as something to be admired, but with which they have nothing to do: quod super nos, nihil ad nos. The artists of that age, even Raffaelle himself, seemed to be going on very contentedly in the dry manner of Pietro Perugino; and if Michael Angelo had never appeared, the art might still have continued in the same style.

"Besides Rome and Florence, where the grandeur of this style was first displayed, it was on this foundation that the Carracci built the truly great academical Bolognian school.

"This grandeur of style has been, in different degrees, disseminated over all Europe. Some caught it by living at the time, and coming into contact with the original author, whilst others received it at second hand; and being everywhere adopted, it has totally changed the whole taste and style of design, if there could be said to be any style before his time. Our art, in consequence, now assumes a rank to which it could never have dared to aspire, if Michael Angelo had not discovered to the world the hidden powers which it possessed,-without his assistance we never could have been convinced that painting was capable of producing an adequate representation of the persons and actions of the heroes of the Iliad.

"I would ask any man qualified to judge of such works, whether he can look with indifference at the personification of the Supreme Being in the centre of the Capella Sestina, or the figures of the sybils which surround that chapel, to which we may add the statue of Moses; and whether the same sensations are not excited by those works, as what he may remember to have felt from the most sublime passages of Homer? I mention those figures more particularly, as they come nearer to a comparison with his Jupiter, his demigods, and heroes, those sybils and prophets being a kind of intermediate beings between men and angels. Though instances may be produced in the works of other painters which may justly stand in competition with those I have mentioned, such as the Isaiah and the Vision of Ezekiel, by Raffaelle, the St. Mark of Frate Bartolommeo, and many others, yet these, it must be allowed, are inventions so much in Michael Angelo's manner of thinking, that they may be truly considered as so many rays, which discover manifestly the centre from whence they emanated.

"The sublime in painting, as in | poetry, so overpowers and takes such a possession of the whole mind, that no room is left for attention to minute criticism. The little elegancies of art in the presence of these great ideas thus greatly expressed, lose all their value, and are, for the instant, at least, felt to be unworthy of our notice. The correct judgment, the purity of taste, which characterise Raffaelle, the exquisite grace of Correggio and Parmegiano all disappear before them.

*

"I feel a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as < he intended to excite. I reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear testimony to my admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this academy, and from this place, might be the name of Michael Angelo."-Sir J. Reynolds's Discourses.

With respect to the great praises bestowed on Michael Angelo by Sir Joshua, many have been induced to doubt the sincerity of his admiration, seeing that his own works bear so little traces of the style and manner of him whom he considered most excellent. Sir Joshua, however, has himself stated that he was rather to be considered an admirer than an imitator, having taken another course, one more suited, as he modestly observes, to his abilities, and the times in which he lived. That Sir Joshua Reynolds would have been eminent in whatever style he attempted, his great success, and the merit of the works he has left us, give ample evidence. It is in the latter part of his observation that the true reason of the course he pursued is to be discovered. There was no real taste in the country for the grand and severe style of the Roman school; there were no great buildings to be adorned, nothing to call into existence rivalry and emulation such as existed during the times of the revival of the art at Rome; and it was only in the exercise of that branch of art which the public taste made lucrative, that the artist could arrive at that independence which it must be the object of all to attain.

We cannot better illustrate our position, as to the little taste, or, at least, little patronage, those artists receive who exclusively confine themselves to the higher branches, than by mentioning that the late Mr. Flaxman (who, after raising the character of this country by his outlines from Homer and Dante,

which the united testimony and applause of all Europe pronounced to approach nearer, in grandeur and simplicity of composition, to the works of the ancients than any other,) never, through a long life, was commissioned to execute one single subject from these designs!

The recently published life of Sir Thomas Lawrence proves to us that he also concurred in giving the palm to Michael Angelo. He observes, in a letter from Rome,-" It often happens that first impressions are the truest, we change, and change, and then return to them again. I try to bring my mind in all the humility of truth, when estimating to myself the powers of Michael Angelo and Raphael, and again and again, the former bears down upon it with the compacted force of lightning.' The diffusion of truth and elegance, and often grandeur, cannot support itself against the compression of the sublime. There is something in that lofty abstraction, in those deities of intellect, that people the Sistine Chapel, that converts the noblest personages of Raphael's drama into the audience of Michael Angelo, before whom you know that, equally with yourself, they would stand silent and awe-struck. Raphael never produced figures equal to the Adam and Eve of Michael Angelo.

