Such forms as Michelangelo’s are tolerable only when possessed by that melancholy poetry of his which gives them meaning. If the serene intelligence of a Raphael had not found emotions to fill such forms, if Michelangelo himself in his later years falls back on a monotonous formula of terribleness, what hope was there for such uninspired imitators as the Venustis, Volterras, and Vasaris? One and all, they entertained monstrous delusions of effortless attainment—cleverly contorted their nudes, shrewdly calculated their terrors. And the Roman art of the Golden Age, forgetting both the wise humility of Umbria and the reasonable pride of Florence, suddenly collapsed in the ugliest and most irrational ostentation. Michelangelo had passed—to fulfill and to destroy. ILLUSTRATIONS FOR CHAPTER VI A CONTEMPORARY LIST OF GREAT ARTISTS, BEFORE 1510 In an offhand mention in _The Courtier_ Baldasarre Castiglione tells us who seemed to be great artists to a cultured and well-informed gentleman about the year 1508. Titian had not yet emerged and of the older men only Leonardo da Vinci and Mantegna are remembered. As seniors, they are the first mentioned. “Again various things give equal pleasure to the eyes, so that we can with difficulty decide what are more pleasing to them. You know that in painting Leonardo da Vinci, Mantegna, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgio da Castelfranco are very excellent, yet they are all unlike in their work; so that no one of them seems to lack anything in his own manner, since each is known as the most perfect in his style.” _The Book of the Courtier by Count Baldesar Castiglione_, translated by Leonard Ekstein Opdycke, New York, 1903, p. 50. MICHELANGELO ON RENAISSANCE COUNTERPOISE It is said then that Michelangelo once gave his advice to Marcoda Siena, his pupil, that “one should make the figure pyramidal, spiral, (_serpentinata_) and multiplied by one, two, and three.” Lomazzo _Trattato_, Milan, 1484, p. 23. The pose, that is, should be contained geometrically, should display opposing thrusts, and should be mathematically proportioned within the inclosing geometrical form. VASARI ON THE “MODERN STYLE” Vasari’s account of the Grand Style or “Third Manner,” in the Preface to Part III (De Vere’s translation, Vol. IV, pp. 79–85) is still authoritative. He praises the artists before Leonardo, but finds in them a certain hardness, lack of finish and uncertainty of proportions. The change to the perfect manner was caused by the discovery of ancient marbles.