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Angelo has just burnt his fingers picking a chestnut out of the ashes. He turns very red, but he is too proud to cry. Angelo's hands and feet are so hard he does not feel the pointed rocks that break the turf in the forest, nor does he fear the young snakes, as plenty as lizards, in the warm nooks. All yesterday Angelo had run up and down to look for chestnuts, on his naked feet.
"Shall I utter any more heresies? On Michael Angelo's great wall, the grotesque and terrible are not out of place. What an awful achievement! Fancy the state of mind of the man who worked it as alone, day after day, he devised and drew those dreadful figures!
Ghirlandajo loved to represent grave, dignified figures, which were portraits, clad in long gowns, stiff brocades, and flowing mantles; and there are superb accessories in his pictures, landscapes, architecture, and decorated interiors. On the other hand, Michael Angelo's figures are most impersonal, and each depends for effect simply on its own magnificence of conception and rendering.
In the Via San Felice, Raphael used to paint when a boy; near the Ponte Santa Trinita stands Michael Angelo's house, with his pictures, clothes, and painting implements, just as he left it three centuries ago; on the south side of the Arno is the house of Galileo, and that of Machiavelli stands in an avenue near the Ducal Palace.
The intelligence that could call them forth, the craft that could draw them, have long since perished. But the meaning survives the craft. The lost arts retain their power over us. We understand but vaguely, yet we are thrilled. We cannot decipher the signs, yet we subscribe to their import. The world from which Michael Angelo's figures speak is our own world, after all.
"See here, my dears," he announced, "Not a cathedral will I visit from this time on! You can take a guide and go by yourselves if you feel you can't let any get away from you. Go and find another of Mike Angelo's last work; every church has got one.
He pointed to Wilfrid: "Barto Rizzo captured this man; Carlo has released him. Take him with you to attend on his superior officer." She drew Angelo's observation to the first morning colours over the peaks. He looked up, and she knew that he remembered that morning of their flight from the inn.
Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminutive race of beings, yet they are confessedly the standard of sublimity in what regards the human form. Grandeur, then, admits of an exaggeration of our habitual impressions; and 'the strong, marked, and peculiar character which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his works' does not take away from it. This is fact against argument.
Any particular felicity of expression you are apt to find him borrowing from Donatello such as, for instance, the movement of the arm of the 'David, which is borrowed from Donatello's 'St. John Baptist." Most people to whom Michael Angelo's creations appear celestial in their majesty at once and in their winningness would deny this.
Whether the "Entombment," also unfinished, and also in the National Gallery, belongs to this time, and whether it be Michael Angelo's at all, is a matter for the experts to decide. To my perception, it is quite unworthy of the painter of the Doni "Holy family;" nor can I think that his want of practice in oil-painting will explain its want of charm and vigour.
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