*

*

"I passed my morning, for some hours, in the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican; and procured an order to admit me to go round the top of the chapel in the narrow gallery; I thus saw the noble work with closer inspection, and therefore more advantage. With all your love of Raphael, you must and shall believe in the superiority of that greater being, of whom, in grateful, virtuous sincerity, your painter himself said, 'I bless God I live in the times of Michael Angelo.' Admired and popular as he was, it was fine, yet only just in him to say so; and, from frequent comparison of their noble works, I am the more convinced of the entire veracity of Sir Joshua Reynolds's decision in favour of Michael Angelo. I am not used, I hope, to be presumptuous in my opinions about art, but in my own mind, I think I know that Sir Joshua Reynolds could not have had another opinion on the subject."

Fuseli, whose works we have already often referred to, says, " Michael Angelo did for painting what Homer had planned for poetry, the epic part of which, with the utmost simplicity of a whole, should

unite magnificence of plan and endless variety of subordinate parts. He in time became generic, perhaps too uniformly grand: character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand a patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is expressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are giants." Mr. Flaxman, speaking of Michael Angelo, says, “his name was great and venerable, without an equal in the three sister arts; one which became the wonder and example of his own and succeeding ages;" and in his tenth lecture, speaking of his sculpture, he observes:-"The character of Michael Angelo's sculpture is too lofty and original to be dismissed without further notice; although we must acknowledge it has been criticised with severity, because it rarely possesses the chaste simplicity of Grecian art. True, but although Michael Angelo lived long, he did not live long enough to give absolute perfection to all his works; yet the pensive sitting figure of M. de' Medici, in the Medici chapel, is not without this charm; and the Madonna and Child, on the north side of the same chapel, is simple, and has a sentiment of maternal affection never found in Greek sculpture, but frequently in the works of this artist, particularly in his paintings, and that of the most tender kind. The recumbent statues in the monument of Julian de Medici, in the same chapel, of Daybreak, or Dawn, and Night, are grand and mysterious: the characters and forms bespeak the same mighty mind and hand evident throughout the whole ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgment."

and which have gained the applause of ages. It is, perhaps, of little importance to consider either the motives or the capacity of those who have taken on themselves the ungracious task of detraction; but as mere matter of curiosity it may be mentioned, that amongst the foremost of the moderns are Mengs and the Abbé Milizia*. The little work of the latter has become popular in the present day, as affording ready means to the hurried traveller of acquiring, in a given number of minutes, the whole art of criticism in the fine arts. The following may be taken at once as a specimen of the style of the writer, and of the soundness and fairness of his judgment :"THE CHRIST OF MICHAEL ANGELO. -Is this really a Christ, or is it a ruffian, who fiercely grasps the cross, for we know not what purpose? The anatomy is very hard; yet it is praised by numbers who think they know how to see, and who esteem Buonaroti as divine.

"In this Christ, in the Moses, and in all his works of sculpture and painting, Michael Angelo makes such a display of his anatomical knowledge, that he appears to have laboured only for anatomy; and unluckily he has neither well understood nor well applied it. The joints are wanting in lightness; the flesh is full, and round in its forms; the muscles are all equally prominent: from which it results that the beauty of motion is wholly lost sight of. No muscle is in repose; which is alone a vast defect. The tendons are of equal size, the outlines sweeping harshly, so that they start forth, and have no passage through which to retire again. What design then, and what elegance! much, indeed, like the labour of those learned persons who heap up all their erudition without discernment, and understand every thing but elegance and delicacy of perception.

"Michael Angelo mistook a means for the end. He studied anatomy deeply, and he did well; he considered anatomy as the ultimate object of the art, and he did ill; nay, he did worse than ill, from not knowing how to make use of it.

"He became (I humbly beg pardon of all his idolaters) sharp, hard, extravagant, overcharged, mean, vulgar, and, what is still more apparent, a mannerist, insomuch that his figures invariably display the same style and the same cha

Dell' arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno secondo i principii di Sulzer e di Mengs.

racter. In short, after having seen one you may be said to have seen them all."

