scheme; in niches at either side of him were to be standing figures of “Leah” and “Rachel.” These Michelangelo himself executed hastily with the help of assistants. To pupils entirely was left the carrying out of the upper cornice, with the recumbent effigy of the pope occupying the centre of a weak and incongruous architectural scheme, a Madonna and Child in a niche above, and a prophet and a sibyl in recesses at either side. Meantime all idea of incorporating any of the “Slaves” in the new design had been abandoned. The master gave the two that had been finished in 1513–1516 to Robert Strozzi, who gave them to Francis I.; while the four that had been roughed out between 1518 and 1522 remained at Florence. “Brutus,” marble (National Museum, Florence). Probably executed soon after 1539, in memory of the tyrannicide Lorenzino de’ Medici. To the end of this period or to a year or two later belongs the infinitely pathetic unfinished sketch in marble of a life-size “Pietà” (Palazzo Rondini, Rome)—the mourning mother, standing on an elevation behind her son, holds his body upright in front of her by the shoulders. Still later, after 1550, is the more complicated and more finished group of the “Pietà,” with the corpse of Christ collapsing in utter relaxation through the arms of those who try to uphold it: this Michelangelo destined for his own sepulchre; it stands now in the cathedral at Florence.
Painting.—“The Entombment of Christ” (National Gallery, London). This unfinished painting bears all the marks of Michelangelo’s design, and must have been begun from a cartoon by him, probably of about 1535–1540. The touch of his own hand seems evident in some parts, particularly the body of Christ; other parts, in various degrees of incompletion, are apparently the work of various pupils or imitators.
For nearly all his great life-works mentioned above, preparatory sketches and studies by the master’s hand exist. These, with a large number of other drawings, finished and unfinished, done for their own sakes and not for any ulterior use, are of infinite value and interest to the student. Michelangelo was the most learned and scientific as well as the most inspired and daring of draughtsmen, and from boyhood to extreme old age never ceased to practise with pen, chalk or pencil. He is said to have burned vast numbers of his drawings with his own hand and caused others to be burned by friends and pupils to whom he had given them; so that what we possess must be less than a tithe of what he executed. But there are some 250 genuine sheets—enough to let us follow and understand his modes of conceiving, preparing and maturing his designs at all periods of his life. They are scattered amongst various collections, chiefly public; those in England (at the British Museum, the University Galleries, Oxford, and the Royal Library, Windsor), are quite half the whole number; other important examples remain still at what was for centuries the home of his heirs, the Casa Buonarroti at Florence; others at the Uffizi, Florence; the Venice Academy; the Albertina, Vienna; the Louvre; the Condé Museum at Chantilly; the Berlin Museum; and, not least, the Teyler Museum at Haarlem. By means of these drawings and the many published facsimiles we are best able to trace the progress of the master’s genius and its secrets. We see him diligently copying in youth from the frescoes of Giotto, Masaccio, and his own master Ghirlandaio. At this date his instrument was the pen only, used in a manner of hatching: sometimes extremely careful and close, at others fiercely bold and free, and in either case all his own. Sketches and studies thus drawn with the pen exist for the “David,” the “Bathers Surprised,” the accessory figures for the tomb of Julius as first conceived, and the great series of the Sixtine Chapel decorations. By, or even before; the date of the Sixtine Chapel, chalk, red or black, comes into use along with the pen, and many of the finest studies for the “Slaves” or “Atlases” and other decorative figures of the ceiling are in the latter material (many more studies are preserved for these subordinate figures than for the main compositions). After the Sixtine Chapel period the pen gives way to red or black chalk almost entirely. Sketches are rare for the great abortive scheme of the Julius monument; almost non-existent for the equally abortive San Lorenzo façade; fairly abundant for the various stages of the Medici monument scheme in its architectural parts, but not for the great figures. About the time of Michelangelo’s final change of domicile from Florence to Rome (1532–1535) he began the practice of making highly finished and fully shaded drawings of classic or symbolic subjects in red or black chalk for presentation to his friends, especially to young Tommaso Cavalieri, the object of his passionate Platonic affection, from about 1532. The “Fall of Phaeton,” the “Tityos,” the “Ganymede,” the “Men shooting at a Mark,” are well-known examples; in this class of work the Windsor collection is far the richest. At the same time or soon afterwards, were produced drawings little less powerful and finished of Christian subjects, especially the “Crucifixion,” “Entombment” and “Resurrection.” Then comes the great fresco of the “Last Judgment,” for which there exist both general sketches and particular studies. In the few extant drawings for the Cappella Paolina a faltering both of the imagination and of the hand become discernible. To the same or to still later years belong many beautiful but somewhat tentative drawings done either directly for, or nearly in the spirit of, the famous “Crucifixion” which he is recorded to have painted with so much devotion for Vittoria Colonna. About many of these, for all their intensity of feeling, there is a wavering touch betraying the approach of infirmity; so there is about many of the architectural studies done. for the buildings of which he had charge in his last years at Rome; but signs of the old impressive power and penetration are not wanting in some even of the latest drawings that have come down to us.
