CHAPTER XLIV.

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTI- TALENTS OF A PAINTER, SCULPTOR, ARCHITECT, ETC. CHARACTER OF A FIRM, HONEST, STERN, INDEPENDENT, INDUSTRIOUS, BUT IRRITABLE MAN.

FIGURE XXI. is a drawing of the head of Michael Angelo Buonaroti, copied from an engraving, which was taken from an original picture by himself. It must have been somewhat flattered, or else his head was one of the most remarkable the world has ever known. It runs high, and is exceedingly large in the sincipital region.

The intellect is immense, yet the region of the affective faculties is fully equal to it. From another and side view of him, now before me, it would appear that the head was quite large in the occipital region, indicating great energy in several of the propensities. Destructiveness was small, but adhesiveness, inhabitiveness, and combativeness are large. Constructiveness is very large; approbativeness and self-esteem were predominant; benevolence, reverence, firmness, conscientiousness, hope, marvellousness, ideality, and imitation are very large.

In the intellectual region the lower row of the perceptive organs, and the reflective organs, are particularly large, the fullness at the side of the head back of mirthfulness is not all to be placed to ideality. His comparison and causality were remarkably large, occupying a large space in the frontal region. This is frequently the case where the upper and middle region of the forehead appear very voluminous; individuality, form, size, weight, color, locality, and order are very large; eventuality is full, and language is large.

The countenance would indicate great activity in the perceptive organs. The corrugators appear large and accustomed to action. His general look is that of great gravity, austerity, and self-respect, and not a little like irritability and disgust at the grovelling views and conceptions of the world around him. With such talents connected with firm health, what might not a man accomplish? He would be a universal genius. He might have excelled as an orator, a poet, a philosopher, a man of learning, and in all the arts of design. His sentiments would greatly predominate over his other propensities, and when not vexed and irritated, his feelings would be

lofty, grave, and refined, and his conceptions would be strongly tinctured with reverence, ideality, and wonder. Yet chastened constantly by comparison, they would be in good keeping, and such as could be brought forth with great majesty and effect. But so different would his exalted, noble, and expansive views be from all the world. around him, that he would be constantly thwarted and checked in his desires, and feel the mortification of submission to those of whose inferiority he could not but be deeply conscious. This would sometimes engage him in difficulties, and increase the irritability of his temper. His destructiveness being small, and his conscientiousness, and benevolence, and reverence large, he would not be inclined to gratify his ambition by the destruction of the rights of others. His ambition would go along with his conscientiousness, reverence, and ideality, and call into aid the higher and lower intellect, in the arts of design. His propelling principles are too strong to be satisfied with the life of literature and retirement, else he would have been one of the greatest poets of any age.

We have given our impressions of him, as indicated by his organization and physiognomy. How far do they agree with his life, as we have extracted it from the most approved writers in the following pages.

He was born in the year 1474, of an ancient and illustrious family. At the time of his birth his father was governor of the castle Chiusi and Caprèse. Michael Angelo was put to nurse with the wife of one of the masons of the quarries, near the place where his father resided, and used jestingly to attribute his excellence as a sculptor, to having imbibed with his milk a love for the chisels and mallet of his foster-father. His father was

poor, but of illustrious descent. He was placed at a grammar-school, but he preferred drawing to study, and snatched every opportunity for that purpose. The profession of an artist being at this period in little estimation, the pride of the father and uncle was shocked at the notion of his son's following the arts as a trade, and they therefore sought not only by persuasion, but by chastisement to check his drawing taste. [This discloses the family pride, and shows the stimulus of opposition acting upon great firmness and combativeness, and it added fuel to the flame.] His father finding it impossible to stem his son's inclinations, at last consented to his becoming a painter, and he was placed under the most eminent painter in Italy. He early displayed great talent; one by one, his fellow pupils were surpassed, and it was not long before he ventured to criticise the designs of his

master.

His progress under his master was that of a genius, frequently producing drawings of great merit. It was not long before they were noticed by Lorenzo de Medici, who became a judicious patron, and by means of whom he formed an acquaintance with the learned men of the time, by whom Lorenzo was surrounded. During this period he obtained the friendship of Politian, the most accomplished scholar of his age, by whose advice he executed the celebrated small bas relief of the battle of Hercules and the Centaurs, which at once established his fame as a great artist. During his studies in the garden of Lorenzo, a late fellow student, in a fit of envy at his rising greatness, or on some quarrel, struck him so violent a blow on the nose with a mallet, that he bore the mark through life. [This may be seen in the drawing.]

He early evinced the activity of his reflective powers, by his study of the parts of the human figure and the functions of the organs. He indeed made the anatomy

of the human figure his great study.

The age in which he lived was highly favorable to the excitement of his genius; it was near the time of the revival of letters, the fine arts, and the invention of printing, which followed in quick succession. It was indeed mainly his genius that called into new life the arts of painting and sculpture, and it was he, united with Brundeschi and Bramante, who was destined to raise those splendid fabrics, which rival the greatest monuments of ancient architecture. Before this time, the works of antiquity were little appreciated, but Lorenzo and others had recently formed a collection of them. These were well calculated to excite the reverence, wonder, and ideality of Michael Angelo.

When the Medici were driven from Florence, he was obliged to leave the city, and went to Bologna, and thence to Venice. At Bologna he executed a statue for one of the public buildings. He was assisted here by Aldrovandi, an officer of state, who became his patron, and induced him to read Petrarch, Dante, and Boccacio aloud. He then returned to Florence, and there executed a sleeping Cupid. He was afterwards, in consequence of this, invited by St. Giorgio, the purchaser of this, to go to Rome. The next two works were a Cupid and a Bacchus, then a group consisting of a Virgin and dead Christ, called Pietá, which was placed in the chapel of St. Peter's. He then returned to Florence, and there cut the celebrated statue of David with a sling in his hand, from a spoiled block of marble, out of which