequent architects altered the exterior of the cupola, but that the
interior is exactly as Michelangelo designed it. This is also stated by Milanesi, p. 333,
Note 2 to Letter CCCII. Michelangelo refers in this letter, addressed to his nephew, to
the model as about to be made.

242 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
ma non pia bella," he said, when asked if he hoped to surpass that
admirable model. The result showed that he had underestimated his
powers, for the dome of St. Peter's is not only larger, but finer in effect
and more perfect in its proportions than that of its rival at Florence.
At certain hours the flood of light which pours into the church from
the sixteen windows with which it is pierced, streams like a banner of
golden vapor across the chancel, bathing the great Baldacchino in its
splendor (Plate XII.). Then if you look up into the dome which over
hangs it, you will seem to be gazing into the spacious firmament, so
vast, so luminous, and so lofty does it appear. Disturbed by many
inharmonious details of ornament, fretted by the tortured and twisted
draperies of the statues with which Bernini and his scholars have filled
the surrounding niches, and intolerant of the white marble cherubs in
medallions with which the great pillars of the nave are spotted, you
have perhaps confessed yourself disappointed in the great basilica; but
now, as you receive the full impression of this its chief glory, the part
stands for the whole in your mind, and it becomes to you the paragon
of churches.
It was a grand ending to a noble career, this crowning of the first
of Christian temples with a Dome (see tail-piece), so loftily enthroned
upon its pedestal that it is the first object seen by the traveller on
his approach to Rome, and the last upon which his eyes rest when he
leaves it. If you traverse the city until you reach its extreme limits,
or drive miles away from its gates upon any of the great roads which
cross the Campagna, so long as no hill intervenes to shut it out, so long
will you see the mighty dome of St. Peter's, so long will you have the
name of Michelangelo upon your lips.
At Rome, like this mighty creation of his genius, he is rarely out of
sight. The Sistine Chapel, the Campidoglio, the Farnese Palace ; the
noble church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which he shaped out of the
ruins of Diocletian's Baths ; the cypresses which he planted in the midst
of the adjoining cloisters, where they mirror their sombre foliage in un
disturbed waters ; the deserted villa of Pope Julius III., near the Arco

ST. PETER'S.

243

Scuro, which he designed ; the monument of Julius II. at San Pietro in
Vincola, which cost him so many years of trouble and disappointment ;
the Pieta at St. Peter's which he sculptured ; the Torso of the Belvidere
which he so much admired; the Laocoon which he restored; the Porta
Pia which he built; the house near the steps of the Capitol where he
once lived ; and the little church of San Silvestro on the Quirinal where
he held converse with Vittoria Colonna, — these are but a few of the
many objects which recall him to our minds as we tread the streets of
the Eternal City.

244

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

CHAPTER X.
"There is something higher and more wonderful than St. Peter's or the Last Judgment,
namely, the mind which flung those creations into the world." — Dowden.
LD age, though brightened by the
reflected splendor of a life spent
in immortal labors, is sad to con
template, unless, while the frame
has lost its strength and the
right hand its cunning, the spirit
has grown strong through the
steady contemplation of things
beyond the reach of change. It
was thus with Michelangelo, for,
as he drew nearer and nearer to
his end, his mind was more and
more filled with thoughts of things heavenly. The burden of his later
sonnets is ever, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner"; and their never-
ceasing aspiration, rest in the Eternal arms.
"Burdened with j'ears, and full of sinfulness,
With evil custom grown inveterate,
Both deaths I dread that close before me wait,
Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
No strength I find in my own feebleness
To change or life or love or use or fate,
Unless thy heavenly guidance come, though late,
Which only helps and stays our nothingness.
'T is not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn
. For thaj celestial home, where yet my soul
May be new made, and not, as erst, of naught :
Nay, ere thou strip her mortal vestment, turn

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CHAPTER X.
Michelangelo, 1647-1564.
Deposition from the Cross  1550 Cathedral, Florence.
Unfinished group of Deposition from the Cross  ? Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
Unfinished group of Deposition from the Cross  1 Palazzo Fevoli, Rome.
Death of Michelangelo, February 18, 1564.

OLD AGE OF MICHELANGELO. 245
My steps towards the steep ascent, that whole
And pure before thy face she may be brought."1
While in these lines the poet recognizes the impossibility of overcoming
sinful tendencies without Divine help, and utters an earnest prayer for
assistance, in the following sonnet he welcomes death as a fire which
will refine and purify his earthly nature.
"Not without fire can any workman mould
The iron to his preconceived design ;
Nor can the artist without fire refine
And purify from all its dross the gold.
Nor can revive the phoenix, we are told,
Except by fire. Hence, if such death be mine,
I hope to rise again with the divine,
Whom death augments, and time cannot make old.
0 sweet, sweet death ! 0 fortunate fire that burns
Within me still to renovate my days,
Though I am almost numbered with the dead !
If, by its nature, unto Heaven returns
This element, me, kindled in its blaze,
Will it bear upward when my life is fled." 2
The thought of death seems to have been much in his mind, and
it found frequent expression both in his verses and his conversation.
Thus at the end of Giannotti's first Dialogue,3 when the friends who
have taken part in it would persuade Michelangelo to go and dine
with them, he refuses, wishing, he says, to be alone, — "this being a
time to weep rather than to dance." " I would remind you," he says,
" that it is not desirable to seek amusements and gayeties if you would
enter into and enjoy communion with your own spirit; to do this you
must think upon death. This is the only thought which makes us
know ourselves, which keeps us united in ourselves, so that we cannot
be taken possession of by relations or friends or great masters, nor by
1 Sonnet LXX. Translated by J. Addington Symonds. Renaissance in Italy, Vol. II.
Appendix 11.
2 Sonnet LIX. A hitherto unpublished translation from the version of Michelangelo
the younger, made by H. W. Longfellow, January 30, 1874.
8 Op. cit. Gotti, Vol. I. p. 252.

246 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
ambition, avarice, or any other of the vices and sins which steal man
from man, and keep him in an unsteady and thoughtless state of mind,
unable to reflect and meditate. Wonderful is the effect of this thought
of death, which, being itself destructive of all things, preserves and
sustains those who think upon it, and defends them against all human
passions. I remember that I have already pointed this out in one of
my madrigals,4 in which, talking of love, I concluded that nothing can
protect us from it so completely as the thought of death."
When he was eighty-one years old he wrote two sonnets, — one of
which we cite here, — and sent them to Vasari with a note, saying, " I
do so that you may see where I keep my thoughts " : —
"The fables of the world have filched away
The time I had for thinking upon God ;
His grace lies buried 'neath oblivion's sod,
Whence springs a grievous crop of sins alway.
What makes another wise leads me astray,
Slow to discern the bad path I have trod :
Hope fades ; but still desire ascends that God
May free me from self-love, my sure decay.
Shorten half-way my road from heaven to earth,
Dear Lord ! I cannot even half-way rise,
Unless thou help me on this pilgrimage.
Teach ine to hate the world so little worth,
And all the holy things I once did prize,
That endless life, not death, may be my wage. " 6
The above admirable translations will enable even those who are not
conversant with the language in which these poems were written to
appreciate their power, feeling, and ingenuity. Though often obscure
in thought and rugged in form, they are full of fervor, quaint in con
ceit, and eminently vital. Vitality is perhaps their most striking char
acteristic, as it is that of the poet-artist's statues and paintings. As
we read Michelangelo's verses we feel that we have been admitted into
* Madrigal XVI. Guasti, p. 41: —
"Non pur la morte, ma'l timor di quella."
6 Sonnet LXVI. Translated by J. A. Symouds, op. cit. p. 526.

MICHELANGELO'S POETRY. 247
the innermost sanctuary of his nature, and know its aspirations, fears,
hopes, and desires. In his own eyes he was " but a tyro in the art of
poesy " ; one who wrote verses " merely for his own pleasure and that of
his friends"; but so he said he was no painter, and no architect, and
yet he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and built the dome
of St. Peter's. His contemporaries showed that they considered him
a true poet by placing the statue of Poetry with those of Architecture,
Sculpture, and Painting upon the steps of the temporary monument
which they erected at Su Croce at the time of his funeral obsequies ;
and the many ways in which eminent literary men of his own and
succeeding generations have labored to make his poems known to the
world, prove past and present appreciation of their merit. While he
was yet living Berni declared them to be a mine of Platonic philos
ophy, Donato Giannotti praised them for their Dantesque form, and
Benedetto Varchi read an elaborate essay before the Florentine Acad
emy upon that finest of his sonnets, " Whate'er conception a great artist
fires." Several of the madrigals were set to music by contemporary
composers, among whom were Archadelt, a Flemish musician settled at
Rome; Costanzo Testa, a Roman; and Tromboncino, a Veronese.6 In
1623 the collected poems were first published, with revisions by his
namesake and gxand-nephew, Michelangelo the younger, prefaced by
two admirable essays from the pen of Guiducci.7 Poets of our own
day, among whom are Wordsworth, Southey, Longfellow, and Symonds,
have translated some of the finest sonnets and madrigals into English,
and with wonderful success, considering the difficulties involved.
Among the sonnets, those addressed to Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness
of Pescara, that dear and trusted friend whose influence over him during
his latter years was paramount, are perhaps the most widely known
and most deservedly celebrated. Often as the story of their friendship
6 Two of these madrigals, for four voices, are given in Gotti's second volume, pp. 99
and 110. See ibid. p. 89, Letter of Leto Puliti.
7 This first edition has now been superseded by that of Cesare Guasti (1863), in which
they are given both in their original and amended forms, together with a valuable preface,
and the essays of Varchi and Guiducci.

243 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
has been told, it cannot be passed over by any one who undertakes to
write about Michelangelo, so important were its bearings upon his
mental and spiritual development. The period of his life during which
he lived in almost daily intercourse with this "lady both great and
good," corresponds to the Indian summer in our late autumn season,
which beneficently stays the winter's coming, and, as it sheds its warm
glow over the landscape, cheats us into the belief that ice and snow are
illusions, aud cold blasts not inevitable evils. Their friendship began
between 1536 and 1538, when Michelangelo was frequently at Rome,
though possibly a few years earlier.8 Vittoria Colonna9 was then liv
ing, by Papal permission, in the convent of "San Silvestro in Capite,"
where she had taken refuge after the death of her ever-lamented hus
band, Alfonso d'Avalos, on the battle-field of Pavia, with the intention of
taking the veil. Being unable to obtain the Pope's consent to this step,
she contented herself with a life of seclusion in a religious house at
Rome or Viterbo, where she could " weep, pray, study, and write poetry,
and whence she could lend a helping hand to the needy." In these
pious, intellectual, and charitable exercises she passed the remainder
of her existence, cheered by frequent converse with the great artist,
between whom and herself existed "a firm friendship and a most un
changeable affection, bound in a Christian knot."10 The topics dis
cussed at their interviews were, for the most part, of a religious nature,
but occasionally, as we are told by Francois de Hollande,11 art and
8 Gotti (op. cit. Vol. I. p. 231) says they met as early as 1532.
0 Daughter of Fabrizio Colonna and Agnese da Montefeltro.
10 Letter from Vittoria Colonna to Michelangelo, dated July 20, 1546.
11 Francois de Hollande, the painter, was an art pensioner of Don Giovanni III., Kin"
of Portugal, at Rome. The authenticity of his manuscript diary, written in 1549 and first
published by Count Raczynski in a work entitled Les Arts in Portugal (Renouard, 1846),
cannot reasonably be called in question ; and, so far as the fact of his being Michelan
gelo's friend goes to prove it, is substantiated by a letter dated Lisbon, August 15, 1553,
preserved in the Buonarroti archives, which was written by Francois to the great artist six
years after he left Rome. (See Gotti, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 245.) "I write," he says, "that
I may not lose your friendship, begging you to let me know how you are in these your
days of old age, in which I am sure you do not fail to exercise yourself in less laudable

