Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
Nevertheless, at no period, even when fresh from the master's hand, can they have been typical of his style. It is true that contemporaries were not of this opinion. Condivi calls both of them "stupendous not only in the general exposition of the histories but also in the details of each figure."
His work, as we know, is singularly deficient in motives drawn from any province but human beauty; and his poems and letters contain hardly a trace of sympathy with the external world. Yet, in the main contention, Condivi told the truth.
In the year 1495, whilst living with Aldovrandi at Bologna, as Condivi tells us, Michael Angelo, for the sum of thirty ducats, completed the drapery of a San Petronio, begun by Nicolo di Bari on the arca or shrine of San Domenico, and carved the very beautiful and highly finished statuette of an angel holding a candlestick, still to be seen there.
You must return; and if you do so, we will write you letters of such authority that, should he do you harm, he will be doing it to this Signory. Accordingly I took the letters, and went back to the Pope." Condivi gives a graphic account of the transaction which ensued.
"And so," writes Condivi, "he remained for some months with the Medici, and was treated by Piero with great kindness; for the latter used to extol two men of his household as persons of rare ability, the one being Michelangelo, the other a Spanish groom, who, in addition to his personal beauty, which was something wonderful, had so good a wind and such agility that when Piero was galloping on horseback he could not outstrip him by a hand's-breadth."
We must therefore study Condivi, who probably got the details from Michael Angelo himself, though he, too, must have had great difficulty in recalling the ideas of forty-eight years ago. The plans for the new church of St.
I will again quote Condivi here, for the passage seems to have been inspired by the great sculptor's verbal reminiscences: "The worst was, that while he was pulling down the old S. Peter's, he dashed those marvellous antique columns to the ground, without paying the least attention, or caring at all when they were broken into fragments, although he might have lowered them gently and preserved their shafts intact.
About Michelangelo's kindness to his pupils and servants there is no doubt. We have only to remember his treatment of Pietro Urbano and Antonio Mini, Urbino and Condivi, Tiberio Calcagni and Antonio del Franzese. A curious letter from Michelangelo to Andrea Quarantesi, which I have quoted in another connection, shows that people were eager to get their sons placed under his charge.
But this document does not contain the name of Michelangelo; and by a third decree, dated November 16, it appears that the Government were satisfied with depriving him of his office and stopping his pay. We gather indeed, from what Condivi and Varchi relate, that they displayed great eagerness to get him back, and corresponded to this intent with their envoy at Ferrara.
Nevertheless we cannot but regret the fate which drove him to consume years of hampered industry upon what Condivi calls "the tragedy of Julius's tomb," upon quarrying and road-making for Leo X., upon the abortive plans at S. Lorenzo, and upon architectural and engineering works, which were not strictly within his province. At first it seemed as though fortune was about to smile on him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking