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A work most marvellous and full of art, and much more so because all the form is apparent beneath the beautiful garments with which it is covered. The dress does not hide the shape and beauty of the body, as, in a word, may be seen in all Michael Angelo’s clothed figures, whether in painting or sculpture. The statue is more than twice the size of life.
With great devotion he has explained everything minutely to me; he also conferred with Messer Realdo Colombo, an anatomist and most excellent surgeon, a great friend of Michael Angelo’s and mine. He sent to Michael Angelo for study the body of a Moor, a very fine young man, and very suitable to the purpose; he was sent to Santa Agata, where I then lived and still live, as it is a quiet place.
The boar cannot be by Michael Angelo’s hand, and, indeed, very little of the figure suggests his grasp of plastic possibilities; the figure cannot have been much more than blocked out by him, and was finished after his death by some artist of the type of Vincenzio Danti.
Michael Angelo made his famous report condemning the design of Antonio da Sangallo for the rebuilding of the Farnese palace upon the shores of the Tiber; it is a mysterious document, in Michael Angelo’s own hand, and does not leave Sangallo a single merit. All the theories are proved by the precepts of Vitruvius.
It pleased Michael Angelo so much that he gave Leone a wax model of a Hercules strangling Antæus, by his own hand, together with some drawings. There exist no other portraits of Michael Angelo, except two in painting, one by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte; and one in bronze, in full relief, made by Daniele da Volterra. These, and Leoni’s medal, from which many copies have been made, and a great number of them have been seen by me in several parts of Italy and abroad." Francesco d’Olanda made a drawing of the old man in hat and mantle. Another portrait of Michael Angelo is introduced into Marcello Venusti’s copy of the Last Judgment, now in the Picture Gallery at Naples. The original study for it may be the portrait in the Casa Buonarroti, at Florence; it was frequently repeated by him. One replica may be the portrait, said to be by Michael Angelo’s own hand, at the Capitol. The apostle in red on the spectator’s right of the picture of the Assumption, by Daniele da Volterra, in the Church of the Trinit
These retouches a secco have destroyed to a great extent the atmospheric quality and the relation of the planes in Michael Angelo’s suave true-fresco method, which, as may be seen in the vault, gives the grey half-tints of the flesh-tones in a way only equalled by Andrea del Sarto in fresco and Rembrandt in oil painting.
John, which had been placed in the palace of the Counts Gualandi Rosselmini, at Pisa, in 1817, and was rediscovered there in 1874. It is supposed to be this San Giovannino by Michael Angelo, though it has nothing of the large quality of Michael Angelo’s work. Donatello has been suggested as the author, but it has still less of the square planes and ascetic character of the great Donato.
The right arm of the Christ has become over polished and much worn because it is used as a balustrade by the acolytes, who carelessly run up and down the steps between the group and the back of the high altar to light the candles during service. On the other side a rough metal handle has positively been let into the left side of the Joseph of Arimathea, so that a clumsy boy may climb the more easily; wooden steps also fit so closely to the marble that they injure the lines of the group. All the characteristics of Michael Angelo’s impassioned period may be studied in this group; his favourite mannerisms are there also. Examine the hand of Joseph, with the middle finger touching the thumb, and compare it with the allegorical statues of the Medici Chapel. Vasari tells us that Michael Angelo began another Piet
The eyes of the mask are cut double so that the thing alters its glance as you move about the chapel, fascinates and is intolerable. The noble and splendid thighs of the woman again realise a favourite problem of Michael Angelo’s. He represented these powerful limbs in the Flood and other parts of the Sistine vault, and in the Leda.
When he saw Michael Angelo’s design it pleased him so much that he at once sent him to Carrara to quarry the necessary marbles, instructing Alamanno Salviati, of Florence, to pay him a thousand ducats for this purpose. Michael Angelo stayed in these mountains more than eight months with two workmen and his horse, and without any other salary except his food.
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