No man ever portrayed the human figure with the same fidelity that Angelo has.  The naked Adam, when the finger of the Almighty touched him into life, gives one a thrill of health to look upon, even after these four hundred years have struggled to obliterate the lines.

His figures of women shocked the artistic sense of his time, for instead of the Greek idealization of beauty he carved the swelling muscles and revealed the articulations of form as no artist before him had ever dared.  His women are never young, foolish, timid girls—­they are Amazons; and his men are the kind that lead nations out of captivity.  The soft, the pretty, the yielding, were far from him.  There is never a suggestion of taint or double meaning; all is frank, open, generous, honest and fearless.  His figures are nude, but never naked.

He began his artistic work when fourteen years old, and he lived to be eighty-nine; and his years did not outlast his zeal and zest.  He was above the medium size, an athlete in his lean and sinewy strength, and the whipcord quality of his body mirrored the silken strength of his will.

In his old age the King arose when Michelangelo entered the Council-Chamber, and would not sit until he was seated at the right hand of the throne; the Pope would not allow him to kneel before him; when he walked through the streets of Rome the people removed their hats as he passed; and today we who gaze upon his work in the Eternal City stand uncovered.

* * * * *

Michelangelo was the firstborn in a large family.  Simone Buonarroti, his father, belonged to an ebbtide branch of the nobility that had lost everything but the memory of great ancestors turned to dust.  This father had ambitions for his boy; ambitions in the line of the army or a snug office under the wing of the State, where he might, by following closely the beck and nod of the prince in power, become a magistrate or a keeper of customs.

But no boy ever disappointed a proud father more.

When great men in gilt and gold braid, with scarlet sashes across their breasts, and dangling swords that clicked and clanged on the stone pavement, strode by, rusty, dusty little Michel refused to take off his cap and wish them “Long life and God’s favor,” as his father ordered.  Instead, he hid behind his mother’s gown and made faces.  His father used to say he was about as homely as he could be without making faces, and if he didn’t watch out he would get his face crooked some day and couldn’t get it back.

Simone Buonarroti had qualities very Micawber-like mixed in his clay, and the way he cringed and crawled may have had something to do with setting the son on the other tack.

The mother was only nineteen when Michel was born, and although the moralists talk much about woman’s vanity and extravagance, the theory gets no backing from this quarter.  She was a plain woman in appearance, quiet and self-contained, with no nerves to speak of, a sturdy, physical endowment, and commonsense enough for two.  When scarcely out of dresses the boy began to draw pictures.  He drew with charcoal on the walls, or with a stick in the sand, and shaped curious things out of mud in the gutters.