Mr. John Addington Symonds’s ”Michael Angelo”

Illustrated London News, 26 November 1892, page 687, 1,226 words

Who reads the multitude of books that each season sets afloat on the market! Whither goes this infinite variety? And when, looking down the interminable lists, do we see a book that we would really like to possess that is worth its price? But surely such a book came to me when I received Mr. John Addington Symonds's Life of Michel Angelo (John Nimmo). And with this book — the most beautiful and soul-satisfying I have met this many a day — I have spent a delightful morning full of wonderment and dream. Kings, conquerors, prophets and such vainglory are always coming and going in and out of this world; but in all the ages there never was but one Michel Angelo, and so great was this soul that to believe that it once inhabited human flesh seems impossible. Mr. Symonds's book is, as it were, a portal thrown open on a world of rapture, where there is neither criticism nor comparison.

Volumes prefaced by that grave, austere. monumental brow! Bountiful volumes, rich with facsimile of the master's very pen and ink — for instance, that unequalled dream, the pen-and-ink design for the tomb of Julius II., or the unparalleled accomplishment of the tomb of Lorenzo di Medici! Volumes full of the complete story of his daily life, a daily life of stupendous achievement and still more stupendous dream, titanic sculpture, all the magnificences of architecture, feats of engineering skill, and lastly poetry; for it was in poetry, when the other arts had been successively exhausted in fifty years of the passion, the giddiness, and the exultation of a constant creation, that this unique soul found its last assuagements. One may not lightly read a book dealing with such subject-matter — a book in which erudition combines with a style whose culture touches genius — as ladies read the literature that relieves the tedium of their leisure ere it passes from them on its circulating way. One reads such a book as Mr. Symonds’s, if one reads it at all, at first in sort of ecstatic dream, turning the leaves slowly, gathering a fragment of extraordinary story from this page, musing over the supernatural beauty of some divine sketch — the creation of Adam or the figure of Night. And as we turn the pages we are only fretted by occasional scraps from Ruskin, inconceivable follies, of course, but which should no longer be quoted against him. For instance, he is reported as having said that compared with Tintoretto Michel Angelo is a cold and unsympathetic artist. Admiration of Mr. Ruskin's political economy will still pass muster, but to quote his opinion on matters connected with painting is equivalent to a confession of a want of sympathy with the art. A perfect book were it not for such references to Mr. Ruskin and those portions where Mr. Symonds passes from the man to the artist, and explains inexplainable merits and points out imaginary imperfections. To be frank, I do not think that Mr. Symonds ever quite realises how infinitely great was Michel Angelo, and I am sure he is mistaken in speaking of him as a painter. Michel Angelo was in no sense of the word a painter. It is not possible to regard “The Last Judgment" as anything else than a coloured bas-relief, more complete and less perfect than the Greek's. Michel Angelo’s outlook was the same as Phidias’s. One chose the Last Judgment and the other Olympus, but both subjects were looked at from the same point of view. In each instance the question asked was, What opportunity does it afford for the display of human form? Vasari, excellent guide though he is, does not succeed in keeping Mr. Symonds from considering Michel Angelo from false points of view; Mr. Symonds does not see that in Michel Angelo's day painting had not become separated from her elder sister, and so he wanders and hesitates in his appreciations and depreciations, and he stumbles in places where the way is as clear as may be.

There are two pictures said to be by Michel Angelo in the National Gallery: a Madonna with Christ, St. John, and four attendant figures, and by its side a larger picture, “The Entombment of Christ." Mr. Symonds prefers the first picture, and by a good deal. He thinks it highly probable that it is a genuine work by the master; ”The Entombment” he feels quite sure is spurious. The pictures have no history, and we are free to hold what opinion we please. Mr. Symonds speaks of designs by Michel Angelo coloured by pupils. Well, we have all our own way of looking at things, but personally, I can hardly believe at all in the possibility of an inferior artist working up a design by a great artist without betraying uncertainty, weakness, and ignorance in his every touch. True it is that the inferior artists of the great artistic epochs were strangely gifted: the absolute duffer seems peculiar to the nineteenth century; and the weaknesses of such second-rate artists I think I see in the heads on the Virgin's left. Does not the modelling seem a little empty, a little feeble, for Michel Angelo? Docs not it seem to have been accomplished by someone working from a finished drawing not his own, rather than the artist working from his own drawing, and putting more into the picture than there was in the drawing? “The Entombment” is not so obviously beautiful in design — it is harsher, grander, more terrible. It is also more picturesque, and, in my opinion, the rarity of the invention of the composition, l’idée plastique, proclaims it as coming from Michel Angelo. I, at least, can imagine no one else capable of conceiving, drawing, or executing the figure supporting the dead Christ with strained arm and thrown back head. That strained arm is, according to me, un morceau sans prix; and I confess that I would prefer to doubt the authenticity of the Cupid in the Kensington Museum upon which Mr. Symonds lavishes all his praise. This Cupid is surely a somewhat tiresome and uninteresting performance, and if we had to sacrifice any work, however vaguely attributed to Michel Angelo, I know not what I would choose to give up before this statue.

Mr. Symonds seems to me to walk on surer ground when he speaks of Michel Angelo's merits as a literary artist. Some doubt existed as to the sex of the person to whom these sonnets were addressed, for of woman, or even woman’s influence, there is no faintest trace in Michel Angelo’s life. A special Act of Parliament, setting aside the will of the last survivor or the artist's family, has enabled Mr. Symonds to set this matter at rest. What these sonnets are in Italian I have no means of knowing; but when translated into English by Mr. Symonds they seem to be as fine as any, reminding us of Wordsworth in their stateliness and their profound gravity. The bulk of his poetry was written when he was seventy, when he had exhausted sculpture, painting, and architecture, and must fain find another medium for his eternal genius.

GEORGE MOORE.

Illustrations:

• MICHEL ANGELO.
• HEAD OF' DELPHIC SIBYL. — BY MICHEL ANGELO.
• HEAD OF ISAIAH. — BY MICHEL ANGELO.