the museum of Madrid, there is one — the Sacrifice of
Isaac — which is thought to have been one of the two
paintings which on his return to Italy he had intended
to have sent to Francis L, to implore his forgiveness
for his fault. If the other were as admirable as this,
the two might have equalled the value of the money
which that prince had confided to him for the purchase
120 WONDERS OF ITALIAN AliT.
of works of art, and which, notwithstanding an oath
he had taken on the Gospels, Andrea allowed to be
frittered away by the beautiful and capricious widow
he had just married. This picture, liKe the Vision
of Ezekiel, and, indeed, like nearly all the works of
Poussin, proves that there is no need of large propor-
tions to give au elevated style. It would be difficult
to compose a subject with more skill and clearness, or
to give it more vigor and effect. It has been said
that the principal figure in the picture — the young
Isaac, who bows his head with such submission under
his father's knife — has been copied from one of the
children of Niobe, in the famous antique group in the
museum of the Uffizi. Far from detracting from the
merit of Audrea, this would prove that, although
especially great as a colorist, he studied severe draw-
ing in his most perfect works, and that he knew to
how great an extent the arts are intended for mutual
help, and how well each may furnish the other with
excellent models.
But what I consider the most astonishing work in
Spain of the painter — who was called by his contem-
poraries Andrea Scnza errori — is a simple portrait,
that of his wife Lucrezia della Fede. This portrait
has been placed as a pendant to the ALona Lisa of
Leonardo da Vinci in the Madrid gallery. It deserves
and justifies such an honor. I consider it to be its
equal in painting, and, thanks no doubt to the beauty
of the original, it is still more charming and lovely.
It is one of the most beautiful portraits of a womai
FLORKNTINK SCHOOL. 121
which I can remember. The beauty of the model —
idealised perhaps by love— the grace of the position,
the exquisite taste in the dress, and the wonderful
execution of the whole, combine to render this picture
interesting in the history of painting. It has a double
title to be so, as it is the type of all the women painted
by Andrea, even of his Madonnas, and also it is a
masterpiece in his style, as the Madonna delta Sedia
is in that of Raphael. And really these two pictures,
so different in subject, bear a singular resemblance to
one another. There is the same modest and piquant
beauty which attracts homage ; there is the same
powerful and victorious charms in both pictures.
Why did not poor Andrea, when tormented by his
conscience, send as an excuse to his royal creditor,
instead of Abraham , or any other biblical subject, the
portrait of this tempter, more dangerous and more
irresistible than our first mother Eve? He would
have been justified, and have died without remorse.
We could not justly terminate our review of the
illustrious Florentines if we did not mention the famih
of the Allori. The oldest, Angiolo Allori, bette)
known under the name of Bronzino (1502-1572), ha?
left in the Gallery of the Utiizi a Descent into Hades.
which is considered his chef-d'oeuvre in works of
sacred history, and which takes rank amongst the
classical productions of art. In the Pitti palace there
are portraits by him, a style of painting which lie
cultivated with more success than history. All thes*
works are those of an artist who was, in easel-pictures
122 WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
the imitator of the frescoes and cartoons of Michae)
Angelo, and who even imitated him in satirical verses
called O'/pitoli. As a painter he remained faithful to
the manner of his master, whose accuracy and vigor
in drawing he lias preserved, with less contorted
forms and a more correct and lively coloring. The
second Bronzino, Allessandro Allori, the nephew and
disciple of the preceding, departed still further from
the school of Michael Angelo, giving to his coloring
more softness and vivacity. As for the third Allori,
Christoforo, the son of Alessandro (1577—1021), who
was the pupil of Cigoli, an imitator of Correggio, he
entirely abandoned his grandfather's style in order to
follow that of the master of his choice, which seems
to take him from the school of Florence and to place
him in that of Parma. His most celebrated pictures
are in the Pitti palace — the Hospitality of St. Julian,
and Judith after the murder of Holof ernes.
The former, which was taken to Paris, is a magni-
ficent composition, finished off with that minute and
jealous care which Allori gave to all his works. He
was never contented with himself, and he often spoiled
fine works by putting too many finishing strokes.
The Judith appears to me finer than the St. Julian.
It enjoys a fame which makes praise unnecessary.
