Part 3 (1/2)

Where the masters of Florence placed it, under the direction of its reat white David stood for more than three centuries uncovered, open to all injuries of frost and rain, and to the violence of citizens, until, for the better preservation of this masterpiece of modern art, it was removed in 1873 to a hall of the Accademia delle Belle Arti On the whole, it has suffered very little

Weather has slightly worn away the extre a popular tue stone cast by the assailants of the palace Giorgio Vasari tells us how, together with his friend Cecchino Salviati, he collected the scattered pieces, and brought theelo Salviati, the father of Cecchino They were subsequently put together by the care of the Grand Duke Cosimo, and restored to the statue in the year 1543

III

In the David Michelangelo first displayed that quality of _terribilita_, of spirit-quailing, awe-inspiring force, for which he afterwards became so famous The statue iht, but by so vehe yet adopted those systeave an air of ures On the contrary, this young giant strongly recalls the ly indeed than the Bacchus did Wishi+ng perhaps to adhere strictly to the Biblical story, Michelangelo studied a lad whose frame was not developed The David, to state the matter frankly, is a colossal hobbledehoy His body, in breadth of the thorax, depth of the abdorown up to the scale of the enormous hands and feet and heavy head We feel that he wants at least two years to beco froth and beauty This close observance of the irowth is very re in a statue h Both Donatello and Verocchio had treated their Davids in the sa on a small scale and in bronze I insist upon this point, because students of Michelangelo have been apt to overlook his extrees of his career

Having acknowledged that the head of David is too ely formed for ideal beauty, hypercriticis and execution of each part The attitude selected is one of great dignity and vigour The heroic boy, quite certain of victory, is excited by the co contest His brows are violently contracted, the nostrils tense and quivering, the eyes fixed keenly on the distant Philistine His larynx rises visibly, and the sinews of his left thigh tighten, as though the whole spirit of the ht hand, kept at a just middle point between the hip and knee, he holds the piece of wood on which his sling is hung The sling runs round his back, and the centre of it, where the stone bulges, is held with the left hand, poised upon the left shoulder, ready to be loosed We feel that the nextto its full extent the sling, dragging the stone away, and whirling it into the air; when, after it has sped to strike Goliath in the forehead, the whole lithe body of the lad will have described a curve, and recovered its perpendicular position on the two firelo invariably chose some decisive h he orking here under difficulties, owing to the lied block at his disposal, he contrived to suggest the iy which shall disturb the equilibriuiant's pose Critics of this statue, deceived by its superficial reselected the candid realism of theof the sling Even Heath Wilson, for instance, writes: ”The ht arrasps resolutely the stone_ hich the adversary is to be slain” This entirely falsifies the sculptor's , renders the broad strap behind the back superfluous, and changes into elo intended to be alife

It has often been remarked that David's head is e at Orsanests a co the face idealistically, however much he took from study of his models Vasari, for example, says that he avoided portraiture, and co several individuals We shall see a new ideal type of thewhich the uished is Giuliano de' Medici at San Lorenzo We have already seen a female type created in the Madonnas of S Peter's and Notre Daelo's theory of foreneral That must be reserved until we enter the Sistine Chapel, in order to survey the central and the crowning product of his genius in its prielo carved his David with no guidance but drawings and a sht The inconvenience of this method, which left the sculptor to wreak his fury on the marble with mallet and chisel, can be readily conceived In a fae, disinterred by M Mariette from a French scholar of the sixteenth century, we have this account of the fiery master's systeelo, at the age of est for his time of life, knock off more chips from an extre stone-cutters could have done in three or four--a thing quite incredible to one who has not seen it He put such iht the whole reat frag the line so closely that if he had overpassed it by a hair's-breadth he ran the risk of losing all, since one cannot mend a ures of clay and stucco” It is said that, owing to this violent way of attacking his elo sometimes bit too deep into the stone, and had to abandon a pro piece of sculpture This is one of the ways of accounting for his nu up representing the greatbut a sketch in wax before hi than fiction; and, while I am upon the topic of his method, I will introduce what Cellini has left written on this subject In his treatise on the Art of Sculpture, Cellini lays down the rule that sculptors in stone ought first to h, and after this to fore as the statue will have to be He illustrates this by a critique of his illustrious predecessors ”Albeit many able artists rush boldly on the stone with the fierce force of ood design, yet the result is never found by them to be so satisfactory as when they fashi+on the e scale This is proved by our Donatello, as a titan in the art, and afterwards by the stupendous Michelangelo, orked in both ways Discovering latterly that the senius de most careful models exactly of the same size as the marble statue was to be This we have seen with our own eyes in the Sacristy of S Lorenzo Next, when a man is satisfied with his full-sized model, he ure on the marble in such wise that it shall be distinctly traced; for he who has not previously settled his designirons Michelangelo's method in this matter was the best He used first to sketch in the principal aspect; and then to begin work by re the surface stone upon that side, just as if he intended to fashi+on a figure in half-relief; and thus he went on gradually uncovering the rounded forh-hewn Captives, possibly the figures now in a grotto of the Boboli Gardens, says: They are well adapted for teaching a beginner how to extract statues from the marble without injury to the stone The safe method which they illustrate may be described as follows You first take ain a vessel full of water The water, by its nature, presents a level surface; so that, if you gradually lift the her parts are first exposed, while the lower parts re thus, the whole round shape at length appears above the water Precisely in the saht statues to be hewn out frohest surfaces, and proceeding to disclose the lowest Thisout the Captives, and therefore his Excellency the Duke was fain to have them used as models by the students in his Acadeenious process of ”pointing themachine” and ”scale-stones,” which is at present universally in use a sculptors, had not been invented in the sixteenth century