ITALIAN REFORMERS. 249
philosophy also engaged their attention. Valuable as the diary of the
Portuguese painter is as the only record of Michelangelo's opinions
upon subjects connected with his profession, it does not compare in
interest with his own letters and sonnets to the Marchesa, wliich, in
language perfectly suitable to their respective rank and age, tell us of
his deep attachment to her, and prove the great influence which she
had in shaping his religious opinions.
Knowing what a foothold the Reformers had gained in Italy at a
time when, as stated in the rescript of Clement VII., both the laity
and the clergy were affected by Lutheran doctrines, and having the
testimony of Giannone as to the powerful effect of the sermons of
Valdez, the Spaniard, and Ochino, the converted Capuchin friar, upon
many men and women of high rank, we cannot doubt that Michel
angelo shared the general feeling as to the necessity of a radical reform
in the Roman Catholic Church, and looked, like them, upon the calam
ities which had fallen upon Rome and Florence as direct judgments
of Heaven for the corrupt lives of the clergy and the abuses of the
Papal court. Though he does not recant any of the Romish dogmas in
his letters or his sonnets, some of the latter are Protestant in spirit,
in so far as they directly appeal to Christ for pardon and aid. The
seventy-third sonnet,12 for instance, written while he was painting a
picture of the Crucifixion, illustrates this point forcibly: —
"Freed from a burden sore, and grievous load,
Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied,
Like a frail bark I turn me to thy side,
As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land.
Thy thorns, thy nails, and either bleeding hand,
works of heroic virtue than those which do your hands immortal honor in the art of
painting. For the great love which I have of rare things, and especially for those exe
cuted by your noble self while I was at Rome, I beg you to do me the great favor to
send me one of your drawings, as a remembrance of your works, even if it be but a line
or a profile like that made by the ancient Apelles, so that it may be to me an evidence
of your health, and also a substantial memorial of our friendship."
" Guasti, op. cit. p. 246. Translated by J. A. Symonds, op. cit p. 257.

250 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
With thy mild, gentle, piteous face, provide
Promise of help and mercies multiplied,
And hope that yet my soul secure may stand.
Let not thy holy eyes be just to sec
My evil part, thy chastened cars to hear,
And stretch the arm of judgment to my crime :
Let thy blood only love and succor me,
Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer,
As older still I grow with lengthening time."
Valdez and Ochino preached the same dependence of man upon
God through Christ, and, with an eloquence which, as the Emperor
Charles V. said, "was enough to make the stones weep," declared the
Bible to be the source of all truth. By its light they set forth the true
view of justification by faith, purgatory, and the Papal power, about
which their hearers had hitherto accepted the dicta of Roman Catholic
theologians. They spoke at Naples before vast audiences made up of
people of all ranks, among whom two of the most conspicuous for a
time were Giulia Gonzaga and Vittoria Colonna. In Fra Ochino they
recognized one of those men whom God sends into the world from time
to time to rouse those who sleep, and to revive the drooping spirits of
those who are fainting by the roadside. "His age, the austere tenor
of his life, the roughness of his dress, his long beard falling below bis
breast, his gray hairs, his pallid and wasted visage, and a certain ap
pearance of infirmity and weakness affected with much art, together
with the general opinion as to his sanctity, caused him to be looked
upon as an extraordinary man. Not only the people, but the greatest
sovereigns and nobles, revered him as a saint, went to meet him on his
arrival, received him with the utmost honor and every possible mark
of affection, and escorted him on his road when he departed." 13 " You
ask me," writes Vittoria Colonna to one of her correspondents, "about
Fra Bernandino of Siena (Ochino), and I answer that he has left
behind him in Milan a name so good, and such universal contrition,
13 Bishop Graziani's description of Fra Ochino, quoted by Tiraboschi. Stria della Lett
It, Vol. VII. p. 370.

FRA OCHINO. 251
that all esteem him to be a truly Christian man. May it please God,"
she adds, " to let him persevere in his work." u This letter was written
before Fra Ochino concluded to return to Geneva, instead of sivino-
himself up to the court of Rome, which would have amounted to vol
untary martyrdom. By so doing he left those who had been half won
over to his religious opinions exposed to strong counter influences,
which in many cases availed to win them back to their former state
of unquestioning obedience to the Roman Catholic Church. The Mar
chioness of Pescara seems to have been one of these, if we may judge
by her letter to Pope Marcellus IV. in which she writes, "It grieves
me deeply that the more he [Fra Ochino] endeavors to excuse, the
more he accuses himself; and the more he thirsts to save others from
shipwreck, the more he exposes them to the deluge, being himself an
outcast from the ark which saves and assures."
To put down the fast-spreading contagion of reform, Rome used her
wonted weapons. In 1542 Paul III. organized the inquisition and the
censorship; the faint-hearted were terrified into submission by threats
of confiscation and banishment, and the city where Leo X. and his car
dinals had so lately smiled when they heard men doubt the existence
of a God and the immortality of the soul, now saw Jews and heretics
burned for non-acceptance of Romish dogmas.
We shall never know how much Michelangelo was affected by Prot
estant ideas, but that they found some favor in his sight seems not
improbable, if we reflect that in his youth he had learned from Savona
rola to look upon the Bible as the reformers did, to regard the state
of the church as corrupt, and that during his long residence at Rome he
afterwards had ample opportunity of convincing himself of the necessity
of extensive reforms.
In those early days he had also learned, by study of the philosophy
of Plato, to aspire to the beautiful and the good as emanations from
a Divine but vaguely defined source: This sufficed him until, capti
vated by the beauty and the genius of Vittoria Colonna, and filled with
i* Tiraboschi, op. cit. Vol. VII. p. 372.

252 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
reverence for her piety, he was brought into sympathy with her relig
ious views, and found the peace for which his soul yearned. The fol
lowing sonnet shows how absolutely he gave himself up to her guidance,
and how fully he relied upon its efficacy: —
"As one who having lost the light of heaven
Bewildered strays, whatever path he takes,
I, lady, to your sacred penmanship
Present the blank page of my troubled mind,
That you in dissipation of my doubts
May on it write how my benighted soul
Of its desired end may not so fail
As to incur at last a fatal fall.
Be you the writer who have taught me how
To tread by fairest paths the way to heaven."
Many and ingenious are the conceits and quaint are the metaphors
used by Michelangelo in his poems to express his deep feelings of
tender affection for the noble guide and friend who blessed his life.
" As the stone when an intaglio is cut upon it becomes more precious
than it was in its natural state, so am I of greater worth since your
image has been graven on my heart. When a sculptor would give
shape to an idea, he makes a model in some vile material, such as clay
or wax; then he puts it into marble and assures its immortality. So
I, born but the model of my future self, have been re-formed and re
made by you, 0 lofty and noble lady, in more perfect form."
A still more abstruse and curious comparison forms the subject of
his fifteenth sonnet, here given in a new and admirable translation: —
"Nothing the greatest artist can conceive
That every marble block doth not confine
Within itself ; and only this design
The hand that follows intellect can achieve.
The ill I flee, the good that I believe,
In thee, fair lady, lofty and divine,
Thus hidden lie ; and to make ruin mine,
Art of desired success doth me bereave.
Love is not guilty then, nor thy fair face,
Nor fortune, cruelty, nor great disdain

VITTORIA COLONNA. 253
Of my disgrace, nor chance, nor destiny,
If in thy heart both death and love find place
At the same time, and my distracted brain,
Burning, can nothing draw but death from thee."
The seventeenth sonnet,16 translated by the same distinguished poet,
will, if we are not mistaken, be new to English readers, and it is one
of the most beautiful: —
"Lady, how can it chance — yet this we see
In our experience, that will longer last
A living visage carved from quarries vast
Than its own maker, who dies presently ?
Cause yieldeth to effect if this so be,
And even nature is by art surpassed.
This know I, who to art have given the past,
¦ But see that time breaking faith with me.
Perhaps on both of us long life can I
Either in color or in stone bestow,
By now portraying each in look and mien,
So that a thousand years after we die,
How fair thou wast, and I how full of woo,
And wherefore I so loved thee, may be seen."
Seeing the strong affection expressed in these poems, we can meas
ure the deep sorrow which the poet felt when death removed its
object from his sight This sad event took place in February, 1547,
at the house of Giuliano Cesarini, husband of Giulia Colonna, the last
1S Sonnet XV. Guasti, p. 173. Translated by Professor H. W. Longfellow. This is the
sonnet upon which Varchi commented before the Florentine Academy in 1546: On re
ceiving the commentary from Luca Martini, Michelangelo wrote : "The sonnet indeed came
from me, but the commentary comes from heaven ; it is truly admirable, not only in my
judgment, but in that of men of note, and especially of Messer Donato Giannotti, who is
never tired of reading it. As for the sonnet, I know what it is ; but however it may be,
I cannot but feel a little proud of it since it has been the cause of a commentary so
beautiful and so learned ; and as in the author of it I feel myself, by reason of his
words and praises, to be that which I am not, I pray you to express yourself to him from
me in words suitable to his so great love, affection, and courtesy." — Lettere pittoriche di
Bottari, Vol. V. p. 76. Gotti, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 249.
16 Guasti, p. 175. Translated by Professor H. AV. Longfellow.

254 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
surviving relative of the Marchesa. She had been carried there from
the monastery when it was known that she could not recover, and Mi
chelangelo was among those who stood near her bedside at the last,
kissing her cold hand and weeping over it with many tears. But,
although dead, she walked with him in spirit so long as he lived, in
spiring him by her example, guiding him by her precepts, and sus
taining him by her well-remembered counsels.
Of the four sonnets which he wrote after her death we shall quote two,
that the reader may judge of its effect upon him : —
"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.
0 fate, unheeding my impassioned cries!
0 hopes fallacious ! 0 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." 17
These lines must have been written in the first anguish of a grief
whose intensity was too great to allow of any search for ingenious tropes
and skilfully contrived metaphors, but the next sonnet would seem to
have been composed when the writer's feelings were more under com
mand, and artistic considerations had freer play: —
"When my rude hammer to the stubborn stone
Gives human shape, now that, now this, at will,
Following his hand who guides and wields it still,
It moves upon another's feet alone.
But he who dwells in Heaven all things doth fill
With beauty by pure motions of his own ;
And since tools fashion tools which else were none,
17 Sonnet XLII. Translated by Professor Longfellow, January 29, 1874.

TOMMASO DE' CAVALIERI. 255
His lifo makes all that lives with living skill.
Now for that every stroke excels the more
The closer to the forge it still ascend,
Her soul that quickened mine hath sought the skies :
Wherefore I find my toil will never end,
If God, the great artificer, denies
That tool which was my only aid before." 18
In one of his letters19 to Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo mentions
Tommaso de' Cavalieri,20 a Roman gentleman of good family, and an
amateur artist, to whom he wrote frequently in terms so passionate
and so extravagantly eulogistic, that one of his late biographers sug
gests that they were really addressed to the Marchesa under cover of
his name.21 Did not our own and other languages furnish examples
of prose and poetry in which friendship speaks with the voice of love,22
or could we discover any reason why Michelangelo should have thus
masked his correspondence with the Marchesa, we might accept this
theory; but we are hardly inclined to do so, as he wrote to her and
talked with her freely, and made no secret of his great admiration for
her, while at the same time he lived on the most intimate terms with
Cavalieri. His attachment to the young Roman, who was one of the
few faithful attendants upon him in his last moments, showed itself
also in deeds, as, for instance, when he sent him a drawing of the
18 Sonnet XLI. Translated by J. A. Symonds, op. cit. Vol. II. Appendix II. Guasti
(op. cit. p. 226) says that Michelangelo knew the doctrine of an earthly instrument made
after a divine model, as expressed in Plato's Kratilus, from the Platonists of his day.
» No. CDLV., dated 1545. Milanesi, op. cit. p. 515.
20 Benedetto Varchi, in his Lezione on one of Michelangelo's sonnets (Guasti, op. cit.
p. 108), thus refers to Cavalieri : " I recognized in him such great amiability, and such
an excellent mind with charm of manner, that he well deserved and still deserves to be
most loved by those who know him best."
a Gotti, Vol. I. p. 231.
22 M. de Montaiglon (op. cit. p. 283) refers to the " cultisme de l'Espagne et a l'euphuisme
de l'Angleterre, qui ne sont que des imitations de l'ltalie ; quand on se souvient, par exemple,
des hyperboles passionnees du recueil des sonnets de Shakspeare, addresses non pas a une
femme mais a un homme, a ce jeune lord cache sans les initiales W. H., on s'etonne moins
de l'extravagance des expressions employees par Michel Ange a l'endroit de Cavalieri."

