OF THE FINE ARTS. 



XXIX 



highest order. His statue of Moses belongs to 

 a mightier race of men than the present mortals 

 who inhabit the earth ; there is a morose, some 

 call it savage, grandeur about it ; the soul of the 

 beholder feels elevated by contemplating it ; 

 Scripture is realized. His fabric of St Peter, 

 deficient though it seems in unity, is stamped 

 with a sublimity seldom seen in architecture : and 

 his pictures reject all supplemental ornament, 

 all charms of oil colour, and appeal to the heart 

 and imagination with a force which the coldest 

 acknowledge. The epic serenity of his works is 

 indeed injured by occasional extravagance of 

 posture, and the dignity of his forms perplexed 

 by an ostentatious and swelling anatomy, yet all 

 who are intimate with the loftiness and variety of 

 his creations will hardly suspect that Fuseli said 

 more than was merited in the character which he 

 drew. " Sublimity of conception, grandeur of 

 form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of 

 Michael Angelo's style. By these principles he 

 selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As 

 painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted, 

 and, above any other man, succeeded to unite 

 magnificence of plan, and endless variety of 

 subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and 

 breadth. His line is uniformly grand ; character 

 and beauty were admitted only as far as they 

 could be made subservient to grandeur. The 

 child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by 

 him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur; a 

 beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of 

 poverty ; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with 

 dignity ; his women are moulds of generation ; 

 his infants teem with the man ; his men are a 

 race of giants. To give the appearance of 

 perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty was 

 the exclusive power of Michael Angelo : he is 

 the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime 

 circle of the Sistine chapel, which exhibits the 

 origin, the progress, and the final dispensations 

 of theocracy. He has personified motion in the 

 groups of the cartoon of Pisa ; imbodied senti- 

 ment in the monuments of St Lorenzo ; unravelled 

 the features of meditation in the prophets and 

 sibyls of the Sistine chapel ; and in the Last 

 Judgment, with every attitude that varies the 

 human body, traced the master-trait of every 

 passion that sways the human heart." 



In this high-wrought character the faults as 

 well as the excellencies of the works of Michael 

 Angelo are indicated, though not intentionally ; 

 he generally did too much ; action with him 

 becomes painful ; he is seldom easy, and simple, 

 and always too picturesque. The milder but 

 equally lofty genius of Raphael gladdened the 

 world at the same time with the planet Michael ; 



he has been termed the father of dramatic paint- 

 ing, and the artist of humanity ; he merits higher 

 ' praise. In delineations of angelic emotion and 

 heavenly grandeur, in calm dignity, " in looks 

 commercing with the skies," he has been equalled 

 by none. The muscular animation of Angelo is 

 mistaken for mental vigour ; the tranquil thought 

 and meditative postures of Raphael are pro- 

 nounced deficient in loftiness. The latter imi- 

 tated the composure of the gods, and knowing 

 that the religion of Christ was of the soul and 

 not of the body, he stamped a celestial spirit 

 on all his works ; the former has more of the 

 " double double, toil and trouble " of human life 

 in his creations; his angels seem inclined to 

 perform miracles by strength of arm, and he 

 abounds so much in violence that action becomes 

 painful. " Michael Angelo," says Fuseli, " came 

 to nature, nature came to Raphael ; he transmit- 

 ted her features like a lucid glass unstained, 

 unmodified. We stand with awe before Michael, 

 and tremble at the height to which he elevates us 

 we embrace Raphael and follow him wherever 

 he leads us. Energy, with propriety of charac- 

 ter and modest grace, poise his line and 

 determine his correctness. Perfect human beauty 

 he has not represented ; no face of Raphael's is 

 perfectly beautiful, no figure of his in the abstract 

 possesses the proportions which could raise it to 

 a standard of imitation ; form to him was only a 

 vehicle of character or of pathos, and to these 

 he adapted it in a mode and with a truth which 

 leaves all attempts at emendation hopeless. His 

 invention connects the utmost stretch of possi- 

 bility with the utmost plausible degree of pro- 

 bability, in a manner that equally surprises our 

 fancy, persuades our judgment, and affects our 

 heart." 



In composition, Raphael is equalled by few, 

 and excelled by none ; the chief circumstance, 

 the leading feature of the picture is not only 

 visible at the first glance, but it is stamped so 

 effectually on the performance that the sentiment 

 which it awakens pervades every group and all 

 accessary figures. He introduces no forms 

 because the canvass and not his story requires 

 them ; the eye is not perplexed by secondaries 

 pushing themselves into notice like principals. 

 All is harmony, whether composition, character, 

 or colouring ; dramatic propriety is every where 

 observe'd, and no epic poem can have greater 

 unity or greater breadth ; all this is combined 

 with a wondrous simplicity a simplicity 

 scarcely of this earth, it is so lovely and so holy. 



Some, nay many, of the companions and suc- 

 cessors of these illustrious artists were scarcely 

 inferior in beauty of form or grace of expression, 



