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Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867). Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867). Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo
By Sir Archibald Alison (1792–1867) From an essay in Blackwood’s for January, 1845.

NEVER did artist work with more persevering vigor than Michael Angelo. He himself said that he labored harder for fame than ever poor artist did for bread. Born of a noble family, the heir to considerable possessions, he took to the arts from his earliest years from enthusiastic passion and conscious power. During a long life of ninety years, he prosecuted them with the ardent zeal of youth. He was consumed by the thirst for fame, the desire of great achievements, the invariable mark of heroic minds; and which, as it is altogether beyond the reach of the great bulk of mankind, so is the feeling of all others which to them is most incomprehensible. Nor was that noble enthusiasm without its reward. It was his extraordinary good fortune to be called to form, at the same time, the “Last Judgment” on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the glorious dome of St. Peter’s, and the group of “Notre Dame de Pitié,” which now adorns the chapel of the Crucifix, under the roof of that august edifice. The “Holy Family” in the Palazzo Pitti at Florence, and the “Three Fates” in the same collection, give an idea of his powers in oil painting; thus he carried to the highest perfection, at the same time, the rival arts of architecture, sculpture, fresco, and oil painting. He may truly be called the founder of Italian painting, as Homer was of the ancient epic, and Dante of the great style in modern poetry. None but a colossal mind could have done such things. Raphael took lessons from him in painting, and professed through life the most unbounded respect for his great preceptor. None have attempted to approach him in architecture; the cupola of St. Peter’s stands alone in the world.

1   But notwithstanding all this, Michael Angelo had some defects. He created the great style in painting, a style which has made modern Italy as immortal as the arms of the legions did the ancient. But the very grandeur of his conceptions, the vigor of his drawing, his incomparable command of bone and muscle, his lofty expression and impassioned mind, made him neglect, and perhaps despise, the lesser details of his art. Ardent in the pursuit of expression, he often overlooked execution. When he painted the “Last Judgment” or the “Fall of the Titans” in fresco, on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel, he was incomparable; but that gigantic style was unsuitable for lesser pictures or rooms of ordinary proportions. By the study of his masterpieces, subsequent painters have often been led astray; they have aimed at force of expression to the neglect of delicacy in execution. This defect is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in Sir Joshua Reynolds, who worshiped Michael Angelo with the most devoted fervor; and through him it has descended to Lawrence, and nearly the whole modern school of England. When we see Sir Joshua’s noble glass window in Magdalen College, Oxford, we behold the work of a worthy pupil of Michael Angelo; we see the great style of painting in its proper place, and applied to its appropriate object: but when we compare his portraits, or imaginary pieces, in oil, with those of Titian, Velasquez, or Vandyke, the inferiority is manifest. It is not in the design, but the finishing; not in the conception, but the execution. The colors are frequently raw and harsh; the details or distant parts of the piece ill-finished or neglected. The bold neglect of Michael Angelo is very apparent. Raphael, with less original genius than his immortal master, had more taste and much greater delicacy of pencil; his conceptions, less extensive and varied, are more perfect; his finishing is always exquisite. Unity of emotion was his great object in design; equal delicacy of finishing in execution. Thence he has attained by universal consent the highest place in painting.

2   “Nothing,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, “is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is to be attained without it.” “Excellence in any department,” says Johnson, “can now be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.” These words should ever be present to the minds of all who aspire to rival the great of former days; who feel in their bosoms a spark of the spirit which led Homer, Dante, and Michael Angelo to immortality. In a luxurious age, comfort or station is deemed the chief good of life; in a commercial community, money becomes the universal object of ambition. Thence our acknowledged deficiency in the fine arts; thence our growing weakness in the higher branches of literature. Talent looks for its reward too soon. Genius seeks an immediate recompense; long protracted exertions are never attempted; great things are not done because great efforts are not made.

3   None will work now without the prospect of an immediate return. Very possibly it is so; but then let us not hope or wish for immortality. “Present time and future,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, “are rivals; he who solicits the one must expect to be discountenanced by the other.” It is not that we want genius; what we want is the great and heroic spirit which will devote itself, by strenuous efforts, to great things, without seeking any reward but their accomplishment.

4   Nor let it be said that great subjects for the painter’s pencil, the poet’s muse, are not to be found—that they are exhausted by former efforts, and nothing remains to us but imitation. Nature is inexhaustible; the events of men are unceasing, their variety is endless. Philosophers were mourning the monotony of time, historians were deploring the sameness of events, in the years preceding the French Revolution—on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the flames of Moscow, the retreat from Russia. What was the strife around Troy to the battle of Leipsic? The contests of Florence and Pisa to the Revolutionary War? What ancient naval victory to that of Trafalgar? Rely upon it, subjects for genius are not wanting; genius itself, steadily and perseveringly directed, is the thing required. But genius and energy alone are not sufficient; courage and disinterestedness are needed more than all. Courage to withstand the assaults of envy, to despise the ridicule of mediocrity—disinterestedness to trample under foot the seductions of ease, and disregard the attractions of opulence. A heroic mind is more wanted in the library or the studio than in the field. It is wealth and cowardice that extinguish the light of genius, and dig the grave of literature as of nations.

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