Francis I., who had seen the painting of the Last Supper at Milan, became desirous of possessing so eminent an artist; and although Da Vinci was then an old man, he invited him to his court. The rivalry which existed between Da Vinci and Michael Angelo, and, the fact that the latter was preferred to him both at Rome and at Florence, probably induced him to quit his native country with little regret, particularly as, by withdrawing from all cause of excitement and irritation, he was enabled to consult his own ease and happiness. He accordingly went to France, where, however, he expired in 1519, in the arms of his royal patron, before he had employed his pencil in his service. Raphael de Santi, or Sanzio, the third and last of the great triumvirate, was the son of an inferior painter, and was born at Urbino in 1483. He was early placed at Perugia, under Pietro Perugino, an artist of considerable celebrity, and whose style he in a great measure adopted in his early works; but, like his great contemporaries, he soon surpassed his master, abandoning the stiffness of his draperies, his dryness and harshness, and animating with spirit the gestures and countenances of his heads. The bent of his genius was towards the voluptuous and graceful, and led him to that ideal beauty, grace, and expression which may be considered as the most refined and difficult province of painting. Whilst at Rome he principally studied the remains of Grecian sculpture, by which he perfected his knowledge of the art; and he also devoted much time to the study of the ancient buildings in that city. He studied six years under his relation Bramante, the architect, in order that at his death he might succeed him in the manage ment of the building of St. Peter's. A vivid apprehension, a sort of fervour in seizing the sudden expression of passion, and a facility of execution, seem to have marked his earliest works. The career of Raphael was, however, as short as it was brilliant; yet a careful investigation of his works, in the order of time in which they were executed, shew, even to a common observer, the continued and rapid improvements he made in the highest branches of his art; whilst Da Vinci appears to have been almost paralyzed by hesitation and doubt, and to have been in a constant state of balance betwixt his notions of elaborate finish and want of perseverance. He left behind him but few works during a life of eighty-seven years; whilst Raphael, who died at thirty-seven, in the full vigour of life, left an infinite variety of pictures. The last, and, perhaps, greatest effort of his genius, is the Transfiguration. Mengs observes, that this contains more excellencies than any of his numerous works. It is well known by the various celebrated and costly engravings which have been made of it. We hope, however, at no very distant period, to furnish engravings of this and others of the most celebrated productions of the great masters, at a price which will enable the most humble to obtain them; so that we may be enabled, by thus diffusing the knowledge, to raise the standard of taste for works of art. In speaking of the three great masters of painting, who, together, appear to have attained every degree of excellence of which the art is susceptible, the name of Fra Bartolommeo must not be omitted, even in this short notice. "He," observes Fuseli, "first gave gradation to colour, form and masses to drapery, a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution. If he were not endowed with the versatility and comprehension of Leonardo, his principles were less mixed with base matter, and less apt to mislead him. As a member of a religious order, he confined himself to subjects and characters of piety; but the few nudities he allowed himself to exhibit shew sufficient intelligence and still more style. He foreshortened with truth and boldness, and wherever the figure did admit of it, made his drapery the vehicle of the limb it invests. He * Raffaelle Sanzio was one of the geniuses the most favoured by nature, to whose development the culture and taste of the age, the society of the princes, and the progress of his predecessors in the great men then living, the wise magnificence of fine arts equally contributed. He was inferior to Michael Angelo in the knowledge of the human machine, and in the art of executing possible sub. jects; but he was superior to all in the execution of subjects of fact, in which he carried the expression of the passions and feelings of the soul to perfection. Thence as Buonaroti strikes the mind, compels it to think and to admire, Raffaello goes straight forward to the heart, overwhelming it with a magical delight, and obliges it to feel, though uneducated and unused to the language of the fine arts. Recognising, however, the excelheart than mind, and are more touched by fact than lence of both, each in his line, as men have more by the possible, though sublime, Raffaello has, for three centuries, been deservedly considered as the prince of painting; and if men were differently formed, the crown of supremacy would belong to Michael Angelo. Raffaello was a good architect; he commented Vitruvius, and he is thought to be the author, at least as far as the substance of it, of a beautiful letter to Leo X., on the manner of drawing copies of the antiquities of Rome. He also which is still in Rome, at