During his later years the long-pent human elements of fervour and tenderness in Michelangelo’s nature had found vent and utterance such as they had never found before. He had occasionally practised poetry in youth, and there are signs of some transient love-passages, during, his life at Bologna. But it was not until towards his sixtieth year that the springs of feeling were fairly opened in the heart of this solitary, this masterful and stern, life-wearied and labour-hardened man. About 1533–1534. we find him beginning to address impassioned sonnets—of which the sentiment is curiously comparable to that expressed in some of Shakespeare’s—to a beautiful and gifted youth, the young Roman noble Tommaso Cavalieri. Soon afterwards he made the acquaintance of the pious, accomplished, and high-souled lady, Vittoria Colonna, widow of the Marquess Pescara. For ten years until her death, which, happened in 1547, her friendship was the great solace of Michelangelo’s life. On her, in all loyalty and reverence, he poured out all the treasures of his mind and all his imprisoned powers of tenderness and devotion. She was the chief inspirer of his poetry—of which, along with her praises, the main themes are the Christian religion, the joys of Platonic love, and the power and mysteries of art. Michelangelo’s poetical style is strenuous and concentrated like the man. He wrote with labour and much self-correction; we seem to feel him flinging himself on the material of language with the same overwhelming energy and vehemence with which contemporaries describe him as flinging himself on the material of marble—the same impetuosity of temperament combined with the same fierce desire of perfection, but with far less either of innate instinct for the material or of trained mastery over its difficulties.
And so the mighty sculptor, painter, and poet reached old age. An infirmity which settled on him in 1544, and the death of Vittoria Colonna in 1547, left him broken in health and heart. But his strength held on for many a year longer yet. His father and brothers were dead, and his family sentiment concentrated itself on a nephew, Leonardo, to whom he showed unremitting practical kindness, coupled with his usual suspiciousness and fitfulness of temper. In almost all his relations the old man continued to the end to manifest the same loyal and righteous heart, accompanied by the same masterful, moody, and estranging temper, as in youth. Among the artists of the younger generation he held a position of absolute ascendancy and authority; nor was his example, as we have said, by any means altogether salutary for them. To artists, and to a certain number of chosen friends, belonging chiefly to the lettered, diplomatic, and secretarial classes, he was more accessible and affable than he had been to any one in earlier days, though still formidable in moods of scorn and scoffing. His great age and fame made him the most honoured citizen of Rome, to whom the highest, both of his fellow countrymen and foreigners, were eager to do homage. During the last years of his life he made but few more essays in sculpture, and those not successful, but was much employed in the fourth art in which he excelled—that of architecture. A succession of popes demanded his services for the embellishment of Rome. Between 1536 and 1546 he was engaged on plans for the rearrangement and reconstruction of the great group of buildings on the Capitol—plans which were only partially and imperfectly carried out during his lifetime and after his death. For Paul III. he finished the palace called after the name of the pope’s family the Farnese. On the death of Antonio da San Gallo he succeeded to the onerous and coveted office of chief architect of St Peter’s church, for which he remodelled all the designs, living to see some of the main features, including the supports and lower portion of the great central dome, carried out in spite of all obstacles, according to his plans. The dome as it stands is his most conspicuous and one of his noblest monuments: the body of the church was completed in a manner quite different from his devising. Other