Mr. Payne Knight, amongst our own countrymen, is also a severe critic on M. Angelo, finding in him little to admire. But it may be said of many of those who have underrated his genius, that perhaps they have had but few opportunities of studying those works which they so readily condemn, and that, if it had been otherwise, they would as readily have changed their opinion, as was the case with Falconet, a French sculptor, who was at one time foremost in his censures. When, however, he saw the two statues brought into France by Cardinal Richelieu, he said, with a candour which did him credit, "I have now seen M. Angelo; he is terrific."

The monuments to Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici at Florence are perhaps the most remarkable of M. Angelo's works in marble. The statue of Lorenzo is the most remarkable. Lorenzo appears seated, wrapt in thought, leaning his face on one hand, while the rest of the figure is in perfect repose. Of this work, it has been observed, that it bears no resemblance to the antiques; but it rivals the highest excellence of the ancients in point of expression, with repose and dignity of its own. Such effects are produced only by the study of real life, contemplated by genius and imagination.

Mr. John Bell, whose work (Travels < in Italy) has been already quoted, has some excellent remarks on the different statues of M. Angelo. Speaking of the tombs of the Medici, he observes :—

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Till I beheld them I had formed no conception of the splendour of genius and the taste possessed by Michael Angelo. They are works which evince a grandeur and an originality of thought, a boldness and freedom of design and execution, unparalleled.

"Two sarcophagi,-those of Lorenzo and Julian,-are each supported by two figures. The personifications of the Twilight and Aurora guard the remains of Lorenzo, and the Night and Day those of his brother. The crepuscule or twilight is represented by a superb manly figure, reclining and looking down; the wonderful breadth of chest and fine balance of the sunk shoulder are masterly, and the right limb, which is finished, is incomparable.

"The Aurora is a female form of the

most exquisite proportions; the head is of a grand and heroic cast, and the drapery, which falls in thin, transparent folds from the turban, is full of grace, while in her noble countenance a spring of thought, an awakening principle seems to breathe, as if the rising day awaited the opening of her eyes.

"Day is much unfinished-little more than blocked, yet most magnificent. To have done more would have diminished the noble effect of the whole, which is only heightened by what is left to the imagination. Perhaps none but a mind so gifted as that of this great master could have conceived this, or succeeded in so bold an attempt. Genius is creative; and this great artist did not imitate: he meditated, and in his moments of inspiration struck out the most superb inventions, often imperfect indeed, but always grandly conceived. Doubtless the unfinished state in which many of his splendid works were left must have been occasioned by that impatience so often the concomitant of genius, which, having attained its grand object in producing splendour of effect, becomes weary, and forsakes the details.

"The personification of Night*, in sleep and silence, is finely imagined. The attitude is beautiful, mournful, and full of the most touching expression; the drooping head, the supporting hand, and the rich head-dress, are unrivalled in the arts.

There are in this chapel, forming a part of the group, or at least of the subject, two statues of the brothers Lorenzo and Julian, by the same master. They are both in armour. The figure of Lorenzo is simple and impressive. The whole character of this piece is marked by a cast of gloomy melancholy, which awakens the idea of his brooding over the fate of his murdered brother, their mutual affection being represented by the writers of the day as having been of almost a romantic character.

"The figure of Julian is a noble heroic statue. He is seated, the left hand gloved and raised. The bent forefinger touches the upper lip, which is admirably expressed, seeming literally to yield to the pressure. The helmet, fine in form and proportion, throws a deep shade over the countenance."

is a mere sketch: he cut his figures out of the block as others would sketch a design upon waste paper, which might prove too small for their intention. The subject is the taking down from the cross. The group is composed of four figures; those of our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and an angel. The whole expression is very touching and mournful: our Saviour forms the principal figure, and seems to hang suspended in the arms of Joseph, who supports the body from above; the figure of the Virgin is seen assisting under the shoulder, to uphold the weight, whilst her face is turned up towards the body. The me lancholy of the whole scene is beauti fully represented: the head of Christ rests upon her shoulder; the lengthened form of the body, supported in the arms of the assistants, seems extended by its own weight, whilst the suppleness and lankness of recent death is finely marked by the manner in which the limbs hang in gentle bendings, and seem falling towards the ground, with the most natural disposition of the arms, as if affected by every motion. The left arm hangs over the shoulder of the Virgin, whilst the right crosses her neck, and rests on a lesser angelic figure, which might have been omitted without injury to the subject. The interest of the piece lies in the melancholy but placid countenance of our Saviour, and the declination of the head, which is lacerated by the crown of thorns, and seems thus to have drooped in the awful moment when the vail of the Temple was rent and the sun was darkened.'

