Part 23 (1/2)

The best way to study Michelangelo's last work in raph produced under artificial illumination by Alinari No sympathetic mind will fail to feel that we are in immediate contact with the sculptor's very soul, at the close of his life, when all his thoughts eaned fro nor sculpture now can lull to rest My soul, that turns to his great love on high, Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread

As a French critic has observed: ”It is the most intimately personal and the most pathetic of his works The idea of penitence exhales fros of the Passion; it makes us listen to an act of bitter contrition and an act of sorrowing love”

Michelangelo is said to have designed the Pieta for his own monument

In the person of Nicodeloom of the sombre Duomo His old sad face, surrounded by the heavy cowl, looks down for ever with a tenderness beyond expression, repeating uish and of blood divine the redereat poem in marble, abandoned by its maker in some mood of deep dejection, is not without interest We are told that the stone selected was a capital froe colu hard and difficult to handle, theThis circumstance annoyed the master; also, as he infor hi the block had been to keep hily he heith fury, and bit so deep into the marble that he injured one of the Madonna's elbows When this happened, it was his invariable practice to abandon the piece he had begun upon, feeling that an incomplete perfore he suffered from sleeplessness; and it was his habit to rise fro a thick paper cap, in which he placed a lighted candle ht of one candle must have complicated the technical difficulties of his labour But e may perhaps surmise to have been his final motive for the rejection of the work, was a sense of his inability, with diminished powers of execution, and a still more vivid sense of the importance of the motive, to accomplish what the brain conceived

The hand failed The ietic Losing patience then at last, he took a haht arm of the Mary shows a fracture The left arm of the Christ is mutilated in several places

One of the nipples has been repaired, and the hand of the Madonna resting on the breast above it is cracked across It would have been difficult to reduce the whole huge block to fragments; and when the work of destruction had advanced so far, Michelangelo's servant Antonio, the successor to Urbino, begged the reood friend of Buonarroti's at this time He heard that Francesobndini, a Florentine settled in exile at Rome, earnestly desired soni, with Michelangelo's consent, bought the broken ether, and began to mend it

Fortunately, he does not seem to have elaborated the surface in any important particular; for both the finished and unfinished parts bear indubitableAfter the death of Calcagni and Bandini, the Pieta rearden of Antonio, Bandini's heir, at Montecavallo It was transferred to Florence, and placed a the new Medicean Chapel, until at last, in 1722, the Grand Duke Cosimo III

finally set it up behind the altar of the Duoan another Pieta in marble on a much smaller scale It is possible that this ures (a dead Christ sustained by a bending man), of which there is a cast in the Accade Deposition frouor of the dead Christ's li

While speaking of these several Pietas, I h relief of the Madonna clasping her dead Son, which adorns the Albergo dei Poveri at Genoa It is ascribed to Michelangelo, was early believed to be his, and is still accepted without hesitation by coelesque n, I cannot regard the bas-relief, in its present condition at least, as a genuine work, but rather as the production of some imitator, or the _rifacimento_ of a restorer A si the noble portrait-bust in marble of Pope Paul III at Naples This too has been attributed to Michelangelo But there is no external evidence to support the tradition, while the internal evidence froainst it The medallions introduced upon the heavily embroidered cope are not in his style The treatment of the adolescent female form in particular indicates a different temperaht have more easily accepted it But Cellini would certainly have enlarged upon so important a piece of sculpture in his Memoirs If then we are left to lielmo della Porta, who executed the Farnese monument in S

Peter's

IV

While still a Cardinal, Paul III began to rebuild the old palace of the Farnesi on the Tiber shore It closes one end of the great open space called the Campo di Fiore, and stands opposite to the Villa Farnesina, on the right bank of the river Antonio da Sangallo was the architect employed upon this work, which advanced slowly until Alessandro Farnese's elevation to the Papacy He then deter forward, and to co the supreallo had carried the walls up to the second story The third remained to be accomplished, and the cornice had to be constructed Paul was not satisfied with Sangallo's design, and referred it to Michelangelo for criticism --possibly in 1544 The result was a report, which we still possess, in which Buonarroti, basing his opinion on principles derived froallo's plan under six separate heads He does not leave a single ards either harance of composition, or practical convenience, or decorative beauty, or distribution of parts

He calls the cornice barbarous, confused, bastard in style, discordant with the rest of the building, and so ill suited to the palace as, if carried out, to threaten the walls with destruction This docu Michelangelo's views on architecture in general, and displaying a pedantry of which he was never elsewhere guilty, partly as explaining the bitter hostility aroused against hireat architect's adherents We do not, unfortunately, possess the design upon which the report wasthat it elo, who professed that architecture was not his art, ht, one thinks, have spared his rival such extremity of adverse criticism It exposed him to the taunts of rivals and ill-wishers; justified theave them a plausible excuse when they accused hie building, the Laurentian Library, glaringly exhibits all the defects he discovered in Sangallo's cornice

I find it difficult to resist the ie extent, for the ill-will of those artists whoallesca” His life became embittered by their animosity, and his industry as Papal architect continued to be haues But he alone was to bla an honest opinion, as for doing so with insulting severity

That Michelangelo allo's cornice is of course possible Paul himself was dissatisfied, and eventually threw that portion of the building open to coa, Sebastiano del Pioio Vasari are said to have furnished designs Michelangelo did so also; and his plan was not only accepted, but eventually carried out

Nevertheless Sangallo, one of the most illustrious professional architects then alive, could not but have felt deeply wounded by the treatment he received It was natural for his followers to exclaied rasp, by the discourteous exercise of his coe in the world of art

In order to be just to Michelangelo, we ard to his own performances, and severe in self-criticisle word of self-complacency escape his pen He sincerely felt himself to be an unprofitable servant: that was part of his constitutional depression We know, too, that he allowed strong tes to control his utterance The cruel criticisallo may therefore have been quite devoid of malice; and if it was as well founded as the criticiselo stands acquitted Sangallo's e that you can walk inside it, and coment:--

”It cannot be denied that Bramante's talent as an architect was equal to that of any one from the times of the ancients until now He laid the first plan of S Peter, not confused, but clear and sis, so that it interfered with no part of the palace It was considered a very fine design, and indeed any one can see now that it is so All the architects who departed froallo has done, have departed from the truth; and those who have unprejudiced eyes can observe this in his ht from the interior as Bramante planned it; and not only this, but he has provided no other -places, above and below, all dark, which lend themselves to innumerable knaveries, that the church would beco bandits, false coiners, for debauching nuns, and doing all sorts of rascality; and when it was shut up at night, twenty-five ues hidden there, and it would be difficult enough to find them There is, besides, another inconvenience: the interior circle of buildings added to Bramante's plan would necessitate the destruction of the Paoline Chapel, the offices of the Piombo and the Ruota, and more besides I do not think that even the Sistine would escape”

After this Michelangelo adds that to reallo's plan would not cost 100,000 crowns, as the sect alleged, but only 16,000, The material would be infinitely useful, the foundations i, and the whole fabric would profit in so like 200,000 crowns and 300 years of time ”This is ain a victory here would be elo means that, at the time when he wrote the letter in question, it was still in doubt whether Sangallo's design should be carried out or his own adopted; and, as usual, he looked forith dread to undertaking a colossal architectural task

V