Leonardo's contemporaries who caught much of his peculiar manner. He worked chiefly at Siena, where are still to be seen his Deposition from the Cross in the Academy, several scenes from the Life of S. Catharine in the chapel of S. Catharine of Siena, in S. Domenico, and other works in the galleries and churches.

touching

beauty and

both them and all his predecessors. Michelangelounlike Leonardo, who gave his chief attention to light and shade and color-devoted his life to the study of form and the expression of energy in action. His figures are stamped with the impress of his bold, profound and original genius, and have a mysterious

the expression of intense mental agony given to the head of the youthful martyr.

MICHELANGELO AND HIS SCHOOL.

We should like to speak of the great Florentine, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), both as an architect and sculptor; but we must here consider him as a painter. We find him taking rank among the first and greatest of his cotemporaries, and, in the force and grandeur of his conceptions, his anatomical knowledge and power of drawing, excelling

and awful grandeur all their own. His mighty spirit found its best

expression in

Sculpture. He

despised easel

pictures as un

worthy of a

great man;

and his large
fresco paint-
ings-the

greatest works of the kind ever produced -which he executed without assistance of any kind, are instinct with the same fire and energy which we know to be characteristic of his statues and bas-reliefs.

Michelangelo's first work of importance

in the branch of art now under consideration, was the Cartoon of Pisa, already alluded to. It is unfortunately lost, having, it is said, been destroyed by Baccio Bandinelli, one of the great painter's rivals; but the Earl of Leicester possesses, at his seat at Holkham, a copy of the principal portions, which has been very well engraved. It represented a group of Florentine soldiers bathing in the Arno unexpectedly called to battle, and is remarkable for the extraordinary knowledge displayed of the human form in every variety of attitude. A few years after

the completion of this cartoon, Michelangelo commenced, in 1507, the decoration of the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Rome, by command of Pope Julius II., finishing it in 1512. This stupendous undertaking, which is considered Buonarroti's masterpiece and the most powerful piece of painting in existence, contains more than two hundred figures, nearly all larger than life. The flat central portion of the ceiling is divided into four large and five small compartments, the former containing representations of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, the Creation of Adam, the Fall and its immediate consequences, and the Deluge; the latter, scenes from Genesis of minor importance. The triangular divisions at the springing of the vaults are occupied by grand seated figures of the prophets and sibyls who foretold the advent of Christ, of which we give a single specimen. In the small recesses between these compartments and above the windows are groups of the Ancestors of Christ, awaiting in calm expectation the Coming of the Lord; and in the four corners of the ceiling are scenes from the various deliverances of the people of Israel-viz., Holofernes and Judith, David and Goliath, the Brazen Serpent, and Haman's Death. The various portions of the work are united by architectural designs inclosing numerous figures of a gray, bronze, or bright color, according to the position they occupy, which admirably serve to throw the groups into the necessary relief without in the least obtruding themselves upon the attention. The combined genius of an architect, sculptor and painter was required to produce a result so admirable. The figures of the prophets and sibyls are

painter's brush-they are all alike grand, dignified, and full of individual character; whilst those in the minor groups display a feeling for beauty and a tenderness of sentiment rarely met with in the works of the stern and rugged author of Moses and the Last Judg

ment.

Between the years 1534 and 1541 Michelangelo executed his Last Judgment as an altar-piece for the same chapel, in obedience to the command of Pope Paul III. In this composition the Judge is represented at the moment of saying, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!" In the upper part of the picture we see the redeemed in every variety of attitude anxiously awaiting the sentence of mercy; and in the lower the condemned, writhing in anguish and convulsively struggling with evil demons.

Paul.

They are now nearly destroyed; but the British Museum contains some old engravings after them.

The National Gallery has an unfinished picture of the Entombment of Christ, said to be by Michelangelo, though various critics will not admit its authenticity. The National Gallery also contains his design of a Dream of Human Life, and that of the Raising of Lazarus, both supposed to have been executed by Sebastian del Piombo, his best pupil. In the latter there are some figures probably from the great master's own hand. His most important easel picture is the Holy Family, of the year 1504, in the Uffizi, Florence.

Of Michelangelo's pupils, the best were Marcello Venusti, Sebastiano Luciani, called del Piombo-three of whose pictures are in the National Gallery-and Daniele Ricciarelli, called da Volterra, who worked out something of an independent style of his own. His finest work, the Descent from the Cross, is in the church of the Trinità de' Monti, at Rome.

THE SIBYL. BY MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI.

The whole scene is pervaded by horror; there is no joy in the countenances even of the blessed; and the Virgin, standing beside her Son, turns away her head with an expression of sorrowful dismay. Universally allowed to be a marvelous effort of human skill, the Last Judgment is inferior in beauty, if not in power, to the paintings of the vault. In it the great master has broken completely loose from all the traditions of Christian art, and his chief aim appears to have been to prove his knowledge of muscular development at every stage of human life, and his power of expressing all the most terrible of human emotions. Powerless rage, terror, doubt, and the struggle between fear and hope, are alike admirably rendered in this awful scene. Several engravings of the Last Judgment are in the British Museum.

Michelangelo's only other paintings of importance were two frescoes in the Pauline Chapel, Rome, of the Crucifixion of S. Peter and Conversion of S.

FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

We may conveniently here mention a few painters who upheld Florentine art during part of the sixteenth century. Andrea d'Agnolo, commonly called del Sarto (1487-1531), a contemporary of Michelangelo, attained to considerable excellence as a colorist, and enriched Florence with many fine original frescoes and altar-pieces, of which the History of S. John in the Scalzo, and the Life of S. Filippo Benizzi in the church of the Servi (which contains his famous Madonna del Sacco) are among the best. The National Gallery contains a portrait of himself and a Holy Family. He was first apprenticed to a goldsmith; and then studied painting under Piero di Cosimo. His style, however, was formed more from a study of the great works of Ghirlandaio and Masaccio, of Michelangelo and Leonardo, than from any instruction received from Piero.

Francesco Bigi, commonly known as Franciabigio (1482-1525), first studied in the Brancacci Chapel,

and then under Albertinelli. He was a friend of Andrea del Sarto, and was influenced by him. A Portrait of a Youth, by him, is in the National Gallery.

RAPHAEL AND HIS SCHC OL.

Raffaello Sanzio, usually called Raphael (14831520), is generally considered to be the greatest of all painters. He was born at Urbino; his father, Giovanni Santi (ab. 1440-1494), was an Umbrian painter of some notę, whose title to fame has been eclipsed by that of his famous son; and the young painter's

earliest works were exponents of the peculiar style of the Umbrian School in its highest development. The pupil of Perugino, he was at first greatly influenced by that master; and in speaking of his works we shall have to distinguish between three distinct styles-known as the Perugino manner, the Florentine and the Roman-adopted at the three different periods of his life. Raphael, like the other master-spirits of his age, was a universal genius; he excelled alike in Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, and was endowed with every quality which could endear him to his associates. No man inspired such universal confidence and affection, and no artist has exercised so wide and lasting an influence upon art as Raphael, by whose spirit we are

BY ANDREA DEL SARTO.

are inseparably blended; and it is this union of the highest faculties which produces that beautiful and unrivaled harmony which pervades everything from his hand. He exhibited in the highest degree the combination of the powers of invention with those of representation, sometimes known as the formative and imitative qualities. In invention, composition, moral force, fidelity of portraiture, and feeling for spiritual beauty, he is surpassed by none; in grandeur of design by Michelangelo alone; while in fullness of chiaro-oscuro and richness of coloring he is only excelled by the best masters of the Venetian School.

It will be impossible, having regard to our limited space, to do more than allude in the most cursory

manner to the chief of Raphael's numerous works. Although he died at the early age of thirty-seven, he executed no less than two hundred and eightyseven pictures and five hundred and seventy-six drawings and studies, in addition to the series of frescoes in the Vatican and elsewhere.

Of the paintings executed under Perugino, the principal are a Coronation of the Virgin, in the Vatican, two studies for which are in the Oxford Collection; and the Vision of a Knight, in the National Gallery. The earliest independent works are said to have been a Church banner in S. Trinità at Città da Castello; and a Crucifixion, in the possession of Lord Dudley, which was exhibited at the "Old Masters" Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1872.

On leaving Perugino's school in 1504, at the age of twenty-one, Raphael, eager to improve himself by the study of greater works than his master's, repaired to Florence, and found all that he required in the cartoons of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, which excited his enthusiastic admiration. Peculiarly susceptible to the influences

youths, Mary's former suitors, whose disappointment is symbolized by the flowerless reeds they hold.

Of the paintings executed at Florence, in the master's second manner, we must name, as especially celebrated, the Madonna del Cardellino (with the Goldfinch), in the Uffizi, Florence; the Madonna of the Tempi Family, in the Pinakothek, Munich; the famous Madonna in the Louvre, known as La Belle Jardinière; Lord Cowper's Madonna-known as The

Little Panshanger Raphael (of about the year 1505), to distinguish it from the more famous painting by that artist in the same collection-at Panshanger; S. Catherine, in the National Gallery; the Entombment, an altarpiece, now in the Borghese Palace, Rome; and the Madonna del Baldac chino (of the Canopy), in the Pitti Palace, Florence, which belongs to the close of the second period.

Here we must mention the other and more famous Panshanger Raphael, the Madonna della Casa Niccolini, which bears the date 1508. Both Panshanger pictures were exhibited at the "Old Masters" in 1881; as they were hung in close proximity, their differences could be readily noticed.

alike of the old and new Florentine schools, Raphael's transcendent genius manifested itself perhaps in nothing so much as in his marvelous power of assimilating and fusing, so to speak, with his own peculiar gifts all that was best and highest in the works of others, building up therefrom a lofty and independent style essentially his own.

Of the works of the first period of Raphael's life, a Madonna with SS. Jerome and Francis, in the Berlin Museum, and the Marriage of the Virgin (known as the Sposalizio), in the Brera, Milan, are among the most esteemed. In the last named we see the Virgin attended by five maidens and S. Joseph by five

In the middle of the year 1508 Raphael was called to Rome by Pope Julius II. to aid in the adornment of the magnificent suite of apartments in the Vatican, which were to commemorate the temporal and spiritual power of the Papacy. The walls of three stanze (i.e. rooms), and of the gallery or corridor leading to them from the stair-case, and consisting of thirteen compartments, or loggie, with small cupolas, were covered with frescoes by the great master himself, and by his pupils after his designs.

In the first room, the Stanza della Segnatura, Raphael represented in symbolic scenes on the walls