But I cannot pass over in silence the anecdote which
gave rise, it is said, to this picture. This magnificent
Judith, so proud and imperious, is the portrait of a
mistress of Allori, named Mazzafirra. The attendant
holding the bag is the woman's mother ; in the severed
FLORENTINE SCHOOL. 123
head of Holofernes he painted his own features. lie
intended to indicate in this allegory the torture he
constantly experienced from the capricious pride of
the daughter and the greedy rapacity of the mother.
It would be unjust not to mention, at least the
name, of the historian Giorgio Vasari (1512-1574),
better known by his book than by the works of his
pencil. Although he has left many frescoes in
churches and palaces, his easel-pictures are very rare.
Vasari himself says of his works: "I did them with a
conscience and love which render them worthy, if not
of praise, at least of indulgence." There is evidence
of haste in the execution of his works, which the pro-
cess of fresco then rendered indispensable in mural
painting, but which was quite unnecessary on canvas
or panel. We see in Yasari both the Florentine style
and one imitated from Michael Angclo, whom he knew
at Rome when he was old, and whom he loved as a
father and admired as a master.
We shall conclude with a Florentine painter who
was very fertile during a laborious life of seventy
years, and whose renown has surpassed his merit.
This is Carlo Dolci, whom the Italians also call Carlino
(1616-16S6). One might almost suppose that Vasari
was thinking of him when he said of an earlier
painter (Lorenzo da Crcdi) : " His productions are so
finished, that beside them those of other painters
appear coarse sketches. . . This excessive care is no
more worthy of praise than is excessive negligence;
in everything we should keep from extremes, which
124 WONDERS OK ITALIAN ART.
are equally vicious." This reflection serves to judge
the works of Carlo Dolci on the material side. If we
examine them from a moral point of view, we And
their principal characteristic to he a feeble, insipid
affectation of religious feeling. He does not attain
to the mystic devotion of the art of Fra Angelico and
Morales, but stops short at narrow devoteeism. The
last of th 5 Florentines in age, he was so also in style
and taste. With him expired the great school which
had been rendered celebrated by Giotto, Masaccio,
Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Fra Bartolom-
meo. and Andrea del Sarto. And yet it is to be
regretted that there is no specimen of Carlo Dolci at
the Louvre. If the painters of the periods of decay
should never, any more than the poets, be chosen as
models for study, they are yet of real use when placed
near the works of classic masters, because they serve
as examples of the most dangerous of all faults, those
which are agreeable or fashionable, in contrast with
severe, solid, and eternal beauties. The taste becomes
formed by discriminating between these, and talent
learns to shun the defeats of the one whilst imitating
the beauties of the other. Hence the works of Carlo
Dolci have a use even by the side of those of Michael
Angelo and Raphael.
Roman School.
We have now come to these two illustrious rivals,
whom it was necessary to reserve till the last, since they
ROMAN SCHOOL. 125
form the bridge between the Roman and Florentine
schools ; or rather, since, coming from Florence, they
founded the school at Rome, which city, strange to
say, had in fact no school before their time, as it had
none after them and their immediate disciples. If
any one were to ask who, at the commencement of the
sixteentn century, were the two great rivals whose
contest was watched by the whole of Europe, politi-
cians would reply : Francis I. and Charles V. ; but
artists: Raphael and Michael Angelo. "They have
been the only conquerors in art," say the annotators
of Yasari, "and nothing can be compared to the en-
thusiastic acclamations of the people who saw them
produce the Cartoon of the Plsan War, the paintings
in the Stanze of the Vatican, those in the Sistine
Chapel, and the Transfiguration. Not a single voice
arose to contest their victory ; more than a century
passed before emboldened criticism dared to stammer
out its first objections. . . After vain attempts to at-
tack Raphael and Michael Angelo, it at last had re-
course to the expedient of the lapidary, who attacks
the diamond with the diamond. It opposed Michael
Angelo to Raphael and Raphael to Michael Angelo;
but though continually brought into opposition for
more than three centuries, Raphael and Michael An-
gelo only appear the more radiant."
Montesquieu compared Raphael to Fenelon and
Michael Angelo to Bossuet. Since the age of Mon-
tesquieu we can rind a more apt comparison, not, how-
ever, in literature, but in the art of music. Mozart
126 WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
may represent Raphael, and Beethoven, Michael An
gelo. Like the illustrious painters, they are constant-
ly placed in contrast, and the comparison only increas-
es their reputation, throwing additional glory upon
each.
