316 IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST. 



and stick all the candles in tbis, and light them all, and leave them 

 there." Michael Angelo said, " Xo, I can't allow jon to make such a 

 confnsiou as there would be about my door ; so you may leave them." 

 This shows the homely and friendly way in which the artists lived among 

 themselves. 



We have a very interesting account of the manner in which he used 

 to work at his marble, from a contemporary French writer, who says: 

 "I can say that I have seen Michael Angelo, when he was about sixty 

 years of age, and not then very robust, make the fragments of marble 

 fly about at such a rate, that he cut off more in a quarter of an hour than 

 three strong young men could have done in an hour — " a thing almost in- 

 credible to any one who has not seen it; and he used to work with 

 such fury, with such an impetus, that it was feared he would dash the 

 whole marble to pieces, making at each stroke chips, of three or four 

 fingers' thick, fly off into the air ;" and that with a material in which, 

 if he had gone only a hair's-breadth too far, he would totally have de- 

 stroyed the woik, which could not be restored like i)laster or clay. 



Going now to another ])art of the world for the same art, we return 

 to Kuremberg, and find a most magnificent piece of sculpture in stone, 

 unrivaled in the delicacy and exquisite beauty of the work ; that is 

 the tabernacle in the church of St. Lawrence. It rises from the ground 

 and goes up, not merely to the top of a very high church, running along 

 like a plant, with one of the pillars against which it is built ; but, as if 

 the church was not high enough for it, creeping far beyond, and making 

 the most graceful termination, which has nothing similar in works of 

 this sort. So beautiful and delicate is the whole work, representing all 

 the mysteries of our Lord's life and passion, that, for a longtime, people 

 used to assert that it was not stone, but modeled in some composition. 

 But it has been proved beyond doubt that it is stone. Now, the man 

 who made this was a mason — a common icorhing stone-mason — Adam 

 Kraft, who built part of the tower of the church, and Vtiiose name is 

 upon it as the mason who built it; and he, until l-iOO, when he was 

 fifty-three years of age, had never attempted to work as a sculptor ; 

 and yet, before he died, he had not only executed many beautiful works, 

 and among them a carved staircase in the tower, but this exquisite 

 work, which is without a parallel. He has represented the whole of it 

 as supported \)j three kneeling figures, himself and his two apprentices, 

 who executed alone the whole work. 



We see, therefore, that wherever there has really been grand or noble 

 work executed by sculptors, they have been artificers as tvell as designers ; 

 they have done the tvorh with their oivn hands, as well as imagined it in their 

 oicn fancies. 



Let us go now to another department of art. We have treated of met- 

 als and carved work in wood and stone. Let us now go to pottery. I have 

 already observed that those beautiful vases, known by the name of Eti'us- 

 can, were really made originally for domestic use; that, consequently, 



