and wrinkled, bowed with thought, consumed by vigils, startled from tranquillity by visions, overburdened with the messages of God.  The loveliest among them, the Delphic, lifts dilated eyes, as though to follow dreams that fly upon the paths of trance.  Even the young men strain their splendid limbs, and seem to shout or shriek, as if the life in them contained some element of pain.  “He maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire:”  this verse rises to our lips when we seek to describe the genii that crowd the cornice of the Sistine Chapel.  The human form in the work of Pheidias wore a joyous and sedate serenity; in that of Michael Angelo it is turbid with a strange and awful sense of inbreathed agitation.  Through the figure-language of the one was spoken the pagan creed, bright, unperturbed, and superficial.  The sculpture of the Parthenon accomplished the transfiguration of the natural man.  In the other man awakes to a new life of contest, disillusionment, hope, dread, and heavenward striving.  It was impossible for the Greek and the Italian, bearing so different a burden of prophecy, even though they used the same speech, to tell the same tale; and this should be remembered by those critics who cast exaggeration and contortion in the teeth of Michael Angelo.  Between the birth of the free spirit in Greece and its second birth in Italy, there yawned a sepulchre wherein the old faiths of the world lay buried and whence Christ had risen.[318]

The star of Raphael, meanwhile, had arisen over Rome.  Between the two greatest painters of their age the difference was striking.  Michael Angelo stood alone, his own master, fashioned in his own school.  A band of artists called themselves by Raphael’s name; and in his style we trace the influence of several predecessors.  Michael Angelo rarely received visits, frequented no society, formed no pupils, and boasted of no friends at Court.  Raphael was followed to the Vatican by crowds of students; his levees were like those of a prince; he counted among his intimates the best scholars and poets of the age; his hand was pledged in marriage to a cardinal’s niece.  It does not appear that they engaged in petty rivalries, or that they came much into personal contact with each other.  While Michael Angelo was so framed that he could learn from no man, Raphael gladly learned of Michael Angelo; and after the uncovering of the Sistine frescoes, his manner showed evident signs of alteration.  Julius, who had given Michael Angelo the Sistine, set Raphael to work upon the Stanze.  For Julius were painted the “Miracle of Bolsena” and the “Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple,” scenes containing courtly compliments for the old Pope.  No such compliments had been paid by Michael Angelo.  Like his great parallel in music, Beethoven, he displayed an almost arrogant contempt for the conventionalities whereby an artist wins the favour of his patrons and the world.