Michael Angelo Buonarroti

ntending to proceed with the Twelve Apostles for that church. Michael Angelo's father now emancipated his son from parental control. The date of the document is

presence of his artist in Rome as soon as he heard that the work at Bologna was finished. Michael Angelo obeyed at once this time. We h

Francesco Fat

ence (Janu

g for either undertaking. Afterwards, I being in Rome with the said Pope Julius, he commissioned me to make his tomb, into which was to go a thousand ducats' worth of marbles. He paid me the money, and sent me to Carrara for them; there I stayed eight months having them blocked out, and brought them almost all to the piazza of St. Peter's; a part remained at the Ripa. After I had paid the freightage of these said marbles the money received for this work came to an end. I furnished the house I had on the piazza of St. Peter's with beds and furniture with my own money, on my hopes of the tomb, and sent for workmen from Florence (some of whom are still living), and paid them with my own in advance. By this time Pope Julius had changed his mind, and no longer wished to have it done.

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ld cast it for a thousand ducats, but that it was not my art and that I could not promise. He replied to me: 'Go to work and cast it until it come well, and we will give you what will content you.' To be brief, it was cast twice. At the end of the two years that I stayed there I found m

n with the tomb, but set me to paint the vault of Sisto, and we made an agreement for three thousand ducats. The first des

o Rome. I returned to Rome and set myself to work on the cartoons for the said vault, that is, for the ends and sides of the said Chapel of Sisto, hoping to have money to finish the work. I never could obtain anything; and complaining one day to Messer Bernardo da Bibbiena and Attalante how that I was unable to stay any longer in Rome, but that I must go away, with the help of God, Messer Bernardo said to Attalante that he m

ter work than the design I had at first prepared, we made a contract, and I not wishing the said three thousand ducats I had receiv

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esser Carlino, chamberlain, and Messer Carlo degli Albizzi, on account of the painting of the vault of the Chapel of Pope Sisto, on which I begin to work this day, under the conditions and contracts set forth in a document written by his Most Reverend Lordship of Pavia, and signed by my hand. For the painter assistants who are to come from Florence, who will be five in number, twenty g

proved by the Pope, and set it off with very careful measurements on the surface of the rough cast, at least as to the architectural framework. The cartoons for the figure-subjects and details he may have left until they were needed. He considerably altered the scale of the figures in his stories as he proceeded with the work; this alteration in scale is not only observable in the central subjects or pictures of the vault, but also in the decorative figures on the framework, called Athletes; those at the end, near the stories of Noah and the Flood, and where Michael Angelo began to work, are at least a head smaller than those at the other end of the chapel over the altar, where the stories relate to the Creation. This can be seen even in a photographic reproduction. Although the development of

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God, the 11th

ts in gold, full weight, on account of 'Scialbatura' on the vault of Pope Sixtus, and for rough plastering in his chapel, and doing that which was

on June 3, and another on June 10. On July 17 Michael Angelo himself paid the mason; so Granacci had gone to Florence by then to hire the other assistants. On July 27 Michael Angelo paid Rosselli thirty golden ducats, full weight, for rough p

received from the Master Pietro Matteo d'Amelia, who, he says, gave him ten ducats a month. Ever faithful to your Excellency, I give the advice as from myself. If you have need to employ him, offer him your amount of salary; he is ready to do what you may command as to work. He is a good ma

22nd of J

ou

esco G

e is said, I shall be willing

anni

renzo,

service and

o the Excel

ngelo, Fl

's, Sculp

nk of Baldassare i

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Michael Angelo must have been in Florence in person when this deed was executed. It runs: "In the year of our Lord, 1508, on the 11th day of August, Michael Angelo, the son of Ludovico Lionardo di Buonarroto, cancelled his lawful claim upon the estate of his uncle Francis by a deed drawn up by Ser Giovanni di Guasparre da Montevarchi, Florentine notary, on the 27th of the month of July, 1508." Another instance of Michael Angelo's generosity to his family. If Michael Angelo at once proceeded to Rome, he and his assist