IV

I cannot omit a rather childish story which Vasari tells about the David After it had been placed upon its pedestal before the palace, and while the scaffolding was still there, Piero Soderini, who loved and ade

The sculptor immediately ran up the ladder till he reached a point upon the level of the giant's shoulder He then took his ha concealed some dust of marble in the hollow of his hand, pretended to work off a portion from the surface of the nose In reality he left it as he found it; but Soderini, seeing the ht that his hint had been taken When, therefore, Michelangelo called down to him, ”Look at it now!” Soderini shouted up in reply, ”I aiven life to the statue”

At this ti character, though not gifted with thatwhich iination, was Gonfalonier of the Republic He had been elected to the supree of Florence His friendshi+p proved on elo; and while the gigantic David was in progress he gave the sculptor a new coe us The Florentine envoys to France had already written in June 1501 fro that Pierre de Rohan, Marechal de Gie, who stood high in favour at the court of Louis XII, greatly desired a copy of the bronze David by Donatello in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio He appeared willing to pay for it, but the envoys thought that he expected to have it as a present The French alliance was a hest importance to Florence, and at this time the Republic was heavily indebted to the French crown Soderini, therefore, decided to coust 1502 Michelangelo undertook to model a David of two cubits and a quarter within sixhe was assisted by a specialthe next two years a brisk correspondence was kept up between the envoys and the Signory about the statue, showing the Marshal's impatience Meanwhile De Rohan becae with a sister of Louis d'Ar more was to be expected froress, and the question arose to whonory fell on Florimond Robertet, secretary of finance, whose favour would be useful to the Florentines in their pecuniary transactions with the King A long letter from the envoy, Francesco Pandolfini, in September 1505, shows that Robertet's ather fronory, dated Nove about 800 pounds, had been ”packed in the nahorn Robertet received it in due course, and placed it in the courtyard of his chateau of Bury, near Blois Here it remained for more than a century, when it was removed to the chateau of Villeroy There it disappeared

We possess, however, a fine pen-and-ink drawing by the hand of Michelangelo, which n for this second David

The muscular and naked youth, not a mere lad like the colossal statue, stands fir with the trunk thrown boldly back His right foot rests on the gigantic head of Goliath, and his left hand, twisted back upon the buttock, holds what seeelo's conception of an ideal David would have been orking under conditions in of the page the folloords may be clearly traced: ”Davicte cholla fro, and I with the bow

Meanwhile Michelangelo received a still more important commission on the 24th of April 1503 The Consuls of the Arte della Lana and the Operai of the Duoh, to be carved out of Carrara marble and placed inside the church The sculptor undertook to furnish one each year, the Board of Works defraying all expenses, supplying the costs of Michelangelo's living and his assistants, and paying hiolden florins a month Besides this, they had a house built for hin He occupied this house free of charges while he was in Florence, until it became manifest that the contract of 1503 would never be carried out Later on, in March 1508, the tenement was let on lease to him and his heirs But he only held it a few months; for on the 15th of June the lease was cancelled, and the house transferred to Sigis of these twelve Apostles is the huge blocked-out S Matteo, now in the courtyard of the Accadean a statue in hly hewn, shows perfection of design, and teaches sculptors how to extract figures froround by re able to withdraw or change in case of need” This stupendous sketch or shadow of a hty form is indeed instructive for those ould understand Michelangelo's es quoted above fron of the chief view of the statue must have been chalked upon the ed into relief Were we to place it in a horizontal position on the ground, that portion of a rounded fore just in the sah to cover it At the saenere while we study the titanic chisel-rooved deeply in the body of the stone, and carried to the length of three or four inches The direction of these strokes proves that Michelangelo worked equally with both hands, and the way in which they are hatched and crossed upon the hts of the stone has remarkable affinity in linear effect to a pair of the ns for a naked man, now in the Louvre On paper he seems to heith the pen, on marble to sketch with the chisel The saint appears literally to be growing out of his stone prison, as though he were alive and enclosed there waiting to be liberated This recalls Michelangelo's fixed opinion regarding sculpture, which he defined as the art ”that works by force of taking away” In his writings we often find the idea expressed that a statue, instead of being a huht invested with external reality by stone, iswhich the sculptor seeks and finds inside his marble--a kind of marvellous discovery

Thus he says in one of his poey stone the ure, which ever grows the ain--

_The best of artists hath no thought to show Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell Doth not include: to break the marble spell Is all the hand that serves the brain can do_

S Matthew seems to palpitate with life while we scrutinise the aible than soe in the clouds

