within the power of music to call up sensations, which we feel deeply and yet cannot exactly put into words, so Michelangelo’s figures carry our imagination far beyond the personal meaning of the name attached to them. We know, from our Bible, for example, who Jeremiah was, and what he did; but this figure, buried in thought, of what is he thinking? To each one of us, thoughtfully considering the picture, it might have a separate meaning, In a general way we are all agreed as to its significance; yet if I were to attempt to explain what I feel, you might say, “Yes; but I feel so and so about it.”
On the other hand, we could come very near to agreeing upon an understanding of the emotions aroused by Correggio’s picture; although he too, as we have seen, was not intent upon representing an actual marriage, but rather an ideal union of peace, happiness, and innocence. But while Correggio’s pictures appeal to us as a pastoral theme in music by Haydn might, Michelangelo, in the range of his sculptured and painted works, is to be compared to the inexhaustible grandeur and manifold impressiveness of Beethoven,
Michelangelo, therefore, compels us to widen our ideas of what is beautiful. To Correggio it was physical loveliness joined to loveliness of sentiment; but Michelangelo, with a few exceptions, cared little for physical beauty. The beauty of his sculpture and paintings consists in the elevation of soul which they embody and the power they have to stir and elevate our own souls, They have the far-reaching grandeur of Beethoven’s music. In Michelangelo’s figures, lines of grace are for the most part replaced by lines of power—the power of vast repose or of tremendous energy, even of torment, but always of some deep thought or emotion.
In a brief study of so great a man it is possible to allude to only one more feature of Michelangelo’s greatness—namely, that he was a great architect as well as a great sculptor, painter, and poet. For a time the building of St. Peter’s was intrusted to his care, and in the last years of his life he prepared plans and made a model of its wonderful dome.
Michelangelo died in Rome, February 18, 1564, after dictating this brief will: “I commit my soul to God, my body to the earth, and my property to my nearest relations.” His remains were conveyed to Florence, and given a public funeral in the Church of Santa Croce.
Compared with this long and arduous life, Correggio’s seems simple indeed. Little is known of it, which would argue that he was of a retiring dispostion. He was born in the little town of Correggio, twenty-four miles from Parma. In the latter city he was educated, but in his seventeenth year an outbreak of the plague drove his family to Mantua, By 1514 he was back in Parma, For some years he worked here and painted many famous pictures.
It may have been because of grief over the death of his young wife, but at the age of thirty-six, indifferent to fame and fortune, he retired to the little town where he was born. All that is known regarding the death of this really great painter is the date, March 5, 1534.
