Notwithstanding the very considerable attainments already exhibited, to the perfection of Sculpture, there yet wanted greater ease and grace of execution, more perfect and elevated expression, more refined selection of form and composition,—more, in short, of that heightening charm which fancy lends to reality—of that which constitutes the poetry, not the fiction, of art. The first blush of the times, too, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, seemed to promise a most propitious era for the accomplishment of these remaining improvements. In Italy, yet the only fixed and native seat of art, a spirit of refinement and love of elegance, a high and general respect for art, pervaded all ranks. Universal activity, also, and energy of character, growing out of the conscious dignity of independence, animated the republican cities. Each vied with its neighbour in the splendour of public buildings, and in munificence of patronage. Florence, indeed, from her peculiar advantages and superior opulence, sooner distanced rivalry; but her schools were open to all, and her Medici, the most enlightened of patrons, were as yet but merchants and simple citizens. In those states, too, where free and popular government was not established, kings and princes affected to love and encourage the arts. Literature, in most of the countries of Europe, had spread its lights around; the ancient models of eloquence were known, at least in their precepts, to all who laboured in the fields of genius; and even in sculpture, some of the most breathing fragments had been, or in the course of the century, were restored to day. The stir of spirit had penetrated even the recesses of papal domination and priestly ease. Means of empire were now to be essayed more congenial to the complexion of the times, and to the minds of men, than spiritual weapons, unhallowed in every church, because unscriptural, or than—more unjustifiable still, when wielded by ministers of peace—secular arms. Rome was to be rendered the home and habitation of art, as of religion. She was to contain a temple vainly hoped to become the Zion of the Christian world. All these causes, favorable as they were to general developement of talent, tended with a peculiar energy to the advancement of sculpture, in which, with the exception of poetry, the greatest progress had yet been accomplished since the revival of intelligence. The path, too, which had here been pursued, led directly to excellence. Nothing was to be unlearned. The era bore a striking resemblance in its leading features to that of Pericles; there was wanting only a Phidias to realize its expectancy; and in Michael Angelo, the genius of Greece seemed to be supplied.

For three fourths of the sixteenth century, this extraordinary man presided in the schools, and by his style influenced much longer the principles of modern art. To him, therefore, during the most brilliant period in the annals which we are now feebly endeavoring to trace, is the attention chiefly directed. Nor only in one point of view, is his genius to be contemplated. He has extended the grasp of a mighty though irregular spirit over our whole subject. Sculptor of the Moses, painter of the Last Judgment, architect of the Cupola—we behold in him the greatest of the works of art. It is this, more than any other circumstance, which has invested the character of his genius with a species of awful supremacy not to be inquired into; discrimination is lost in general admiration; and to him who thus seems to bear away the palm of universal talent, we are inclined to concede the foremost rank in each separate pursuit. His productions, thus dominating among the labours of man, bewilder the judgment both by their real and their apparent magnitude. Thus some giant cliff, rising far above minor elevations, while it serves as a landmark to the traveller, misleads his conceptions of its own distance and immediate relations of site.

Here it appears the proper, or at least simplest method, to present such gradual unfolding of the subject as each branch separately may seem to require, reserving a general view for such place as shall give the reader full command of the joint influences, bearings, and consequences of these details.

In sculpture, the works of Michael Angelo are divided between Rome and Florence. They are not numerous, and few are even finished. Impatience of slowly progressive labour, united with indomitable activity and unwearied industry—fastidiousness of fancy, and exalted perceptions of excellence, joined with a reckless daring in execution, form singular distinctions of intellectual temperament. Hence have sprung the characteristic beauties and the besetting errors of his style in sculpture—a style discovering much that is derived from liberal and enlightened study of the sublime and graceful in nature, but still more of those qualities which arise from the peculiarities of an individual and erratic, though rich and powerful, imagination. Rarely do his statues exhibit that simplicity and repose essential to beauty in an art—grave, dignified, or even austere, and possessing means comparatively limited and uniform. Forced and constrained attitude, proportions exaggerated, expression awful, gloomy, and unearthly, forms of unnatural, of superhuman energy—these constitute the ideal of his composition. In giving visible existence to these ideas, his execution is most wonderful. A force, a fire, an enthusiasm, elsewhere unfelt, unknown, give to every limb and lineament, a vitality, a movement, resembling more the sudden mandate of inspiration, than a laborious and retarded effort. The first impressions created by these works are thus irresistibly powerful; but they startle, surprise, astonish—do not soothe, delight, and satisfy the mind. An influence originating solely in the imagination, and in which the sensibilities of the heart have little interest, cannot long retain its power; the ordinary tone of feeling returns, and amid the unquiet and aspiring composition seeks for nature and repose.

