Part 16 (2/2)
”As I wish that God may pardon you, I do not write this out of any resented of you In truth, if you had sentwhat you ought to have desired erly to do in your own interest; for this act of courtesy would silence the envious tongues which say that only certain Gerards and Thomases dispose of them
”Well, if the treasure bequeathed you by Pope Julius, in order that you , was not enough to hted word, what can I expect froreat painter, but the grace and merit of the Supreme Shepherd, which decide his fame God wills that Julius should live renowned for ever in a simple tomb, inurned in his own enius Meantiations is reckoned to you as an act of thieving
”Our souls need the tranquil emotions of piety more than the lively impressions of plastic art May God, then, inspire his Holiness Paul with the saory of blessed memory, who rather chose to despoil Roan deities than to let their es of the saints of the devotion of the people
”Lastly, when you set about co your picture of the universe and hell and heaven, if you had steeped your heart with those suggestions of glory, of honour, and of terror proper to the theme which I sketched out and offered to you in the letter I wrote you and the whole world reads, I venture to assert that not only would nature and all kind influences cease to regret the illustrious talents they endowed you with, and which to-day render you, by virtue of your art, an is, would herself continue to watch over such a overnment of the hemispheres
”Your servant, ”The Aretine
”Now that I have blown off soainst you for the cruelty you used to ht you to see that, while you may be divine, I am not made of water, I bid you tear up this letter, for I have done the like, and do not forget that I as and eelo Buonarroti in Ronancy of this letter is only equalled by its stylistic ingenuity Aretino used every means he could devise to wound and irritate a sensitive nature The allusion to Raffaello, the coues with the Last Judgossiped about Michelangelo's relations to young reat ard to the Tomb of Julius, his devout hope that Paul will destroy the fresco, and the iy of his precious letter on the Last Day, were all nicely calculated to annoy
Whether the missive was duly received by Buonarroti we do not know
Gaye asserts that it appears to have been sent through the post He discovered it in the Archives of the Strozzi Palace
The virtuous Pietro Aretino was not the only one to be scandalised by the nudities of the Last Judgelo treated such a subject in such athe principle of art for art's sake to its extremity One of the most popular stories told about this work shows that it early began to create a scandal When it was three fourths finished, Pope Paul went to see the fresco, attended by Messer Biagio da Cesena, his Master of the Cere, Messer Biagio replied that he thought it highly iures in a sacred picture, and that it was more fit for a place of debauchery than for the Pope's chapel Michelangelo, nettled by this, drew the prelate's portrait to the life, and placed him in hell with horns on his head and a serpent twisted round his loins
Messer Biagio, finding hihed at by his friends, co to help hiatory, I would have used et you released; but I exercise no influence in hell; _ubi nulla est redeelo's death, his follower, Daniele da Volterra, was eures, and won thereby the naave the painter this co previously consulted Buonarroti on the subject The latter is said to have replied to the Pope's er: ”Tell his Holiness that this is a sht Let hi the world in order: to refor the Pontificate of Pio V, a un by Daniele da Volterra As a necessary consequence of this tribute toand the balance of his ed
IV
Vasari says that not very long before the Last Judg, and seriously hurt his leg
The pain he suffered and his melancholy made him shut himself up at home, where he refused to be treated by a doctor There was a Florentine physician in Rome, however, of capricious humour, who admired the arts, and felt a real affection for Buonarroti This man contrived to creep into the house by some privy entrance, and roamed about it till he found the uard until he had effected a complete cure The name of this excellent friend, famous for his skill and science in those days, was Baccio Rontini
After his recovery Michelangelo returned to work, and finished the Last Judgment in a few months It was exposed to the public on Christe, the dust of centuries, the burned papers of successive conclaves, the ss of upholsterers, the brush of the breeches-ment that it is alelo intended by his scheme of colour is entirely lost Not only did Daniele da Volterra, an execrable colourist, dab vividly tinted patches upon the modulated harmonies of flesh-tones painted by the , deepening to so like lamp-black around the altar Nevertheless, in its composition the fresco may still be studied; and after due inspection, aided by photographic reproductions of each portion, we are not unable to understand the enthusiasm which so nobly and profoundly planned a work of art aroused a contemporaries