When Michael Angelo Buonarotti (1474-1564),
who had for nurse the wife of a stone-mason, carved,
at fifteen years of age, as a pastime, that mask of a Faun
which won for him admission to the academy of Lo-
renzo the Magnificent, no one — not even he himself —
surmised that, in addition to becoming a great statu-
ary, he would also become a great painter and architect.
This is not the place to enumerate his triumphs
as a sculptor, from the Drunken Bacchus, now in the
L T ffizi of Florence, to the Moses in the church of
San Pietro in Yincula, at Rome ; but we may relate
as a unique event in the history of art how he was en-
abled to fulfil the proud boast : " I will build the
Pantheon of Agrippa in the air.' 1 It was in 1546 that
the pope Paul III., " inspired by God himself," as
Vasari says, named Michael Angelo, then seventy-
two years old, architect of St. Peter's. Michael An-
gelo refused at first, but he was obliged to give way,
and began at this advanced age his apprenticeship in
this new art. Wild, morose, misanthropic, brusque
in words without beino; unkind, full of uoriif-htness
and probity, living with sobriety in a complete soli-
tude, refusing all presents as so many bonds difficult
to shake oft", Michael Angelo changed all the plans,
which had till then been a fruitful source of profit, " a
EOMAN SCHOOL. 127
veritable shop," for the various superintendents of
the works. In the decree of Paul III. naming him
architect-in-chief, with full powers, he caused to be in-
serted a proviso that his services should be gratuitous.
Michael Angelo worked during eighteen years at the
building of the cupola, that is to say, until he died,
after having been employed, praised, and respected,
by the popes Julius II., Leo X., Clement VII., Paul
III., Julius III., Paul IV., and Pius IV., by Francis
I. of France, the Emperor, Charles V., the Sultan Sol-
iman, the signory of Venice, the Medici, and the He-
public of Florence.
It was also by compulsion that Michael Angelo
became a painter before being an architect. From
the first he had shown himself an admirable draughts-
man. At twenty-nine years of age, and in rivalry
with Leonardo da Vinci, he had drawn that famous
cartoon named the War of the Pilaris, because it rep-
resented an incident of the struggle between Florence
and Pisa. This wonder in the art of drawing became
the common school of all the artists of Italy. Taking
advantage of the troubles with which Florence wae
agitated, at the time of the fall of the republican Gon-
falonier Soderini and the recall of the Medici, in 151:?,
the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. an arrogant, envious,
and cowardly rival, obtained admittance to the hall
where this masterpiece was kept, and cut it to shreds.
The engraving, which has preserved a part of it, was
made from a copy taken before this wanton crim< wae
committed.
128 WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
The Sistine Chapel at the Vatican is tor Miclnie.
A ngelo, as a painter, what the Stanze are for Raphael
— his domain, his kingdom, his triumph. Twelve im-
mense frescoes, the works of eminent artists, Luca
Signorelli, Sandro Boticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Ghir-
landaio, and Perugino, entirely cover the two side walls,
and show at once by their preservation and beauty
what might be expected from frescoes. But all of
these are crushed by the superiority of the two works
by Michael Angelo, the ceiling and the Last Judg-
ment. It was the warlike pope Julius II., who, hav-
ing sent for him to Rome, commanded him to paint
the ceiling — that is to say, to fill with painting all the
compartments of an ornamented vault which covers
the whole chapel. Michael Angelo only accepted by
constraint, and in spite of himself, this vast commis-
sion, for he was unskilled in the processes of fresco-
painting, and the furious impatience of Julius II., who
feJt that he was growing old, did not allow him to
finish his work as he would have desired. The pope
wished that he should enliven his pictures by puerile
ornaments. " Holy Father," he replied, " the men
whom I have painted were not wealthy, but holy per-
sons, who despised riches." Michael Angelo began
this great work in 1507, and marvellous to relate, fin-
ished it in the spaco of twenty months, alone, and
without assistance of any sort. As he made his own
sculptor's tools, so he made for himself, in order to
work during the night, a sort of cardboard helmet, at
the top of which he fastened a candle, leaving thus
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ROMAN SCHOOL. 131
both hands free, yet carrying his own light. He shut
himself up during whole days in the chapel, the keys
of which had been given him, and allowed no one to
enter — not even to prepare his colors. It is however
believed that Bramante obtained leave of entrance
for his nephew Raphael, who thus studied the style
of Michael Angelo before commencing the frescoes in
the Stanze and the Loggie, and who certainly imitated
him in the ligure of the prophet Isaiah at the church
of St. Augustine, as if wishing by anticipation to con-
tradict the Baying of Madame de Stael — Michael An-
gelo is the painter of the Old Testament, Raphael the
painter of the Gospel.