256 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
Fall of Phaeton as a present, with these words: "Sir Tommaso, if
this sketch does not please you, tell Urbino so, that I may find time
to make you another as I promised, and if it does please, and you
would like to have it, say so, that I may finish it for you."23
The following sonnet has no address, but there can be no doubt that
it was written to Cavalieri, from the play upon his name in the last
line which is lost in the English version by the substitution of the
word " Knight " for " Cavalier," used in the original : —
"Why should I seek to case intense desire
With still more tears and windy words of grief,
When heaven, or late or soon, sends no relief
To souls whom love hath robed round with fire ?
Why need my aching heart to death aspire,
When all must die ? Nay, death beyond belief
Unto these eyes would be both sweet and brief,
Since in my sum of woes all joys expire !
Then, too, because I cannot shun the blow
I rather seek, say who must rule my breast,
23 Besides the engraving by Beatrizct (B. Vol. XV. No. 33) there are two drawings of
this composition, one of which is at Windsor in the Royal collection. The other, which
formerly belonged to Mariette, became the property of M. Galichom, late editor of the Ga
zette des Beaux Arts. Both are given as illustrations to an article, written by him, in
the Gazette of March 1, 1874. The attitude of the sun-god, the grouping of the falling
horses, are different in these two drawings, but the most important change is in the lower
part of the design. In the Windsor drawing, beside the river-god, who pays no attention
to the catastrophe, there are three nude figures gazing upward with gestures of affright ; a man
in the background bearing an amphora upon his shoulders ; and a swan. In M. Galichom's
drawing, the river-god looks up at the crashing chariot, and the three nude figures in a
wood are half metamorphosed into trees. They illustrate the thirteenth canto of the
Inferno, — the wood of suicides : —
" Uomini fummo, ed or sem fatti sterjii " :
"Men once we were, and now are changed to trees."
Michelangelo also gave Cavalieri the cartoons which he had composed for Sebastiano del
Piombo, and painted his portrait the size of life. This was a singular proof of affection,
for Vasari tells us (Vol. XII. p. 272) that in this single instance only did he take the
likeness of any one, "for he detested ('abboriva') drawing from life, unless the model was
infinitely beautiful."

LUIGI DEL RICCIO. 257
Gliding between her gladness and her woe ?
If only chains and bonds can make mo blest,
Nor marvel if alone and bare I go,
An armed Knight's captive and slave confessed."24
Michelangelo's letters to Cavalieri are equally warm in tone, and are
filled with praises suited to a Dante or a Shakespeare. "You must
excuse me if I show myself incompetent to sail over the waves of the
sea of your mighty genius; you must pardon me and not be angered
at my failure, nor ask from me that which is not in me; because he
who stands alone in all things cannot have companions in any. It is
not strange that your Signory, being the unique light of our century
in the world, should be unable to take pleasure in the work of any
other person, having no one who is equal or like to yourself.25 Sooner
can I forget the food which poorly nourishes my body only, than your
name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling both with such
sweetness, that so long as memory preserves it I can feel neither
weariness nor fear of death." 26
It was not only about his own friends, but also about those of others
who were dear to him, that Michelangelo wrote in terms of extravagant
eulogy. Thus when Luigi del Riccio asked him to make a bust of his
beloved pupil, Cecchino Bracci, who died at the age of sixteen, he
replied in a sonnet, " As I cannot take his likeness I will take yours,
which will be the same thing, as those who love are one,"27 and sent
24 No. XXXI. Guasti, p. 189. Translated by J. A. Symonds, op. cit.
25 Milanesi, op. cit. No. CDXI. p. 462. The letter is dated January 1, 1533, two years
before Michelangelo is generally believed to have met Vittoria Colonna. Gotti (op. cit.
Vol. I. p. 231) supposes that it is really written to her, and thus dates their acquaintance
from 1533.
26 Letter CDVI. Milanesi, p. 467.
27 We give the sonnet (Milanesi, No. VIII. p. 162, dated 1544) as translated by Mr.
Symonds, op. cit. : — "Scarce had I seen for the first time his eyes,
Which to your living eyes are life and light,
When closed at last in death's injurious night
He opened them on God in Paradise.
I know it, and I weep, too late made wise:
17

258 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
him no less than forty-three epitaphs, of which the few here given are
perhaps the most worthy of translation:28 —
"No. 4. Death wished to slay, but yet without th' employ
Of years injurious, and hard days of need,
The beauty that lies here, so it might speed
With presence all unchanged into heaven's joy.
" No. 7. Here am I buried, who was born of late ;
To whom came Death with such untimely speed,
That scarcely did my naked soul give heed,
In leaving earth, that she had changed her state.
"No. 9. The soul within from without is not seen,
As we see not the face this tomb shuts in.
Yet if in heaven were not as fair an inn,
Thus snatched by Death it surely had not been.
" No. 38. In this the monument speaks, — •
With Braccio's, the sun of nature's day
For aye extinct, I here lock up and seal.
Death surely slew him, without sword or steel ;
For flowers of spring small breeze doth bear away.
"No. 43. Erst mortal Cecchino, now I am divine:
Shut while on earth, but blessed in heaven for aye.
For such exchange my thanks to death I pay,
Who, used to taking life, to me gave mine."
This pathetic letter,29 written by Luigi del Riccio to Donato Giannotti,
shows how deeply he mourned over the death of this rare youth: —
"Alas, Messer Donato, our Cecchino is dead. I pray you to preserve the
Yet was the fault not mine ; for death's fell spite
Bobbed my desire of that supreme delight.
Which in thy better memory never dies.
Therefore, Luigi, if the task be mine
To make unique Cecchino smile in stone
Forever, now that earth hath made him dim.
If the beloved within the lover shine,
Since art without him cannot work alone,
Thee must I carve, to tell the world of him."
28 The author is indebted to his friend, Professor Charles E. Norton, for these translations.
29 Printed in Vol. II. of the Opcre di Donato Giannotti.

LUIGI DEL RICCIO. 259
memory of that love and reverence wliich we bore him, and that of his good
and rare qualities, which had infinitely multiplied since your departure
Heaven, which always carries off the best, has taken him from us. All Rome
weeps his loss. Messer Michelangelo has designed for mo a beautiful mon
ument80 of marble, and I pray you to write the epitaph and send it to me
with a letter of condolence, if it can be sent in time, for my heart is rent in
twain. Patience ; I live now with a thousand deaths every hour. 0 God !
how fortune has changed for me! "Your broken-hearted "Luigi del Riccio."
Luigi might soon have had also to mourn for Michelangelo, had he
not nursed him through a very dangerous illness at the Casa Strozzi,
of which he was the intendant, after moving him from his own house,
where he could not be properly cared for. Writing to Roberto de
Filippo Strozzi, in answer to a letter of inquiry from Lyons, Luigi
sends Michelangelo thanks for the shelter given him, and in his name
asks Filippo to remind the King of France that he has offered to
make his equestrian statue in bronze and erect it on the Piazza della
Signoria at Florence, if he will restore the republic.31
We have many letters, or rather notes, from Michelangelo to Luigi
between 1542 and 1547, the year of his death, which show how close
was their friendship. In one he asks his advice as to a fitting present
30 The monument was finished at the end of 1545, and placed in the church of Santa
Maria in Ara Coeli. Lettere DIV., DVIL, DVIIL, DXVII. Prospetto, 391.
Cecchino's father, Zanali di Giovanni Battista, was » Florentine exile, whose property
was confiscated on account of his resistance to the MedicL His mother was a Contessa
dei Castellani.
31 Gotti, Vol. I. p. 281, and Gaye, Carteggio, Vol. II. p. 296. Luigi's letter is dated
July 21, 1544. In 1546 Michelangelo received a letter sent by Primaticcio, from King
Francis I. , dated February 8, asking him to make some work of art for him. In his answer,
dated April 26, he says : "I am now old, and much occupied in the service of the Pope ;
but if I live long enough I will prepare a statue in marble, and one in bronze, and also
a picture for your Majesty, as I have long desired to do. If I should die first, and we are
permitted to sculpture and paint in the other world, where we shall no longer grow old,
I will then perform my promise." Milanesi, Lettere No. CDLIX. p. 569.

260 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
for the Flemish composer, Archadelt, who had set two of his madrigals
to music; in another he prays him to use his best endeavors to bring
about a reconciliation between his faithful servant, Francesco d' Ama-
dore, called Urbino, and a marble-worker named Giovanni de' Marchesi
da Saltri, who had quarrelled about the work allotted to them upon the
monument of Julius II. ; in still another he confides to him his own
annoyances concerning the final contract for that monument, and begs
him to urge the Pope to settle his differences with the Duke of Ur
bino, bitterly exclaiming: "For my thirty-six years of faith in others,
to whom I gave myself, I deserve my fate; painting and sculpture,
fatigue and trust, have ruined me, and things go on from bad to worse.
Better would it have been for me, if in my youth I had set myself
to the making of sulphur matches, in which case I should have escaped
this present misery." 32 In another letter he recounts to him the whole
history of his connection with Pope Julius II.,33 and once, for some
unknown reason, writes thus angrily : " He who saved me from death
may abuse me if he likes, but I know not which is the worst, abuse or
death," signing himself in this strange fashion, " Michelagniolo Buonar
roti, neither painter, sculptor, nor architect ; but anything you like, ex
cepting a drunkard, as I told you at home." M
In a like gust of sudden wrath, which shows that his irritable
temper had not cooled with age, he sends the following lines to his
nephew, who had hurried to Rome from Florence on hearing of his
dangerous illness : " Lionardo, I have been ill, and you, by the advice
of Ser Giovan Francesco, have come to kill me, and to see what prop
erty I have left. Did you not have enough of what belongs to me at
Florence ? You cannot deny that you are like your father, who drove me
out of my own house at Florence. Learn that I have made my will
in such a way that you will have no reason to trouble yourself about
82 Milanesi, op. cit No. CDXXXIV. p. 488, dated October, 1542.
33 No. CDXXV. This letter is addressed to a Monsignore, and was perhaps given to Del
Kiccio that he might read it to the Pope.
84 No. CDLX., dated 1546.

LIONARDO BUONARROTI. 261
what I own at Rome. Be off, then, and do not venture into my pres
ence, and never write to me again." ^
We have no reason to suppose that this treatment was deserved, or
to believe that Michelangelo himself thought what he said. He was
really very fond of his nephew, and their quarrels were, like those of
lovers, soon made up. One of his letters is addressed to " Lionardo
Buonarroti, in Florence, beloved as if he were my son'';36 and many
are filled with counsel as to the selection of a proper person for him
to marry. "What you want," he writes in one of these, "is a wife
who will be docile and stay at home, not being inclined to pomps and
vanities, or anxious for banquets and weddings every day in the week." w
When Lionardo at last fixed his choice on Cassandra de' Ridolfi,
Michelangelo approved it most heartily, and wrote to say that he had
commissioned a goldsmith from Urbino to find him a beautiful "set
of pearls which he can present to her." Instead of these he ultimately
sent her two rings, a diamond and a ruby, in an enamelled box, with
instructions to have their value estimated, "as he is himself no con
noisseur of such things, and wishes to be sure that he has not paid
too much for them."
The two most touching letters of Michelangelo to his nephew w are
those in which he tells him of the illness and death of his faithful
and beloved servant Urbino, which caused him much sorrow. In the
first he writes: "I am here in great anxiety about Urbino, who is
dangerously ill ; what will be the end of it I cannot say ; if he were
my son I could not be more grieved, both because he has served me
faithfully for twenty-five years, and because I am old and can never
find another who will be to me what he has been." In the next letter
he thus announces the end : " Last night, at four o'clock, on the 3d of
December, 1555, to my great sorrow, Francesco, called Urbino, passed
bs No. CXLIX., dated July, 1544.
86 No. CLX., dated January, 1546.
87 No. CCLXIV., June 20, 1553.
<» November 30 and December 4, 1555. Nos. CCLXXXIII. and CCLXXXIV.

262 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
from this life, leaving me so deeply afflicted, that for the love which
I bore him it would have been sweeter for me to have died with him.
He deserved indeed all that I could give him, for he was an honor
able man, full of faith and loyalty : wherefore it seems to me that by
his death I have become lifeless, and cannot find peace for my soul."
To Giorgio Vasari he writes on the same subject : " You know of Ur-
bino's death, in the which God has shown great mercy to me, though
it has been to ine a terrible loss and a cause of infinite grief. The
mercy has been, that while living he kept me alive, dying he has
taught me to die, not with reluctance, but with a longing for death.
I kept him with me for twenty-five years, during which he was always
loyal and faithful, and now that I had enriched him and hoped that
he would be the staff and repose of my old age, he has left me with
no other hope than that of seeing him again in Paradise." ^
Michelangelo's affection for this faithful servant showed itself not
only in words but in deeds of kindness to his widow, Cornelia, and
to their children, one of whom bore his honored name. From Castel
Durante, where she went to live with her relations after her hus
band's death, Cornelia wrote to tell him of her sorrow at having been
obliged to part with two of his drawings to the Duke of Urbino, who
had set his heart on having them and would not be refused, and to
beg him to write to her and tranquillize her mind, which will not
be at peace until she knows that he is content.40 In another letter
she relates how a certain "Abbate" and her own father have tried
to induce her to marry a good-for-nothing fellow who has an eye to
her property, and thus expresses her feelings towards Michelangelo:
"The loving courtesy which your Signory has always shown me and
my children has been such that I can truly say it has far surpassed
that of my father, my .mother, or any of my relations. Knowing this
to be so in truth, I have always loved, obeyed, and revered you as
my most loving father and patron, and have always been most ready
89 February 23, 1556. Letter CDLXXVII.
40 Gotti, Vol. I. pp. 334, 335.

GIORGIO VASARI. 263
to serve, honor, and obey you, nor have I ever thought of doing any
thing without first obtaining your consent and advice." 41 Could there
be a better proof of the affection with which Michelangelo inspired
his dependants, than the letter of this worthy woman, who signs her
self, " Your loving daughter, Cornelia " ?
One of his most devoted followers and admirers in these latter years
of his life was Giorgio Vasari, whose biography of him in the Lives of
tlie Painters is the only one of a then living artist. The filial affec
tion of Vasari for Michelangelo, who was thirty-seven years his senior,
met with a warm recognition, as many letters attest. "Could I be
lieve myself to be in any way what you think me," he writes in one
of these, "I should rejoice for no other reason than that it would
prove that you have a servant of some value. But I do not wonder
that you, being a resuscitator of dead men, can prolong the lives of
the living, or, in other words, that you can keep off death for a long
time from those whose lives have been ill-spent."42
In the same affectionate and half-sportive tone he writes a few months
later : " Dear friend Giorgio, you will say that I am too old and crazy
to write sonnets, but I choose to do so, because many say that I am
in my second childhood. Your letter shows how much you love me, etc."
He then excuses himself for refusing to accept the Grand Duke's
pressing invitation to return to Florence, on the ground of duty to
the great work of building St. Peter's. " If I went away, now that I
have served eight years, not only without compensation, but with great
annoyance and injury to myself, when I have at last got money to
spend, and am about to vault the cupola, it would be the ruin of the
building, which would be a disgrace to all Christendom and a great
sin upon my soul.43 Tell this to the Duke, and commend me to him
Dear Messer Giorgio, I know that you know that I am near my last
« Gotti, op. cit. Vol. I. p. 336. Cornelia afterwards married a lawj'er at Gubbio named
Giulio Brnnelli, with whom she lived happily.
42 April, 1554. No. CDLXXII.
48 May 11, 1555, June 22. No. CDLXXVI.

264 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
hour, and that death is ever in my thoughts. God grant me a few
years more of life."
There were other reasons which made Michelangelo refuse to return
to Florence, or he would have gone there in the summer of 1556, when
he made a pilgrimage to Loreto and passed more than a month at a
convent in the mountains near Spoleto. He was ill, and knew that
the Tuscan air was not good for him,44 and he wanted rest, which he
could not have found at the Florentine court, where every one would
have labored to do him honor.
Rome was then threatened by the Spanish army under the Duke
of Alva, and filled with alarm at the prospect of a siege whose antici
pated terrors were enhanced by the recollection of the last visit of
Spanish troops under the Constable de Bourbon ; all work at St. Peter's
was for the time suspended; and as Michelangelo was too old to fight,
and too ill to bear the trials and sufferings incident to war, he pru
dently withdrew to await the moment when he should be able to re
sume his work.
In a letter to his nephew ^ he mentions that when all work at St.
Peter's ceased he went to Loreto on a pilgrimage ("per alcuna mia
divozione"), and that, being weary when he arrived at Spoleto, he re
mained there until he was sent for by the Pope. Writing to Vasari,
December 29, 1556, he says, " I obeyed the summons with considerable
reluctance, having greatly enjoyed my visits to certain hermits living
in the mountains near that town, and discovered that peace is only to
be found in the woods."
44 In a letter to the deputies of the Florentine Academy, wiitten after Michelangelo's
death, Grazzini, Secretary of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, says, on the authority of Daniel
of Arolterra, that the great artist " absented himself from his beloved Florence only on ac
count of the quality of the air, experience having taught him that it was inimical to his
constitution on account of its sharp and subtile nature, while the softer and more tempered
climate of Eome kept him in good health up to his ninetieth year, with all his faculties
as perfect and vigorous as they ever had been, and with such strength, considering his
great age, that up to the last day of his life he was able to work." See the Esequie del
Divino Michelagnolo ristampato svll' edizione dei Giunti, 1564. Firenze. 1875. p. 23.
46 October 31, 1556. No. CCXCIX.

LAST WORKS. 265
It is not astonishing that, being eighty-one years old, he should have
preferred the quiet of this temporary retreat to his necessarily dis
turbed existence at Rome, where demands were constantly made upon
him, to some of which he could not refuse to listen. Among these
were the flattering request of Catharine de' Medici that he would
design an equestrian statue of her murdered husband, Henry II. of
France;48 and that of his countrymen that he would make plans for
the completion of San Giovanni, the church of the Florentines at
Rome.47 Pope Pius IV. also asked him to make designs for a monu
ment to his brother, the Marquis of Mariguano,48 to be placed in the
church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and also for the Porta Pia at
Rome.49 As his hand now trembled so that it could not draw a
straight line, Michelangelo was obliged to dictate these plans to Ti-
berio Calcagni, one of his assistants. Three years before his death he
virtually gave up his superintendence of the works at St. Peter's,
though he received daily accounts of their progress from his subor
dinates. Early in the year 1564 it became evident that his life could not be
greatly prolonged, and on the 15th of February his friend Diomede
Lioni wrote to Lionardo Buonarroti : " I advise you to come as soon
as possible from Florence, starting immediately, but not hurrying over-
46 The Queen's autograph letter is dated from Blois, November 14, 1559. Gotti, op. cit.
Vol. I. pp. 349, 350. Daniel of Volterra modelled the horse under Michelangelo's eyes,
and it was cast in 1565. In 1639 it was placed in the Place Eoyale at Paris with a statue
of Louis XIII. upon its hack. In 1793 it shared the fate of so many other royal mon
uments. 47 This church was begun by Antonio da Sangallo. Michelangelo's designs for its com
pletion, drawn by Tiberio Calcagni, were made in 1559 and 1560, but were never carried
out, owing to the great expense which they would have necessitated.
48 The monument executed by Leone Leoni for the cathedral at Milan is described in
my work on Italian Sculptors, p. 156.
49 The contract for this gate is dated 1561. The greater part of the sculpture upon it
was made by Jacopo del Duca, a Sicilian sculptor, who also designed the Baldacchino in
the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which was built after Michelangelo's plans out
of the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian.

266 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
much, because if, as God forbid, the master's life is in danger, you
cannot get here with the utmost haste in time to find him alive ; for,
owing to his great age and his disease, he cannot live a great while 
You may be certain in your absence that Messer Tomniaso del Cavalieri,
Messer Daniele [Ricciarelli, the painter], and I will not fail in our
duty. Besides which Antonio del Francesco [who had succeeded Ur
bino as manager of Michelangelo's household], the master's old and
faithful servant, is one who will do himself credit in any possible
circumstances in which it may please God to place him  To
give you an account of the master's condition at this moment, it
being the third hour of the night, I will tell you that I just now
left him in full possession of his faculties, but troubled with constant
drowsiness. He got on horseback this afternoon, according to his usual
habit when the weather is good, to chase it away, but the coldness
of the weather and the weakness of his head and limbs made it
impossible for him to ride, and he returned to his chair by the fire,
which he much prefers to his bed." Two days later another letter was
despatched to hasten the coming of Lionardo, and on the next day,
February 18th, the great artist breathed his last with these words upon
his lips : 50 "I give my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my
worldly goods to my nearest relations, charging them through life to
keep in remembrance the sufferings of Jesus Christ." 51
The feelings with which he met death breathe in the beautiful sonnet
to Vasari, written ten years before it came to set his spirit free: —
"The course of my long life has reached at last,
In fragile bark o'er a tempestuous sea,
The common harbor, where must rendered be
Account of all the actions of the past.
The impassioned fantasy, that, vague and vast,
Made art an idol and «. king to me,
Was an illusion, and but vanity
60 M. de Montaiglon (op. cit) says he was exactly eighty-eight years and fifteen days
old. « Vasari, Vol. XII. p. 269.

