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It is difficult to decide who understood Michael Angelo less, his admirers or his censors; though both rightly agree in placing him at the head of an epoch; those of the re-establishment, these of the perversion, of style.

All extremes touch each other: languid praise and frigid censure belong to the paths of mediocrity, but he who enlarges the circle of knowledge, passes from the realm of talents to that of genius, leaps on an undiscovered or long-lost shore, and stamps it with his name, commands indiscriminate homage, and provokes irreconcilable censure. He who reflects on the "Più che Uman, Angelo divino" of Ariosto, the "via terribile" of Agostino Carracci, and for centuries on the general homage of a nation allowed to legislate in art, will not be easily persuaded that these epithets, this prerogative, were granted to an artist merely for correctness of design or anatomic discrimination, or that he exclusively obtained them for uniting sculpture, painting, and architecture in himself; three branches of one stem, and diverging only in mechanism and application, they have been more than once eminently united by others, and were seldom altogether separated before the time of Carlo Maratta. And yet this is all on which the eminence of Michael Angelo has been hitherto supposed to rest, all that can be gathered from the astrologic nonsense and the Tuscan loquacity of his blind adorer, Vasari – and what he found not, it would be time idly lost to search for in his contemporaries and successors, down to Reynolds, who, though chiefly smitten with the breadth of Michael Angelo, knew him better than all the copyists of his school.

The art preceded Michael Angelo as a craft; more or less practice alone distinguishes Pietro Perugino from Cimabue: whilst copy and imitation remain synonymes, there can be no choice in art; instead of the real nature it will copy the accidents of objects, and substitute the model for the man.

Michael Angelo appeared and soon felt that the candidate of legitimate fame is to build his works, not on the imbecile forms of a degenerate race, disorganized by clime, country, education, laws, and society; not on the transient refinements of fashion or local sentiment, unintelligible beyond their circle and century to the rest of mankind; but to graft them on Nature's everlasting forms and those general feelings of humanity, which no time can efface, no mode of society obliterate; – and in consequence of these reflections discovered the epic part of painting: that basis, that indestructibility of forms and thoughts, that simplicity of machinery on which Homer defied the ravages of time, which sooner or later must sweep to oblivion every work propped by baser materials and factitious refinements.

The subject of the Sistine Chapel is Theocracy and Religion, the Origin and the first Duty of Man. All minute discrimination of character is alien to the primeval simplicity of the moment – God and Man alone appear. The veil of Eternity is rent; Time, Space, and Matter teem; life darts from God, and adoration from the creature; deviation from this principle is the origin of Evil; the economy of Justice and Grace commences; Prophets and Sibyls in awful synod are the heralds of the Redeemer, and the host of patriarchs the pedigree of the Son of Man. The brazen Serpent and the fall of Haman, the Giant subdued by the Stripling, and the Conqueror destroyed by female weakness, are types of His mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces Him immortal, and the magnificence of the Last Judgement sums up the whole and re-unites the Founder and the race.

Michael Angelo, in his Last Judgement, with a few exceptions, has wound up the life of man, considered as the subject of religion, faithful or rebellious; and in a generic manner has distributed happiness and misery.

The more finished a character, the more, discriminated by his actions and turn of thought from his contemporaries, he pursues paths of his own, so much the more he attracts, so much the more he repels; the ardour of the one is equal to the violence of the other: he is not merely disliked, he is detested by all who have no sense for him; whilst by those who enter his train of thought, or sympathise with him, he is adored. Indifference has no share in what relates to him, it is a softer word for antipathy – it resembles the indifference of a female wooed; her indifference, her apathy, is a refusal without a verbal repulse. Where yes or no must decide, the mouth that can form neither, rejects. The principles, the style of Michael Angelo, are of that so closely-connected magnitude, that they are either all true or all false: pretended gold is either gold or not – the purer, the simpler a substance, the less it can coalesce with another; a pretended diamond of the size of a fist, is either of inestimable value or of none. If Michael Angelo did not establish art on a solid basis, he subverted it; he can claim only the heresies of paradox and receive their reward – disgust.

