great architectural tasks on which he was engaged were the reconstruction of the Porta Pia, and the conversion of a portion of the baths of Diocletian into the church of Sta Maria degli Angeli; the great cloister with its hundred columns, now used as the Museo delle Terme, is the only part of this reconstruction which remains as he designed it. At length, in the midst of these vast schemes and responsibilities, the heroic old man’s last remains of strength gave way. He died on the threshold of his ninetieth year, on the 18th of February 1564.
Authorities.—For the earlier bibliography of Michelangelo, which is extensive, see the useful though very imperfect compilation of Passerini, Bibliografia di Michelangelo Buonarroti, &c. (Florence, 1875). The most important works, taken in chronological order, are the following: P. Giovio, supplement to the fragmentary Dialogus de viris litteris illustribus, written soon after 1527, first published by Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana (Modena, 1871); G. Vasari, in Vite degli più eccellenti architettori, pittori, e scultori, &c. (Florence, 1550); A. Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti (1553); this account, for which the author, a pupil and friend of the master’s, had long been collecting materials, was much fuller than that of Vasari, who made use of it in rewriting his own life of Michelangelo for his second edition, which appeared after the master’s death (1568). The best edition of Vasari is that by Milanesi (Florence 1878–1883); of Condivi, that by Gori and Mariette (Pisa, 1746); for English readers there is a useful translation with notes, by Sir Charles Holroyd. The first additions of importance were published by Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, &c. (Rome, 1754; 2nd ed. by Ticozzi, Milan, 1822); the next by Gaye, Carteggio inedito (1840). Portions of the correspondence preserved in the Buonarroti archives were published by Guasti in his notes to the Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti (1863), and by Daelli in Carte Michelangelsche inedite (Milan, 1865). Complete biographies of Michelangelo had been meanwhile attempted by J. Harford (London, 1857), and with more power by Hermann Grimm, Leben Michelangelos (Hanover, 5th ed., 1879). A great increment of biographical material was at length obtained by the publication, in the four-hundredth year after Michelangelo’s birth, of the whole body of his letters preserved in the Buonarroti archives, Lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti, ed. G. Milanesi (Florence, 1875). This material was first employed in a connected but too trivial narrative by A. Gotti, Vita di Michelangelo (Florence, 1875). Next followed C. Heath Wilson, Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence, 1876), the technical remarks in which, especially as concerns the fresco paintings, are still valuable. Other lives of Michelangelo are by Anton Springer, in his Michelangelo u. Raphael (Leipzig, 1883); J. A. Symonds, The Life of Michelangelo (London, 1893), full of valuable matter on the history and spirit of Michelangelo’s times, but not trustworthy in the criticism of his works; H. Mackowksy, Michelagniolo (Berlin, 1908), excellent in all respects, and in moderate compass; Emile Gebhardt, Michel-Ange, sculpteur et peintre (1808) is a handsome volume of reproductions with text. Michelangelo, by Fritz Knapp, in the Klassiker der Kunst series (Stuttgart, 1906) is a very useful compendium. For the early works of Michelangelo the standard authority is H. Wölfflin, Die Jugendwerke Michelangelos (Munich, 1891, and later editions), a masterly work, though at variance with Berlin official opinion. The most elaborate study of the Sixtine frescoes, magnificently illustrated, is by E. Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, vol. ii. (Munich, 1905). Consult also C. Justi, Michelangelo (Leipzig, 1903), and with caution H. Thode, Michelangelo u. das Ende der Renaissance (Berlin, 1902–1903). Of the poems of Michelangelo the first sound edition is that already referred to, G. Guasti, Rime di Michelangelo Buonarroti (1863); in earlier editions the text had been recklessly tampered with, and the rugged individuality of the master’s style smoothed down. An edition with German translations was published by Hasenclever (Leipzig, 1875); and a thorough critical edition by Karl Frey (Berlin, 1897); for the English student the translations by J. A. Symonds, in Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella (London, 1878) are invaluable. On the drawings of Michelangelo see especially B. Berenson, The Drawings of Florentine Painters (London, 1903). A comprehensive work on the same subject, in which the most important examples are reproduced and discussed, unfortunately not arranged chronologically, is Karl Frey, Die Zeichnungen Michelangelos (Berlin, 1908 seq.), still in progress. An elaborate life by the same author (Karl Frey, Michelagniolo Buonarroti, sein Leben und seine Werke) is also in progress, but is more to be prized for documentary fullness and accuracy than for critical insight. (S. C.)
