facilitating the practice of art in its principal object, which is the human form. Keeping this end in view, he gave but slight attention to the attractions of colouring, or to the caprices and new phantasies of certain delicate minutiae, which some painters, and not perhaps without good show of reason, have been especially careful to cultivate. Many, indeed, who have not possessed Michelagnolo’s distinction in design, have sought by the variety of their tints and shades of colouring, by many fanciful and varied inventions, or, in short, by some other method of proceeding, to make their way to a place beside the first masters; but Michelagnolo, taking firm ground on the most recondite principles of art, has made manifest to all who know enough to profit by his teaching, the means by which they may attain perfection.
But to return to the story. Michelagnolo had brought three-fourths of the work to completion, when Pope Paul went to see it; and Messer Biagio da Cesena, the master of ceremonies, a very punctilious man, being in the Chapel with the Pontiff, was asked what he thought of the performance.
To this he replied, that it was a very improper thing to paint so many nude forms, all showing their nakedness in that shameless fashion, in so highly honoured a place; adding that such pictures were better suited to a bath-room, or a road-side wine-shop, than to the chapel of a Pope.
Displeased by these remarks, Michelagnolo resolved to be avenged; and Messer Biagio had no sooner departed than our artist drew his portrait from memory, without requiring a further sitting, and placed him in Hell under the figure of Minos, with a great serpent wound round his limbs,[1] and standing in the midst of a troop of devils: nor did the entreaties of Messer Biagio to the Pope and Michelagnolo, that this portrait might be removed, suffice to prevail on the master to consent; it was left as first depicted, a memorial of that event, and may still be seen.[2]
- ↑ Round the waist that is to say, and not round the limbs, Michael Angelo having followed the reading of Dante, his devoted admiration of whom is well known.
- ↑ The Pope is said to have replied to Messer Biagio’s plaints by the comforting assurance that, ‘‘ If the painter had put thee into Purgatory, I would have done all I could for thee, but since he hath sent thee to Hell, it is useless for thee to come to me, since thence, as thou knowest, nulla est redemptio.”
