File:The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti - based on studies in the archives of the Buonarroti family at Florence (1911) (14761312671).jpg

Identifier: lifeofmichelange02symo (find matches)
Title: The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti : based on studies in the archives of the Buonarroti family at Florence
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Symonds, John Addington, 1840-1893 Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564
Subjects: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564
Publisher: New York : C. Scribners London : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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of the stone-work so repellent in its ashen dulness, the plasterso white, and the false architectural system so pain-fully defrauded of the plastic forms for which it wasintended to subserve as setting. We have here no masterpiece of sound con-structive science, but a freak of inventive fancyusing studied details for the production of a pic-torial effect. The details employed to compose thiscurious illusion are painfully dry and sterile ; partlyowing to the scholastic enthusiasm for Vitruvius,partly to the decline of mediaeval delight in natural-istic decoration, but, what seems to me still moreapparent, through Michelangelos own passionatepreoccupation with the human figure. He couldnot tolerate any type of art which did not concede apredominant position to the form of man. Accord-ingly, his work in architecture at this period seemswaiting for plastic illustration, demanding sculptureand fresco for its illumination and justification. It is easy, one would think, to make an appeal to
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Tomb of Lorenzo de Medici. BAROCCO MANNERISM. 17 the eye by means of colossal orders, bold cornices, enormous consoles, deeply indented niches. How much more easy to construct a box, and then say, Come, let us cover its inside with an incongruous and inappropriate but imposing parade of learning, than to lift some light and genial thing of beauty aloft into the air, as did the modest builder of the staircase to the hall at Christ Church, Oxford ! The eye of the vulgar is entranced, the eye of the artist bewildered. That the imagination which inspired that decorative scheme was powerful, original, and noble, will not be denied; but this does not save us from the desolating conviction that the scheme itself is a specious and pretentious mask, devised to hide a hideous waste of bricks and mortar. /^Michelangelos imagination, displayed in this dis- Itressing piece of work, was indeed so masterful that, as Vasari says, a new delightful style in architecture seemed to be revealed by it. A n

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