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.

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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.

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"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.

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"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."

CHAPTER IX.

The critics and censurers of Michael Angelo, with remarks on the various estimates of his genius and character. Ir is one of the evils attendant on genius to be obnoxious to the criticisms of the envious, the ignorant, and the malicious. M. Angelo had his share of detraction amongst those who were jealous of his greatness, in his own time; and there are others of the present time who profess to see no merit in the great works which are yet left to us,

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.

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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."

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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 melancholy of the whole scene is beautifully 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