SKETCHES OF THE OLD MASTERS. 247 



the most attractive man of his age, yet lacked application the 

 concentration of his energies on any one line of effort. He was 

 therefore the inferior of the younger and rising genius, Michael 

 Angelo, with whom he was often brought into rivalry and 

 jealousy. 



Michael Angelo Buonarotti, was born also near Florence, 

 in 1494, was from an influential family, and received all the 

 advantages of education. His marvelous talent for both painting 

 and sculpture was early developed. When it is considered that 

 throughout his long life of nearly ninety years he was patient, 

 laborious, virtuous and indefatigable, his great influence on his 

 age, on the arts and on all who came after him, is easily accounted 

 for. Michael Angelo lived in troublesome times, when political 

 changes were sudden and violent, and states were continually 

 passing from one hungry possessor to another. This ablest of 

 men had not however the continence or the wisdom to keep 

 aloof from political entanglements ; so was he continually flying 

 from one city to another, now basking in favor, and now hiding 

 himself from his pursuers. He was never married, and was past 

 sixty years old before he met the first woman who seems to have 

 exercised an influence over him. The accomplished and high- 

 born Victoria Colonna gave him her friendship, and the poems 

 and sonnets that passed between this elderly pair were at one 

 time the amusement of all Italy. During the last twenty years 

 of his life he was the architect of St. Peter's church ; he made 

 all the plans, but did not live to see it completed. He died in 

 Rome in 1564 ; his body was taken to Florence, and buried with 

 unusual honors in the church of Santa Croce. Sculpture seemed 

 to have been his preference, and numerous works, especially his 

 David in Florence and his Moses in Rome, attest for him the 

 highest place in the art. It was with great reluctance that he 

 undertook the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. The ceiling, 

 which is the most complete and wonderful series of Biblical 

 illustrations that ever was painted, was accomplished by his own 

 hand in twenty months, and when the artist was thirty-five years 

 old. The Last Judgment was executed twenty years later and 

 was the labor of six years. These monuments of painting have 



