Viewed in this light, the vault of the Sistine and the later fresco of the Last Judgment may be taken as the final outcome of all previous Italian art upon a single line of creative energy, and that line the one anticipated by Luca Signorelli.  In like manner, the Stanze and Loggie of the Vatican were the final outcome of the same process upon another line, suggested by Perugino and Fra Bartolommeo.

Michelangelo adapted to his own uses and bent to his own genius motives originated by the Pisani, Giotto, Giacopo della Quercia, Donatello, Masaccio, while working in the spirit of Signorelli.  He fused and recast the antecedent materials of design in sculpture and painting, producing a quintessence of art beyond which it was impossible to advance without breaking the rhythm, so intensely strung, and without contradicting too violently the parent inspiration.  He strained the chord of rhythm to its very utmost, and made incalculable demands upon the religious inspiration of its predecessors.  His mighty talent was equal to the task of transfusion and remodelling which the exhibition of the supreme style demanded.  But after him there remained nothing for successors except mechanical imitation, soulless rehandling of themes he had exhausted by reducing them to his imperious imagination in a crucible of fiery intensity.

V

No critic with a just sense of phraseology would call Michelangelo a colourist in the same way as Titian and Rubens were colourists.  Still it cannot be denied with justice that the painter of the Sistine had a keen perception of what his art required in this region, and of how to attain it.  He planned a comprehensive architectural scheme, which served as setting and support for multitudes of draped and undraped human figures.  The colouring is kept deliberately low and subordinate to the two main features of the design—­architecture, and the plastic forms of men and women.  Flesh-tints, varying from the strong red tone of Jonah’s athletic manhood, through the glowing browns of the seated Genii, to the delicate carnations of Adam and the paler hues of Eve; orange and bronze in draperies, medallions, decorative nudes, russets like the tints of dead leaves; lilacs, cold greens, blue used sparingly; all these colours are dominated and brought into harmony by the greys of the architectural setting.  It may indeed be said that the different qualities of flesh-tints, the architectural greys, and a dull bronzed yellow strike the chord of the composition.  Reds are conspicuous by their absence in any positive hue.  There is no vermilion, no pure scarlet or crimson, but a mixed tint verging upon lake.  The yellows are brought near to orange, tawny, bronze, except in the hair of youthful personages, a large majority of whom are blonde.  The only colour which starts out staringly is ultramarine, owing of course to this mineral material resisting time and change more perfectly