the passion of Jesus Christ. Shortly after thus disposing of his possessions, he expired, his death happening on the twenty-third of February, 1563, when he had completed within a few days the eighty-ninth year of his age.

The conspicuous station which M. Angelo had now for so long a space occupied, rendered his decease an event of considerable importance, and Florence disputed with Rome the honour of possessing his remains. They were, however, deposited, three days after his death, in the church of the Apostles at Rome, the Pope at the same time expressing his resolution to remove them at some future period to St. Peter's, and erect a monument over them worthy of the great artist's fame; "a circumstance," observes the editor of Vasari, "sufficient of itself to show the height of honour to which Michael Angelo had arrived, as it was the pontiffs alone who were usually interred in the cathedral."

The intelligence of his interment was no sooner received at Florence, than the academy of that city held a sitting to consider by what means it might prevent the remains of one who had so greatly increased the honour of the Florentine name from reposing in a distant province. A committee was accordingly chosen with a president of considerable reputation, Vincenzo Borghini, to arrange the preliminaries necessary to their design. The persons selected to represent the academy were Agnolo Bronzino, Giorgio Vasari, the biographer; the celebrated Benvenuto Cellini and Bartolommeo Ammanati. Having finished their consultations on the subject, they resolved upon petitioning the grand duke to obtain the pope's consent that the body of Michael Angelo might be transported to Florence, and deposited in the church of San Lorenzo, which contained the greater part of the noble works executed by the divine artist in his native country.

because of their common country, they are unanimous in desiring that this should be done in the noblest manner, and to the best of their power. They have therefore made known their sentiments to your excellencies as their most certain refuge and aid. To this address, the latter part of which abounds in compliment to the grand duke, the latter replied, that the readiness which the academy had shown to honour the memory of Michael Angelo gave him great happiness, and that he was not only willing to do that which had been requested in the memorial, but would endeavour to obtain the removal of his body to Florence.

This letter of the duke's produced another address from the academy, in which they thanked him for having employed his orator at Rome to secure the object of their wishes, and begged him to appoint Benedetto Varchi, a distinguished man of letters, to pronounce a funeral oration in honour of the deceased artist. These requests were also immediately granted, and the body, being privately conveyed to Florence, was placed at the foot of the great altar of San Pietro Maggiore. On the following day, all the sculptors and painters of the city were assembled in the church at an early hour; and about midnight the whole of the spectators having surrounded the coffin, the oldest and most celebrated of the artists present suddenly held up the numerous torches which had been prepared for them, and the young men raised the bier, all eagerly endeavouring to assist in the obsequies of so renowned a man.

The church of Santa Croce had been finally destined to receive his remains; and as they were conveyed thither, the streets were crowded by immense multitudes, all loud in their expressions of love and admiration for the sublime genius who had so greatly contributed to the glory of their city. When the procession arrived at the church, it was with the utmost difficulty the bearers could make their way through the concourse of spectators; but this being at last effected, and the funeral service having been performed by the friars of the establishment, the body was deposited in the sacristy, where the president of the academy, expressing his wish to see the deceased, whom he had not beheld for so many years, that he had forgotten his person, declared his intention to open the coffin.

tained. The peculiar style which his genius, and both his moral and intellectual character led him to adopt, was wholly removed from that which, by flattering popular tastes, may secure for its cultivators a rapid and easily earned reputation.

The ceremonies, however, necessary to complete the funeral honours of Michael Angelo were not yet ended; and some weeks after, his solemn obsequies were performed in the church of San Lorenzo, where a magnificent catafalque or monumental pile was raised in his honour by the united abilities of the Florentine sculptors and painters. Some idea may be formed of this structure, when it is mentioned that it was twenty feet by seventeen at its base, and more than fifty feet high; and that from its base to its top it was surrounded by paintings and statues representative or emblematical of the events in Michael Angelo's life, or of the triumphs he had effected in his favourite arts.

This remarkable catafalque occupied the middle of the great nave in the church, which, on the day the ceremonies took place, was hung with black, and illuminated in the most splendid manner, not merely the body of the building, but every chapel being decorated with paintings and other ornaments in honour of the deceased. The mass for the dead was performed, amid these manifestations of public respect, with all the pomp and solemnity of which that impressive though vain ceremony is capable; and at its conclusion Benedetto Varchi ascended a platform erected for the purpose, and pronounced the funeral oration, an honour so great, that, according to Vasari, Michael Angelo might consider himself fortunate to have died before Varchi, thus to enjoy the reward of his grand and eloquent discourse.

