He is the last of the
Florentines, of those on whom the peculiar sentiment of the Florence of
Dante and Giotto descended: he is the consummate representative of the
form that sentiment took in the fifteenth century with men like Luca
Signorelli and Mino da Fiesole. Up to him the tradition of sentiment is
unbroken, the progress towards surer and more mature methods of
expressing that sentiment continuous. But his professed disciples did
not share this temper; they are in love with his strength only, and seem
not to feel his grave and temperate sweetness. Theatricality is their
chief characteristic; and that is a quality as little attributable to
Michelangelo as to Mino or Luca Signorelli. With him, as with them, all
Is serious, passionate, impulsive.
This discipleship of Michelangelo, this dependence of his on the
tradition of the Florentine schools, is nowhere seen more clearly than
in his treatment of the Creation. The Creation of Man had haunted the
mind of the middle age like a dream; and weaving it into a hundred
carved ornaments of capital or doorway, the Italian sculptors had early
impressed upon it that pregnancy of expression which seems to give it
many veiled meanings.
Pages:
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136