DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51585#0062
58 EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
With the frescoes in the Pauline Chapel ends
Michael Angelo’s career as a painter. During the
remainder of his life, a period of sixteen years, we
find him wholly devoted to architecture. His vast
and daring genius finding ample scope in the com-
pletion of St. Peter’s, he has left behind him in his
capacity of architect yet greater marvels than he
had achieved as painter and sculptor. Who that
has seen the cupola of St. Peter’s soaring into the
skies, but will think almost with awe of the universal
and majestic intellect of the man who reared it ?
There is a striking anecdote of Mrs. Siddons,
which at this moment comes back upon the mind.
When standing before the Apollo Belvedere, then
in the gallery of the Louvre, she exclaimed, after a
long pause, “ How great must be the Being who
created the genius which produced such a form as
this ! ”—a thought characteristic of her mind, but
more fitly inspired by the works of Michael Angelo
than by those of any artist the world has yet seen.
They bear impressed upon them a character of
greatness, of durability, of sublimity of invention
Angelo at the age of sixty, and ■with a body announcing
weakness, make more chips of marble fly about in a quarter
of an hour than would three of the strongest young sculptors
in an hour,—a thing almost incredible to him who has not
beheld it. He went to work with such impetuosity and fury
of manner, that I feared almost every moment to see the
block split into pieces. It would seem as if, inflamed by the
idea of greatness which inspired him, this great man
attacked with a species of fury the marble which concealed
the statue.”—Blaise de Vigenere.
With the frescoes in the Pauline Chapel ends
Michael Angelo’s career as a painter. During the
remainder of his life, a period of sixteen years, we
find him wholly devoted to architecture. His vast
and daring genius finding ample scope in the com-
pletion of St. Peter’s, he has left behind him in his
capacity of architect yet greater marvels than he
had achieved as painter and sculptor. Who that
has seen the cupola of St. Peter’s soaring into the
skies, but will think almost with awe of the universal
and majestic intellect of the man who reared it ?
There is a striking anecdote of Mrs. Siddons,
which at this moment comes back upon the mind.
When standing before the Apollo Belvedere, then
in the gallery of the Louvre, she exclaimed, after a
long pause, “ How great must be the Being who
created the genius which produced such a form as
this ! ”—a thought characteristic of her mind, but
more fitly inspired by the works of Michael Angelo
than by those of any artist the world has yet seen.
They bear impressed upon them a character of
greatness, of durability, of sublimity of invention
Angelo at the age of sixty, and ■with a body announcing
weakness, make more chips of marble fly about in a quarter
of an hour than would three of the strongest young sculptors
in an hour,—a thing almost incredible to him who has not
beheld it. He went to work with such impetuosity and fury
of manner, that I feared almost every moment to see the
block split into pieces. It would seem as if, inflamed by the
idea of greatness which inspired him, this great man
attacked with a species of fury the marble which concealed
the statue.”—Blaise de Vigenere.