e certain that all the labours which I have continually endured have been more for your sake than for my own, and the property which I have bought I have bought that it may be yours whilst you live. Had it not been for you I should not have bought it. Therefore, if it please you to let this house or the farm, do so; and with that income and with what I shall give you you will live like a gentleman. Were it not that the summer were coming on I would say come and live with me here, but it is not the season, for here in summer you would not live long. It has occurred to me to take from him (Giovan Simone) the money which he has in the shop, and to give it to Gismondo, so that he and Buonarroto may get on together as well as they can ... and if you let these said houses and the farm of the Pazolatica, and with that income and with the help that I will give you besides, you will take refuge in some place where you will be comfortable, and you

el Angelo,

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that wrote the following letter to Giovan Simone cannot have been in a good state for work; but as he never lets a thought about his ar

, Jul

ds, like all the rest that I have wasted on you. To cut the matter short, I will tell you for a certain truth that you have nothing in the world. What you spend and your house-room I give you, and have given you these many years, for the love of God, believing you to be my brother like the rest. Now, I am sure that you are not my brother, else you would not threaten my father. Nay, you are a beast; and as a beast I mean to treat you. Know that he who sees his father threatened or rou

est, and make you able shortly to open a good shop. If you do not do so, I shall come and settle your affairs in such a fashion that you will know what you are better tha

Angelo,

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into a thousand dangers, solely to help the fortunes of my house, and now that I have begun to raise it up a little, you alone choose to destroy and ruin in one hour all that I have done in so many years, a

The clause prepared beforehand by Michael Angelo in the contracts came into effect, and they had to be sent away, with plenty of grumbling on their part, no doubt. Michael Angelo was too exacting in the perfection of his taste to allow any work short of the absolute ideal he had imagined. Unlike Raphael, who was working in the neighbouring stanze, and who was contented to pass, and some would have us believe to execute, ill-turned foreshortenings and false drawing, so long as his general effect was preserved and the work do

rs to have begun about the New Year 1

ok away all you have in the world you should not lack means to be comfortable as long as I was there. Therefore be of good cheer. I am still in a great quandary, for it is now a year since I received a groat from the Pope, and I do not ask for it, for my work does not go forward in such a fashion as to deserve it, as it seems to me. And this is because of the difficulty of the work, and also that it is not my profession. And so I lose my time fruitlessly. God help me. If yo

twenty 7

Angelo, i

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work of his. The hatchings in the shadows, especially of the draperies, are made up of short and feeble lines, and do not express the form of the folds at all in the same way as we are accustomed to see Michael Angelo express them, even in his earlier drawings, the copies from Giotto and the primitives. The form of the mouths, and the expression and shape of the heads, especially in the second angel on the right, are similar to the work of Buggiardini as seen in Florence, Milan, and the Cathedral of Pisa. Buggiardini is the only one of the assistants who seems to have reaped any benefit, beyond their wages, from the work they did for the great master. This trouble with his assistants was not the only difficulty that Michael Angelo had to contend with in the execution of his work. Vasari says that he shut himself alone in the chapel, without any one to help him even in the grinding of his colours; but, as he adds, that he took great precautions to prevent the

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Buonarrota Sim

January

send him on muleback in state. Oh! I had never such good fortune! not I. Although the father declared, and the son likewise, that he would do anything, attend to the mule, and sleep on the ground if necessary; and now I have to look after him. Did I need any more bothers than I have had since my return? Here I have my boy, whom I left here, ill since the day I returned until now. He is now better it is true, but he has been between life and death, given up by the doctors, so that for about a month I have not been in bed, let alone many others. Now I have this [pg 160]nuisance of a boy, who says, and says again, that he does not want to lose time, that he must learn. And he told me that he would be satisfied with two or three hours a day. Now all day is not enough, so that he will be drawing all night also.

re diligent and do well, give it to them and make me their creditor, as I was to Buonarroto when he went away.

ael Angelo

icely, mannerly; that he is a good lad, but too genteel, and th

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ardly he would be rough, consumed with anger and indignation; but i

onsists, on counting heads, of some three hundred and ninety-four figures, the majority ten feet high; the prophets and sibyls, twelve in number, would be eighteen feet high if they stood up; yet by the following letters to his brother Buonarroto,