It has soest andfor, and descending figures Nothing can be elo was sixty-six years of age when he laid his brush down at the end of the gigantic task He had long outlived the spontaneity of youthful ardour His experience through half a century in the planning ofof facades and sacristies and libraries, had developed the architectonic sense which was always powerful in his conceptive faculty
Consequently, we are not surprised to find that, intricate and confused as the schen of rouping The wall, since it occupies one entire end of a long high building, is naturally less broad than lofty The pictorial divisions are therefore horizontal in the h so combined and varied as to produce the effect oftheir lines of sinuosity The pendentive upon which the prophet Jonah sits, descends and breaks the surface at the top, leaving a semicircular coelo filled these upper spaces with two groups of wrestling angels, the one bearing a huge cross, the other a colu-post are the chief emblems of Christ's Passion
The crown of thorns is also there, the sponge, the ladder, and the nails It is with noare thus exhibited De on clouds like Leviathans, hurl them to and fro in brutal wrath above the crowd of souls, as though to demonstrate the justice of damnation In spite of a God's pain and shae is what the crimes of the world and Italy have made him
Immediately below the corbel, and well detached from the squadrons of attendant saints, Christ rises from His throne His face is turned in the direction of the dah loaded with thunderbolts for their annihilation He is a ponderous young athlete; rather say a arised Apollo The Virgin sits in a crouching attitude at His right side, slightly averting her head, as though in painful expectation of the co sentence The saints andone of the chief planes in the coroups of subtle and surprising intricacy All bear the eht of Christ as though appealing to His judgested that they intend to supplicate for mercy I cannot, however, resist the iid justice S Barthololare of les to raise her broken wheel S Sebastian frowns down on hell with a sheaf of arrows quivering in his stalwart arrid-irons, all subserve the sa Christ that, if He does not damn the wicked, confessors will have died with Hielo depicted so erness, anxiety, and astonishiven to none of theratitude, or love, or sy alike, are hu to Buonarroti's conception, was not inal, and tender The hosts of heaven are adult and over-developed gymnasts Yet, while we record these ilect the spiritual beauty of sorave, with folding ar these, Michelangelo thought peradventure of his father and his brother
The two planes which I have atteer portion of the composition The third in order is made up of three masses In thetrumpets over earth and sea to wake the dead
Dray and superhuman force of these superb creatures Their attitudes co thunders of the tru to be judged, sorave-clothes, others assisted by descending saints and angels, who reach a hand, a rosary, to help the still gross spirit in its flight To the right are the conde doards to their place of tored by de, huddled in a mass of horror It is just here, and still yet farther down, that Michelangelo put forth all his power as awhich is truly proper to their state of holiness and everlasting peace, the daony and terror The colossal forms of flesh hich the multitudes of saved and damned are equally endowed, befit that extreuish more than they suit the serenity of bliss eternal There is a wretch, twined round with fiends, gazing straight before him as he sinks; one half of his face is buried in his hand, the other fixed in a stony spas could express with subliher order the sense of irremediable loss, eternal pain, a future endless without hope, than the rigid dignity of this not ignoble sinner's dread Just below is the place to which the dooelo reverted to Dante for the symbolism chosen to portray hell Charon, the de coal, compels a crowd of spirits in his ferryboat They land and are received by devils, who drag theions He towers at the extreions yawn infinitely deep, beyond our ken; just as the angels above Christ suggest a region of light and glory, extending upward through illiment on which attention is concentrated forms but an episode in the universal, se hell, on the left hand of the spectator, is brute earth, the grave, the for clay, out of which souls, not yet acquitted or condee with difficulty, in varied for into life eternal
Vasari, in his description of the Last Judgment, seized upon what after all endures as thework, at once so fascinating and so repellent ”It is obvious,” he says, ”that the peerless painter did not ai but the portrayal of the human body in perfect proportions and ether with the passions and affections of the soul That was enough for hirand style: consuhtsn He concentrated his power upon the hu all subsidiary things, as charm of colour, capricious inventions, delicate devices and novelties of fancy”
Vasari ht to have been aeloquence, the solerossness quit
As a collection of athletic nudes in all conceivable postures of rest and action, of foreshortening, of suggested edfor the portrayal of divinely simple faces, superb li h upon its details, e, terrifying, dreadful in its poignant expression of wrath, retaliation, thirst for vengeance, cruelty, and helpless horror But the supreme point even of Doomsday, of the Dies Irae, has not been seized We do not hear the still sh Thomas a Celano's hymn:--