BOOKS.

MICHAEL ANGELO.* HERNIAS GRIMM has executed his task as a labour of love, ran- sacking all the museums of Europe for evidence on the life of his hero, but using his vast material rather to enrich and lighten his own narrative than to solidify it in the true German style. His biography, admirably translated by Miss Bunnett, is as full of point and sparkle as a French memoir, as crowded with anecdote as an English book of reminiscences, but pervaded throughout with that historic instinct, that power of seeing as well as describing the picture called up by a host of minute facts, which is the first merit of the German biographer. He has given us not only the life of his subject, but of all his contemporaries, of the group of men of genius of whom he was the centre,—Leo X., the Pagan Pontiff of the Christian world; Julius, the brave, easy, Italian Pope, who could expel the barbarian, but not regenerate Italy, who loved art as only Italians can, and power as only priests do ; Raphael, the man, perhaps the only one ever on earth, whose soul was large enough to paint with equal power and equal conception of the underlying truth, the Madonna and the Fomarina ; Lorenzo di Medici, perfection of an aristo- crat, a man to whom human beings were tools, whose purposes never swerved, and whose end was always himself, but who used the vast wealth obtained alike by oppression and by commerce to advance civilization, literature, and refinement ; the Catiline of mediaeval Italy Caner Borgia, strong and evil as a patrician of the past-away world ; Savonarola, the Irving of the pre-Reformation ; Titian, who painted the faces of intellectual men and the bodies of naked women as if his life were one conflict between the spirit and the flesh, and who was in reality a serene, slightly scornful patri- cian; Vittoria Colonna, perfect type of the highest Italian women ; Macchiavelli, unintentional author of the kingcraft which has inflicted such profound misery on the world; Leonardo da Vinci, who thought out that face of Christ which to all succeeding ages has seemed the true realization of His humanity, but who lived a patrician Sybarite ; Ariosto and Bramante, Ghiberti and Bru- nelleschi,—he has given all, for there is scarcely an artist or a poet of the great age of Italy with whom Michael Angelo was not himself familiar. And there is also scarcely a name which in its own department of excellence he did not rival. He was rather the embodiment of art than a mere artist. Archi-

• Life of if,chael Angelo. By Herman Grimm. Translated by Fanny Elizabeth Bannett. Iu two volume& Lmilon: Smith, Eider, and Co.

tea, he built St. Peter's ; sculptor, he produced work in every range, from Christian to Pagan, from Moses to Leda, from the David to the drunken Bacchus and the marvellous Aurora, all endowed with the same quality of power ; painter, he gave us the " Last Judgment," which painters have studied ever since, with perfect admiration only when they themselves are great ; engineer, he repaired St. Peter's and defended Florence ; poet, he sang of his art like this :-

" As when, 0 lady mine ! with chiselled touch,

The stone nnhewn and cold Becomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows ; So if the working in my soul be such, That good is but evolved by time's dread blows, The vile shell, day by day, Falls like superfluous flesh away.

0 take whatever bonds my spirit knows, And reason, virtue, power, within me lay!"

And of life thus :— "Borne to the utmost brink of life's dark sea, Too late thy joys I understand, 0 earth! How thou dost promise peace which cannot be, And that repose which ever dies at birth. The retrospect of life through many a day, Now to its close attained by Heaven's decree, Brings forth from memory, in sad array, Only old errors, fain :ergot by me,— Errors which e'en, if long life's erring day To soul-destruction would have led my way. For this I know, the greatest bliss on high Belongs to him called earliest to die."