If the productions and style of Michael Angelo be compared with the great standards of excellence and of truth in sculpture—nature, and the remains of ancient art, he will be found to have deviated widely from both, or rather, perhaps, he has rendered both subservient to his own particular views of each. He has created to himself modes of imitation, which should in themselves claim a paramount importance, independent of all archetypes; while these latter are connected with the originals of reality, only as an intermediate step to the realms of fancy. Hence, round a false, though gorgeous and imposing art, his genius has swept a magic circle, within whose perilous bound no inferior spirit has dared with impunity to tread. Unfortunately, however, such was the fascination produced in his own age, when the forcible and imaginative were admired above the simple and the true, that his works became a standard by which the past was to be tried, and the future directed. As a necessary consequence, a prodigious and irreparable lapse was prepared for the art. The imitation of a natural style will ever be productive of good; it will ultimately lead to no imitation, by conducting to the primeval source. The very reverse is the effect of following a guide such as Buonarotti, who has departed from nature farther, we will venture to say, than any great name on record, whether in literature or in art. Irregularities and imperfections in almost every other instance of lofty genius, are forgotten amid the deep-thrilling pathos, or soothing loveliness, of natural expression; but amid the awe-inspiring, the commanding, the overpowering representations of the Tuscan, the soul languishes for nature. His creations are not of this world, nor does feeling voluntarily respond to the mysterious and uncontrollable mastery which they exert over it. The cause and progress of this dereliction of nature can also be traced. He had marked the perplexities and constraint under which his predecessors had laboured, in their endeavors to unite the forms and expressions of living nature with images of ideal beauty, overlooking the productions of classic sculpture, in which this union is so happily accomplished: because to his vigorous, rather than refined perceptions, its simplicity appeared poverty, he fearlessly struck into a line of art, where all was to be new—vehement—wonderful.

From the antique, besides simplicity, Michael Angelo has deviated in another important, and, indeed, vital respect; a deviation, indeed, which changes completely the very aspect of art. Of the two elements of sculptural design—form and expression—the ancients selected form as the principal object of their representation: the modern has preferred expression, to which he may be said almost to have sacrificed form; or rather, he has so contorted his figures, by the violence of their emotions, that all is expression, and that of the most vehement kind. Here, however, it may be asked, how far has prescription the power to determine this matter? To this it may be replied, that not only the associations springing from the most perfect of human works were opposed to this choice, but also the internal proprieties of the art favour the selection of the ancients. In sculpture all is staid, enduring, actual; movement alone is the only passing object of imitation. Expression, therefore, at least strong and individual expression, as a primary characteristic—as destructive of symmetry, and as implying an effort ungraceful, when connected with unyielding materials, seems not a legitimate beauty of higher art. Indeed, passion is inconsistent with the beautiful in form, or the dignified in sentiment. A sweetly pleasing, a gently agitating excitement, or a nobly repressed feeling, visible only in the resolve of soul, and mastering of sorrow, is the true and the only proper expression in sculpture. Grief alone seems to be admissible in its deepest pathos.