The splendour with which these rites were performed was an apt emblem of the reputation which Michael Angelo possessed during his life; and it would be difficult to name an artist, in any period of the world, or of any country, who more richly deserved, to the very utmost, that celebrity which he at

CHAPTER XIV.

Angelo.

In whatever this great man undertook, we may discern the aspirations of a powerful mind struggling with the difficulties which, by the nature of things and the circumstances of age and country, presented themselves in formidable array before his bold discursions and discoveries in the regions of human art. Nothing less than his mighty genius could so far have outstripped the times in which he lived, and by his grasp of intellect, have reached the consummate perfection which distanced all living competition, and rendered his predecessors and successors alike the satellites of one majestic luminary. Difficulties, long insurmountable to other minds, he confronted and triumphed over with the daring inspired by the conscious strength of gigantic intellect. The Homer of painting, he seemed to belong to some higher and grander world; and to draw from sources of joy and woe, far above the level of mere humanity as it is felt to exist.

It was thus the admiration he gained by his works became as universal as it has been lasting. If he ever incurred failure, it seems to have been in consequence of allowing his art to overstep the modesty of nature by the fire of his genius, and hence his mannerism whenever it obtrudes itself somewhat too glaringly on our notice; hence his studied display of anatomical science, and his fondness for sporting with difficulties which sometimes led him to the brink of absurdity itself. Whenever this was not the case-when he trusted to his own free conceptions, and was content. to express them, as well as the instruments with which he had to work would allow, the productions of his pencil and of his chisel partook of an almost supernatural grandeur and sublimity; the forms under which he embodied his ideas were marked with fearful strength,

because the natural offspring of his mind could not be otherwise than characteristic of power; and the composition of his subjects was distinguished by a mingled severity of thought and boldness of invention, which, tempering each other, prompted him to depict the awful scene of the Last Judgment, but to reject in so doing any appeal to our more ordinary sympathies.

It was from a perfect consciousness of the advantage which his mind possessed when working with as much freedom as possible from whatever injures the simple expression of sublimity, that he felt so decided an aversion to painting in oil, which he denominated an employment only fit for women; and it was probably to the same cause that he owed his early predilection for sculpture, as better calculated than the sister art to express the feelings and ideas in which he delighted. Certain it is that in all his works we may discover a noble struggle to emancipate art from the accidents of fashion and human caprice; an endeavour solely to employ it as a medium of lofty and unchanging truth. No attempt was ever made by him to supply a want of essential beauty in natural forms by the skilful management of drapery, or any of the trickeries of art. He sought no aid from the gorgeous attractions of colour, or even from the austerer effect of light and shade. Whether the materials he employed were marble or colour, he never allowed them to appear but as the true materials of his art.

The only respect in which Michael Angelo put himself occasionally on a level with artists of inferior genius was by suffering the boldness of his manner to degenerate into what the French critics term. "the fierceness of his line;" not always what Agostino Carracci means by

"Di Michel Angiol la terribil via,” but a degree of extravagance springing from the very exuberance of his powers. His most zealous supporters indeed cannot vindicate some of his productions from faults of this nature; and great exceptions have been very generally taken to the harsh and obtrusive figures he has not unfrequently introduced into his compositions, apparently from the desire, as was before said, of displaying his anatomical knowledge-a sort of ambition creditable to a young academician, but to which a man of such re

splendent genius would soon, we should suppose, have risen superior.

It is not, however, only by reference to his particular productions that the greatness of Michael Angelo's genius is to be judged. The facility with which he passed from the exercise of one branch of art to that of another proves how unrestricted were its energies, how comprehensive an idea he had formed of nature, and how rapidly he could make himself acquainted with all the modes by which her external forms may be imitated, or her more mysterious operations typified. Sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry, were all exercised by him with noble success, and were all made the medium of conveying to the world a great and elevating class of sentiments. In his moral and personal character he was equally noble and superior to the rest of mankind. His heart was strongly susceptible of affection, and he delighted in both writing and conversing on the subject of love. Yet Condivi observes, that, in his long intimacy with him, he never heard him speak in any way which did not tend to extinguish every lawless and vicious passion.

