The letter of religion was nothing to Michelangelo, but the eternal spirit of truth that broods over and beyond all forms and ceremonies touched his soul.  His heart was filled with the poetry of pagan times.  The gods of ancient Greece on high Olympus for him still sang and feasted, still lived and loved.

But to the art of the Church he devoted his time and talents.  He considered himself a priest and servant to the cause of Christ.

Established at Rome in the palace of the Pope, Michelangelo felt secure.  He knew his power.  He knew he could do work that would for generations move men to tears, and in his prophetic soul was a feeling that his name would be inseparably linked with Rome.  His wanderings and buffetings were things of the past—­he was necessary to the Church, and his position was now secure and safe.  The favor of princes lasts but for a day, but the Church is eternal.  The Church should be his bride; to her and to her alone would he give his passionate soul.  Thus mused Michelangelo, aged twenty-two.  His first work at Rome was a statue of Bacchus, done it seems for an exercise to give Cardinal Giorgio a taste of his quality, just as he had drawn the human hand on the wall for his Bologna protector; for this fine and lofty pride in his power was a thing that clung to Michelangelo from rosy youth to hoary age.

The “Bacchus,” which is now in the National Museum at Florence, added to his reputation; and the little world of art, whose orbit was the Vatican, anxiously awaited a more serious attempt, just as we crane our necks when the great violinist about to play awakens expectation by a few preliminary flourishes.

His first great work at Rome was the “Pieta.”  We see it today in Saint Peter’s at the first chapel to the right as we enter, in a long row of commonplace marbles, in all its splendid beauty and strength.  It represents the Mother of Christ, supporting in her arms the dead body just after it was lowered from the cross.  In most of Michelangelo’s work there is a heroic quality in the figures and a muscular strength that in a degree detracts from the spirit of sympathy that might otherwise come over us.  It is admiration that seizes us, not sympathy.  But this early work is the flower of Michelangelo’s genius, round and full and complete.  The later work may be different, but it is not better.

When this group was unveiled in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-eight it was the sensation of the year.  Old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, flocked to see it, and the impression it made was most profound.  If the Catholic Church has figured on the influence of statuary and painting on the superstitious, as has been tauntingly said, she has reckoned well.  The story of steadfast love and loyalty is masterly told in that first great work of Michelangelo.  The artist himself often mingled with the crowds that surrounded his speaking marble, and the people who knelt before it assured him by their reverence that his hand had wrought well.  And once he heard two able doctors disputing as to who the artist was.  They were lavish in their praise, and one insisted that the work was done by the great sculptor at Bologna, and he named the master who had befriended Michelangelo.  The artist stood by and heard the argument put forth that no mere youth could conceive such a work, much less execute it.