Michelangelo Part 11

CENTRAL FIGURES IN THE LAST JUDGMENT

There are in the Bible certain references to a great day when the Son of Man shall be seen "coming in the clouds with great power and glory." "And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."[35] St. Paul, in a letter which he wrote to the Christians in Corinth, speaks of this as a "mystery," and says:[36] "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

[Footnote 35: Matthew, chapter xxiv. verse 31.]

[Footnote 36: 1 Corinthians, chapter xv. verses 51, 52.]

In the Middle Ages these pa.s.sages were interpreted very literally and had a great influence over the people. At that time the Christian religion was a religion of fear rather than of love, and men were continually picturing in their minds G.o.d's angry separation of the good from the wicked.

How much such thoughts occupied them we may see from Dante's great poem describing a vision of the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.

This was written in the thirteenth century, and in the same period appeared a short Latin lyric, or hymn, called "Dies Irae," or the Day of Wrath, from an expression used by the old Hebrew prophet Zephaniah.

The author was a Franciscan monk named Thomas of Celano, and we may see how deeply he felt from these verses:--

"Ah! what terror is impending When the Judge is seen descending, And each secret veil is rending.

"To the throne, the trumpet sounding, Through the sepulchres resounding, Summons all, with voice astounding.

"Sits the Judge, the raised arraigning, Darkest mysteries explaining, Nothing unavenged remaining."

This vivid word picture forms the subject of many great paintings by the older Italian masters, known under the t.i.tle of the Last Judgment.

Michelangelo's was one of the last of these, and in general arrangement his composition resembles those of his predecessors.

From the upper air a company of angels descends, carrying a cross, a crown of thorns, and other instruments of the Saviour's sufferings.

Below them is the Judge himself surrounded by the apostles and other saints. Underneath are the archangels blowing their trumpets. On earth, in the lowest part of the picture at the left, the dead rise from their graves and ascend through the air to the Judge. At the right, opposite the ascending dead, are the condemned sinners, descending to the boat which will carry them over the river Styx into the Inferno.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CENTRAL FIGURES OF THE LAST JUDGMENT. _Sistine Chapel, Rome._]

Our ill.u.s.tration gives only the central figures in this great mult.i.tude, the Divine Judge accompanied by his mother. He is a man of mighty muscular power, young and handsome, with an expression of imperious dignity. Enthroned on the clouds, he seems just rising from a sitting posture to execute his judgments. He lifts his arms in a sweeping motion as if to part the mult.i.tudes pressing upon him on both sides. In so doing he shows the wound in his right side made by the soldier's spear at the crucifixion. Neither expression nor gesture manifests anger; those beautiful hands with delicately extended fingers will strike no blow. The gesture itself is a command.

Beneath Christ's upraised arm, on his right side, sits his Mother Mary. Each must interpret for himself her att.i.tude and expression.

Some think that because she turns her face away she is shrinking from her son in terror. Yet her expression is so gentle that others say she is nestling close to him for protection. This is certainly as we should imagine the situation. When she was a young mother, she was proud to take care of her child. And now on this great day she is equally proud to let him take care of her. As he clung to her, his mother, so she now clings to him, the Judge.

Looking at the composition of the picture, we see that her figure completes a pyramid, whose apex is the uplifted hand of the Judge, and whose base lies along the cloud supporting his feet and hers. This gives proper stability to the figures which dominate the whole great picture. Considered in a larger way, the pyramid is itself the upper part of a long oval which keeps the central group apart from the surrounding host.

The picture of the Last Judgment was painted by Michelangelo on the end wall of the Sistine Chapel, over the altar, nearly twenty years after the completion of the ceiling frescoes. There is a great difference between the two works. The figures on the ceiling are strong and powerful, their att.i.tudes spirited and graceful. Those in the Last Judgment are huge and c.u.mbersome, their att.i.tudes strained and violent. The entire effect of the vast company of colossal figures is awe-inspiring, but not pleasing.

It is a relief to fix our eyes upon the central portion. Here the painter expressed an idea at once n.o.ble and original. The figure of the Christ has not the delicate beauty of the dead Christ in the Pieta, or the finished elegance of the Christ Triumphant, but he has the splendid vigor of a forceful character. The Mother, less grand and n.o.ble than in the bereavement of the Pieta, less proud than in her young motherhood, is a gentle and lovely creature. Thus the intensely masculine is completed by the delicately feminine, and the artist shows us ideal types of manhood and womanhood.