Lodovico di Buona

he 17th of O

w I am situated here, all the same I excuse you. What I can do, I will. About Gismondo and how he intends to come here to advance his business, tell him from me not to have any designs on me, not because I do not love him as a [pg 162]brother, but because I am unable to help him in anything. I am obliged to love

t, maintain what you have got, so that you will know how to manage larger affairs afterwards; for I have a hope, when I return to you, that you will

lo, Sculptor,

he s

me (Oct

ost in Florence. I am here just as usual, and shall have finished my painting by the end of next week, that is, the part of it I began; and when I have uncovered it I believe I shall receive my money

lo, Sculptor,

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plaster could only be painted on whilst wet, we can tell, by the marks of the divisions between the separate days' plasterings, how many days the larger individual figures took. One of the largest and most prominent, as well as one of the finest and most finished, the Adam in the Creation of Man, was painted in three sittings only. The lines of the junctions of the plaster may be seen in a photograph; one is along the collar bone, and one across the junction of the body an

enlargement of the style from the Sin of the Sons of Ham through the series of the Creation and the Athletes to the Prophets and Sibyls, and again from the first of these, near the large door, to those near the altar wall. So it may have been the complete work on the flat part of the vault that was shown to the world, including the story of the Creation and Fall of Man; and it was not, therefore, so very un

e scaffolding for completing the painting of

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Buonarrota Simo

, Septemb

hat I am waiting to receive from the Pope five hundred ducats, well earned, and he should give me as much again to put up the scaffolding and go on with the other part of my work. And he has gone from here without leaving me any orders. I have written him a letter. I do not know what will follow. I should have come to you immediately on the receipt of you

th day of

Angelo, Sculpt

te tells of the

Oxford there are two drawings after these two destroyed frescoes of the Ancestors of Christ series. Fourthly, at the four corners the four great Deliverances of the Chosen People, emblems of the Redemption; fifthly, below, between the windows, a row of the figures of the Popes by Sandro Botticelli and others; these are still in existence, except the three that were on the wall of the high altar, now occupied by the Last Judgment. They were the earliest of the Popes, St. Peter probably in the centre. Lastly, below again, the great series of frescoes of the History of Christ and the History of Moses by Sandro Botticelli, Domenico del Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Pietro Perugino, Bernardino Pintoricchio, Luca Signorelli, and Bartolomeo della Gatta. This splendid series forms a worthy predella to the epic work of Michael Angelo above; that they are worthy the one of the other is the highest compliment that can be paid to either. These stories well repay prolonged study, and help to keep our min

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k the positions occupied by the principal figures designed for the Tomb, like the great statue of Moses. The Athletes at the corner of the ribs of the roof were in place of the bound captives, two of which are now in the Louvre, and the nine histories of the Creation and the Flood fill the panels like the bronze reliefs of the Tomb. The detail and completeness of this fresco are the best refutation of the [pg 168]frequent criticism that Michael Angelo did not finish his work. The fact is, that he finished more than any one. Had Michael Angelo done no work but this vault of the Sistine Chapel, it would have represented an output equal in quantity alone to that of the most prolific of his br

the width of the roof, and containing from five to more t

e of the last, with from on

al nude figur

ular med

e figures

eighteen feet high if they stood upright, and most of them have s

pilasters of two childr

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ting the Redemptions of Israel, and contain

representing the Ancestors of Christ, con

above the windows, also of the Ancestors of

under the figures of Prophets and Sibyls, at

ssal figures filling up the spac

e of the same throne has a very valuable decorative effect, well known to the old Italian workmen, who frequently repeated the forms of their fruit and flower decorations in this manner, by the expedient of reversing the paper-pricking from one and the same cartoon. It is interesting to find Michael Angelo resorting to this simple trick to get the effect of balance in figure decoration. The light and shade of the reversed figures follow the general scheme of the

yzantine and early Italian works; but the new treatment gives them a character of grandeur only equalled by the Old Testament narrative which they illustrate. All the human figures and most of the angels appear to be dominated by an idea of impending doom, but they nobly act their part in a fateful present, although they know that the future cannot be changed by any effort of theirs, however noble

