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Updated: May 22, 2025
So perished another of Michelangelo's masterpieces; and all we know for certain about the statue is that Julius was seated, in full pontificals, with the triple tiara on his head, raising the right hand to bless, and holding the keys of S. Peter in the left. Michelangelo reached Florence early in March.
The figure, in size, in massiveness, in the drawing up of the limbs, and in its roughened surface, vaguely reminded one of Michelangelo's "Night and Morning." Of course, the difference between this crude figure and those great Medicean statues was infinite; and yet it seemed to me that the man who had carved this figure must have received a hint from those.
For in truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michelangelo's fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone.
How much this little incident biased Raphael's opinion concerning Michelangelo's art we can not say: possibly Raphael could not have told, either. But such things count, I am told, for even Doctor Johnson thought better of Reynolds' work after they had dined together. It seems that Fra Bartolomeo was one of the first and best friends Raphael had at Florence.
Lionardo Buonarroti showed at once a great anxiety to obtain his uncle's bust from Daniele da Volterra. Possibly he ordered it while resident in Rome, engaged in winding up Michelangelo's affairs.
So far, then, as I have yet pursued the analysis of Michelangelo's portraits, I take Bonasoni's engraving to be decisive for Michelangelo's appearance at the age of seventy; Leoni's model as of equal or of greater value at the age of eighty; Venusti's and Da Volterra's paintings as of some importance for this later period; while I leave the attribution of minor easel-pictures to Del Conte or to Bugiardini open.
He could hardly have turned round against his own recommendation; and, moreover, it is likely that he would have wished to keep so great a work in the hands of his own set, Raffaello, Peruzzi, Sodoma, and others. Meanwhile, Michelangelo's friends in Rome wrote, encouraging him to come back. They clearly thought that he was hazarding both profit and honour if he stayed away.
We shall soon find him, at Ferrara, refusing to quit his hostelry for the Duke's palace, and, at Venice, hiring a remote lodging on the Giudecca in order to avoid the hospitality of S. Mark. An important part of Michelangelo's plan for the fortification of Florence was to erect bastions covering the hill of S. Miniato.
When he married and got children, the old man purred with satisfaction over him, but only as a breeder of the race; and he did all in his power to establish Lionardo in a secure position. Returning to the history of Michelangelo's domestic life, we have to relate two sad events which happened to him at the end of 1555.
For all art is an exchange of gain against loss you cannot have Sargent's truth of impression and Titian's truth of emotion in the same picture, nor Michelangelo's beauty of structure with Botticelli's beauty of line.
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