DEATH OF MICHELANGELO. 267
Were the desires that lured me and harassed.
The dreams of love, that were so sweet of yore,
What are they now, when two deaths may be mine,
One sure, and one forecasting its alarms?
Painting and sculpture satisfy no more
The soul now turning to the Love Divine
That oped, to embrace us, on the cross its arms."62
Lionardo Buonarroti arrived at Eome three days after the death of
his uncle, as we know from the letter written by Daniel of Volterra
to Vasari, which also informs us that in accordance with the express
wish of Michelangelo he ordered that the body should be removed to
Florence. So great, however, was the love of the Romans for the illus
trious dead, and so desirous was the Pope to give his remains the
peculiar honor of burial at St. Peter's, that it was found necessary to
send the corpse to Florence as a bale of merchandise. It remained
at the Custom-House until the 11th of March, when it was transferred
to the church of San Piero Maggiore preparatory to its removal to
Santa Croce. The funeral obsequies were celebrated, with the utmost
pomp and circumstance, at the church of San Lorenzo, under the direc
tion of Vasari, Bronzino, Cellini, and Ammanati, deputed for that pur
pose by the Academy of Artists, and the oration was pronounced by
Benedetto Varchi.
That Duke Cosimo should do everything in his power to make the
ceremonies memorable, and that all the artists in the city should as
semble to do honor to him whom they regarded as their chief, was to
be expected; but no one could have foretold how universal a homage
would be paid to Michelangelo by the people of his native city.
"Perceiving the intense feeling of the multitude, and thinking that
it would content many," says Grazzini in his account to the deputies
62 Sonnet LXV., written to Vasari and sent to him with these lines : "My dear Messer
Giorgio, you will say that I am old and mad to wish to write sonnets ; but as many say
I have fallen into second childhood, I have chosen to do what I can, etc. 19th September,
1554. Your Michelagniolo Buonarroti at Rome." Professor H. W. Longfellow's hitherto
unpublished translation of this sonnet bears date January 28, 1874.

268 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
already referred to,53 "the prior, who, as he afterwards confessed, de
sired to see him dead whom he had never seen living, or had seen
when so young that he had hardly any recollection of his appearance,
decided to have the coffin opened, which, as you will believe, met the
wishes of all ; so, entering into the sacristy, he gave the necessary orders.
Both he and we expected to find the body in a state of decomposi
tion, as it had lain in the coffin twenty-two days or more, and had
been dead twenty-five; but when it was opened no bad odor came
from it, and you would have sworn that it was lying in a sweet and
most quiet sleep. The lines of the face and the complexion, saving
a somewhat deathly pallor, were unchanged, no limb was injured, or
in any way disagreeable to look upon ; and when we touched the head
and cheeks, as all did, to our wonder we found them flexible and nat
ural, as if life had departed but a few hours before."
Thus the last impression of Michelangelo's face was solemn and
peaceful, and since, as often happens after death, many deeply furrowed
lines had disappeared, wore a more youthful appearance than in life.
We could wish that for us also some marks of suffering and disap
pointment could be smoothed away from it, or at least that we had
some likeness of him in his youth, so that we could know how he
looked before he had fought his battle and won his crown. Could
such a portrait be found, the world would greet it with the same feel
ings of delight with which it greeted the recovered portrait of the
young Dante, painted by Giotto on the wall at the Bargello before the
sorrows of exile had left their deep and solemn impress upon his well-
known features. This can never be, nor can we by the utmost effort of
imagination smooth out the wrinkles, straighten the crushed nose, fill
out the sunken cheeks, and give color to the whitened locks of Mi
chelangelo, but must ever think of him as a man advanced in years
and burdened with care. We would not, indeed, exchange these evi
dences of past struggles for the fresh smoothness of youth, for they are
precious to us as records of the efforts which made him what he was;
63 Esequie, etc. p. 27.

fr^

1 . I Is I

PORTRAITS. 269
but we would gladly know how he looked before he entered upon
them, if only that we might estimate their intensity. So if we
stood upon a battle-field where a nation had lately won its freedom,
and saw the deep ruts made by cannon-wheels, and the marks of the
trampling hoofs of victorious legions, we should not indeed desire to
restore the once green expanse to its former smoothness, if at the cost
of effacing the memory of brave deeds there done, but we might wish
that we had seen it as it once was, that we could the better estimate
the price which brave men have paid for victory.
Condivi64 teUs us that Michelangelo was somewhat sickly in his
younger days, and describes him in his seventy-ninth year " as of middle
height, with broad shoulders and thin legs, having a large head, a face
small in proportion to the size of his skull, a square forehead, full
temples, high-cheek bones, and a nose made flat by the fist of that
beastly and proud man, Torrigiano de' Torrigiani." " His lips," he adds,
" are thin, and the lower, being the larger, appears to protrude slightly
when his face is seen in profile. His eyebrows are sparse; his eyes
small, gray, spotted with yellow and blue lights, and ever varying ; his
ears of just proportion; his hair, once black, is streaked with gray, as
is his thin forked beard, which is four or five fingers' breadth in length."
In all important particulars the portraits known to us55 corroborate
64 Vita di Michelangelo, pp. 57, 58. Vasari's description (Vol. XII. p. 270) tallies with
that of Condivi.
65 In a valuable pamphlet by Mr. C. E. Drury Fortnum, on the original portrait by
Leo Leone, called II Cavaliere Aretino, containing a complete list of all the portraits of
Michelangelo, he says that seven only, including busts, medals, and paintings, can be
considered authentic likenesses, namely : 1. A bronze bust at the capital supposed to be
by Daniel of Volterra, and the original of all the bronze busts of Michelangelo attributed
to various artists of the sixteenth century. 2. A posthumous bust in marble modelled
from a mask taken after death. 3. Leo Leone's medal (see tail-piece to this Chapter), of
which Mr. Fortnum owns the wax original, which he discovered and identified. 4. A
figure in the foreground of Daniel of Volterra's fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin in
the church of Santa Trinita at Rome. 5. A head painted by Marcello Venusti in his copy
of the Last Judgment. 6. A portrait by the same painter at the Casa Buonarroti. 7. The
engraving by Giulio Buonasoni which forms the title-page of Condivi's Life of Michelangelo.
See Appendix D.

270

RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

the exactness of this description. The face even in youth can never
have been handsome, though its energy, earnestness, and intelligence
must at all times have made it interesting. It is the face of a man
who would put his will into whatever work he had on hand, making
that for the time his one object in life. This, indeed, Michelangelo
did in all relations and occupations ; for whether we look at him as
artist, patriot, son, brother, or friend, we see that his whole soul was
absorbed in present work. In all respects he was one of the most
remarkable men the world has known, so multiple were his intellectual
gifts, so admirable were his moral attributes. While Raphael is like
a crystal sphere, " teres atque rotundus," Michelangelo is like a diamond
cut in facets, each one of which, as we turn the precious stone in our
hand, catches and throws out fresh rays of light.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX. APPENDIX A.
THE MEDICI COLLECTIONS.
See Chapter II. page 38, note 11.
LORENZO DE' MEDICI, says Niccolo Valori, took the liveliest interest
in all antique objects. Those who wished to do him a pleasure brought
him coins and bronzes and antiquities of every kind from every quarter of
the globe, but he showed them only to those who could appreciate them.
When Federigo, Duke of Urbino, saw them, he said, " I behold here a royal
treasure-house, yet such as no king is able to gather either by money or
power or rapine." Giovanni Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, said he too could
show treasures, but the finest things in all the world were collected in the
house of a private man, Lorenzo de' Medici. Commines estimated the value
of the rings, cameos, agates, and nearly three thousand gold and silver medals
destroyed or carried off from the Medici Palace in November, 1494, when it
was plundered by the soldiers of Charles VIII. and by the Florentines, at
one hundred thousand crowns.
The treasures of the Medici were collected in various ways. The engraved
gems and precious stones brought together by Paul III. came for the most
part into their hands through Giovanni Tornabuoni. Busts of Augustus and
Agrippa were presented by Sixtus IV. to Cosmo de' Medici, and some vases
of chalcedony and engraved stones were bought at Rome, where, as well as at
Siena, agents were employed in 1484, 1488, and 1490, to make purchases.
(See Gaye, Carteggio, 1. c. i. 285, 286, and 290.) Vasari, in his Life of Giuli
ano da Sangallo, Vol VII. p. 213, speaks of presents made to Lorenzo by Don
Ferrante, and of a Greek vase given to him by Maestro Zaccaria Barbaro ;
and Gaye (op. cit. 1. c. p. 304) of gifts from the Malatesta. Lorenzo placed the

274 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
antique marbles along the shady alleys in the Gardens of St. Mark, and the
cartoons and pictures in the Casino, where they could be studied by the young
artists who frequented them.
An account of the Medici treasures is given in A. von Eeumont's Lorenzo
de' Medici, translated by Robert Harrison, Vol. II. p. 3G7, et seq.

APPENDIX. 275

APPENDIX B.
See Chapter VIII. page 225.
BY the kind permission of Dr. T. W. Parsons we print here the whole
of his eloquent poem, written to be read at the celebration of the four
hundredth birthday of Michelangelo by the Woman's Club of Boston, from
which certain passages are given in this volume.
THE BIRTHDAY OF MICHELANGELO.
Boston to Florence, greeting, on the morn
Dear to Art's children, even in Art's young land,
Sends — " Joy ! — this day thy fov.r-sov.led man was born 1 "
One of his country's poets named him so ;
And we accept the phrase, and would expand.

When the first man of Europe could conceive
That Syrian Shepherd, in the Ducal Square,
One soul he surely had ; and that he gave
His first love, Sculpture, moulding marble so
That when his David was unveiled, — the young
Champion of Israel, such as men believed
Once ruled in Jewry, — it is writ, a low
Murmur went through the multitude, as when
The sacred Host is lifted, and the crowd,
Though clad in corselets, drop adoring down !
That boyish triumph bears no more, with us,
The lofty meed that Florence then bestowed,
Since the youth's manhood went so far beyond
The Son of Jesse, — what a giant stride
From him to Moses ! — Then was Art's high flood.

27G EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
II.
Mid the white marble crags of Luni's hills,
Whose sides the peasant, nestling near their base,
Above the village of Carrara, tills,
He had a cavern for his dwelling-place ;
Like Aruns, the great soothsayer, whose home
Dante hath pictured in the verse above.
Brave master ! laboring like a quarry-slave
Among rough men, hard-handed and dark-eyed,
Making himself coarse- fingered as themselves,
Till his right hand had almost lost her cunning ;
Yet with his left he gave those Fates that face !
See the weird women ! Clotho stands behind
Wielding her distaff, — then the one who spins
And rules the threads, — and she who cuts them off :
0 Atropos ! unchangeable, — the Greeks
Gave thee that name ; but when thy severing steel
Comes near the silver cord of such a life,
We must remember, if we keep our faith,
That though ye fashion destiny to-day,
Thou and thy sisters are but mortal too,
And have no office in the life to come.
III.
Now for the builder, — he the lofty rhyme
Could also build : but now we speak of him
Who might have bridged the Hellespont, but chose
Bather to work for Christendom, and serve
The Servant of the servants of his God.1
He labored for his Italy. Who else,
Following the lead of Brunelleschi's dome,
Saint Mary of the Lily, could have made
The church which Jesus planted on a Rock
To hang forevermore in Rome's blue air ?
IV.
Was he a poet? Who shall give response
To this high question for the court supreme
1 Servus servorum Dei, Leo X.

APPENDIX. 277
Of the eternal ages ? Wo must bow,
Being fast frost-bound in this realm of prose,
To Italy, who has declared him one
Second to Petrarch seldom, in the nerve
Of his grave sonnets, whether love was Lord
Of the strict verse, or intellect alone.
He was no singer in the modern strain
Of bugle-songs and Balaklava blasts,
Ravens and Bells, most musically mingled,
Yet not much more than melody to a mind
That seeks in poesy the food of Thought :
The pomp of Opera had not been born,
And thought and feeling had not died in words,
Words poor in sense, though silvered o'er with sound.
V.
Now give to Michelangelo a name
Past Pindemonte's four,11 — that highest one
Of patriot soul, — for whosoever works
Without a country, in whatever art,
Counts as an artist only second best.
0 stately city, — Florence of the West !
Since Charles and Amo have grown kindred streams
(Our great Song-master being at home by both),
Laurentian city ! many sons of thine
And noble daughters have in Florence marked
The Medicean chapel, and the shrine
Where Cosmo sleeps in marble, and the words
On the black slab graved, — " Pater Patrise,"
Which now we borrow for our Washington:
In my mind's eye I figure such a group;
And haply some one, looking fondly round,
Dazed with such splendor, says, — if English born,
To some fair cousin of his blood, perchance
Pilgrim o'er seas to Latium's holy land, —
"Look there, my Lady! see Lorenzo's tomb!
2 This expression refers to a. phrase used by the Italian poet Ippolito Pindemonte, des
ignating Michelangelo as the four-souled man (nom di quattr' alme), in allusion to his
having been a sculptor, a painter, an architect, and a poet.