the Madonna del Popolo, directed, and perhaps modelled, the statue of Jonas, was the true master of Raphael, whom his tuition weaned from the meanness of Perugino, and prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo. "Whilst Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael had thus raised the character of the Tuscan, Roman, and Lombard schools, Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli) first, and then Titian (Tiziano Vecelli,) about the same period, displayed in their works the more alluring charm of colour, thus founding what has been termed the Venetian school. To no colourist did nature unveil herself with that dignified familiarity in which she appeared to Titian. His organ, universal and equally fit for all her exhibitions, rendered her simplest and her most compound appearances with equal purity and truth. He penetrated the essence and the general principle of the substances before him, and on them exhibited his theory of colour." 46 The last great advance in art was made by Correggio (Antonio Allegri); he it was who attained that peculiar harmony and grace, which had never before been so fully and strikingly developed; and added a magnificence of breadth and of relief which has been exhibited only by himself. The harmony and the grace of Correggio are proverbial; the medium by which breadth of gradation unites the two opposite principles--the coalition of light and darkness by imperceptible transition, are the elements of his style: this inspires his figures with grace, and to this their grace is subordinate. The most appropriate, the most elegant attitudes were adopted, rejected, perhaps sacrificed, to the most awkward ones, in compliance with this imperious principle. Hosts vanished, were absorbed, or emerged in obedience to it. This union of the whole predominates over all that remains of him, from the vastness of his cupolas to the smallest of his oil pictures. The harmony of Correggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent of colour; his great organ was light and shade in its most extensive sense. The bland, central light of a globe imperceptibly gliding through lurid demi-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the style of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a dream." Such were the singular effects of genius, that in so short a period raised modern art to its highest pitch. So rapid was its progress, that one enjoying the common term of life, might have witnessed its rise, progress, and decline. After the works of those who have been mentioned, little was done by the artists who followed, except in refining and ornamenting that which had been struck out by their great predecessors. Whilst Raphael died too early to witness the decline of the art he had so materially assisted to perfect, the long life of Michael Angelo permitted him to see and to lament the perversion of those principles which he had developed. Amongst the most distinguished disciples of the Roman schools may be mentioned Pelegrino Tebaldi of Bologna, Julio Pipi (Romano) and M.A. Amerigi (Il Caravaggio). The principle of Correggio found no worthy follower except in Parmegiano (Francesco Muzzuoli), who may be said to have refined upon the grace of his master, to a degree of elegance, which, however, was too often allied to weakness and affectation. Towards the end of the sixteenth century arose at Bologna the school of the three Carracci, known by the name of the Eclectic School, from its leading principle of endeavouring to select the beauties, correct the faults, supply the defects, and avoid the extremes of the different styles; a union which the slightest consideration shews to be entirely incompatible. These principles of the eclectic school speedily caused its decay, and the most eminent of the scholars, such as Domenichino, Schedoni, Guido Reni, and Guercino, soon found their peculiar bias, and followed their own course, unfettered by such inconsistent rules. As even a short notice of the life of Michael Angelo would have been imperfect without a sketch of the rise and progress of art to excellence, so the singularity of its almost equally rapid decline was too curious to pass entirely without notice; and this must be the apology for the few meagre extracts which have been given from Mr. Fuseli's very spirited notice of the art of the moderns in his second lecture. CHAPTER VIII. Character of Michael Angelo as a Sculptor and Painter. HAVING thus shortly traced the history of painting and sculpture, both ancient and modern, we shall, before we refer to the architectural productions of Michael Angelo, consider his character and rank as a painter and sculptor. An estimate of his powers in these two branches of art may be best formed by a reference to the opinions of some of the most eminent writers on art of our own country. Although we may not have produced any artists worthy to contend with the great Italian painters, yet it may be affirmed that no country has hitherto produced writers more fully capable of appreciating the merit and beauties of the Italian school, or of developing the principles of its great masters, than our English artists. Neither Italy nor France has produced works equal to the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fuseli, and Flaxman. In general, the Italian and French have wasted their time in