DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0433
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
413
that he was no more obliged to Pope Julius for the
material than Francia himself was to the chemist who
sold him his colors. “ You and Cossa are two solemn
blockheads,” the enraged artist added, in the presence of
several genii Oto mini, to the confusion of Francia. Even
this does not seemed to have satisfied his wrath. Shortly
after, he saw a son of Francia’s, a very handsome youth,
to whom he exclaimed, with as much bad taste as injustice,
“ Thy father can make better faces in flesh and blood than
in paint.” We are disposed to hope that Francia was not
jealous, but only confused by the greatness of the presence
in which he found himself, and tiiat Michael Angelo, when
his passion was over, recognized the cruel brutality of his
speech.
Meanwhile, if the historian may be trusted, mischief
was brewing against the sculptor in Rome. According to
Vasari, the architect Bramante, who was Raphael’s relation
and Michael Angelo’s enemy, had ere now interposed to
arrest the progress he was making—by persuading Pope
Julius that it was unlucky for a man to build his own
sepulcher in his lifetime ; and secondly, that the then
existing Cathedral of St. Peter’s was too small to receive
fitly the great groups already partially executed, for the
completion of which all those blocks of purest marble of
Carrara encumbered the Piazza. The San Pietro of that
day was not the great temple with which we are all
acquainted, and which from all the adjacent heights shows
its great dome, the only distinctly visible object upon the
vast level of the Campagna, the one thing which is Rome.
The older church was an ancient Roman basilica founded
by Constantine, rich and splendid with antique marbles,
but not raising itself in imposing height, the genius of the
city, like the present edifice. We speak of our own age
as careless of the monuments of the past, and with still
warmer zeal we rave against that eighteenth century
413
that he was no more obliged to Pope Julius for the
material than Francia himself was to the chemist who
sold him his colors. “ You and Cossa are two solemn
blockheads,” the enraged artist added, in the presence of
several genii Oto mini, to the confusion of Francia. Even
this does not seemed to have satisfied his wrath. Shortly
after, he saw a son of Francia’s, a very handsome youth,
to whom he exclaimed, with as much bad taste as injustice,
“ Thy father can make better faces in flesh and blood than
in paint.” We are disposed to hope that Francia was not
jealous, but only confused by the greatness of the presence
in which he found himself, and tiiat Michael Angelo, when
his passion was over, recognized the cruel brutality of his
speech.
Meanwhile, if the historian may be trusted, mischief
was brewing against the sculptor in Rome. According to
Vasari, the architect Bramante, who was Raphael’s relation
and Michael Angelo’s enemy, had ere now interposed to
arrest the progress he was making—by persuading Pope
Julius that it was unlucky for a man to build his own
sepulcher in his lifetime ; and secondly, that the then
existing Cathedral of St. Peter’s was too small to receive
fitly the great groups already partially executed, for the
completion of which all those blocks of purest marble of
Carrara encumbered the Piazza. The San Pietro of that
day was not the great temple with which we are all
acquainted, and which from all the adjacent heights shows
its great dome, the only distinctly visible object upon the
vast level of the Campagna, the one thing which is Rome.
The older church was an ancient Roman basilica founded
by Constantine, rich and splendid with antique marbles,
but not raising itself in imposing height, the genius of the
city, like the present edifice. We speak of our own age
as careless of the monuments of the past, and with still
warmer zeal we rave against that eighteenth century