The ceiling of the Sistine contains, in its numerous
compartments of all shapes, several subjects taken
from the Old Testament, and, in its twelve penden-
tives. different isolated personages, such as patriarchs,
prophets, and sibyls. All these compositions are
known from engravings, and it is seen with what won-
derful skill Michael Angelo adjusted them in the
frames so ill-contrived for large painting. When he
had to depict, for example, the creation of the world,
there was so little room, that he was only able to show
the head and hands of the Eternal Father. But that
head and those hands which till the whole frame give
a clear idea of the Great Creator— all intelligence
and power. In the midst of these strong, terrible,
and sometimes grotesque figures, with which the ca-
pricious compartments of the vault are filled, the
Creation of Eve is a picture of such charming grace
132
WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
that it arrests the spectator. As for the Creation of
Man, "it is, in my eyes," says M. Constantine, " the
THE ERYTHRAEAN SIBYL.
In the Sistint Ohatptl. By Michael Angelo.
most sublime point to which modern art has risen. . .
What power in the gesture of the Creator ! He passes
ROMAN SCHOOL.
133
and without deigning to stop, he creates man. . . This
piece unites everything, the sublime in thought and
THE DEI-Pmc SIBYL.
In the Btstiru Chapel By Michael Angelo.
the sublime in execution!' Amongst the prophets
ur remark Isaiah buried in such profound meditation.
134
WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
that he seems to turn himself slowly even at the voice
of the angel who calls him. The sibyls have a mid-
THE PROPHET JOEL.
In the Sistine Chapel, By Michael Angelo.
die character, between the inspiration of a saint and the
fury of a sorceress, which well accords with the strange
ROMAN SCHOOL. 135
equivocal part which the church has assigned to them
In all this great work " there is," says M. Charles
Blanc, "a singular contrast between the pride of in-
vention and the apparent facility of execution. The
general appearance of the heads is formidable, but the
colors are broken and softened ; the thought is superb,
but the touch is delicate. These terrible figures speak
strongly to the soul and softly to the eyes." It is vex-
atious not to be able to admire at leisure the infinite
details of this magnificent ceiling, in which Michael
Angelo seems to have understood the beautiful, like
the ancients, by seeking it in greatness, and the
true, which excludes neither simplicity nor grace.
But besides that it is not easy to penetrate into cer-
tain parts of the chapel, which are thus too far from
the eye, it would be necessary, in order not to dislo-
cate one's neck, to imitate a certain English visitor,
who, lying clown without any ceremony on his back,
with an opera-glass in his hand, shifted his vertical
observatory from place to place. This is the incon-
venience of all ceilings.
The great fresco of the Last Judgment, which oc-
cupies the whole wall opposite the entrance, was
executed thirty years after the paintings on the vaulted
ceiling, and the change vvhicl/ *4iat period had made in
the character of the man is shown by the change in
the style of his work. It was after his quarrel with
Julius II., and the strange reconciliation which fol-
lowed it - after his embassy to Bologna- -after the
long siege of Florence, in 1530, when this republican
136 WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
town struggled alone, long and valiantly, against the
pope, the emperor, and the Medici, leagued together
for its ruin, when Michael Angelo, named by the
coimcil of the ten procuraiore generate of the works
of defence, remained six whole months on the Hill of
San Miniato; — it was after the chief acts of his polit
ioal life that he resolved to paint a subject so thor-
oughly in accordance with the nature of his stern and
rugged genius. When id formed of the studies Michael
Angelo was engaged in, the pope Paul III. went to
the studio of the artist, escorted by ten cardinals, and
with this pomp and solemnity, unusual in the arts,
entreated him to execute, on the large panel in the
Sistine Chapel, the work for which he had prepared
the cartoons under the pontificate cf Clement VII.