278 EAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.
0 Day and Night — but this is wondrous strange!"
And she gives answer, if of his degree :
"Most strange, indeed, to sco those half-born things
Out of dead marble starting into life !
The perfect somnolence, in slumber locked;
And under that vast quietude, the grief
Of one who seems to have forever lost
Some great and honored object. Such are we,
Losing that model which our youth designed;
But we may win it back again through grace,
Unless the good seed, dropped on barren ground
Of stony hearts, find no more nourishment
Than roses could on yon huge heaps of lime.''
On those grand forms, one of the Strozzi wrote
This choicest compliment in choice Italian,
Poet penned ever, — purely Florentine
(For Florence is the flower of compliment,
And always bore the lily on her shield) :
"The Night which thou beholdest, bound in deep
And sweet repose, an Angel's hand did hew
Out of this rock, — and though she is asleep
Breathes — doubt'st thou? Wake her — she will speak to you."
Whereto, in language we may never match,
The grief-worn patriot gave sublime reply :
" 'T is well to slumber, best to be of stone,
While shame endures and Florence is not free ;
So, lest I waken, ah! subdue thy tone;
Methiuks 't is blessed not to hear nor see."

APPENDIX. 279

APPENDIX C.
See Chapter VII. page 180.
THE following account of the tapestries of Raphael during the French
Revolution is taken from an article by E. Muntz, published in the
Chrovique des Arts for the 14th and 28th of July, 1877: —
" The eight tapestries mentioned by Millin (Magasin Encyclop&dique, t. III.
p. 374, 1797), as exposed in the Louvre in 1797, were probably Gobelin
copies executed under Louis XIV.,, now preserved in the Garde Meuble.
"The originals were not exhibited until 1797, as is proved by a document
entitled Notice des Tapisseries, etc., published by M. Muntz. In the Preface
to this notice it is stated that the government commissioners bought these
nine tapestries after Raphael, at the sale of the 'mobilier du Pape,' which
took place at Rome immediately after the subversion of the Papal government
by the French. (See Duppa, ' A Brief Account,' etc. pp. 58 - 63. London.
1799. 2d ed.) At this sale the company of brokers which followed the
army was allowed to buy what it pleased on its own terms, and what re
mained was purchased by the Jews of the Ghetto. The tapestries of Raphael
were appraised at twelve hundred piastres each by an employe" of the Vatican,
to which the company of brokers added fifty piastres. No objection being
raised, they were sold for twelve hundred and fifty piastres apiece, or about
seven thousand francs. With the exception of the Descent into Limbo, they
were exhibited in the Louvre for the space of two years. At the end of
that time they were given back to the company of brokers represented by
MM. Coen and Nouvel, as the government declined to purchase. Until 1808,
when they were restored to the Vatican, nothing is known of their history.
M. Muntz publishes in his article (July 28th) documents from the library of
the Louvre."

280 RAPHAEL AND MICHELANGELO.

APPENDIX D.
See Chapter X. page 269, note 55.
TO the portraits of Michelangelo, mentioned in the text, we may add an
engraving in the Royal collection at Berlin, which is reproduced in the
Zeitschrift fur Bildende Kunst, Vol. XL p. 64, with a short article by J. E.
Wessely, the well-known author of several valuable works upon engraving.
Wessely claims that this bold and forcible head was not only drawn but also
engraved by Michelangelo himself, and that it is the original from which
Giorgio Ghisi worked (B. 71). The head is treated with great vigor, and in
style of work resembles a pen-and-ink drawing. The profile head by Buonasoni,
which forms the title-page to Condivi's Life of Michelangelo, and the above-
mentioned engraving by Ghisi, are the only two contemporary engraved
portraits of the great master, and from them have sprung the modern engrav
ings by Francois, Normand, Meulemeester, Potrelle, and others. Besides
these there is a head engraved by I. Matham, with the inscription, " Ad vivum
delineatus, prout est Romae in monte Trinitatis." It is not known who made
the original drawing, but the engraver cannot have worked from the life, as
he lived at Rome a century after Michelangelo's death.

APPENDIX. 281

APPENDIX E.
See Chapter IX. page 241, note 20.
" ~T~ E Tournoi sous Pie IV. dans la cour du Vatican. Deux chevaliers la
_l  1 lance en arret, se precipitent l'un sur l'autre, tandis que divers autres
se tiennent tout autour a cheval et qu'un grand nombre de spectateurs gar-
nissent les tribunes et les loges. A droite on voit s'elever la coupole de St.
Pierre en construction. Sur une tablette du haut I'inscription : Mostra della
giostra fatta nel teatro di Palazzo Ridotto in questo forma della Sta. di N. S.
Pio IV. come si vede nella pianta della stampa con sue misure. Le chifire
IB fecit, et ou le trait du H. est une barre et non un c, se trouve a la droit
du bas. H. 16 p. L. 21 p. 2 L.
"Francfort s/m. Piece a l'eau forte." — Passavant, Vol. IV. p. 96, Appen
dix No. 3.

INDEX.

INDEX.

Adriatic, 1.
Assisi, 3, 11, 15, 17.
Ambrogia da Milano, 5, 6, 7.
Apennines, 8, 16.
Alexander VI., 10, 81, 110, 118, 159.
Archivio de' Canonici, 12.
Avellana, monastery of, 12.
Anthony, St., 13, 36.
Academy at Florence, 14.
Adoration of the Magi, 14.
Angelico, Fra, 14, 26, 152, 231.
Antonio da Milano, 14.
Alexander V., 15.
Alunno, 15, 17, 27.
Alfani, 25, 35.
Adam, 31, 42, 100, 116, 119, 123.
Academy, St. Mark's, 37, 38.
Alps, 45.
Aldovrandi, 46.
Agnelli, Fra Guglielmo, 47.
Albergo dei Poveri, 53.
Arno, 54, 74.
Albertina Collection, 57, 79, 170.
Augustine, St., 62, 117, 174.
Anghiari, 65.
Academy, Florentine, 70.
Academy, Royal, 71.
Apostles, statues of, 71.
Allegro, of Milton, 72.
Aumale, Due d', 74.
Albizzi, 82.
Ariosto, 82, 122.
Alexander the Great, 84, 95.
Athos, Mount, 84.
Apelles, 95.

Apollo, 101, 110, 111, 114, 121, 123 ; statue
of, 221.
Avignon, 109.
Ariadne, 111.
Abraham, 116.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 118.
Alcseus, 121.
Archimedes, 124, 128.
Aristotle, 124, 125, 126, 129.
Alkibiades, 126, 212.
Archytas, 126.
Anaxagoras, 127.
Archesilaus, 127.
Aristippus, 127.
Averroes, 127.
Areopagus, 130.
Agostino, San, 135 ; Church of, 26, 57.
Attila, 136, 153, 154, 157, 202.
Amsterdam, 155.
Apneas, 176.
Anchises, 176.
Ascanius, 176.
Arras, 180.
Ananias, 182, 184.
Athens, 182, 194, 211, 213.
AUegri, Antonio, 196.
Alaric, 202.
Aventine Hill, 204.
Aginensis, 206.
Atalante, 206.
Aphrodite, 212.
Athena, 212.
Alcamenes, 213.
Adonis, statue, 216.
Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, 219, 221.
Aretino, Pietro, 231.

28G

INDEX.

Alfonso d' Avalos, 248.
Amadore, Francesco, 260, 261.
Archadelt, 261. B.
Barbarossa, Frederick, 2.
Boniface VIII., 2.
Biancaleoni, Gentile de', 4.
Bembo, 7, 10, 22, 82, 113, 114, 120, 141.
Bettinelli, Abbate, 7.
Bibbiena, Cardinal, 7, 39, 120, 151, 199.
Boccaccio, 7, 47.
Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 7, 24, 29, 30, 31,
32, 35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50, 51,
53, 54, 55, 56, 65, 67, 68, 71, 80, 82, 83,
84, 85, 86, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 104,
108, 111, 119, 134, 135, 138, 144, 145, 146,
147, 149, 150, 156, 158, 170, 171, 173, 175,
189, 193, 194, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 207,
208, 213, 215, 216, 217, 219, 220, 223, 224,
227, 229, 230, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238,
239, 240, 241, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 251,
252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 263,
265, 266, 269, 270.
Borgia, Ctesar, 10, 81, 82, 222.
Baldinucci, 11.
Buonagiunta, Oderigi, 11.
Balbi, Cesare, 12.
Bosone, 12, 13.
Bellini, Gentile and Jacopo, 14.
Benedict XIII., 14.
Brunelleschi, 14, 111, 241.
Bartolomeo da Foligno, 17.
Bartolomeo, Sanzio, 20.
Bernardina, 21, 23.
Bologna, 23, 46, 48, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 139,
162, 174, 205.
Brughiroli, Canon, 26.
BonKgli, 27.
Boniface, Marquis, 31.
Buonarroti Simoni, 31.
Bandinelli, Baccio, 32, 66, 199.
Buonarroti, Ludovico di Lionardo, 32, 92.
Baldovinetri, Alesso, 33.
Bigordi, Domenico. See Ghirlandajo.
Bertoldo, 38.
Buonarroti, Casa, 38, 43, 68, 83, 170.
Beatrice of Ferrara, 40, 132.

Bari, Niccola da, 47, 48.
Baldassare, 49, 50.
Bacchus, 51.
Brauwer, Adrien, 55.
Bury, Chateau de, 69.
Bruges, 70, 71.
Berlin, 72.
Baldacchino, Virgin of the, 74, 75, 79.
Bridgewater, Duke of, 74.
Baglione, Grisone, 75 ; Atalanta, 75 ; Gian
Paolo, 75, 76 ; Chapel, 75, 78.
Baglione, Astorre, 76.
Bramante, 82, 85, 86, 93, 128, 151, 169, 173,
184, 238, 239.
Bentivogli, 89, 136, 174.
Bernardino d' Antonio, 89.
Buonarroti, Buonarroto, 90.
Buonarroti, Giovan Simone, 90, 92.
Buonarroti, Lionardo, 92, 260, 261, 267.
Botticelli, 98.
Bernini, 108.
Bartolomeo, Fra, 109.
Bracciolini, Poggio, 111.
Bernard, San, 117.
Bonaventura, San, 117.
Beethoven, 122.
Bellona, 131.
Barberini Palace, 132.
Burckhardt, 132.
Bolsena, 136, 137, 138, 153.
Beraldus, 141.
Baraballo, 143.
Baccio d' Agnolo, 144.
Bini, Bernardo, 144.
Baldini, 162.
Berti, Casa, 169.
Borgo Nuovo, 169, 176.
Borgo, Incendio del, 175, 176, 177.
Borgia chamber, 185.
Buonaccorsi, 185.
Barbara, St., 188.
Buoninsegni, Domenico, 198.
Borghese, Giulio, 200.
Boyers, Adrian VI., 201.
Bibbiena, Bernardo, 206.
Bosco, Maso del, 208.
Boboli Gardens, 215.
Baglioni, 220.
Brutus, Bust of, 227, 228.

INDEX.

287

Binck, Jacob, 240.
Beatrizet, 256.
Bracci, Cecchino, 257, 258, 259.
Blois, 265.
Bonasone, Giulio, 269.

C.

Castiglione, Count, 1, 4, 7, 39, 64, 112, 120,
161, 186, 191.
Carpegna, Monte, 2.
Catria, Monte, 2, 12.
Cavallo, Monte del, 2.
Celestine V., 2, 3.
Colonna family, 2.
Cagli, 7, 13, 21.
Calandra, La, 7, 10, 142.
Carpi, 7.
Cicero, 7.
Colonna, Palazzo, 7.
Corteggiano, 7, 8.
Cavalcaselle, 13, 18, 21.
Cavallini, 16, 17.
Clitumnus, 16.
Colbordolo, 18.
Ciarla, Battista, 21 ; Magia, 21.
Cambio, Sala del, 23, 24, 27, 29.
Ciarla, Simone, 23, 73, 93, 128, 151.
Citta della Pieve, 23.
Cincinnatus, 25.
Canossa, 31.
Casentino, 31.
Chiusi e Caprese, 31.
Cologne, 32.
Carmine Chapel, 34, 44.
Clement VII., 39, 174, 201, 202, 203, 217,
249.
Condivi, 41, 83, 84, 85, 150, 230.
Colonna, Vittoria, 42, 242, 247, 248, 250,
251, 255, 257.
Credi, Lorenzo di, 44, 58.
Charles VIII., 45, 52.
Cupid, 45, 49.
Christ, 53, 78, 179, 182, 189.
Citta di Castello, 56, 57, 59.
Camino, Prince of, 57.
Connestabile, 58, 61, 159.
Caen, 59, 169.

Camaldoli, 61.
Carrara, 71, 84, 86, 145, 146, 147, 149, 200,
201, 205, 214, 224.
Cardellino, 72, 73, 158, 195.
Campagna, 74.
Canigiani, 74.
Crosnier, 103.
Correggio, 106.
Chantelon, 108.
Caligula, 110.
Calcagnini, 112, 153.
Catullus, 120.
Calliope, 121.
Clio, 121.
Corinna, 122.
Chrysoloras, 127.
Czartorysky, 128.
Carmine, 129, 156.
Chigi, Agostino, 132, 159, 160, 200, 205 ;
Chapel, 200.
Conti, Sigismund, 133.
Campori Marchese, 142.
Charles V., 143, 201, 217, 218, 250.
Cenci, Bernardo, 150.
Calvius, Fabius, 153.
Capua, 153.
Canaan, 157.
Ca:sarino di Francesco, 159.
Cecilia, St., 174, 195.
Constantine, Hall of, 177.
Caldara, Polidoro, 178.
Charles I., 180.
Cromwell, 180.
Charles II., 181.
Cosmo, St., 217, 226.
Cambry, League of, 218.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 218.
Capponi, Niccolo, 219.
Carducci, 219.
Charon, 233.
Clement XIII., 233.
Colnaghi, 235.
Coningham, W., 235.
Cramer, Dr., 235.
Caradosso, 239.
Cancellaria, Palace of the, 240.
Campidoglio, 242.
Colonna, Fabrizio, 248.
Cesarini, 253.

288

INDEX.

Colonna, Giulia, 253.
Cavalieri, Tommaso de', 255, 256, 257.
D.
Dante, 2, 11, 12, 13, 15, 40, 47, 120, 228.
Dennistoun, 2, 5.
Domenico di Bartolo, 16.
Domenico, Sail, Church of, 21, 47, 57, 158.
Desiderio da Settignano, 32.
Donatello, 49.
Dudley, Lord, 57, 63.
David, 65, 68.
Doni, Angelo, 67.
Dusseldorf, 74.
Diirer, Albert, 95, 162.
Daniel, 102, 103.
Dicaearchus, 126.
Diogenes of Melos, 126.
Duglioli, Elena, 174.
Danby, Lord, 181.
Damian, Saint, 217, 226.
Durante, Castel, 239.
Diocletian, Baths of, 241, 265.
Duca, Jacopo del, 265. E.
Emilia, Donna, 9.
Eyck, Van, 34.
Edelinck, 57, 65.
Egerton, Sir Thomas, 61.
England, 61, 180, 181.
Ellesmere, 74, 75.
Ercolani, Count, 174.
Ezekiel, Vision of, 174, 175."
Elymas, 182, 184.
Elias, 190. F.
Frederic II., 2, 17.
Federigo, Montefeltro, 3, 4, 6, 9, 20.
Francis, St., convent of, 3, 15.
Fregoso, Ottaviano and Federigo, 7.
Florence, 10, 14, 16, 23, 26, 31, 34, 46, 49,
50, 54, 61, 80, 84, 85, 86, 110, 147, 169, 204,
229, 230, 249, 259, 260, 261, 263, 265, 267.
Fabriano, 11.
Foligno, 11, 13, 14, 15, 131, 133, 134.
Franco, Bolognese, 11.

Frezzo, Federigo, 15.
Fortunata, Santa, 16.
Francia, Francesco, 23, 128, 162.
Francis, St., 35.
Fancelli, Clara, 57.
Fevoli, Palazzo, 70.
Farnese, Alexander, 130.
Ferrara, Beatrice of, 132.
Fornarina, 132, 133, 190.
Farnesina, 159.
Flanders, 180.
Francia. See Raibolini.
Fattucci, 203.
Fiumlcino, 204.
Franzese, Giovanni, 241.
Fortnum, C. E. Drury, 269.
G.
Gonzaga, Gian Francesco, 3.
Gregory XII., 3, 14, 71, 117, 130.
Guidobaldo, Duke, 6.
Gonzaga, Caesar, 7 ; Elizabeth, 7.
Gasparo, Don, 9.
Gubbio, 12, 61, 263.
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 14.
Giotto, 16, 17, 18.
Giovanni Santi, 18, 20, 21, 23.
Grimm, 18, 24, 129.
Genga, Girolamo, 25, 36.
Ghirlandajo, 29, 34, 35, 96, 98.
Gotti, 31, 50, 52, 66, 71, 144, 197, 198, 219,
228, 230, 236, 245, 246, 247, 249, 253, 257,
263.
Guasti, 40, 97, 107, 215, 247, 253.
Granacci, Francesco, 44, 96.
Gallo, Jacopo, 45.
Gualandi, Count, 49, 174.
Gaye, 50, 258.
Giorgio, Cardinal di San, 51, 138.
Gavari, Capella, 56.
Gabrielli, Prince, 61.
George, St., 61.
Guillaume, 70, 216.
Guidi, Casa, 72.
Ganymede, 75.
Genoa, 88, 180.
Grassi, Paolo de', 96.
Goliath, 101.

INDEX.

289

Ghiberti, 111, 156.
Goethe, 124.
Gorgias, 126, 127.
Gonzaga, Federigo, 127.
Gruyer, 129.
Giorgione, 143, 186, 194.
Guigueri, 143.
Gaddi, 147.
Galatea, 160, 161, 173.
Gamier, Ch., 171, 237.
Giovanni, San, in Monte, 174.
Grimani, Cardinal, 181.
Gomorrah, 186.
Giannotti, 227, 228, 245, 247, 258.
Girolamo del Fano, 233.
Guiducci, 247.
Giannone, 249.
Gonzaga, Giulia, 250.
Graziani, Bishop, 250.
Geneva, 251. H.
Haggei, Prophet, 10.
Henry II., Emperor, 31.
Hercules, 43, 44.
Henri V., 44.
Henry VII., Emperor, 62.
Huot, 79.
Haman, 101.
Holofernes, 101.
Homer, 120, 121, 122.
Horace, 122.
Heliodorus, 131, 135, 136, 137, 153, 157, 158,
176, 177, 184, 195.
Hampton Court, 181.
Haydon, 232.
Hollande, Francois de, 248.

I.

Italy, 1, 4, 154.
Italian, 3, 13.
Ingesuati, 26.
Ingegno, 1', 27.
Isaiah, 102, 135.
Inghirami, 176, 195.

Julius II., 11, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88, 90, 107,
110, 113, 129, 130, 132, 136, 138, 139, 140,

143, 146, 147, 148, 157, 170, 195, 201, 202,
203, 204, 206, 208, 215, 217, 230, 241, 260.
Joel, 102.
Jonah, 102, 235.
James, St., 116, 190, 194.
John, St., 116, 174, 190, 194.
Jerome, St., 117, 158, 174.
Justinian, 130.
Jacob, 184.
Jesus, 188.
Jardiniere, La Belle, 195.
Julius III., 241.

K.

Kensington Museum, 181.

Lauranna, Lutiano, 5.
Leo X., 7, 39, 81, 110, 111, 129, 130, 140,
141, 142, 143, 144, 151, 152, 153, 154, 178,
179, 195.
Louvre, 7, 65, 72, 76, 119, 279.
Liberatore, Niccolo di, 17.
Lorenzo da San Severius, 20.
Leonidas, 24, 25.
Lyons, 26.
Lionardo da Vinci, 28, 54, 56, 57, 65, 66,
73, 99, 108, 179, 196.
Lorenzo, San, 31 ; Church of, 170.
Lippi, Fra Filippo, 35, 36.
Labouchere, 36.
Lungara, 49.
Lille, 56.
Lysippus, 62.
London, 63, 189.
Laurence, 66.
Loggia de' Lanzi, 68.
Louis XII. of France, 69, 82.
Leopold II., Duke, 72.
Louis XIV, 74, 139, 181.
Landsberg, Chevalier, 77.
Leah, 83, 184, 213.
Lionardo di Compagno, 94.
Lippi, Filippino, 101.
Lessing, 105.
Lateran basilica, 109.
Laocoon, 111.

290

INDEX.

Lorenzo, St., 116.
Lacrtius, Diogenes, 120.
Laura, 122.
Lascaris, 141.
Leo I., the Great, 153, 154.
Leo III., 177.
Lystra, 182, 183.
Loggie, Vatican, 184, 185, 186, 187.
Lazarus, 189, 191.
Lorcnzetto, 192.
Legname, Antonio Maria, 205.
Lucca, 222.
Longfellow, H. W., 245, 247, 253, 254, 267.
Loreto, 264.
Leone, Leo, 269.

M.
Marino, San, 2.
Montecoppiolo, 2.
Montefeltro, 2, 3.
Mantua, 3, 7, 23, 26, 45.
Martin V, 3, 14.
Malatesta, 4, 14, 18, 19.
Milan, 6, 20, 23.
Medici, Giuliano de', 7, 217, 222, 223, 230.
Medici, Lorenzo de', the Magnificent, 10, 35,
37, 38, 42, 44, 49, 50, 217, 222, 223, 230,
273, 274.
Mezzastro, 15.
Montefalco, 15.
Masaccio, 18, 34, 156.
Melozzo da Forli, 18, 20, 21.
Monte, Contrada del, 20.
Mantegna, Andrea, 23, 35, 43, 78.
Matanzio, 24.
Moody, 28.
Matilda, Countess, 31.
Montaperti, 31.
Medici, Luisa de', 41.
Medici, Piero de', 45, 46.
Medici, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pier Fran
cesco, 48, 49.
Maitland, Mr. Fuller, 61.
Mouscron, 71.
Matarazzo, 76.
Moses, 83, 116, 190, 208, 209, 211, 224, 230,
275.
Minerva, 111.