What Armenini relates as a proof of his nearly intuitive power of conception and execution, may be repeated as a much stronger instance of his deference and gratitude for the most humble claims. "Meeting one day, behind S. Pietro, with a young Ferrarese, a potter who had baked some model of his, M. Angelo thanked him for his care, and in return offered him any service in his power: the young man, emboldened by his condescension, fetched a sheet of paper, and requested him to draw the figure of a standing Hercules: M. Angelo took the paper, and retiring to a small shed near by, put his right foot on a bench, and with his elbow on the raised knee and his face on his hand stood meditating a little while, then began to draw the figure, and having finished it in a short time, beckoned to the youth, who stood waiting at a small distance, to approach, gave it him, and went away toward Belvedere. That design, as far as I was then able to judge, in precision of outline, shadow, and finish, no miniature could excel; it afforded matter of astonishment to see accomplished in a few minutes what might have been reasonably supposed to have taken up the labour of a month."

After the demise of Raffaello, legislation in Art was no longer disputed with M. Angelo; he not only became the oracle of youth, but appears to have inherited all the popularity of his great rival. A signal, though little known proof of this, is told by Bellori, in the Life of Federigo Barrocci, who, he says, used to tell, that when, drawing one day in company with Taddeo Zuccari a frieze of Polidoro, Michael Angelo, as usual, passed by on his little mule on his way to the palace, all the youths rose and ran to meet him with their drawings in their hands; Federigo alone remained bashfully behind in his place, which when Taddeo saw, he took his little portfolio to Michael Angelo, who attentively examined the designs, among which was a careful copy of his Moses; he praised it, and desiring to see the lad who had drawn that figure, animated him to pursue the method of study which he had begun.

The deference which he paid to the unassuming and the humble, he amply redeemed by the full assumption of his rights, and conscious assertion of superiority, when provoked to the contest by those who considered themselves as his equals, entered into competition with him, or attempted to share in his labours. Thus he repaid the sarcasms of Pietro Perugino, by calling him publicly a dunce in art; and when Pietro smarting, impatient of the ridicule, summoned him to the Tribunal of the Eight, he made good his charge, and saw him dismissed with contempt. Thus he rejected all partnership with Jacopo Sansovino, in the execution of the Facciata of San Lorenzo at Florence, though Leone X. appears to have intended it, by sending both together to Pietra Santa to provide the marbles necessary for that purpose, and examining both their models.

When Paolo III. had resolved on the fortifications of the Borgo, and, in order to ascertain the best mode of doing it, had assembled many persons of rank, with Antonio da Sangallo, Michael Angelo, as architect of the fortifications of S. Miniato at Florence, was likewise invited to join the assembly, and, after much contest, his opinion asked; he freely told it, though contrary to that of Sangallo and others present; and when the architect bade him to be content with the prerogatives of sculpture and painting without pretending to skill in fortification, he replied, that of the former two he knew little, but that of fortification, considering the time his mind had dwelt on it, and the proofs he had given of the solidity of his theory, he did not hesitate to claim more knowledge than what came to the share of Sangallo and all his relatives; and then proceeded, in the presence of all, to point out the many errors which Antonio had committed.

Another instance of a still greater independence of mind, Vasari⁸⁰ has recorded in the peremptory answer which M. Angelo gave to the Committee of Cardinals, &c. instigated by the partisans of Sangallo, (La Setta Sangallesca, Vasari,) to inspect the process of the fabric of S. Pietro, and to examine his plan. Ignorant of his design to derive the main light of the edifice from the cupola, they found fault with the scanty distribution of light, and told the Pontiff that M. Angelo had spoiled S. Pietro, and instead of a luminous temple, was erecting a gloomy vault. Giulio having communicated this to him at a general meeting of the deputies and inspectors, M. Angelo replied, I wish to hear these deputies talk myself: "Here we are," answered Cardinal Marcello – "Then know, Monsignore," said he, "that over these windows, in the vault which is to be raised, there are to be placed three more." – "You never told us this before!" said Cervino. – "No," replied M. Angelo, "I am not, nor ever will be bound to tell your Eminence, or any other person, what I must or what I mean to do: your duty is to provide money and take care that it be not stolen; what belongs to the plan and execution of the building you are to leave to me." Then turning to the Pope, "Holy Father," continued he, "you see what I gain; the fatigue I undergo is time and labour lost, unless my soul gain by it." The Pope, who loved him, and rejoiced at the defeat of the cabal, laying hands on his shoulders, said, "Doubt not your soul and body shall be equal gainers by it."