Michael Angelo began his picture in 1532, and un-
covered it nine years later, on Christmas day, 1541,
having then reached the age of sixty-seven.
Always fond of solitude, and having passed a life
without pleasures, without amusement, and without
any other passion but that of art, his imagination still
full of the horrors of which he had been the witness
and almost the victim at the taking of Floreuee by
the Medici, and the tack of Rome by the troops of
Charles Y., his mind tilled with the poems of Dante,
a faithful disciple of the lieformer-Martyr, Savonarola,
bearing also the name of the Angel of Justice, as
Raphael had borne that of the A.ngei of Mercy, all
tie wild melancholy with which the soul of Michael
Amgelo was filled burst forth in thi« composition.
ROMAN SCHOOL. 137
One would say that Bossuet was interpreting Michae.
Angelo, when he says, in his sermon on the Last
Judgment: "Yes, I avow it, God also will become
cruel and pitiless. After his goodness has been des-
pised, lie will carry his vengeance so far as to wash
his hands iu the blood of sinners. All the just will
join in derision with God ; they will laugh at
the sinner, and say: 'This is the man who put
not his trust in God.' ? ' And, indeed, the Christ
of Michael Angelo is rather a thundering Jupiter
than the merciful Redeemer of men, the Lamb, the
humble Son of Mary ; and the angels, the saints, the
elect, seem also as tierce and furious as the demons
and the reprobates.
I need not go into all the details of this vast poem,
in which appear three hundred personages. It is
sufficient to mention that Michael Angelo has depict-
ed the scene described in this verse of St. Matthew :
" They shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds
of heaven with power and great glory ; " that in the
centre of the higher part or celestial seat of Christ is
the inexorable and terrible judge, who weighs in just
balances the actions of men, without being softened
even by the tears of His mother ; that around Him,
and the prophets or saints attendant on Him, a group
of criminals await anxiously the seutence of His
mouth ; that the angels who execute His decrees take
up the saints to heaven or deliver the condemned to
the bauds of devils; that in the lower or terrestrial
part, where on one side the dead awake at the blast
of the everlasting trumpets, on the other a group of
138 WONDERS OF ITALIAN ART.
the condemned, personifying sins and vices, are piled
on the fatal boat which is about to be engulfed in a
mouth of Hell.
If the multiplicity and complication of the epi-
sodes require a long and sustained attention, at all
events these principal features stand out clearly, and
give an easy key to the whole composition. Instead
of entering into all the details of the picture, it will be
better to warn those who see this fresco, either in the
original or in a copy, against the pretended faults
which every one thinks he discovers at a first glance,
and which certainly could not have escaped the
painter himself, any more than the thousands of visit-
ors who for more than three hundred years have
pressed around his work. Whatever Michael Angelo
did here he did of set purpose.
The first of these faults, so often discovered and so
often condemned, is the disproportion in the figures.
Some of them, such as that of Christ, His immediate
attendants, and the group of the elect, are double the
size of the others in the lower part. They also show
in the highest degree those athletic forms, those signs
of enormous strength, which Michael Angelo affected
and even carried to an extreme. This disproportion
is glaring, and for that reason we must seek another
3xplauation than a blunder of the artist. We must
not attribute it either to a material calculation or to
an exaggerated effect of perspective ; for if Michael
Angelo had wished that result, when he gradually
made the figures larger from the bottom to the top,
ROMAN SCHOOL. 139
from the condemned to Christ, he would not have
tailed to carry it still further ; but, on the contrary,
the higher groups, for example that of the angels who
bear the instruments of the Passion, gradually dimin-
ish until they become the size of the men at the bot-
tom of the picture. Michael Angelo had another
motive. He was not able to treat this fiual comple-
tion of the drama of humanity as a scene of ordinary
life, or a simple historical picture ; he was obliged, in
order fully to translate his thought, to have recourse
to old Byzantine allegories, and in that thought the
dispropoition of height and strength between the elect
and the lost simply indicates the superiority of the
former over the latter. It seems useless to seek in
more or less ingenious commentaries another reason
for a fact which can be so easily explained.
The second fault which has been frequently point-
ed out is not physical but moral. This is that he has
placed in the group of the condemned, to the right of
the picture, some figures which are too grotesque for