Phillipps, Evelyn March: The frescoes in the Sixtine chapel (London: John Murray, 1901)

THE ROOF

74
furnishes us with his own clue, and the man
is even more interesting than the marvels
that he wrought.
We have to bear in mind, too, the age
in which he was bound up : “ That strange,
over-cultured, strong, yet dying age, the very
height of the Renaissance, the full richness
pausing for a moment ere the decline.” All
art is in more or less measure the outcome
of its age, but that of Alichel Angelo was
produced, not in following its tendencies,
but by dint of strenuously battling against
them. The man felt so bitterly all that
Italy had been—how great the promise of
the revival, how deep the corruption which
followed. Most of the painters of the
Golden Age were enwrapped in their art,
searching out its secrets, discovering in it
its own exceeding great reward, like Fra
Angelico, Masaccio, Botticelli, or Da Vinci;
often full of the joie de vivre, successful,
beloved, like Giotto, Raphael, or the great
Venetians. Michel Angelo’s art was a
weapon and a voice—one long, deep pro-
test of a noble spirit against conditions he