Mr. Flaxman observes of the Last Judgment," All is original, and unlike any production of antiquity, and forms a labour that seems scarcely the work of man, and stands without a rival in ancient and modern art."

Again" In this there are multitudes and legions in comparison with the separate figures and single groups in the most considerable of the ancient works. In this stupendous work, in addition to the genius of the mighty master, the mechanical powers and movements of the figures, its anatomical energy and forms are shown by such perspective of the most difficult positions, as surpass any examples left by the ancients, on a flat surface, or low relief, and are only to be equalled in kind, but not in proportion of complication, in the front and diagonal views of the Laocoon, and all the views

of the Boxers, which are both entire groups."

In estimating the character of Michael Angelo, we must judge of him, like Bacon, by his times, and must consider what progress had been made since the revival of the arts; how few ancient statues had been discovered, and how little of the principles of art had been then defined. It is not so much his works that remain; those of his pencil have long lost all their freshness, and most are fast fading to decay; but it is the great and universal change which his genius effected that will make him always illustrious, even when all traces of his own works may have been destroyed. The graceful, the elegant, and the refined style of the ancients could not perhaps be surpassed; but the grand and terrific seems to have been his peculiar province. In invention, vigour, energy of mind, and knowledge of form, he led the way.

It has been objected, and with some truth, that his statues are most of them rather pictures than statues, to be seen in one view only; and indeed most of them were executed for monuments, and not to be seen isolated.

It may fairly be inferred, from the excellence of his Moses and other figures, that, had he confined himself through life to sculpture alone, he would have attained the highest reach of the art. It should also be observed, that his impatience and eagerness did not allow either of his finishing with the necessary care, or of taking the means usually adopted to attain perfection of execution. In a work quoted by the writer, under the name of Baron Stendhal, written in the 16th century, the au thor observes :-"I myself saw Michael Angelo, when more than sixty years old. His body was thin, and did not give the idea of strength; he was hewing away large pieces of a block of hard marble with such power and dexterity, that in a quarter of an hour he had cut more than three of the strongest young sculptors could have cut away in a whole hour. He worked with such impetuosity and fury, that I expected every moment that the whole block would have been broken in pieces. Every blow brought away pieces of three or four inches in thickness; and his chisel went so near the termination of the outline of the subject, that, if the blow had driven it one line further, the whole would have been destroyed. His

impatience was so great, that he often executed his works in marble from small models in wax or clay, trusting to his own resources for the detail."

Many of Michael Angelo's designs were executed by others, particularly by Sebastiano del Piombo, and Daniel da Volterra. With respect to these, it has been observed, that he lowered his imagination to suit the capacity of the colourists, and without losing any of his grandeur or knowledge of design, appears to have avoided those extremes of energetic expression which have laid him open to so much rebuke. With the exception of these painters, who executed works under his immediate inspection, or from designs made by him, he may be said to have had no followers,none who could be called imitators. His style was one which required his own peculiar genius to attain.

In this short account of the merits and defects of Michael Angelo, we have furnished the reader with the opinions and criticisms of distinguished artists and scholars, who have written on the principles of art and taste, and who, of necessity, have devoted peculiar attention to the works of one who, by almost universal consent, has produced the most wonderful, if not the most pleasing, works of modern art, and most of whom had opportunities of personally studying the original works of this great artist. On a subject depending so much on individual feeling; when, with one, some particular style of excellence is corsidered as pre-eminent; when, as with Mr. Payne Knight, nothing is excellent which does not convey a notion of ease, and of individual nature; and when with another, as Mr. Fuseli, "the grand" is considered as a compensation for every other defect; and when their very definitions of the terms "beauty, grace, grandeur, sublimity," have afforded discussion sufficient to fill entire volumes,-it would be hopeless to expect any great unity of opinion. None, however, except Mengs and Milizia, have gone so far as to deny great merit to the productions of Michael Angelo; whilst nearly the whole of those best qualified to judge have concurred in placing him at the head of the modern school of art.

If, in weighing the opinions of the admirers and the opponents of this extraordinary man, we have leaned towards those of the former, it is from a conviction that more pains have been