Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great | Page 9

at Florence, to be the final resting-place of the great members of the Medici family. Michelangelo planned and built the chapel and for it wrought six great pieces of art. These are the statues of Lorenzo de Medici, father of Catherine de Medici (who was such a large, black blot on the page of history); a statue of Giuliano de Medici (whose name lives now principally because Michelangelo made this statue); and the four colossal reclining figures known as "Night," "Morning," "Dawn" and "Twilight." This chapel is now open to the public, and no visitor at Florence should miss seeing it.
The statue of Lorenzo must ever rank as one of the world's masterpieces. The Italians call it "Il Pensiero." The sullen strength of the attitude gives one a vague ominous impulse to get away. Some one has said that it fulfils Milton's conception of Satan brooding over his plans for the ruin of mankind.
In Fifteen Hundred Twenty-seven, while Michelangelo was working on the chapel, Florence was attacked and sacked by the Constable de Bourbon. The Medici family was again expelled, and from the leisurely decoration of a church in honor of the gentle Christ, the artist was called upon to build barricades to protect his native city. His ingenuity as an engineer was as consummate as his exquisite idea of harmony, and for nine months the city was defended.
Through treachery the enemy was then allowed to enter and Michelangelo fled. Riots and wars seem as natural as thunderstorms to the Latin people; but after a year the clouds rolled by, Michelangelo was pardoned, and went back to his work of beautifying the chapel of San Lorenzo.
In Fifteen Hundred Thirty-four, Pope Clement was succeeded by Paul the Third. Paul was seventy years old, but the vigor of his mind was very much like that of the great Julius. His first desire was to complete the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, so that the entire interior should match the magnificence of the ceiling, and to the task he summoned Michelangelo.
The great artist hesitated. The ceiling was his supreme work as a painter, and he knew down deep in his heart that he could not hope to surpass it, and the risk of not equaling it was too great for him to run. The matter was too delicately personal to explain--only an artist could understand.
Michelangelo made excuses to the Pope and declared he had forgotten how to use a brush, that his eyesight was bad, and that the only thing he could do was to carve.
But Paul was not to be turned aside, and reluctantly Michelangelo went back to the Sistine, that he had left over twenty years before.
Then it was that he painted "The Last Judgment" on the wall of the upper end of the chapel. Hamerton calls this the grandest picture ever executed, at the same time acknowledging its faults in taste. But it must be explained that the design was the conception of Julius, endorsed by Pope Paul, and it surely mirrors the spiritual qualities (or lack of them) in these men better than any biography possibly could.
The merciful Redeemer is shown as a muscular athlete, full of anger and the spirit of revenge--proud, haughty, fierce. The condemned are ranged before him--a confused mass of naked figures, suspended in all attitudes of agony and terrible foreboding. The "saved" are ranged on one side, and do not seem to be of much better intellectual and spiritual quality than the damned; very naturally they are quite pleased to think that it is the others who are damned, and not they. The entire conception reveals that masterly ability to portray the human figure in every attitude of fear or passion. A hundred years after the picture was painted, some dignitary took it into his head that portions of the work were too "daring"; and a painter was set at work robing the figures. His fussy attempts are quite apparent.
Michelangelo's next work was to decorate the Paolina Chapel. As in his last work on the Sistine, he was constantly interrupted and advised and criticized. As he worked, cardinals, bishops and young artists watched and suggested, but still the "Conversion of Saint Paul" and the "Crucifixion of Saint Peter," in the Paolina, must ever rank as masterly art.
The frescoes in the Paolina Chapel occupied seven years and ended the great artist's career as a painter. He was seventy-three years old.
Pope Paul then made him Chief Architect of Saint Peter's. Michelangelo knew the difficulties to be encountered--the bickerings, jealousies and criticisms that were inseparable from the work--and was only moved to accept the place on Pope Paul's declaration that no one else could do as well, and that it was the will of God. Michelangelo looked upon the performance as a duty and accepted the task,