Among the many expectations in which he was disappointed, that which he appears to have formed on the early talent of Jacopo Carucci, as it was the most sanguine, must have been the most distressing; for, on seeing his figures of Faith and Charity with attendant Infants, in fresco, at the Nunziata, and considering them as produced by a youth of nineteen, he said, in the words of Vasari, "This young man, from what appears, grant life and pursuit, will raise this art to heaven."

But Jacopo did neither long pursue the same principles nor adopt superior ones: infected, like Andrea del Sarto, by the temporary fever which the style of Albert Durer had spread over Florence. He was, however, the favourite copyist in oil of M. Angelo's Cartoons, and as such, in preference, recommended by him to Alfonso D'Avalo, Marchese del Guasto, and Bartolomeo Bettini, his friend, who had obtained cartoons, the former of a Noli-me-tangere; this of a naked Venus caressed by Cupid.⁸¹

The name of Giuliano Bugiardini, supported only by its own feeble powers, would probably long have sunk to oblivion, had it not been kept afloat by the personal attachment of M. Angelo. In Vasari, Giuliano is the synonyme, of helpless impotence; he had certainly neither the dexterity nor the grasp of the Aretine biographer; but he also had neither the pretension nor the craft. There is, and chiefly among artists, a singular class of men, who, with great moral simplicity, but a capacity less than moderate, court with ungovernable passion an art which they are doomed never to possess, but to whom self-complacency compensates for every disappointment of the most ungrateful perseverance, public neglect and private irrision: they neither envy nor suspect, and though not intimidated by a superiority which they do not fully comprehend, are ready to respect the part that comes within their compass. Such a man was Bugiardini; and such a character M. Angelo was likely to appreciate;⁸² and though aware that he was not equal to serious communication in art, to select him as a companion of his leisure, and to assist or submit to him, as the simplicity of his character required; – of either we shall select from Vasari an instance. When he was occupied with the picture of Sta. Catherina, for the Church of Sta. Maria Novella, he requested the advice of M. Angelo on the arrangement of a file of soldiers which he meant to place on the foreground, flying, fallen, wounded, killed; because the idea of their having formed a file, could not be expressed within the scanty space he had allotted them, without having recourse to fore-shortenings, which he confessed to be beyond his power. M. Angelo, to please him, took a coal, and with his own comprehension drew on the panel a file of naked figures, variously fore-shortened, falling different ways, forwards, backwards, with others dead or wounded: but the whole being merely in outlines, left Giuliano still at a loss. Tribolo, therefore, to draw him from this dilemma, undertook to form them in clay, leaving the surface of each figure rough, to increase more forcibly the chiaroscuro: this method, however, so little pleased the neatness of Giuliano, that the moment Tribolo left him, he with a wet pencil licked them into a polish, which took away grain and effect together, and when the picture was finished, left no trace of M. Angelo's ever having seen it.