MICHELET, JULES (1798–1874), French historian, was born
at Paris on the 21st of August 1798, of a family which had
Huguenot traditions. His father was a master printer, not
very prosperous, and the son at an early age assisted him in
the actual work of the press. A place was offered him in the
imperial printing office, but his father was able to send him to
the famous Collège or Lycée Charlemagne, where he distinguished
himself. He passed the university examination in 1821, and
was shortly after appointed to a professorship of history in
the Collège Rollin. Soon after this, in 1824, he married. The
period of the restoration and the July monarchy was one of
the most favourable to rising men of letters of a somewhat
scholastic cast that has ever been known in France, and Michelet
had powerful patrons in Villemain, Victor Cousin and others.
But, though he was an ardent politician (having from his
childhood embraced republicanism and a peculiar variety of
romantic free-thought), he was first of all a man of letters and
an inquirer into the history of the past.
His earliest works were school-books, and they were not written at a. very early age, Between 1825 and 1827 he produced divers sketches, chronological tables, &c., of modern history. His Précis of the subject, published in the last-mentioned year, is a sound and careful book, far better than anything that had appeared before it, and written in a sober yet interesting style. In the same year he was appointed maître de conferences at the École normale. Four years later, in 1831, the Introduction à l’histoire universelle showed a very different style, exhibiting no doubt the idiosyncrasy and literary power of the writer to greater advantage, but also displaying the peculiar visionary qualities which made Michelet the most stimulating, but the most untrustworthy (not in facts, which he never consciously falsifies, but in suggestion) of all historians; The events of 1830 had unmuzzled him, and had put him in a better position for study by obtaining for him a place in the Record Office, and a deputy-professorship under Guizot in the literary faculty of the university. Very soon afterwards he began his chief and monumental work, the Histoire de France. But he accompanied this with numerous other books, chiefly of erudition, such as the Œuvres choisies de Vica, the Mémoires de Luther écrits par lui-même, the Origines du droit français, and somewhat later the Procès des templiers. 1838 was a year of great importance in Michelet’s life. He was in the fullness of his powers, his studies had fed his natural aversion to the principles of authority and ecclesiasticism, and at a moment when the revived activity of the Jesuits caused some real and more pretended alarm he was appointed to the chair of history at the Collège de France. Assisted by his friend Edgar Quinet, he began a violent polemic against the unpopular order and the principles which it represented, a polemic which made their lectures, and especially Michelet’s, one of the most popular resorts of the day. He published, in 1839, his Histoire romaine, but this was in his graver and earlier manner. The results of his lectures appeared in the volumes Le Prêtre, la femme, et la famille and le peuple. These books do not display the apocalyptic style which, partly borrowed from Lamennais, characterizes Michelet’s later works, but they contain in miniature almost the whole of his curious ethic-politico-theological creed—a mixture of sentimentalism, communism, and anti-sacerdotalism, supported by the most eccentric arguments, but urged with a great deal of eloquence. The principles of the outbreak of 1848 were in the air, and Michelet was not the least important of those who condensed and propagated them: indeed his original lectures were of so incendiary a kind that the course had to be interdicted. But when the actual revolution broke out Michelet, unlike many other men of letters, did not attempt to enter on active political life, and merely devoted himself more strenuously to his literary work. Besides continuing the great history, he undertook and carried out, during the years between the downfall of Louis Philippe and the final establishment of Napoleon III., an enthusiastic Histoire de la révolution française. Despite or because of its enthusiasm, this was by no means Michelet’s best book. The events were too near and too well known, and hardly admitted the picturesque sallies into the blue distance which make the charm and the danger of his larger work. In actual picturesqueness as well as in general veracity of picture, the book cannot approach Carlyle’s; while as a mere chronicle of the events it is inferior to half a dozen prosaic histories older and younger than itself.