Did Miss Bunnett translate the first of these quotations ? She assigns it to no one, and if she did she may permit us to tell her that her function in life is not that of translator, but something indefinitely higher. In all the works of Michael Angelo, as sculptor, painter, architect, poet, we seem to see the same quality—youth

—the unrestrained, often the boisterous, strength of art, then newly born into the world, muscle as of a giant young in all but the eyes, which shine with that calm, broad survey which genius can impart better than experience. He draws, carves, talks in the few records we have of his conversation which have been preserved like a grand youth, cognizant of every- thing in art except its limits ; full of that admiration for the vast which passes away with age ; apt to attempt the impossible as when he tried to awaken in all men the idea of strength by the symbol on the head of Moses ; reckless of conventionalisms and even of those fitnesses which in middle life become instincts, as when he heaped above the high altar figures so magnificent in their nakedness that Aretino reproved him for immodesty and later Popes had them painted out ; most perfect in architecture because there his exuberant lustiness of power, his ungovernable superfluity of strength was compressed, forced, as it were, to become quiet by the weight and difficulty of material. As in all youth, too, one idea was always dominant in Michael Angelo, the value of anatomy. He declared that only an anatomist could plan a building, as if the builder of the Parthenon had dissected, or the Mussulman who piled up the Tej, as the last proof of what Saracenic architecture might have become, had ever seen below the skin ; and his deep knowledge sometimes conquered him, made his figures too life-like for life, too full of detail imperceptible in flesh, but terribly prominent in stone, revealing lines which in real life would be scarcely seen except as shadowy traces, throwing up muscles which, visible to the anatomist, seem to the spectator in real life only the play of light and quiver of the skin. We wonder as we gaze sometimes that be did not carve the cells of the skin, and make it, as it is, a lacework instead of a smooth covering.

Michaelangelo Buonarroti Simoni, or, as we call him, with our English habit dealing great Italians after their Christian names, Michael Angelo, was born two hours after midnight on 6th March, 1475, of an ancient, almost a princely race, descended from Simone Canossa, who was himself a descendant of Beatrice, sister of Henry IL, Emperor of Germany. Canossa had arrived in Florence in 1250, and from that date the family had occupied an important position in the city, but the habitual use of Buonar- roti as a Christian name at last made it distinctive, and the true surname, Canossa, dropped out of the city records. The sculptor himself, however, often signed his name Buonarroti Simoni. The father, Ludovico, was for a time podesta of Chiusi and Caprese, and the brothers of the sculptor were all merchants. Merchan- dise was the natural occupation of the Florentines, for the great guilds ruled the city, the chief merchants, the Medici, were its lords, and the few nobles who survived the bitter struggles of the preceding centuries were powerful only necause they had been admitted into the merchant cor- porations. He exhibited from infancy a passion for draw- ing, and at fourteen was articled for three years to the masters Domenico and David Gbirlandijo. Within the three years he had so excited the masters' jealousy that they cancelled the articles, and at seventeen he attracted by an accident the atten- tion of Lorenzo di Medici, then undisputed master of Florence, and in his palace executed "The Battle of Hercules with the Cen- taurs," which may be called his first completed work, 'which he never gave away, and whieh may still be seen in the palace of the Buonarroti. It was here that he obtained what was probably the most wonderful education artists have ever received since they watched the Olympic games, an education directed with deliberate purpose by Lorenzo himself, perhaps the most culti- vated man of his time, but carried on amidst the vivid burning life of Florence, then the centre of all Italian influence, the pivot around which the mighty struggle of secular and papal authority went on ceaselessly. Michael lived through the sway of Savona- rola, and felt the influence of that grand spirit, stood as one of the weeping household by the death-bed of Lorenzo, and when Piero's mismanagement broke the power of the Medici fled to Venice, and thence to Bologna, whence the jealousy of the native artists drove him in spite of the protection of the Aldobrandini back to Florence, where he executed the sleeping Cupid which Rome be- lieved to be an antique. Lorenzo, a scion of the Medici, found him a purchaser, but cheated him of six-sevenths of the price, and

Michael Angelo, utterly disgusted, went to Rome. There he remained painting and carving in the house of the Cardinal San Giorgio till after the death of Savonarola he again returned to his home, executing there the giant David which still stands by the gate of the palace of the Signori. In 1505 he was called to Rome by Pope Julius, where he designed a model for the mausoleum of

the Pope, a work which so won him the favour of his patron that

he constructed a drawbridge between the atelier and his palace, that he might visit the artist unobserved ; then returned to Flor-

ence, visited Rome again in 1508 to paint the Sistine Chapel ; fell in love with a woman of whom nothing is known save that she loved him in return ; and thenceforward lived till 1530 a divided