Messer Ottaviano de' Medici had requested Giuliano to paint him a portrait of M. Angelo. He obtained the consent of M. Angelo: having held him between chat and work two hours at the first sitting – for M. Angelo delighted to hear him talk – Giuliano got up, and said, "M. Angelo, if you want to see yourself, rise: I have settled the character of the face." M. Angelo rose, looked at the portrait, and said, smiling, "What the devil (che diavolo) have you been doing? you have clapt one of the eyes into one of the temples – look to it." Giuliano having for some time looked silently at the portrait, and the sitter, resolutely replied, "I do not see what you said; but take your place, and I'll give another glance at nature." M. Angelo, who knew where the defect lay, sat down again sneering; and Giuliano, having eyed repeatedly now the picture and now M. Angelo, at last rose and said, "It appears to me that the thing is as I have drawn it, and that nature shows it so." "Oh, then it is a defect of nature!" replied Michael Angelo, "go on and prosper in your work."

Francesco Granacci, the companion of his early studies, and Jacopo, called L'Indaco, the enlivener of his solitude, enjoyed the same degree of his familiarity; but as the real basis of friendship is equality, and mutual esteem founded on similarity of character and powers, attachments merely formed by early habits or congenial humour between men too dissimilar else to admit of comparison, never can aspire to its privileges and name. Condescension is not always delicate, and the indiscretions of simplicity sooner or later provoke the pride, contempt, and arrogance of superior powers. Giuliano, Granacci, and L'Indaco, experienced all three from Michael Angelo; they were among his conscripts for assisting in the frescoes of the Capella; but finding their pigmy capacities unequal to his colossal style, he not only, in lofty silence, destroyed what they had begun, but barring all access to the Chapel and himself, forced them to return, vainly grumbling, to Florence.

SCHOOL OF SIENA

In the enumeration of Tuscan art, some lovers of subdivision have fancied, with more refinement than solidity, to discover in the style of Sienese artists a characteristic sufficiently distinct from the Florentine, to erect Siena into a school. This characteristic, we are told, is a peculiar gaiety in the selection of colour, and an air of physiognomic vivacity and serenity of face; both, it seems, the inheritance of the Sienese race. They have, accordingly, divided this school into three epochs: the first is that of the ancients (gli antichi); and its first palpable patriarch, Guido, or Guidone, commonly called Guido da Siena, and noticed already in the beginning of our chapter on the Florentine school. He flourished before the birth of Cimabue, in the first half of the thirteenth century, and is followed by the names of Ugolino da Siena and Duccio surnamed di Boninsegna, the precursors of Simone Memmi, the contemporary of Giotto, who painted Laura and survives in the sonnets of her lover. Lippo Memmi and Cecco da Martino, his relatives, float in the obscurity which prevailed till the appearance of Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. Of the first there still exists an extensive work in the public palace, or rather a didactic poem, which in suitable allegories and in varied views, exhibits the vices of a bad government, and personifies the qualities necessary to form the rulers of a virtuous republic – a work which, with less monotony of features, and more judgment in the division of the subjects, would, in the opinion of Lanzi, find little to envy in the best-treated histories of Pisa's Campo Santo. In partnership with his brother Pietro, he painted, in the Hospital of Siena, the Presentation and the Espousal of the Madonna – pictures destroyed in 1720. This is that Pietro who, in the Campo Santo of Pisa, painted the Hermits of the Desert, and the Terrors of Solitude invaded by an Infernal Apparition, with a novelty of conception and a richness of fancy, that render his work the most interesting of the whole series. That, notwithstanding the plague, which had wasted the population of Siena at that period, the art continued to flourish, is proved by the numbers who formed themselves into a civil body under the immediate patronage of the Republic itself. In some families it became an heirloom: such were the Vanni and the Bartoli. Andrea di Vanni, or more properly, di Giovanni, not only figured as an artist in his native city, but was delegated by the Republic to the Pope at Avignon, and appears in the records as "Capitano del Popolo;" and among the letters of Santa Caterina da Siena, there are three addressed to him.⁸³ Vasari has mentioned Taddeo di Bartolo, (1351 – 1410.) whose works still exist in the public palace and the adjoining hall. They pretend to represent a number of celebrated republicans, and chiefly Greeks and Romans, but their physiognomies are all ideal, and their dresses the costume of Siena. Something was added to the monotony of these family styles under the Pontificate of Pio II. or Enea Silvio, (1503,) by Matteo di Giovanni, in disposition, variety, expression, drapery; he has accordingly been complimented by some as the Masaccio of Siena, but remained unknown to Vasari. The art gained still more under the auspices of a second Piccolomini, Pio III. (1503.) He employed Pinturicchio, Raffaello, and other strangers, to perpetuate the achievements of his predecessor Enea; and they, Raffaello excepted, continued with Signorelli and Genga to exercise their talents in decorating the Palace of Pandolfo Petrucci, who had usurped supreme power in the Republic.

