Such was the impatience of Julius that again he nearly quarrelled with Michelangelo.  The latter, requiring to go to Florence on business, went to the Pope for money.  “When do you mean to finish my chapel?” said the Pope.  “As soon as I can,” answered Michelangelo. “’As soon as I can! as soon as I can!’” replied the irascible Pontiff; “I’ll have you flung off your scaffoldings;” and he touched him with his stick.  Michelangelo went home, set his affairs in order, and was on the point of leaving, when the Pope sent him his favorite Accursio with his apology and five hundred ducats.

This time, again, Michelangelo was unable to finish his work as completely as he would have wished.  He desired to retouch certain portions; but, seeing the inconvenience of reerecting the scaffoldings, he determined to do nothing more, saying that what was wanting to his figures was not of importance.  “You should put a little gold on them,” said the Pope; “my chapel will look very poor.”  “The people I have painted there,” answered Michelangelo, “were poor.”  Accordingly nothing was changed.

These paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine transcend all description.  How give an idea of these countless sublime figures to those who have not trembled and turned pale in this awful temple?  The immense superiority of Michelangelo is manifest in this chapel itself, where are paintings of Ghirlandajo, of Signorelli, which pale near those of the Florentine as the light of a lamp does in the light of the sun.  Raphael painted about the same time, and under the influence of what he had seen in the Sistine, his admirable “Sibyls of the Pace”; but compare them!  He also no doubt attained in some of his works—­the “St. Paul” of the cartoon, the “Vision of Ezekiel,” the “Virgin” of the Dresden Museum—­the summit of sublime art; but that which is the exception with Sanzio is the rule with the great Buonarroti.  Michelangelo lived in a superhuman world, and his daring, unexpected conceptions are so beyond and outside the habitual thoughts of men that they repel by their very elevation, and are far from fascinating all minds as do the wonderful and charming creations of the painter of Urbino.

It is necessary, however, to combat the widespread opinion that Michelangelo understood only the extreme feelings, and could express these only by violent and exaggerated movements.  All agree that his figures possess the highest qualities of art—­invention, sublimity of style, breadth and science in the drawing, appropriateness and fitness of color, and this character, so striking in the ceiling of the Sistine that it is not of the painter that the paintings make you think, that looking at it you say to yourself, “This tragic heaven must have come thus all peopled with its gigantic forms”; and it is by an effort of the mind only we are brought to think of the creator of this sublime work.  But it is denied that he understood grace, young and innocent beauty, the forms