To conclude what I have said in this section about Michelangelo'son theboth left and right hand while chiselling Raffaello da Montelupo, ell acquainted with him personally, informs us of the fact: ”Here Iwiththe Arch of Trajan froelo and Sebastiano del Pioh they did not ith the left hand excepting when they wished to use great strength), stopped to see reat wonder, no sculptor or painter ever having done so before me, as far as I know”

V

If Vasari can be trusted, it was during this residence at Florence, when his hands were so fully occupied, that Michelangelo found time to carve the two _tondi_, Madonnas in relief enclosed in circular spaces, which we still possess One of the been acquired by the Royal Acade the best things belonging to that Corporation The other, made for Bartoloello at Florence Of the two, that of our Royal Acaderace and dignity in the Madonna with action playfully suggested in the infant Christ and little S John That of the Bargello is simpler, more tranquil, and es Madonna, the other alht fancifully call theems, lovely by reason even of their sketchiness Whether by intention, as some critics have supposed, or for want of time to finish, as I am inclined to believe, these two reliefs are left in a state of inco the Royal Acaderoundwork supplies an ade froh the whole of theled The most important portions of the composition--Madonna's head and throat, the drapery of her powerful breast, on which the child Christ reclines, and the naked body of the boy--are wrought to a point which only deures remain undeter ht hand is resting on a mass of broken stone, which hides a portion of His mother's drapery, but leaves the position of her hand uncertain The infant S John, upright upon his feet, balancing the chief group, is hazily subordinate The whole of his forh the veil of stone, and what his two hands and arin may hardly be conjectured It is clear that on this side of the composition the marble was to have been hest surfaces of the relief brought into prominence at those points where, as I have said, little is wanting but the finish of the graver and the file The Bargello group is si quite apparent, we can easily construct the incoround What results from the study of these two circular sketches in elo believed all sculpture to be i, yet he did not disdain to labour in stone with various planes of relief which should produce the effect of chiaroscuro Furthermore, they illustrate what Cellini and Vasari have already taught us about his ing the first, the second, then the third surfaces, following aWhether he preferred to leave off when his idea was sufficiently indicated, or whether his nu the lowest surfaces, and lastly polishi+ng the whole, is a question whichthe exquisite elaboration given to the Pieta of the Vatican, the Madonna at Bruges, the Bacchus and the David, the Moses and parts of the Medicean h at his disposal, he would have carried out these rounds in all their details A criticism he made on Donatello, recorded for us by Condivi, to the effect that this great master's works lost their proper effect on close inspection through a want of finish, confirms my opinion

Still there is no doubt that he must have been pleased, as all true lovers of art are with the picturesque effect--an effect as of things half seen in dreaent from primeval substances--which the imperfection of the craftsman's labour leaves upon the elo's mind seems to have been e Holy Faelo Doni, which may, I think, be reckoned the only easel-picture attributable with absolute certainty to his hand

Condivi simply says that he received seventy ducats for this fine work Vasari adds one of his prattling stories to the effect that Doni thought forty sufficient; whereupon Michelangelo took the picture back, and said he would not let it go for less than a hundred: Doni then offered the original suelo replied that if he was bent on bargaining he should not pay less than 140 Be this as it enius ca position on the ground; she throws herself vigorously backward, lifting the little Christ upon her right ar him to a bald-headed old man, S Joseph, who seeroup, which forures of young ainst a wall at soly little S John can be discerned in one corner There is soinal in the composition of this sacred picture, which, as in the case of all Michelangelo's early work, develops the previous traditions of Tuscan art on lines which no one but hiure of the Madonna, too, has always see of marvellous beauty, and of stupendous power in the strained attitude and nobly modelled arot to do with the subject Probably Michelangelo intended in this episode to surpass a Madonna by Luca Signorelli, hose genius he obviously was in sympathy, and who felt, like hinorelli had painted a circular Madonna with two nudes in the landscape distance for Lorenzo de' Medici The picture is hung now in the gallery of the Uffizi It is enough perhaps to reures for his sche the space at his disposal He was either unable or unwilling to coround of trees, meadows, and pastoral folk in thebut the infinite variety of hue of stone or arid earth would suit his haughty sense of beauty The nine persons who make up the picture are all carefully studied fro Tuscan stanoble, and Christ is a conificent _contadina_ in the plenitude of adult womanhood Those, however, who follow Mr

Ruskin in blaelo for carelessness about the hunity and grace he has communicated to his model here In technical execution the Doni Madonna is faithful to old Florentine usage, but lifeless and unsyreeably reminded by every portion of the surface that Lionardo's subtle play of tones and modulated shades, those _sfumature_, as Italians call them, which transfer the mystic charreat draughtsestion, and of chiaroscuro in the marble _tondi_ described above Moreover, in spite of very careful elo has failed to make us feel the successive planes of his composition The whole seeraduated, starts forward to the eye He required, at this period of his career, the relief of sculpture in order to express the roundness of the human for order If anything were needed toto Pope Julius II that sculpture and not painting was his trade, this superb design, so deficient in the essential qualities of painting proper, would suffice Men infinitely inferior to hiino, a Francia, a Fra Bartoloic which evokes pictorial beauty