The second period of Sienese art opens with the sixteenth century, and the works of Giacomo Pacchiarotto, or Pacchiarotti. They resemble the produce of Perugino's school, though distinguished by more vigour of composition. But what entitles this epoch to the claim of establishing the peculiar style of this school, must be looked for in the works of Giannantonio Razzi, Domenico Beccafumi, and Baldassare Peruzzi.

Giannantonio Razzi,⁸⁴ commonly called "Il Soddoma," is said by some to have been a native of Vergille, in the territory of Siena; by others, of Vercelli, in Piedmont. Long residence, however, supplied the want of birthright: Siena claims him for her own; and if a charming whole, suavity of tint combined with force of chiaroscuro, be the principal characteristic of that school, no native has expressed it with equal evidence and felicity. This gaiety of tone and manner some have traced to the jovial turn of the man himself; as careless as gay, ever in pursuit of youth and beauty, though with an indiscretion that brands him with the stain tacked to his name, from a character so volatile and dissipated, that inequality of execution might be expected which marks his happiest effusions. Thus, in the Church of S. Domenico, where he represented Sta. Caterina of Siena, on receiving the stigmata, fainting in the arms of two sister nuns, we forgive to the energy of conception, the pathos of expression, and the sympathy of tone that press the principal group on our hearts, that neglect which left the figure of the Saviour below mediocrity, and own, with Baldassare Peruzzi, that we never saw mental dereliction and fainting beauty expressed with deeper sentiment and truth; a verdict which receives full sanction from him who relates it, Vasari, less the biographer than the merciless censor of the obnoxious Razzi, for whose moral turpitude and technic slovenliness his sanctimonious asperity found no other excuse than that of madness, which swayed him to neglect or misapply the powers of genius. Thus, in speaking of the fresco at Monte Oliveto, in which Soddoma had chosen to represent a bevy of harlots let loose with song and dance on St. Benedetto and his flock, to try their sanctity, he reprobates the licentiousness that had larded the subject with additional obscenity, whilst he concludes by owning that it is one of the best pictures in the Convent. How are we to reconcile the neglect which, disdaining to consult Nature, or to regulate a picture by cartoon or design, relied for the whole on practice and on chance, with the praise bestowed on Razzi's composition, the faces that speak, the breasts that palpitate, the torsos compared by some to the antique, by others to Michael Angelo, but by that indifference which often distinguishes the man of genius from the man of talent, him who possesses by Nature from him who acquires by art? Capacity and attachment unite not always; and to Soddoma, vain, whimsical, volatile, art appears to have been no more than the readiest means of procuring amusement or pleasure. "My art dances to the sound of your purse," said he to the Abbot of Monte Oliveto.

Agostino Chigi, pleased with the art, and still more the whimsies of Soddoma, if we believe Vasari, carried him to Rome, and introduced him to Giulio II. to co-operate with Pietro Perugino, &c. in the Vatican; but his labours being superseded by the novel powers of Raffaelle, Agostino, whose attachments were not regulated by the Pontiff's whims, employed him in the decorations of his own palace, now the Farnesina; where, in a principal apartment leading to the great saloon reserved for Raffaelle, he painted the Nuptials of Alexander and Roxana in a style no doubt inferior to the Loves of Amor and Psyche, but not of an inferiority sufficient to account for the enormous disparity of fame that separates both.

