Tragic and forceful ; stating his senses with a sublime intensity, largeness of conception, grandeur of form, and a noble and dignified breadth of style ; concerning himself with majestic types rather than with character, he was a true son of Italy. He was a Greek in the love of liberty, in the love of the nude whereby to utter his art ; he was Italian in his instincts, his vision, and his soul. His art was as a gulf apart from the art of Greece-a gulf of Hebraic and Christian feeling, but above all Hebraic. [238] Whilst the Borgias were turning the Vatican into a den of thieves and home of harlots, Michelangelo, resenting the inevitable doom and destruction that awaits all wicked things, urged a noble and strenuous life that should meet the inevitable with fearless courage, careless of the consequences. To everything to which he put his hand he brought the fire of genius, and achieved it with rare distinction ! He pleaded ever that he was only a sculptor- he created in painting sublime masterpieces. He demurred to being appointed an architect-he achieved the great cupola-crowned temple of Christendom, and in the doing stands a giant above all the architects of his age.

Steeped in the tradition of the Hebrew writers, holding communion with the thought of Dante, of Plato, and of the Christ-and, like them, a lonely figure and an alien amongst his own people-" To me they portioned darkness for a dower; dark hath my lot been since I was a man "- Michelangelo brooded on the doom of his fellow-men, taken up with foolish things. This homage to Dante is seen in the fact that when, in 1518, the Florentines petitioned Leo X. to transport the bones of Dante from Ravenna to Florence, the artist offered to raise a statue worthy of the poet. How deeply he was influenced by the poet his Last Judgment proves. He stood dismayed at the corruption about him everywhere. In the capital of Christendom he saw holy things sold for money to be employed for Julius II.'s wars. " Here helms and swords are made of chalices; the blood of Christ is sold so much the quart: . . . and short must be the time ere even His patience cease." Alone, a gloomy soul apart, in an age given up to sensuality and vice, and hypocrisy, and sham, Michelangelo saw in the human form the divine that lay bound and imprisoned therein.

[239] Savonarola struggled and died in order that he might stay the demoralisation of society by the pagan invasion ; he strove with all his strength to prevent the enslaving of the liberties of the people by her astute and crafty burgess-tyrants. He died and failed. For these aims also Michelangelo lived and wrought and died-and failed. The Medici conquered.

Savonarola, Dante, and Michelangelo all saw the dangers inherent in the fickleness of their race-all saw the dangers inherent in the paganism of the New Culture -but they were all men of gloomy soul, who saw life like the Hebrews of old, not in the spirit of the Gospels. For them the tragic Puritanism that sees the Day of Judgment like a mighty threat hang over all human endeavour-for them the ascetic denials-for them the law Thou Shalt Not. The vast charity of the Christ, the deep pity, the blithe humanity had little significance.

But the awakening life that pulsed throughout the world was young and eager for experience. Italy was corrupt on the one hand, ascetic and gloomy on the other. Of his age, Michelangelo was the mightiest. And it must ever be remembered that much of what he painted was forced upon him. What he desired to do, when he did it, reveals a loftier and more creative sense of the fulfilling of life. He fills his august figures with the sense of mastery-they stand out as gods amongst men. Critics and writers are wont to urge that the great painters of the Renaissance wrought their art in an age wholly sympathetic to that art. We know that it was not so. What did the courtiers and ladies of the Borgias about the Papal Court understand, or care for, in the superb Pietà of Michelangelo's genius ? In intellect he was a good son of the Church ; in the sensing that creates art he was wholly [240] unchristian. Pity and humility, gentleness and hope, are wholly alien to him. It is when his genius ranges untrammelled that his utter contempt for his age is revealed, and he sounds as with a mighty trumpet the power and will of man, his destiny to conquer the earth, the forthright forcefulness and energy that are his.

The Fairy Prince of the New Thought had tripped into Italy and kissed the Sleeping Beauty; and she, arising, breathing the fragrant air of Liberty, finding the garden of Italy too close and tropical, departed with him into the West, where Freedom was blossoming over the land, and mediævalism crumbling away before the forthright will of men inspired by the discovery of a new world to wider conquest of life, and urged by a new inquisitiveness to achieve a fuller experience.

Of Michelangelo's direct pupils and assistants were MARCELLO VENUSTI (died 1579), SEBASTIAN DEL PIOMBO, and Daniele Ricciarelli known as DANIELE DA VOLTERRA (1509-1566).

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