of Donatello’s manner or a disciple of the classics.  The next period, which includes the Madonna della Febbre, the Bruges Madonna, the Bacchus, the Cupid, and the David, is marked by an intense search after the truth of Nature.  Both Madonnas might be criticised for unreality, owing to the enormous development of the thorax and something artificial in the type of face.  But all the male figures seem to have been studied from the model.  There is an individuality about the character of each, a naturalism, an aiming after realistic expression, which separate this group from previous and subsequent works by Buonarroti.  Traces of Donatello’s influence survive in the treatment of the long large hands of David, the cast of features selected for that statue, and the working of the feet.  Indeed it may be said that Donatello continued through life to affect the genius of Michelangelo by a kind of sympathy, although the elder master’s naivete was soon discarded by the younger.

The second period culminated in the Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa.  This design appears to have fixed the style now known to us as Michelangelesque, and the loss of it is therefore irreparable.  It exercised the consummate science which he had acquired, his complete mastery over the male nude.  It defined his firm resolve to treat linear design from the point of view of sculpture rather than of painting proper.  It settled his determination to work exclusively through and by the human figure, rejecting all subordinate elements of decoration.  Had we possessed this epoch-making masterpiece, we should probably have known Michelangelo’s genius in its flower-period of early ripeness, when anatomical learning was still combined with a sustained dependence upon Nature.  The transition from the second to the third stage in this development of form-ideal remains imperfectly explained, because the bathers in the Arno were necessary to account for the difference between the realistic David and the methodically studied genii of the Sistine.

The vault of the Sistine shows Michelangelo’s third manner in perfection.  He has developed what may be called a scheme of the human form.  The apparently small head, the enormous breadth of shoulder, the thorax overweighing the whole figure, the finely modelled legs, the large and powerful extremities, which characterise his style henceforward, culminate in Adam, repeat themselves throughout the genii, govern the prophets.  But Nature has not been neglected.  Nothing is more remarkable in that vast decorative mass of figures than the variety of types selected, the beauty and animation of the faces, the extraordinary richness, elasticity, and freshness of the attitudes presented to the eye.  Every period of life has been treated with impartial justice, and both sexes are adequately handled.  The Delphian, Erythrean, and Libyan Sibyls display a sublime sense of facial beauty.  The Eve of the Temptation has even something of positively feminine charm.  This is probably