Domenico Mecherino,⁸⁵ the son of a Sienese peasant, better known by the adopted name of Beccafumi, inferior to Razzi in elegance of line and suavity of colour, excelled him in energy of conception and style. Vasari, who invests Beccafumi with every excellence and virtue, of which the defect or opposite vice disgraced Razzi, still owns that he did not reach the physiognomic suavity that marks the faces of Soddoma; and after leading him from the scanty elements of Pietro Perugino to Rome, the Antique, the Chapel of M. Angelo, and the works of Raffaelle, by a kind of anticlimax brings him back to Siena to complete his studies by adopting the principles of Giannantonio. A modern writer,⁸⁶ on the contrary, has discovered that the talents of Domenico, overpowered by the genius of M. Angelo, turned their current awry, and failed to produce the legitimate efforts which might have been expected from a steady adherence to the principles of Raffaelle – opinions less founded on the character of the artist and the spirit of his works than on the partiality and prejudice of the critics. Beccafumi was not of the first class, less made to lead than to follow with an air of originality; to amalgamate principles not absolutely discordant – thus, in single figures, he sometimes more than imitates, he equals M. Angelo, as in those noticed by Bottari; – and again, in larger compositions, such as those on the pavement of the Cathedral, works by which he is chiefly known, we see him on the traces of Raffaelle, and emulating the variety and graces of Polydoro: these graces frequently vanished, and correctness as often ceased with the increased size of his figures: the foreshortenings, in which he delighted, savour more of the "sotto in su," introduced by Correggio to Upper Italy, than of the principles of M. Angelo; they are generally attended by a magic chiaroscuro, like that of the figure of Justice, on which Vasari expatiates, on the ceiling of the public hall at Siena, which, from profound darkness gradually rising into light, seems to vanish in celestial splendour. He is said by Vasari to have preferred fresco and distemper to oil paint, as a purer, simpler, and of course more durable medium; and though the predominant red of his flesh-tints has more freshness than glow, such is the solidity of his impasto and the purity of his method, that his panels present us to this day less with the injuries than the improvements of time.

The style of Mecherino did not survive him: for Giorgio da Siena, his pupil, confined himself to grotesque work, in imitation of Giovanni da Udine; Giannella, or Giovanni of Siena, turned to architecture: of Marco Pino, commonly called Marco da Siena, his reputed pupil, the style, decidedly built on the principles of M. Angelo, renders all notion of his having received more than the first rudiments from Beccafumi or any other master, nugatory: but the conjecture of Lanzi, that Domenico was the master of Danielle Ricciarelli, known to have begun his studies at Siena, though unsupported by tradition, acquires an air of probability less from the supposed mutual attachments to M. Angelo, than the versatility of their talents and similarity of pursuits.

Baldassare Peruzzi,⁸⁷ born in the diocese of Volterra, but in the Sienese State, and of a citizen of Siena, with considerable talents for painting, possessed a decided genius in architecture. His style of design is temperate and correct, but quantity is the element of his composition, if indeed an aggregate of fortuitous figures deserve that name. The Adoration of the Magi, preserved in various coloured copies from his original chiaroscuro, embraces every fault of ornamental painting without its only charm: it is not exaggeration to say, that the principal figures are the least conspicuous, that the leaders are sacrificed to their equipage, that the architect every where crosses the painter, and that the quadrupeds, however brutally placed or impertinently introduced, for conception, chiaroscuro, spirit and style, give to the work what merit it can claim. The same principle prevails in his fresco of the Presentation at the Pace, and both are so evidently opposite to Raffaello's system of composition, that it is not easily understood how he could be supposed to have been a pupil or imitator of that master in propriety. If he resembles him any where, it is in single expressions, as in the Judgement of Paris at the Castello di Belcaro, according to Lanzi; and still more in the prophetic countenance of the celebrated Sibyl predicting the birth of the Virgin to Augustus, at Fonte Giusta, in Siena, whose divine enthusiasm no prophetess of Raffaello has excelled, and no Sibyl of Guido or Guercino approached.