Part 9 (1/2)

Vasari says: ”His powers of iination were such, that he was frequently compelled to abandon his purpose, because he could not express by the hand those grand and sublime ideas which he had conceived in his mind; nay, he has spoiled and destroyed many works for this cause; and I know, too, that soe nuht see the labours he had endured, and the trials to which he had subjected his spirit, in his resolve not to fall short of perfection I have s by his hand, which were found in Florence, and are now in ive evidence of his great genius, yet prove also that the ha Minerva from the head of Jupiter He would construct an ideal shape out of nine, ten and even twelve different heads, for no other purpose than to obtain a certain grace of harmony and composition which is not to be found in the natural for tools, not in the hand, but in the eye, because the hands do but operate, it is the eye that judges; he pursued the same idea in architecture also” Condivi adds so his extraordinary fecundity and variety of invention: ”He was gifted with a h he painted so ures, as any one can see, he never made one exactly like another or posed in the same attitude Indeed, I have heard hi whether he has drawn it before; erasing any repetition, when the design was ination is also most extraordinary This has been the chief reason why he was never quite satisfied with his oork, and always depreciated its quality, estee that his hand failed to attain the idea which he had forhtselo, Raffaello, and Andrea del Sarto They are not to be reckoned as equals; for Lionardo and Michelangelo outstrip the other two almost as much as these surpass all lesser craftsmen Each of the four men expressed his own peculiar vision of the world with pen, or chalk, orthe unique inevitable line, the exact touch and quality of stroke, which should present at once a lively transcript from real Nature, and a revelation of the artist's particular way of feeling Nature In Lionardo it is a line of subtlety and infinite suggestiveness; in Michelangelo it compels attention, and forcibly defines the essence of the object; in Raffaello it carriesrhythm; in Andrea it seems to call for tone, colour, atmosphere, and makes their presence felt Raffaello was often faulty: even in the wonderful pen-drawing of two nudes he sent to Albrecht Durer as a sample of his skill, we blame the knees and ankles of his models Lionardo was sometimes wilful, whimsical, seduced by dreamland, like a God born auor, and lacked passion Michelangelo's work shows none of these shortcos; it is always technically faultness, instinct with passion, supereht, of sweetness, than he chose, or perhaps was able, to communicate We should welcoave a little n is that of a sculptor, Andrea's of a colourist, Lionardo's of a curious student, Raffaello's of a musician and improvisatore These distinctions are not merely fanciful, nor based on e know about the men in their careers We feel sihtsularly akin to Andrea del Sarto's, Giorgione's pen-and-ink sketch for a Lucretia, are seen at once by their richness and blurred outlines to be the work of colourists Signorelli's transcripts froelo, reveal a sculptor rather than a painter

Botticelli, with all his Florentine precision, shows that, like Lionardo, he was a seeker and a visionary in his anxious feeling after curve and attitude Mantegna see into marble It is easy to apply this analysis in succession to any draughtsman who has style To do so would, however, be superfluous: we should only be enforcing what is a truisent students of art--namely, that each individual stamps his own specific quality upon his handiwork; reveals even in the neutral region of design his innate preference for colour or pure form as a channel of expression; betrays the predoy or sensuous charm, of scientific curiosity or plastic force, of passion or of tenderness, which controls his nature This inevitable and unconscious revelation of the ularly modern We do not apprehend it to at all the same extent in the sculpture of the ancients, whether it be that our sy, or whether the ancients really conceived art more collectively in masses, less individually as persons

No master exhibits this peculiarly elo, and nowhere is the personality of his genius, what marks him off and separates him from all fellow-s To use the words of a penetrative critic, froelo is this; he is not, so to say, at the head of a class, but he stands apart by himself: he is not possessed of a skill which renders him unapproached or unapproachable; but rather, he is of so unique an order, that no other artist whatever seeoes on to define in what a true sense the words ”creator” and ”creative” may be applied to him: how the shows and appearances of the world were for hi ideas, hich his soul was fa and skill in the arts supplying to his hand such large and adequate symbols of them as are otherwise beyond attainion of aesthetic criticiselo's own utterances upon art and beauty in his poe with the eternal ideas, the perhts about these h the vehicles of science and of art, for which he was so singularly gifted, Michelangelo, in no loose or trivial sense of that phrase, proved himself to be a creator He introduces us to a world seen by no eyes except his own, compels us to become familiar with forms unapprehended by our senses, accustoms us to breathe a rarer and more fiery atmosphere than ere born into

