Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young PeopleBacon, Mary Schell Hoke
General
Pictures Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People
Bacon, Mary Schell Hoke
Art -- Juvenile literature; Painters -- Juvenile literature; Painting -- Juvenile literature
Back in Rome, he was commissioned to make a tomb for the pope. He had
no sooner set about the preliminaries--the getting of suitable marble
for his work--than he began to quarrel with the men who were to hew
it. When that difficulty was settled, and the marble was got out, he
had a set-to with the shipowners who were to transport the stone, and
that row became so serious that the sculptor was besieged in his own
house.
At another and later time, when he was engaged upon the frescoes of
the Sistine Chapel, he was made to work by force. He accused the man
who had built the scaffolding upon which he must stand, or lie, to
paint, of planning his destruction. He suspected the very assistants
whom he, himself, had chosen to go from Florence, of having designs
upon his life. He locked the chapel against them, and they had to turn
away when they went to begin work. Because of his insane suspicion he
did alone the enormous work of the frescoes. Doubtless he was half
mad, just as he was wholly a genius.
By the time he had finished those frescoes he was so exhausted and
overworked that he wrote piteously to his people at home, "I have not
a friend in Rome, neither do I wish nor have use for any." This of
course was not true; or he would not have made the statement. "I
hardly find time to take nourishment. Not an ounce more can I bear
than already rests upon my shoulders." Even when the work was done he
felt no happiness because of it, but complained about everything and
everybody.
If Angelo thought this an unhappy day, worse was in store for
him. Julius II. died and in his place there came to reign upon the
papal throne, Leo X. If Michael Angelo had been restricted in his work
before, he was almost jailed under Leo X. Julius had been a virile,
forceful man, and Michael Angelo was the same. Since he must be
restrained and dictated to, it was possible for the artist to listen
to a man who was in certain respects strong like himself, but to be
under the thumb of a weak, effeminate person like Leo, was the tragedy
of tragedies to Angelo. That was a marvellous time in Rome. All its
citizens had become so pleasure-loving that the world, stood still to
wonder. When the pope banqueted, he had the golden plates from which
fair women had eaten hurled into the Tiber, that they might never be
profaned by a less noble use than they had known. From all this riot
and madness of pleasure, Michael Angelo stood aside with frowning brow
and scornful mien. He approved of nothing and of nobody--despising
even Raphael, the gentle and loving man whom the pleasure-crazed
people of Rome paused to smile upon and love. The pope said that
Angelo was "terrible," and that he filled everybody with fear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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