XVI

PORTRAIT

In the pictures of this collection we have learned something of the work of Michelangelo as a sculptor and a painter. He was an artist whose personality was so strongly impressed upon his work that we have come thus to know, to a certain extent, the man himself. His, as we have seen, was not a happy nature, and many of the circ.u.mstances of his life conspired against his happiness.

In his early youth he seemed strangely aware of his own superior gifts and was often so overbearing that he made enemies. The story is told of a quarrel he had with a young man named Torrigiano, in whose company he was copying some frescoes in a church in Florence. Stung by some tormenting words of Michelangelo, Torrigiano retaliated with a blow of the fist, which crushed his companion's nose, and disfigured him for life.

Michelangelo's real education began in the palace of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who discovered the lad's talent and made him a favorite.

"He sat at the same table with Ficino, Pico, and Poliziano, listening to dialogues on Plato, and drinking in the golden poetry of Greece.

Greek literature and philosophy, expounded by the men who had discovered them, first moulded his mind to those lofty thoughts which it became the task of his life to express in form. At the same time he heard the preaching of Savonarola. In the Duomo and the cloister of S.

Marco another portion of his soul was touched, and he acquired that deep religious tone which gives its majesty and terror to the Sistine."[37] In the gardens of S. Marco he had Lorenzo's fine collection of antiquities to study, and learned from them the secrets of Greek sculpture.

[Footnote 37: Symonds, in _Renaissance in Italy: The Fine Arts_.]

In all these opportunities it would seem that Michelangelo was a most fortunate person. Nor did he lack proper appreciation; the Piet placed him at once on a pinnacle of fame, and the David was heartily admired.

It was when he entered the service of the Pope that his troubles began. He was never thereafter a free man. His genius was at the disposition of a series of men, each ambitious for his own fame, and caring little for the artist's personal aspirations. His proud nature was bitterly humiliated by this sacrifice of his independence.

Sometimes he openly rebelled, but in the end was always obliged to yield to papal authority.

Michelangelo's sternly upright spirit found also much to sadden him in the corruption of the times. He was a lover of righteousness as well as a lover of liberty, and he greatly mourned the evils which surrounded him.

One of the pleasantest traits in his character was his warm affection for the members of his family and for the few whom he honored with his friendship. One of the latter was Vittoria Colonna, a woman of strong and beautiful character, who brought much brightness into his life.

Our portrait shows him somewhat past middle life when occupied with many important concerns. We can read in the face something of the character of the man. It is certainly not a handsome face, for any good looks he might once have boasted were destroyed by his broken nose. It is nevertheless a face full of rugged strength, with not a little kindliness in the expression. Here is a man whose enmity we should avoid, but whose friendship we should value above rubies.

It is the face of a lonely man. Michelangelo had to suffer the loneliness of genius. No one could fully understand him. He stood apart, towering like a giant above his fellow men.

On the four hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo's birthday, some verses were written by an American poet, Christopher Cranch, which one should read while looking at this portrait:--

"This is the rugged face Of him who won a place Above all kings and lords; Whose various skill and power Left Italy a dower No numbers can compute, no tongue translate in words.

"Patient to train and school His genius to the rule Art's sternest laws required; Yet, by no custom chained, His daring hand disdained The academic forms by tamer souls admired.

"In his interior light Awoke those shapes of might Once known that never die; Forms of t.i.tanic birth, The elder brood of earth, That fill the mind more grandly than they charm the eye.

"Yet when the master chose, Ideal graces rose Like flowers on gnarled boughs; For he was nursed and fed At beauty's fountain head And to the G.o.ddess pledged his earliest warmest vows."

The poet describes still further the artist's character, and then enumerates some of his great works. Whatever occupied him--

"Still proudly poised, he stepped The way his vision swept, And scorned the narrower view.

He touched with glory all That pope or cardinal, With lower aim than his, allotted him to do.

"So stood this Angelo Four hundred years ago; So grandly still he stands, Mid lesser worlds of art, Colossal and apart, Like Memnon breathing songs across the desert sands."