antiquarian discussions on minute points, or in subtle metaphysical theories on beauty, ideality, and grace. The paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds have deservedly placed him at the head of our English school, and his Discourses, taken as a whole, perhaps, place him in the first rank of critics on subjects relating to art. The following extracts, from the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, contain his opinions on the merits of Michael Angelo as a painter. "When we consider that Michael Angelo was the great archetype to whom Parmegiano was indebted for that grandeur which we find in his works, and from whom all his contemporaries and successors have derived whatever they have possessed of the dignified and the majestic; that he was the bright luminary, trom whom painting has borrowed a new lustre; that under his hands it assumed a new appearance, and is become another and superior art; I may be excused if I take this opportunity, as I have hitherto taken on every occasion, to turn your attention to this exalted founder and father of modern art, of which he was not only the inventor, but which, by the divine energy of his own mind, he carried at once to its highest point of possible perfection. "The sudden maturity to which Michael Angelo brought our art, and the comparative feebleness of his followers and imitators, might perhaps be reasonably, at least plausibly, explained, if we had time for such an examination. At present I shall only observe, that the subordinate parts of our art, and perhaps of other arts, expand themselves by a slow and progressive growth; but those which depend on a native vigour of imagination generally burst forth at once into fulness and beauty. Of this, Homer, probably, and Shakspeare more assuredly, are signal examples. Michael Angelo possessed the poetical part of our art in a most eminent degree; and the same daring spirit, which urged him first to explore the unknown regions of the imagination, delighted with the novelty and animated by the success of his discoveries, could not have failed to stimulate and impel him forward in his career beyond those limits, which his followers, destitute of the same incentives, had not strength to pass. "To distinguish between correctness of drawing, and that part which respects the imagination, we may say the one approaches to the mechanical (which, in its way too, may make just pretensions to genius) and the other to the poetical. To encourage a solid and vigorous course of study, it may not be amiss to suggest that, perhaps, a confidence in the mechanical produces a boldness in the poetic. He that is sure of his ship and tackle, puts out fearlessly from the shore; and he who knows that his hand can execute whatever his fancy can suggest, sports with more freedom in embodying the visionary forms of his own creation. I will not say Michael Angelo was eminently poetical, only because he was greatly mechanical; but I am sure that mechanical excellence invigorated and emboldened his mind to carry painting into the regions of poetry, and to stimulate that art in its most adventurous flights. Michael Angelo equally possessed both qualifications. Yet, of mechanical excellence, there were certainly great examples to be found in ancient sculpture, and particularly in the fragment known by the name of the Torso of Michael Angelo; but of that grandeur of character, air, and attitude which he threw into all his figures, and which so well corresponds with the grandeur of his outline, there was no example; it could, therefore, proceed only from the most poetical and sublime imagination. "It is impossible not to express some surprise, that the race of painters who preceded Michael Angelo, men of acknowledged great abilities, should never have thought of transferring a little of that grandeur of outline which they could not but see and admire in ancient sculpture, into their own works; but they appear to have considered sculpture as the later schools of artists look at the inventions of Michael Angelo, 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, stone-mason. Eight years and some months, (being the whole pontificate,) were entirely spent at these quarries, and in petty disputes with the agents of the pope as to money. Historians, and particularly Mr. Roscoe, have given Leo more credit for his patronage of genius than, perhaps, he merited. With respect to Michael Angelo, it must be admitted that he reaped no benefit from the magnificence of him whom it has been the fashion to represent as the universal patron of genius. His title to this praise has been successfully impeached by Mr. Duppa, who observes, that when he ascended the papal throne, the arts in Rome were in their meridian, that he found greater talents than he employed, and greater works commenced, than he completed; that those men who have been for succeeding ages the admiration of mankind, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, executed their best works before his accession; and that Bramante, the architect of St. Peter's, died in the second year of his pontificate. Leonardo da Vinci is acknowledged not to have been benefited by his munificence; and, for the magnificence of the state chambers in the Vatican, posterity is indebted to Julius the Second, as those two rooms, which were painted by Raphael, which are his |