Morelli, l'Anonimo, 112.
Marsyas, 114, 123.
Menexenus, 125.
Miindler, 132.
Mirandola, 139.
Malespina, Marchese, 145.
Michelet, 153.
Madonna, Sistine, 178, 187.
Madrid, 178.
Mengs, Raphael, 179.
Mercury, 183.
Mohammed, 185.
Medici, Giulio de', 189, 191, 201, 202.
Morghen, Raphael, 190.
Madonna del Sasso, 192.
Minerva, Santa Maria sopra, 192.
Michelangelo. See Buonarroti.
Migliarotti, Manetto, 206.
Mario, Monte, 218.
Medici, Alessandro de', 220, 227, 229.
Mini, Antonio, 221.
Medici, Catherine de', 222.
Machiavelli, 223.
Montorsoli, Fra Giovan Angelo, 226.
Milton, 232, 233.
Maderno, Carlo, 240.
Milanesi, 240, 255, 260.
Martini, Luca, 253.
Montaiglon, A. de, 255, 266.
Marignano, Marquis of, 265.
Meulemeester, 280.

N.
Nerone, Monte, 2.
Nicolette, 11.
Nelli, Ottaviano, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18.
Nuzi da Fabriano, 16.
Numa, 24.
Neri, Francesca di, 32.
Nera, Sassetti, 34.
Naples, 82.
Nicholas V., 83, 109.
Novella, Santa Maria, 96.
Nero, 110.
National Gallery, 189.
Narbonne, 191.
Norton, Professor Charles E., 228.
Normand, 280.

INDEX.

291

0.
Odd' Antonio, 3.
Oderigi d' Agobbio, 11, 17.
Orsini, Napoleone, 12.
Oddi, Maddalena degli, 56.
Oxford, 58, 76, 189.
Onofrio, San, 72.
Orleans Madonna, 74.
Ovid, 120, 122.
Ottley, 128.
Onias, 136, 137.
Orvieto, 138, 218, 235.
Orley, Bernhard von, 180.
Overbeck, 192.
Olivier, 196.
Ochino, 250, 251.

Palestrina, 2, 53.
Passavant, 4, 22, 24, 57, 64, 112, 114, 128,
133, 181, 240.
Pesaro, Lord of, 4.
Pavia, 5, 88.
Pintelli, Baecio, 5.
Piero della Francesca, 6, 7, 16, 18.
Pius II., 6, 63, 110.
Pia, Emilia, 7, 8, 9.
Plato, 9, 41, 124, 125, 127, 251, 255.
Paris, 11.
Pater, 11.
Perugia, 11, 13, 15, 23, 24, 26, 54, 59, 65,
75, 78, 83, 118, 136.
Palmerucci, Guido, 12, 13, 16, 18.
Paradiso, II, 12.
Pisa, 15.
Perruzolo, 19.
Plutarch, 20.
Pungileoni, 20, 24, 57.
Parto, Pietro di, 23.
Pittacus, 24.
Pericles, 25.
Pinturicchio, 25, 35, 57, 63, 64, 206.
Pitti Gallery, 26, 143.
Pollajuolo, 35, 59.
Politian, 43, 202.
Palla, Gian Battista della, 44.
Pisano, Niccola, 47.
Pieta, group, 51, 52, 53.

Peters, St., basilica, 52, 85, 111, 118, 150,
151, 170, 173, 237, 241, 242, 247, 203, 267.
Petronilla, St., chapel of, 52.
Peter, St., 59, 153, 155, 182, 190, 195.
Phidias, 62, 186, 210, 212, 213.
Piccolomini, 62.
Praxiteles, 62.
Proserpine, 63.
Paul, St., 83, 116, 153, 174, 181, 195.
Pietro, San, in Vincula, 83, 170.
Petronius, St., 88.
Pinti, Borgo, 92.
Pistoja, Giovanni da, 97.
Parthenon, 100.
Parnassus, 114, 120, 122.
Pindar, 120.
Propertius, 120.
Polyhymnia, 121.
Ptolemy, 124, 128.
Pythagoras, 124, 126, 128.
Pyrrhus of Elis, 127.
Petrarch, 128.
Paul III., 130, 208, 230, 237, 251.
Parma, 139.
Pallas, 140.
Pauluzzi, 142.
Penni, Francesco, 149, 178, 182, 185, 200.
Pesce, Madonna del, 158, 174, 195.
Perugino. See Vannucci.
Pandolfini Palace, 169.
Pitti Palace, 174.
Pippi, Giulio Romano, 177, 178, 182.
Palermo, 178, 179.
Philip IV., 179.
Paris de' Grassis, 180.
Philippi, 181.
Piacenza, 187.
Pietro, San, in Montorio, 189.
Pantheon, 191.
Poseidon, 209.
Parsons, Dr. T. W., 225.
Polidori, 228.
Paul IV., 231, 233.
Pozzi, 233.
Pauline Chapel, 237.
Peruzzi, Balthazar, 240.
Pia, Porta, 243.
Puliti, Leto, 247.
Primaticcio, 259.

292

INDEX.

Pius IV., 265.
Potrelle, 280.

Q.

Quercia, Giacomo della, 48.
Querno, 143.
Quatremere de Quincy, 174.
R.
Rovere, Francesco Maria della, 10, 127.
Bio, A. F., 13, 129.
Rome, 14, 30, 45, 59, 77, 87, 109, 110, 112,
114, 123, 140, 143, 145, 148, 169, 176, 180,
183, 191, 192, 233, 237, 241, 249, 280.
Rimini, 16.
Rossi, Adamo, 17.
Rolandino, Count, 31.
Reiset, 65.
Rubens, 65, 143, 180, 183, 195.
Baimondi, Marc Antonio, 66, 121.
Roselli, Cosimo, 98, 206.
Riario, Raphael, 138.
Ravenna, 139, 154.
Boscoe, 143.
Rossi, Cardinal de', 143.
Rembrandt, 155.
Raphael. See Sanzio.
Raibolini, Francia, 174, 177.
Romano, Giulio. See Pippi.
Rachel, 183, 213.
Rogers, 191.
Ricciarelli, Daniele, 233, 264, 265, 266, 269.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 234.
Raczynski, 248.
Riccio, Luigi del, 257, 258, 259.
Reumont, Avon, 274. S.
Sanzio, Raphael, 4, 7, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25,
28, 29, 30, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65,
66, 67, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 86,
110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119, 120, 122, 123,
128, 133, 135, 137, 144, 151, 152, 155, 156,
157, 158, 169, 170, 173, 174, 175, 177, 180,
182, 183, 185, 186, 191, 192, 196, 197, 198,
199, 238.

Sforza, Battista, 4, 6.
Santi, Giovanni, 5, 16, 18, 23, 28, 108.
Sylvius, ./Eneas, 6, 111.
Savonarola, 9, 10, 16, 97.
Spoleto, 12, 264.
San Sevcriuo, Jacopo and Lorenzo da, 20.
Signorelli, Luca, 23, 98, 236.
Sistine Chapel, 24, 95, 104, 105, 106, 119,
134, 156, 157.
Socinius, Lucius, 24.
Socrates, 24, 124, 126, 130.
Spagna, Lo, 25, 35.
Springer, 26, 58, 206.
Servi, Church of, 27.
Simoni, 31, 32.
Settignano, 32.
Sassetti, Francesco, 34 ; Nera, 34.
Schoengauer, Martin, 36.
Spirito, Santo, Church of, 44.
Sforza, Ludovico, 45.
Sangallo, Francesco da, 50.
Severo, San, Church of, 57, 62, 118.
Soderini, 65, 68, 86, 87, 139.
Saturn, 70.
Siena, 71, 222.
Sergardi, Filippo, 72.
Symonds, 87, 107, 228, 245, 246, 247, 249,
255, 257.
Sebastiano del Piombo, 94, 132, 146, 149,
189, 197, 198, 199, 237, 256.
Swinburne, 94.
Sixtus IV., 98, 206, 273.
Sibyl, Delphic, 101, 103, 104.
Sibyl, Cumaean, 102, 103.
Sibyl, Erythraean, 102, 103, 104.
Sibyl, Libyan, 102, 103.
Sibyl, Persian, 103.
Salviati, Cardinal, 108.
Segnatura, Camera della, 113, 135.
Solomon, Judgment of, 114, 131.
Seotns, Duns, 118.
Sansecondo, Giacomo, 121.
Sappho, 121, 122.
Sciarra, Palazzo, 121.
Sanazzaro, 122.
Speusippus, 125.
Sadoleto, 141.
Serapico, 142.
Sismondi, 143.

INDEX.

293

Sangallo, Giuliano da, 144, 273.
Sansavino, Andrea, 144; Jacopo, 144.
Salviati, Jacopo, 146.
Seravezza, 146, 147, 148.
Shakespeare, 157, 255, 257.
Seggiola, Madonna della, 158, 195.
Sicilia, Spasimo di, 178.
Stephen, St., 181.
Stanze, Vatican, 184, 196.
Sodom, 186.
SiVt-s, St., 187, 188.
Sellajo, Lionardo, 197.
Sampson, 2^21.
Sulla, 228. ;
Sharp, 234..
Sangallo, A ntonio da, 238, 239, 265.
Srt.(izzi, Palace, 238.
Satiro, San, 239.
Sforza, Galeazzo, 239.
Silvestro, San, 242.
Southey, 247.
Strozzi, Roberto de' Filippo, 259.
Sforza, Giovanni Maria, 273.

T.
Trinci Palace, 13.
Trinci, Corrado, 14.
Trinci, Rinaldo, 17.
Tiranni Chapel, 21.
Trajan, 24.
Taunton Madonna, 31, 36, 37, 43.
Trinita, Sta, church of, 33, 34.
Taunton, Lord, 36.
Titus, Baths of, 50, 111, 185.
Tobias, 58, 59.
Taddei, Taddeo, 72, 74.
Theseus, Elgin, 100.
Troad, 101.
Theodoric, 109.
Tibullus, 120.
Thalia, 121.
Tebaldeo, 122.
Terence, 122.
Telanges, 126.
Theano, 126.
Tenda, Madonna della, 158.
Titian, 179, 190, 194, 196.
Transfiguration, 187, 189, 190, 191, 195.

Tabor, Mount, 190.
Tiber, 205.
Testa, Costanza, 247.
Tromboncino, 247.
Tornabuoni, 273. U.
Umbria, 1, 2, 11, 14, 16, 18, 64.
Urbino, 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 18, 20, 21, 23, 32, 33,
73, 74, 83, 151.
Uffizi, 6, 31, 38, 51, 72, 132.
Unti, Pietro degli, 14.
Uccello, Paolo, 20, 43.
Urania, 122.
Urbano, Pietro, 150.
Uguccioni Palace, 169.
Udine, Giovanni da, 178, 182, 186, 226.
Utrecht, Adrian of, 201.
Urbino, Duke of, 208, 229, 273.
Urbino, town of, 239.

Venus, 1.
Venice, 3, 46, 112, 219, 220.
Villari, 10.
Vasari, 11, 27, 64, 94, 129, 152, 180, 189, 236,
237, 256, 263, 264, 266, 267, 269, 273.
Vinci, Lionardo da, 16, 23, 65.
Vannucci, Perugino, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
28, 35, 45, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64,
94, 98, 108, 118, 135, 168.
Villiers, Jean de Groslaye, 51.
Vatican, 78, 80, 84, 113, 141, 152, 153, 155,
156, 175, 176, 177, 180.
Vienna, 79.
Volterra, Cardinal of, 87.
Virgil, 120.
Vidoni Palace, 169.
Veit, Philip, 192.
Varchi, 247.
Valdez, 249, 250.
Valori, Niccolo, 273. W.
Weyden, Rogier van der, 14.
Waagen, Dr., 22, 29, 72, 180, 181, 182.

294

INDEX.

Woltmann, 22, 29.
Wilson, 0. II., 37, 96.
Wicar, Musce, 56, 128.
Woodbum, 61, 77.
Whitehall, 180.

William III., 181.
AVreu, Sir Christopher, 181.
Winckelmann, 196, 208.
Wcllesley, Rev. Mr., 234.
Wordsworth, 247.

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