The vehicles used by Michelangelo in his designs were mostly pen and chalk He employed both a sharp-nibbed pen of soencies of his subject or the temper of hissofter than the latter I cannot remember any instances of those chiaroscuro washes which Raffaello handled in so elo frequently co with pen outlines In like manner he does not seem to have favoured the metal point upon prepared paper, hich Lionardo produced unrivalled s, where the yellow outline bites into a parchest a rusty metal in the instrument We must remember, however, that the inks of that period were frequently corrosive, as is proved by the state of radual attrition of the paper by mineral acids It is also not impossible that artists may have already invented e call steel pens Sarpi, in the seventeenth century, thanks a correspondent for the gift of one of thesebroadly, the reed and the quill, red and black chalk, or _elo's expression as a draughtshtened hite chalk, and none produced in the fine Florentine style of Ghirlandajo by white chalk alone upon a dead-brown surface In this matter it is needful to speak with diffidence; for the sketches of our master are so widely scattered that few students can have exaraphic reproductions, however adive decisive evidence regarding the elo avoided those ht wonders He preferred an instru for plain strokes upon the candid paper The result attained, whether wrought by bold lines, or subtly hatched, or finished with the ut, has always been traced out conscientiously and firmly, with one pointed stylus (pen, chalk, or matita), chosen for the purpose As I have said, it is the work of a sculptor, accustomed to wield chisel and mallet upon marble, rather than that of a painter, trained to secure effects by shadows and glazings

It is possible, I think, to define, at least with soelo's employment of his favourite vehicles for several purposes and at different periods of his life A broad-nibbed pen was used alns of cornices, pilasters, s, also in plans for

Sketches of tombs and edifices, intended to be shown to patrons, were partly finished with the pen; and here we find a subordinate and very li Such perforarded as products of the workshop rather than as examples of the artist'sthe intrusion of a pupil or the deliberate adoption of an office reatest and etically in preparation for sculpture or for fresco The Louvre is rich in masterpieces of this kind--the fiery study of a David; the heroic figures of two male nudes, hatched into stubborn salience like pieces of carved wood; the broad conception of the Madonna at S Lorenzo in her nificent repose and passionate cascade of fallen draperies; the repulsive but superabundantly powerful profile of a goat-like faun

These, and the stupendous studies of the Albertina Collection at Vienna, including the supine man with thorax violently raised, are worked with careful hatchings, stroke upon stroke, effecting a suggestion of plastic roundness But we discover quite a different use of the pen in soures at the Louvre; in thick, ales out of oft-repeated sodden blotches; in the griestiveness of the dissection scene at Oxford The pen in the hand of Michelangelo was the tool by means of which he realised his most trenchant conceptions and his most picturesque ienius was still vehement, it seems to have been his favourite vehicle

The use of chalk grew upon him in later life, possibly because he trusted more to hishis fancies Black chalk was employed for rapid notes of composition, and also for the more elaborate productions of his pencil To this ave to Gherardo Perini (in the Uffizi), the Phaethon, the tityos, the Ganyave to Tommaso Cavalieri (at Windsor) It is i and the precision of predeters have been produced They seem to melt and to escape inspection, yet they remain fixed on the memory as firns for Christ's Crucifixion and Deposition from the Cross are executed in chalk, sometimes black, but mostly red

It is manifest, upon exahts evoked and shadowed forth on paper Their perplexing hty iain upon the clavichord to find his the the key, changing the accent--prove that this continued seeking with the crayon after form and composition was carried on in solitude and abstract ns elo's loftiest drearip upon the subject, shown in the pen-drawings, are absent here These qualities are replaced by s for the Passion hts of the stern master

Red chalk he used for some of his most brilliant conceptions It is not necessary to dwell upon the bending woman's head at Oxford, or the torso of the lance-bearer at Vienna Let us confine our attention to what is perhaps the ns--the ”Bersaglio,” or the ”Arcieri,” in the Queen's collection at Windsor

It is a group of eleven nakedshafts with all their ure, whose face, like that of Pallas, and broad breast are guarded by a spreading shi+eld The draughtsman has indicated only one bow, bent with fury by an old round Yet all the actions proper to archery are suggested by the violent gestures and strained sinews of the crowd At the foot of the ters, with idle bow and quiver Two little genii of love, in the background, are lighting up a fire, puffing its flay and ardour, impetuous movereater force, nor the tyranny of soory seems to is mostly strive to seize it, by the fierce force of the carnal passions It is the contrast between celestial love asleep in lustful souls, and vulgar love infla tyrannous appetites:--

_The one love soars, the other doard tends; The soul lights this, while that the senses stir, And still lust's arrow at base quarry flies_

ThisBuonarroti's lifetime, or shortly afterwards, by Niccol Beatrizet Some follower of Raffaello used the print for a fresco in the Palazzo Borghese at Roe of Alexander and Roxana is painted This has led so itself to the Urbinate Indeed, at first sight, one enuine work of Raffaello, aielo's manner The calm beauty of the statue's classic profile, the refinement of all the faces, the exquisite delicacy of the adolescent forrace, are not precisely Michelangelesque The technical execution of the design, however, makes its attribution certain Well as Raffaello could draw, he could not draw like this He was incapable of rounding and ranulated shadings which bring the whole surface out like that of a bas-relief in polishedfor Alexander and Roxana, in red chalk, and therefore an excellent subject for coht lines; awith the pen, but, so far as I a chalk The style of this design and its exquisite workmanshi+p correspond exactly with the finish of the Cavalieri series at Windsor The paper,with athe date April 12, 1530 We have then in this htsto surpass Raffaello on his own ground of loveliness and rhythrace

CHAPTER VII

I

Julius died upon the 21st of February 1513 ”A prince,” says Guicciardini, ”of inestiant in the schemes he formed, that his own prudence andhins and the circumstances of the tilory had he been a secular potentate, or if the pains and anxious thought he ereatness of the Church by war had been devoted to her spiritual welfare in the arts of peace”

Italy rejoiced when Giovanni de' Medici was selected to succeed him, with the title of Leo X ”Venus ruled in Rome with Alexander, Mars with Julius, now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo” Such was the tenor of the epigraress to the Lateran It was felt that a Pope of the house of Medici would be a patron of arts and letters, and it was hoped that the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent ht restore the equilibriureater faustus in his lifetie of Italian culture Yet he cannot be said to have raised any first-rate e over those whoelo and Raffaello were in the full swing of hen Leo claiifts of the forreat y of Raffaello The project of a new S Peter's belonged to Julius Leo only continued the sche such assistants as the times provided after Bramante's death in 1514 Julius instinctively selected enius, ere capable of planning on a colossal scale Leo delighted in the society of clever people, poetasters, petty scholars, lutists, and buffoons Rome owes no monumental work to his inventive brain, and literature no masterpiece to his discrimination Ariosto, the most brilliant poet of the Renaissance, returned in disappointment from the Vatican ”When I went to Rome and kissed the foot of Leo,”

writes the ironical satirist, ”he bent down from the holy chair, and took my hand and saluted me on both cheeks Besides, he made me free of half the stamp-dues I was bound to pay; and then, breast full of hope, but smirched with mud, I retired and took my supper at the Ram”

The words which Leo is reported to have spoken to his brother Giuliano when he heard the news of his election, express the character of the man and mark the difference between his ambition and that of Julius

”Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has given it us” To enjoy life, to squander the treasures of the Church on amusements, to feed a rabble of flatterers, to contract enormous debts, and to disturb the peace of Italy, not for sorandisement, but in order to place the princes of his family on thrones, that was Leo's conception of the Papal privileges and duties

The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raffaello, are eminently characteristic Julius, bent, white-haired, and eetic temperament Leo, heavy-jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fibre of a sensualist

II