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(Pronounced Meek-el-ahn-jel-o (Bwone-ar-ro'tee))
1475–1564
Florentine School
Pupil of Ghirlandajo
T HIS wonderful man did more kinds of things, at a time when almost all artists were versatile, than any other but one. Probably Leonardo da Vinci was gifted in as many different ways as Michael Angelo, and in his own lines was as powerful. This Florentine's life was as tragic as it was restless.
There is a tablet in a room of a castle which stands high upon a rocky mount, near the village of Caprese, which tells that Michael Angelo was born in that place. The great castle is now in ruins, and more than four hundred years of fame have passed since the little child was born therein.
The unhappy existence of the artist seems to have been foreshadowed by an accident which happened to his mother before he was born. She was on horseback, riding with her husband to his official post at Chiusi, for he was governor of Chiusi and Caprese. Her horse stumbled, fell, and badly hurt her. This was two months before Michael Angelo was born, and misfortune ever pursued him.
The father of Angelo was descended from an aristocratic house—the Counts of Canossa were his ancestors and in that day the profession of an artist was not thought to be dignified. Hence the father had quite different plans for the boy; but the son persisted and at last had his way. When he was still a little child his father finished his work as an official at Caprese and returned to Florence; but he left the little Angelo behind with his nurse. That nurse was the wife of a stonemason, and almost as soon as the boy could toddle he used to wander about the quarries where the stonecutters worked, and doubtless the baby joy of Angelo was to play at chiseling as it is the pleasure of modern babies to play at peg-top. After a time he was sent for to go to Florence to begin his education.
In Florence he fell in with a young chap who, like himself, loved art, but who was fortunate enough already to be apprenticed to the great painter of his time—Ghirlandajo. One happy day this young Granacci volunteered to take Michael Angelo to his master's studio, and there Angelo made such an impression on Ghirlandajo that he was urged by the artist to become his pupil.
All the world began to seem rose coloured to the ambitious boy, and he started his life-work with enthusiasm. At that time he was thirteen years old, full of hope and of love for his kind; but his good fortune did not last long. He had hardly settled to work in Ghirlandajo's studio than his genius, which should have made him beloved, made him hated by his master. Angelo drew superior designs, created new art-ideas, was more clever in all his undertakings than any other pupil—even ahead of his master; and almost at once Ghirlandajo became furiously jealous. This enmity between pupil and master was the beginning of Angelo's many misfortunes.
One day he got into a dispute with a fellow student, Torregiano, who broke his nose. This deformity alone was a tragedy to one like Michael Angelo who loved everything beautiful, yet must go through life knowing himself to be ill-favoured.
In height he was a little man, topped by an abnormally large head which was part of the penalty he had to pay for his talents. He had a great, broad forehead, and an eye that did not gleam nor express the beauty of his creative mind, but was dull, and lustreless, matching his broken, flattened nose. Indeed he was a tragedy to himself. In the "History of Painting" Muther describes his unhappy disposition:
"In his youthful years he never learned what love meant. 'If thou wishest to conquer me,' in old age he addresses love, 'give me back my features, from which nature has removed all beauty.' Whenever in his sonnets he speaks of passion, it is always of pain and tears, of sadness and unrequited longing, never of the fulfilment of his wishes."
Then, too, Michael Angelo had a quarrelsome disposition, and he was harsh in his criticism of others. He hated Leonardo da Vinci more for his great physical beauty than for his genius. He quarreled with most of his contemporaries, never joined the assemblies of his brother artists, but dwelt altogether apart. His was a gloomy and melancholy disposition and he never found relief outside his work.
He was all kinds of an artist—poet, sculptor, architect, painter—and although he worked with the irregularity of true genius, he worked indefatigably when once he began. It is said that when he was making his "David" he never removed his clothing the whole time he was employed upon the work, but dropped down when too exhausted to work more, and slept wherever he fell.
His first flight from the workshop of Ghirlandajo was to the gardens of the great Florentine prince, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had sent to Ghirlandajo for two of his best pupils. He wished them to come to his gardens. and study the beautiful Greek statues which ornamented them. The choice fell to Angelo and Granacci. Probably those statues in Lorenzo's garden were the first glimpses of really great art that Michael Angelo ever had. Certain it is that he was overwhelmed with happiness when he was given permission to copy what he would, and at once he fell to work with his chisel. His first work in that garden was upon the head of an old faun; and Lorenzo, walking by, curious to know to what use the lad was putting his opportunity, made a criticism:
"You have made your faun old," he said, "yet you have left all the teeth; at such an age, generally the teeth are wanting."