life between Florence and Rome, regarding the former as his home, but called every now and then to the Papal City to execute some grand work. In 1530, however, *occurred one of the grandest incidents of his life. Charles V. besieged Florence, and Michael Angelo, engineer as well as artist, undertook the defence of San Miniato. He seems to have conceived the great idea of all modern masters in fortification—that earth is the best defence against shot, and flung up an earthen screen as his first line of defence. All through the siege lie directed the defence at this point while still working daily in his studio, urging on the citizens, sacrificing his personal fortunes, and always designing still. For eight months, while Florence, resolute but defeated, was enduring the horrors of a close blockade, wanting food, wanting wine, suffocated with the smell of the corpses in the streets, he lived externally the life of the engineer, internally that of the pure artist, labouring all day in the council and on the heights, and in his studio finishing his Leda and filling his soul with the thoughts which produced the Aurora, and "Night"—thoughts as of a genius burdened with its own weight. To the very last the Florentines were resolute, to the last they possessed an army of 16,000 citizens ; but their Gonfaloniere Malatesta was a traitor, and at last while the people were worn out with hunger, he seized the city and re-established the power of the Medici. Michael Angelo retired to Rome, forming there his friendship with Vittoria Colonna, the aged Marchese di Pescara, which shed sunshine over his life from 1536 to 1546, working at the mausoleum of Julius, and at last, in 1546, undertaking the mightiest of his architectural works, the dome of St. Peter's. Bramante had designed the Church, and he and his successors completed the underground work and the glorious pillars, but it was left to Michael to plan and build the dome, which was finished completely after his design, excepting the statues above the pillars, and then overloaded with ornament by his successors. In Rome he lived on till his ninetieth year, regarded by Pope and people as the treasure of their city, visited by all illustrious strangers, utterly independent of all patronage, and enjoying in his lifetime many of the pleasures of immortality. He had but little suffering as he passed away, nothing killed him but old age, which left him at the last moment clear and com- posed in mind, still a Theist rather than a Catholic, able to order that his body should be removed to Florence, and on the 18th February, 1564, he died. His body was, as he had directed,

conveyed to Florence, the whole people turning out to receive it in dead silence, and there in Santa Croce he still lies.

Personally Michael Angelo was one of the men of the true Southern type. Small and originally delicate in health, hard work, for he finished his statues himself, abstemious diet and an intense vitality had made him strong, but the melancholy which is the curse of temperaments like his hung over him through life. He was always energetic, but always sad, latterly doubted whether it were possible for Italian affairs ever to go right, and through life carried himself as the equal and the counsellor, not the servant, of popes and princes. He had no doubt external reason for sadness. He never married, his only real love was probably an illicit, certainly a secret one, his external life was passed amidst wickedness such as the world has not since seen, and at home his family, whom he had enriched, maligned and detested him. His letters to his father, several of which are given here, are full of a reproachful sadness, and his poems breathe the spirit of one who wrestled with the spirit of life un- complainingly but drearily. His loneliness probably aided his power, and to the end of life he was beloved but slightly feared by all who came in contact with him. There is a fine photograph from a marvellous portrait prefixed to these volumes, and in the overhanging brows, solid as if sculptured, the strong and stern yet full mouth, the calm, grand eyes, we may see what the man was- and what the race which could produce him. As we look on it we half repent of our own audacity in speaking of him as the em- bodiment of art when young and over-confident in strength. The art 1004 young, but the soul which looks out from those eyes must have been so mature.

It remains only to add that Herman Grimm has displayed a German's laboriousness in collecting materials which lie has used with a Frenchman's lucidity and ease, that his work is full of most thoughtful and true criticism of art, and that his narrative has been rendered into English as easy and yet as characteristic as if he himself had been accustomed to think in our tongue.

The translator obviously can fill a place long empty in literature, and we can almost regret that so much ability should not be employed in producing original work. If the publishers will in their next edition add photographs of all Michael Angelo's attain. able works, so as to enable the reader to follow better one or two descriptions, and supply an index, this biography of the most complete artist who ever lived may take-its place for years in the library of every man of education.