Although this work is the only link directly connecting Michael Angelo with the ducal house of Urbino, we may be allowed a passing tribute to that genius which has hammered huge rocks into colossal compositions, and embodied themes the most difficult in forms the most daring. Of the simple element of beauty we, indeed, find in him few traces. Gentleness and pathos had no place either in his wayward spirit or in his works.[*227] Discarding the beau-ideal aimed at in antique sculpture, where movement was restrained by the observance of form, and passion modified to the measure of fair proportion, he either startled by impossible postures, gnarled limbs, and sturdy deformity, or, in the words of Fuseli, "perplexed the limbs of grandeur with the minute ramifications of anatomy." Hence, when tried by the rules of art, many of his creations are found wanting; when submitted to the standard of pure taste, their faults become glaring. In straining to shake off the trammels of manner, he often fell into mannerism the most infelicitous; and the impression too commonly left on the spectator is that of energy wasted and talent misapplied. But his mind was of that lofty cast which, soaring above common themes, and spurning conventional restrictions, substituted power for beauty, and challenged our wonder rather than our approbation. Awed by the sublimity of his ideas, we overlook their inadequate development, until, descending to details, we impugn the unfinished sketch, and half-chiselled marble, painfully reminded that superhuman gifts are often marred by very ordinary weaknesses. [Footnote *227: No? Consider then the Pietà of S. Pietro in Vaticano, the unfinished Pietà of S. Maria del Fiore. All that Dennistoun says of Michelangelo is full of misunderstanding. For instance, he never "startles" though he may terrify one. It would be ridiculous to defend him. His work is beautiful, with the beauty of the mountains in which he alone has found the spirit of man. His figures, half unveiled from the living rock, are like some terrible indictment of the world he lived in: an indictment of himself too, perhaps, of his contempt for things as they are; it is in a sort of rage at its uselessness that he leaves them unfinished. In him the spirit of man has stammered the syllables of eternity, and in its agony of longing or sorrow has failed to speak only the word love. All things particular to the individual, all that is small or of little account, that endures but for a moment, he has purged away, so that life itself may make, as it were, an immortal gesticulation almost monstrous in its passionate intensity--a shadow seen on the mountains, a mirage on the snow.] [Illustration: _Anderson_ GIOVANNI AND FEDERICO, ELECTORS OF SAXONY _After the Portraits by Cranach, once in the Ducal Collection at Urbino, now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence_]