Blind, more or less, were all who lived around Michelangelo. Their too feeble eyes were dazzled by this sun which shone alone in that twilight of art, the night which was falling on Italy of the Renaissance. A long time after that sun had disappeared below the horizon the radiant glow still remained in the sky. Michelangelo enthralled Italian art. There is no comparison between the influence which he exerted and that of the other masters of the sixteenth century, Corregio and Raphael. However superior they may have been to their century, Corregio and Raphael only reflected its thoughts with more charm and grandeur. Michelangelo is outside of his time, alone, apart and colossal. He is like a great mountain which inspires in those who dwell at the foot an invincible desire to reach the top; and what men have ever existed who were less capable of climbing those austere and sublime heights? All those effeminate artists of the decadence, intoxicated by his inspiration, attempted to express heroic ideas in their insipid works. They lost the sense of proportion which alone could have saved them. Instead of confining themselves to the little world of their own fancy which, though cold, could have been redeemed by sincerity, they attempted great subjects. A mass of forms, heroic figures and furious gestures that they had learned, were whirled about in their mind, uncontrolled either by greatness of intelligence or of heart. We must remember that Michelangelo lived through more than fifty years of the Golden Age of Italian art and, as happened in our own day to Victor Hugo, admiration for his works increased in proportion as they deserved it less. Even the factions that had been longest hostile to him--the school of Raphael, for instance--recognised his triumph. Perino del Vaga admits that all the painters worshipped him as their master, their leader and the god of drawing.[146] The independents, or those who boasted that they were, said as Cellini did in his sonnets: "Just a leaf from thy crown, O divine Michelangelo, who alone art rich, who alone art immortal. That will suffice me and I shall have no desire for anything else, since for me that only is good and beautiful." Florence, his own country, more even than the rest of Italy gave him blind admiration. The Academy of Drawing, founded by Vasari, was a college of disciples and apostles. Since Michelangelo's great paintings were at Rome the Florentines copied chiefly his statues, devoting themselves principally, as Lanzi says, to ostentatiously showing "magna ossa lacertosque."[147] This was in accordance with the doctrine of the master, who declared that sculpture should be the school of the painter and the ideal of painting. Cellini, thinking to define the thought of Michelangelo, absurdly declares and demonstrates that sculpture is seven times greater than painting.