Angelo had nothing to say and the prince walked on, but when next he came that way, he found that Angelo had broken off two of the faun's teeth; and this recognition of his criticism pleased Lorenzo so much that he invited Angelo to live with him. At first his father objected. He felt himself to be an aristocrat, and sculpture and painting were indeed low occupations for his son, who he had resolved should be nothing less than a silk merchant. Nevertheless, the prince's command, united with the son's pleading, compelled the father to give up his cherished dream of making a merchant of him, and Angelo went to live in the palace.
Then indeed what seemed a beautiful life opened out. He was dressed in fine clothing, dined with princes, and possibly he was grateful to his patron. Some historians say so, and add that when Lorenzo died Angelo wept, and returned sadly to his father's house to mourn, but this tale seems at odds with what else we know of Angelo's unangelic, envious and bitter disposition. It is quite certain, however, that with the death of Lorenzo, Angelo's fortunes became greatly changed. Another prince followed in line—Pietro de' Medici—but he was a poor thing, who brought little good to anybody. He had small use for Michael Angelo's genius, but it is said that he did give him one commission. After a great storm one day, he asked him to make a snow-man for him, and Angelo obligingly complied. It was doubtless a very beautiful snow-man, but although it was Angelo's it melted in the night, even as if it had been Johnny's or Tommy's snow-man, and left no trace behind.
In Rome there was a high and haughty pope on the throne—Julius II.—who had probably not his match for obstinacy and haughtiness, excepting in the great painter and sculptor. When Angelo went to Rome, he was bound to come in conflict with Julius for it was popes and princes who gave art any reason for being in those days, and the Church prescribed what kind of art should be cultivated. Michael was to come directly under the command of the pope and such a combination promised trouble. Kings themselves had to remove their crowns and hats to Julius, and why not Michael Angelo? Yet there he stood, covered, before the pope, opposing his greatness to that of the pope. Soderini says that Angelo treated the pope as the king of France never would have dared treat him; but Angelo may have known that kings of France might be born and die, times without number, while there would never be born another Michael Angelo. There could be nothing but antagonism between Angelo and Julius, and soon after the artist returned to Florence; but the necessity for following his profession enabled Julius to tame him after all, and it is said that the pope led him back to Rome, later, "with a halter about his neck." This must have been agony to Angelo.
Back in Rome, he was commissioned to make a tomb for the pope. He had no sooner set about the preliminaries—the getting of suitable marble for his work—than he began to quarrel with the men who were to hew it. When that difficulty was settled, and the marble was got out, he had a set-to with the shipowners who were to transport the stone, and that row became so serious that the sculptor was besieged in his own house.
At another and later time, when he was engaged upon the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, he was made to work by force. He accused the man who had built the scaffolding upon which he must stand, or lie, to paint, of planning his destruction. He suspected the very assistants whom he, himself, had chosen to go from Florence, of having designs upon his life. He locked the chapel against them, and they had to turn away when they went to begin work. Because of his insane suspicion he did alone the enormous work of the frescoes. Doubtless he was half mad, just as he was wholly a genius.
By the time he had finished those frescoes he was so exhausted and overworked that he wrote piteously to his people at home, "I have not a friend in Rome, neither do I wish nor have use for any." This of course was not true; or he would not have made the statement. "I hardly find time to take nourishment. Not an ounce more can I bear than already rests upon my shoulders." Even when the work was done he felt no happiness because of it, but complained about everything and everybody.
If Angelo thought this an unhappy day, worse was in store for him. Julius II. died and in his place there came to reign upon the papal throne, Leo X. If Michael Angelo had been restricted in his work before, he was almost jailed under Leo X. Julius had been a virile, forceful man, and Michael Angelo was the same. Since he must be restrained and dictated to, it was possible for the artist to listen to a man who was in certain respects strong like himself, but to be under the thumb of a weak, effeminate person like Leo, was the tragedy of tragedies to Angelo. That was a marvellous time in Rome. All its citizens had become so pleasure-loving that the world stood still to wonder. When the pope banqueted, he had the golden plates from which fair women had eaten hurled into the Tiber, that they might never be profaned by a less noble use than they had known. From all this riot and madness of pleasure, Michael Angelo stood aside with frowning brow and scornful mien. He approved of nothing and of nobody—despising even Raphael, the gentle and loving man whom the pleasure-crazed people of Rome paused to smile upon and love. The pope said that Angelo was "terrible," and that he filled everybody with fear.
