“He aimed at the portrayal of the human body.  He wanted to exhibit the grand style.”  So says Vasari, and Vasari is partly right.  But we must not fall into the paradox, so perversely maintained by Ruskin in his lecture on Tintoretto and Michelangelo, that the latter was a cold and heartless artist, caring chiefly for the display of technical skill and anatomical science.  Partial and painful as we may find the meaning of the Last Judgment, that meaning has been only too powerfully and personally felt.  The denunciations of the prophets, the woes of the Apocalypse, the invectives of Savonarola, the tragedies of Italian history, the sense of present and indwelling sin, storm through and through it.  Technically, the masterpiece bears signs of fatigue and discontent, in spite of its extraordinary vigour of conception and execution.  The man was old and tired, thwarted in his wishes and oppressed with troubles.  His very science had become more formal, his types more arid and schematic, than they used to be.  The thrilling life, the divine afflatus, of the Sistine vault have passed out of the Last Judgment.  Wholly admirable, unrivalled, and unequalled by any other human work upon a similar scale as this fresco may be in its command over the varied resources of the human body, it does not strike our mind as the production of a master glorying in carnal pride and mental insolence, but rather as that of one discomfited and terrified, upon the point of losing heart.

Henri Beyle, jotting down his impressions in the Sistine Chapel, was reminded of the Grand Army’s flight after the burning of Moscow.  “When, in our disastrous retreat from Russia, it chanced that we were suddenly awakened in the middle of the dark night by an obstinate cannonading, which at each moment seemed to gain in nearness, then all the forces of a man’s nature gathered close around his heart; he felt himself in the presence of fate, and having no attention left for things of vulgar interest, he made himself ready to dispute his life with destiny.  The sight of Michelangelo’s picture has brought back to my consciousness that almost forgotten sensation.”  This is a piece of just and sympathetic criticism, and upon its note I am fain to close.

V

It is probable that the fame of the Last Judgment spread rapidly abroad through Italy, and that many visits to Rome were made for the purpose of inspecting it.  Complimentary sonnets must also have been addressed to the painter.  I take it that Niccolo Martelli sent some poems on the subject from Florence, for Michelangelo replied upon the 20th of January 1542 in the following letter of singular modesty and urbane kindness:—­