But great as was Leonardo, we call the time in which he lived, the age of Michelangelo.

When Leonardo was forty, and at the very height of his power, Michel Agnola Buonarroti, aged twenty, liberated from the block a marble Cupid that was so exquisite in its proportions that it passed for an antique, and men who looked upon it exclaimed, “Phidias!”

Michel Agnola became Michelangelo, that is to say, “Michel the Angel,” in a day.  The name thrown at him by an unknown admirer stuck, and in his later years when all the world called him “Angelo” he cast off the name his parents had given him and accepted the affectionate pet name that clung like the love of woman.

Michelangelo was born in a shabby little village but a few miles from Florence.  In another village near by was born Leonardo.  “Great men never come singly,” says Emerson.  And yet Angelo and Leonardo exercised no influence upon each other that we can trace.  The younger man never came under the spell of the older one, but moved straight on to his destiny, showing not the slightest arc in his orbit in deference to the great luminary of his time.

The handsome Leonardo was social:  he loved women, and music, and festivals, and gorgeous attire, and magnificent equipage.  His life was full of color and sweeping, joyous, rainbow tints.

Michelangelo was homely in feature, and the aspect of his countenance was mutilated by a crashing blow from a rival student’s mallet that flattened his nose to his face.  Torrigiano lives in history for this act alone, thus proving that there are more ways than one to gain immortality.

Angelo was proud, self-centered, independent, and he sometimes lashed the critics into a buzzing, bluebottle fury by his sarcastic speech.  “He affronted polite society, conformed to no one’s dictates, lived like an ascetic and worked like a packmule,” says a contemporary.

Vasari, who among his many other accomplishments seems to have been the Boswell of his time, compares Leonardo and Michelangelo.  He says, “Angelo can do everything that Leonardo can, although he does it differently.”  Further, he adds, “Angelo is painter, sculptor, engineer, architect and poet.”  “But,” adds this versatile Italian Samuel Pepys, somewhat sorrowfully, “he is not a gentleman.”

It is to be regretted that Signor Vasari did not follow up his remarks with his definition of the term “gentleman.”

Leonardo was more of a painter than a sculptor.  His pictures are full of rollicking mirth, and the smile on the faces of his women is handed down by imitation even to this day.  The joyous freedom of animal life beckons from every Leonardo canvas; and the backgrounds fade off into fleecy clouds and shadowy, dreamy, opiate odor of violets.

Michelangelo, however, is true to his own life as Leonardo was to his—­for at the last the artist only reproduces himself.  He never painted a laugh, for life to him was serious and full of sober purpose.  We can not call his work somber—­it does not depress—­for it carries with it a poise and a strength that is sufficient unto itself.  It is all heroic, and there is in it a subtle quality that exorcises fear and bids care begone.