“Vasari’s and Cellini’s criticisms of a master they both honestly revered may suffice to illustrate the false method adopted by these mimics of Michelangelo’s ideal.  To charge him with faults proceeding from the weakness and blindness of the Decadence—­the faults of men too blind to read his art aright, too weak to stand on their own feet without him—­would be either stupid or malicious.  If at the close of the sixteenth century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance the world by empty exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a braggadocio display of meaningless effects—­crowding their compositions with studies from the nude, and painting agitated groups without a discernible cause for agitation—­the crime surely lay with the patrons who liked such decoration, and with the journeymen who provided it.  Michelangelo himself always made his manner serve his thought.  We may fail to appreciate his manner and may be incapable of comprehending his thought, but only insincere or conceited critics will venture to gauge the latter by what they feel to be displeasing in the former.  What seems lawless in him follows the law of a profound and peculiar genius, with which, whether we like it or not, we must reckon.  His imitators were devoid of thought, and too indifferent to question whether there was any law to be obeyed.  Like the jackass in the fable, they assumed the dead lion’s skin, and brayed beneath it, thinking they could roar.”

VI

Continuing these scattered observations upon Michelangelo’s character and habits, we may collect what Vasari records about his social intercourse with brother-artists.  Being himself of a saturnine humour, he took great delight in the society of persons little better than buffoons.  Writing the Life of Jacopo surnamed L’Indaco, a Florentine painter of some merit, Vasari observes:  “He lived on very familiar terms of intimacy with Michelangelo; for that great artist, great above all who ever were, when he wished to refresh his mind, fatigued by studies and incessant labours of the body and the intellect, found no one more to his liking and more congenial to his humour than was Indaco.”  Nothing is recorded concerning their friendship, except that Buonarroti frequently invited Indaco to meals; and one day, growing tired of the man’s incessant chatter, sent him out to buy figs, and then locked the house-door, so that he could not enter when he had discharged his errand.  A boon-companion of the same type was Menighella, whom Vasari describes as “a mediocre and stupid painter of Valdarno, but extremely amusing.”  He used to frequent Michelangelo’s house, “and he, who could with difficulty be induced to work for kings, would lay aside all other occupations in order to make drawings for this fellow.”  What Menighella wanted was some simple design or other of S. Rocco, S. Antonio, or S. Francesco, to be coloured for one of his peasant patrons.  Vasari says that