Reviewing Parlagreco’s argument in general, I think it may be justly remarked that if the qualities rehearsed above constitute hysterical neuropathy, then every testy, sensitive, impulsive, and benevolent person is neuropathically hysterical.  In particular we may demur to the terms “puerile ideas,” “unreasonable vanity regarding external appearances.”  It would be difficult to discover puerility in any of Buonarroti’s utterances; and his only vanity was a certain pride in the supposed descent of his house from that of Canossa.  The frequent allusions to melancholy and madness do not constitute a confession of these qualities.  They express Michelangelo’s irritation at being always twitted with unsociability and eccentricity.  In the conversations recorded by Francesco d’Olanda he quietly and philosophically exculpates men of the artistic temperament from such charges, which were undoubtedly brought against him, and which the recluse manner of his life to some extent accounted for.

It may be well here to resume the main points of the indictment brought against Michelangelo’s sanity by the neo-psychologists.  In the first place, he admired male more than female beauty, and preferred the society of men to that of women.  But this peculiarity, in an age and climate which gave larger licence to immoderate passions, exposed him to no serious malignancy of rumour.  Such predilections were not uncommon in Italy.  They caused scandal when they degenerated into vice, and rarely failed in that case to obscure the good fame of persons subject to them.  Yet Michelangelo, surrounded by jealous rivals, was only very lightly touched by the breath of calumny in his lifetime.  Aretino’s malicious insinuation and Condivi’s cautious vindication do not suffice to sully his memory with any dark suspicion.  He lived with an almost culpable penuriousness in what concerned his personal expenditure.  But he was generous towards his family, bountiful to his dependants, and liberal in charity.  He suffered from constitutional depression, preferred solitude to crowds, and could not brook the interference of fashionable idlers with his studious leisure.  But, as he sensibly urged in self-defence, these eccentricities, so frequent with men of genius, ought to have been ascribed to the severe demands made upon an artist’s faculties by the problems with which he was continually engaged; the planning of a Pope’s mausoleum, the distribution of a score of histories and several hundreds of human figures on a chapel-vaulting, the raising of S. Peter’s cupola in air:  none of which tasks can be either lightly undertaken or carried out with ease.  At worst, Michelangelo’s melancholy might be ascribed to that morbus eruditorum of which Burton speaks.  It never assumed the form of hypochondria, hallucination, misogyny, or misanthropy.  He was irritable, suspicious, and frequently unjust both to his friends and relatives on slight occasions.  But his relatives gave him good reason to be fretful