Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/412

382 Painting find him taking rank amongst the first and greatest of his cotemporaries, and, in the force and grandeur of his con- ceptions, his anatomical knowledge and power of drawing, excelling both them and all his predecessors. Michelangelo — unlike Leonardo, who gave his chief attention to light and, shade and colour — devoted his life to the study of form and the expression of energy in action. His figures are stamped with the impress of his bold, profound, and original genius, and have a mysterious and awful grandeur all their own. His mighty spirit found its best expression in sculpture. He despised easel pictures as unworthy of a great man ; and his large fresco paintings, — the greatest works of the kind ever produced, — which he executed without assistance of any kind, are instinct with the same fire and energy as we have seen to characterize his statues and bas-reliefs. Michelangelo's first work of importance in the branch of art now under consideration was the Cartoon of Pisa, already alluded to. It is unfortunately lost — having, it is said, been destroyed by Baccio Bandinelli, one of the great painter's rivals ; but the Earl of Leicester possesses, at his seat at Holkham, a copy of the principal portions which has been very well engraved. It represented a group of Floren- tine soldiers bathing in the Arno unexpectedly called to battle, and is remarkable for the extraordinary knowledge displayed of the human form in every variety of attitude. A few years after the completion of this cartoon, Michel- angelo commenced, in 1507, the decoration of the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Rome, by command of Pope Julius II. , finishing it in 1512. This stupendous under- taking, which is considered Buonarroti's masterpiece and the most powerful piece of painting in existence, contains more than two hundred figures nearly all larger than life.