hand upon the last youth’s shoulder, through
the open book and the upraised arm of Christ, down
to the feet of S. John and the last genius on the
right side. Florentine painters had been wont
to place attendant angels at both sides of their enthroned
Madonnas. Fine examples might be chosen from
the work of Filippino Lippi and Botticelli. But
their angels were winged and clothed like acolytes;
the Madonna was seated on a rich throne or under a
canopy, with altar-candles, wreaths of roses, flowering
lilies. It is characteristic of Michelangelo to
adopt a conventional motive, and to treat it with
brusque originality. In this picture there are
no accessories to the figures, and the attendant angels
are Tuscan lads half draped in succinct tunics.
The style is rather that of a flat relief in stone
than of a painting; and though we may feel something
of Ghirlandajo’s influence, the spirit of Donatello
and Luca della Robbia are more apparent. That
it was the work of an inexperienced painter is shown
by the failure to indicate pictorial planes.
In spite of the marvellous and intricate beauty of
the line-composition, it lacks that effect of graduated
distances which might perhaps have been secured by
execution in bronze or marble. The types have
not been chosen with regard to ideal loveliness or
dignity, but accurately studied from living models.
This is very obvious in the heads of Christ and S.
John. The two adolescent genii on the right hand
possess a high degree of natural grace. Yet even
here what strikes one most is the charm of their attitude,
the lovely interlacing of their arms and breasts,
the lithe alertness of the one lad contrasted with
the thoughtful leaning languor of his comrade.
Only perhaps in some drawings of combined male figures
made by Ingres for his picture of the Golden Age have
lines of equal dignity and simple beauty been developed.
I do not think that this Madonna, supposing it to
be a genuine piece by Michelangelo, belongs to the
period of his first residence in Rome. In spite
of its immense intellectual power, it has an air of
immaturity. Probably Heath Wilson was right in
assigning it to the time spent at Florence after Lorenzo
de’ Medici’s death, when the artist was
about twenty years of age.
I may take this occasion for dealing summarily with
the Entombment in the National Gallery. The picture,
which is half finished, has no pedigree. It was
bought out of the collection of Cardinal Fesch, and
pronounced to be a Michelangelo by the Munich painter
Cornelius. Good judges have adopted this attribution,
and to differ from them requires some hardihood.
Still it is painful to believe that at any period of
his life Michelangelo could have produced a composition
so discordant, so unsatisfactory in some anatomical
details, so feelingless and ugly. It bears indubitable
traces of his influence; that is apparent in the figure
of the dead Christ. But this colossal nude, with
the massive chest and attenuated legs, reminds us