Independence, so difficult for a man to preserve whose fame and fortune depend in a considerable degree on the favour of the great-distinguished both his conduct and sentiments to the latest period of his life; and it was in solitude, rather than amidst flattering assemblies, that he sought for the inspiration which raised him to eminence.

The other habits of Michael Angelo's mind correspond with these, and to his singular temperance, both in youth and manhood, he attributed his power of studying for a greater number of hours than most of his contemporaries. A little bread and wine was all he required for the chief part of the day when employed at his work. Very frequently he rose in the middle of the night and resumed the labours of the day. When he did this, it was his practice to fix the candle on the summit of a pasteboard cap which he wore, in order that he might not interrupt the light by his hands. He would often also sleep in his clothes, that he might be ready to proceed to work as soon as he rose, and sometimes would do so from having wearied himself too much to undress. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, with as much admiration as Vasari himself for the object of our memoir, loved to expatiate

of the human figure-its mutual supports-its connexion-and gradations, is no unnecessary study to the architect, may be shown on the simple principles of analogy. Neither the older critics and commentators on his works, nor the modern Reynolds, Opie, Fuseli, and Flaxman, have ventured to criticise the great artist for too close an attention to the anatomy of the human figure. The reader, however, will form his own judgment with less difficulty on this head, when he has perused the letter in question, from which Mr. Duppa would seem to infer that the artist showed a want of discernment in not perceiving what he considers the utter inapplicability of the principles of the one study to the practical employment of the other. Michael Angelo's observations on the subject are as follow:"MOST REVEREND SIR,

“When a design in architecture has different parts, all equal, and of the same character, the decorations ought to be of one character also, and executed in the same style; and the same rule is to be observed in corresponding parts. But when the design is entirely changed, it is not only allowable, but necessary. to change its decoration; and the same principle is to be observed in the parts which are meant to correspond: the architect, however, always having full liberty to choose for himself, in the first instance, the style of ornament best adapted to his purpose. The nose, for example, in the middle of the face, does not depend upon the one eye or upon the other; but it is necessary that the one hand should be like the other, and that both the eyes should correspond, as well with respect to each other, as to the parts of the face in which they are situated. It is also certain, that the members of architecture have a reference to those of the human body; and he who does not understand the human figure, and particularly anatomy, can know nothing of the subject.

"MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTI."

The talents of Michael Angelo as a military architect were made known by his admirable defence of Florence against the imperial troops commanded by Philibert prince of Orange; a subject alluded to in the narrative of his life. Of his general excellence in the art we cannot finally convey a more correct idea, than is given in the few brief words. of Fuseli: The fabric of St. Peter,

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scattered into an infinity of jarring parts, he concentrated, suspended the cupola, and to the most complex, gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him all in all, was Michael Angelo,the salt of art."

CHAPTER XVI.

Of the Poetry of Michael Angelo. MICHAEL ANGELO observed that painting has the greatest resemblance to poetry: whence by many oftentimes the one has been called mute poetry, and the other speaking painting; and the close friendship in which we continually see painters and poets united, (like that between Giotto and Dante, or that between Petrarch and Simon of Siena,) is not a slight proof of this alliance or sisterhood of the arts. In the same manner, many poets have been endowed with the art of painting, as, for example, Cratinus, a comic poet, Dante, and some of our own times; amongst whom may be mentioned Pope, who had the finest feeling for art, which is traced throughout his works, particularly in he has so well described the characters his beautiful epistle to Jervas, in which of the different great painters. To the name of Pope might be added that of others of less distinction. This companionship of the arts of poetry and painting arises not only from the advantages which the one often derives from the other, but from the union which naturally subsists between them,—that is, that each is an imitation of nature. M.Angelo himself was an example of his own position respecting the close alliance between the arts of poetry and painting; and he who had surpassed all of his time in that mute poetry, also produced many beautiful verses, some of which have come down to us, while others have been lost. Like Petrarch, of whose poetry he was an imitator, his muse was inspired by a mistress; and, like Parrhasius of old, he charmed the hours of labour by singing to the pure celestial Venus. The object of his muse was one entirely worthy of the worship of so great a man: Vittoria Colonna was the wife of the illustrious Marquis of Pescara, who died of the wounds he received at the battle of Pavia. At the time when the princes of Italy, in great alarm, sought to lead Pescara from his fidelity to the Spanish cause, she wrote to her husband," Remember your honour, which raises you