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lour is a delightful rendering of the lighter flesh tints of woman, something like the quality sought by Correggio in later times. The Adam reclining in the corner fills that part of the space as a good medal design fits its circumference; the grey of the shadow, especially in the darker parts, envelops the figures in a way that had never been attempted in fresco painting, but is somewhat like a hand in shadow by Rembrandt. The representations of the Fall and the Expulsion fill the next compartment, a large one. Here we have another rendering of a female nude; the type, and especially the modelling of the flank, is a prophecy of the figure of Dawn in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo. The upper part of the serpent has a woman's form, and the junction is most admirably managed after the manner of the sea maidens in Gr?co-Roman art. In this story is the only foreground tree in full leaf ever painted by Michael Angelo, and yet it is as supreme as everything else. It is remarkable that the Paradise of Michael Angelo should be such a rocky place, like the side of a marble mountain, for in his time such places were regarded with distaste. The landscape into which Adam and Eve are expelled is a lone flat desert, where no marble could be found. This part of the composition is taken almost exactly from Massaccio's version in the Brancacci Chapel. The Sacrifice of Noah fills the next, a smaller compartment. It is placed, historically, before the Deluge, and must be taken to represent how Noah, the just man and perfect, and his family, found grace in the eyes of the Lord. As there are five male persons present, this scene cannot represent the sacrifice immediately after the Flood, nor is any rainbow to be seen as was usual in the traditional representations of that subject, [pg 173]like the one in the Chiostro Verde at Santa Maria Novella. Raphael also gives more figures than can be accounted for as having been in the ark in his composition of the sacrifice of Noah, in the series called the Bible of Raphael in the Loggia. The large composition of the Deluge

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y are actual portraits. One was the man who sat for the Adam, and was of a noble proportion with a small head, a beautiful brow, and a solemn mouth. His hair was wavy and of a wispy character; he [pg 175]had broad shoulders; his extremities were small, the thighs large and well developed, showing the individual muscles by large forms with flat planes. He may be seen, as we have said, in the Adam, and in the four figures surrounding the fresco representing God dividing the Light from the Darkness; in the two figures near the Adam in his creation of Eve; and best of all, for comparison, in the figures near the foot of Adam in the creation of Man. Another model was of a rounder and more bacchanalian character, not unlike the Dancing Fawn in the Uffizi; but he was not in such good training. He was decidedly fat, his face was mobile, and very easily took jovial expressions, his cheeks dimpled, his eyes round and large, the pupils very dark and the whites very white; his hair went into short, soft, frizzy curls; his shoulders were small and

razia, mi si

un leggiadro

, perchè'n que

igned to show h

than in human

ey image Him, a

even of gold brocade, the works of the hand of man, shall cover any portion of the Divine

Angelo intended to finish with gilding, but owing to the impatience of the Pope they were left in their present state. The

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he new scale of figures easier to see from the floor of the chapel, for we must remember that this was his first experiment in vault painting, and no doubt he would be glad to see its effect from below when he was ordered to remove the [pg 177]scaffolding, and he must have learnt by it. The Prophets and Sibyls appear to be the last word of Michael Angelo in decorative painting,

by the groups representing the Ancestors of Christ. Suffice it to say, that all the thoughts that come into the minds of the beholders are as nothi

ling-clothes (Salmon, Boaz, Obeth); and the old man playing with the children, (Eleazr, Matthew); the student attentively poring over his book regardless of the female figure, possibly Inspiration, speaking to him from the other side of the window (Naason). These figures, the Ancestors of Christ, are more slightly painted than the rest of the vault. They loom out of the darkness, caused by contrast to the light of the [pg 178]windows th

from the two principal figures and the tent in the David and Goliath to the marvellous crowd of twisted limbs in the story of the Brazen Serpent. In the composition of the Death of Holofernes Judith covers with a napkin the severed he

ches, as in Donatello's bas-relief representing Christ before Pilate, in the pulpit of San Lorenzo. These ten beautiful figures are seldom notic

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y. They are all beautiful and all holy. Can Michael Angelo have had any thought of the doom of these his creations, as exemplified by him on the al

g