Finally, Rome so resented his frowning looks and his surly ways that work was provided for him at a distance. He was sent to Florence again to build a façade. While there, the city was conquered, and Angelo was one who fought for its freedom, but even so, he fled just at the crisis. Thus he ever did the wrong thing—excepting when he worked. In Florence he had planned to do mighty things, but he never accomplished any one of them. He planned to make a wonderful colossal statue on a cliff near Carrara, and also he resolved to make the tomb of Julius the nucleus of a "forest of statues."
Michael Angelo never married, but he was burdened with a family and all its cares. He supported his brothers and even his nephews, and took care of his father. All of those people came to him with their difficulties and with their demands for money. He chided, quarreled, repelled, yet met every obligation. He would sit beside the sick-bed of a servant the night through, but growl at the demands of his near relatives—and it is not unlikely that he had good reason.
At last he withdrew himself from all human society but that of little children, whom he cared to speak with and to please. He would have naught to do with men of genius like himself; and when he fell from a scaffolding and injured himself, the physician had to force his way through a barred window, in order to get into the sick man's presence to serve him.
An illustration of his determined solitude is given in the "Young People's Story of Art:"
"There had long been lying idle in Florence an immense block of marble. One hundred years before a sculptor had tried to carve something from it, but had failed. This was now given to Michael Angelo. He was to be paid twelve dollars a month, and to be allowed two years in which to carve a statue. He made his design in wax; and then built a tower around the block, so that he might work inside without being seen."
Everything Angelo undertook bore the marks of gigantic enterprise. Although he never succeeded in making the tomb of Julius II. the central piece in his forest of statues, the undertaking was marvellous enough. His original plan was to make the tomb three stories high and to ornament it with forty statues, and if St. Peter's Church was large enough to hold it, the work was to be placed therein; but if not, a church was to be built specially to hold the tomb. When at last, in spite of his difficulties with workmen and shipowners, the marbles were deposited in the great square before St. Peter's, they filled the whole place; and the pope, wishing to watch the progress of the work and not himself to be observed, had a covered way built from the Vatican to the workshop of Angelo in the square, by which he might come and go as he chose, while an order was issued that the sculptor was to be admitted at all times to the Vatican. No sooner was this arrangement completed than Angelo's enemies frightened the pope by telling him there was danger in making his tomb before his death; and with these superstitions haunting him Julius II stopped the work, leaving Angelo without the means to pay for his marbles. With the doors of the Vatican closed to him, Angelo withdrew, post haste to Florence—and who can blame him? Nevertheless, the work was resumed after infinite trouble on the pope's part. He had to send again and again for Angelo and after forty years, the work was finished. There the sequel of the sculptor's forty-years war with self and the world stands to-day in "Moses," the wonderful, commanding central figure which seems to reflect all the fierce power which Angelo had to keep in check during a life-time.
The command of Julius that he should paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel aroused all his fierce resistance. He did it under protest, all the while accusing those about him of having designs upon his life.
"I am not a painter, but a sculptor," he said.
"Such a man as thou is everything that he wishes to be," the pope replied.
"But this is an affair of Raphael. Give him this room to paint and let me carve a mountain!" But no, he must paint the ceiling; but to render it easier for him the pope told him he might fill in the spaces with saints, and charge a certain amount for each. This Angelo, who was first of all an artist, refused to do. He would do the work rightly or not at all. So he made his own plans and cut himself a cardboard helmet, into the front of which he thrust a candle, as if it were a Davy lamp, and he lay upon his back to work day and night at the hated task. During those months he was compelled to look up so continually, that never afterward was he able to look down without difficulty. When he had finished the work Julius had some criticisms to make.
"Those dresses on your saints are such poor things," he said. "Not rich enough—such very poor things!"
"Well, they were poor things," was Angelo's answer. "The saints did not wear golden ornaments, nor gold on their garments."
After Julius II. and Leo X. came Pope Paul III., and he, like the other two, determined to have Angelo for his workman. Indeed all his life, Michael Angelo's gifts were commanded by the Church of Rome. It was for Paul III. he painted the "Last Judgment." His former work upon the Sistine Chapel had been the story of the creation. All his work was of a mighty and allegorical nature; tremendous shoulders, mighty limbs, herculean muscles that seemed fit to suppprt the universe. These allegories are made of hundreds of figures. To-day they are still there, though dimmed by the smoke of centuries of incense, and dismembered by the cracking of plaster and disintegration of materials.
Angelo's methods of work, as well as their results, were oppressive. In his youth, while trying to perfect himself in his study of the human form, he drew or modelled, from nude corpses. He had these conveyed by stealth from the hospital into the convent of Santo Spirito, where he had a cell and there he worked, alone.
He was concentrated, mentally and emotionally, upon himself. The only remark he made after the blow from Torregiano was, "You will be remembered only as the man who broke my nose!" This proved nearly true, since Torregiano was banished, and murdered by the Spanish Inquisition.
All sorts of anecdotes have floated through the centuries concerning this man and his work. For example, he made a statue of a sleeping cupid, which was buried in the ground for a time that it might assume the appearance of age, and pass for an antique. Afterward it was sold to the Cardinal San Giorgio for two hundred ducats, though Michael Angelo received only thirty. Nevertheless, he died a rich man, after having cared for a numerous family, while he himself lived like a man without means. All the tranquillity he ever knew he enjoyed in his old age.
It was characteristic of his perversity that he left his name upon nothing that he made, with one exception. Vasari relates the story of that exception:
"The love and care which Michael Angelo had given to this group, 'In Paradise,' were such that he there left his name—a thing he never did again for any work—on the cincture which girdles the robe of Our Lady; for it happened one day that Michael Angelo, entering the place where it was erected, found a large assemblage of strangers from Lombardy there, who were praising it highly; one of them asking who had done it, was told, 'our Hunchback of Milan'; hearing which Michael Angelo remained silent, although surprised that his work should be attributed to another. But one night he repaired to St. Peter's with a light and his chisels, to engrave his name on the figure, which seems to breathe a spirit as perfect as her form and countenance."
If his youth had been given to sculpture, his maturity to the painting of wondrous frescoes, so his old age was devoted to architecture, and as architect he rebuilt the decaying St. Peter's. In this work he felt that he partly realised his ideal. Sculpture meant more to him, "did more for the glory of God," than any other form of art. When he had finished his work on St. Peter's, he is said to have looked upon it and exclaimed: "I have hung the Pantheon in the air!"
This colossal genius died in Rome, and was carried by the light of torches from that city back to his better loved Florence, where he was buried. His tomb was made in the Santa Croce, and upon it are three female figures representing Michael Angelo's three wonderful arts: Architecture, sculpture and painting. No artist was greater than he.
His will committed "his soul to God, his body to the earth, and his property to his nearest relatives."
This wonderful painting is a part of the decoration of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. The picture of the prophet tells so much in itself, that a description seems absurd. It is enough to call attention to the powerful muscles in the arm, the fall of the hand, and then to speak of the main characteristics of the artist's pictures.
It is extraordinary that there is no blade of grass to be found in any painting by Michael Angelo. He loved to paint but one thing, and that was the naked man, the powerful muscles, or the twisted limbs of those in great agony. He loved only to work upon vast spaces of ceiling or wall. Look at this picture of Daniel and see how like sculpture the pose and modelling appear to be. First of all, Michael Angelo was a sculptor, and most of the painting which fate forced him to do has the characteristics of sculpture.
One critic has remarked that he loves to think of this strange man sitting before the marble quarry of Pietra Santa and thinking upon all the beings hidden in the cliff—beings which he should fashion from the marble.
It was said that in Michael Angelo's hands the Holy Family became a race of Titans, and where others would have put plants or foliage, Angelo placed men and naked limbs to fill the space. When his subject made some sort of herbage necessary, he invented a kind of mediaeval fern in place of grass and familiar leaves. Everything appears brazen and hard and mighty, suggestive of Angelo's own throbbing spirit and maddened soul. Most of his work, when illustrated, must be shown not as a whole but in sections, but one can best mention them as entire picture themes. On the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are nine frescoes describing "The Creation of The World," "The Fall of Man" and "The Deluge." "The Last Judgment" occupies the entire altar wall in the same chapel of the Vatican. "The Holy Family" is in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.