Considered in connexion with the impetuous style of his composition, nothing can be finer than the execution of Michael Angelo. It participates in, it harmonizes with, his ardent temperament of mind; rapid, impatient, fervid, it seems to animate and create, rather than form, the breathing conceptions. But taken alone, it discovers many technical peculiarities and imperfections. From having sometimes merely sketched, or, at most, modelled the subject in small, nay, in some instances, with no other suggestion or guide, save the accidental shape of the block, he struck into the marble. It was impossible, under these circumstances, to avoid error. While the hand, the eye, the mind, were thus in instant exertion; while propriety of expression and beauty of outline, mechanical detail, and general effect, grandeur of the whole, and propriety of parts, were at once to be studied, and that, too, where each stroke removes what never can be again united—imperfection was almost a necessary consequence. Hence the want of proportion so conspicuous in many of his best works—in the Moses even; hence so few finished; hence, too, his statues, like paintings, seldom present more than one point of view. As regards more individual details; in the salient lines of the contours, the circles have rarely their just value, and the surfaces want their proper fulness. Partly to compensate this deficiency in the advancing curves, partly as a characteristic distinction, which consists in strongly pronouncing the muscles, the retiring lines, or muscular depressions, are expressed in exaggerated depth. Trusting to mechanical dexterity, also, and to a profound science, he was frequently reduced to work without model, or reference to the living form. This produces a rigidity, a want of feeling, and a mannerism, in his best performances even, the commencement of those conventional modes which finally superseded all diligent study of nature, and led to the abandonment of every genuine grace of sculpture.

The style and character of composition now described is evidently one of study and acquisition; we might therefore expect a gradation to be apparent in the works from which we have deduced our remarks. Accordingly, the earlier performances of the artist retain much of the simplicity and truth of the fifteenth century, exhibiting, at the same time, much of the better part of the qualities now described as the peculiar characteristics of the school. These we are inclined, upon the whole, to regard, if not the most splendid, as the most correct examples of Michael Angelo's powers. His later and more important labours present, in their full maturity, the peculiar modes of thought and execution which constitute the principles of this era. A regular gradation, however, is scarcely to be traced, since, in his very old age, he perceived and lamented the brilliant but fatal errors of his style; and, in the few works then finished, a degree of sobriety and chasteness is observed. He saw and lamented, too late, the fall prepared for sculpture.

Of the works of this master at Florence, the Bacchus, notwithstanding the undignified expression of inebriety, is the most correct in its forms, and the least mannered in composition. The tombs of the Medici show much of whatever is most splendid, and what is most reprehensible in the genius of their author. They might indeed be selected as special illustrations of the general views just given. Every figure—there are six—bears the strong impress of a spirit delighting in the great and the wonderful—an imagination eager in the pursuit of untried modes of existence, and a consciousness of power to execute the most daring conceptions. Intelligence in science, breadth of touch, boldness of manner, fearlessness of difficulty, unite to give life and movement to attitudes the most remote from such as nature would voluntarily assume, or graceful design select. Rome contains the most perfect and the most wonderful of Michael Angelo's statues. The PietÀ, or Virgin and Dead Saviour, in St Peter's, finished in his twentyfourth year, is not only at the head of the first division of his works, but, on the whole, is the least exaggerated, and the most natural of all. The Moses, on the tomb of Julius II., amid the creations of genius, rises a solitary and matchless monument. Without model among the productions of antiquity, it has remained inimitable and unimitated in modern times. Neither in nature do we find its prototype: it is the extraordinary conception of an extraordinary mind. Thus isolated by its own peculiar sublimity of character, this statue exhibits a striking resemblance of the imagination whence it derived existence. We behold a being who awes, who subdues, yet who fails to interest—for with such humanity entertains no communion of feeling. Here the sublime is too exclusively sought in the vehement and the marvellous; every effort is forced, every trait exaggerated, and the whole shows a daring originality verging on the extravagant and the false. The solemn majesty—the dignified repose—the commanding simplicity, admired in ancient sculpture—those milder beauties which sentiment alone can appreciate—those exalted and touching graces which arise from elegance or nobleness of form—from refined and subdued expression—from elevated yet genuine nature, in the Moses are looked for in vain.

Than Michael Angelo, no artist has ever exerted a more extensive influence, or more deeply impressed his peculiar views, upon art. Indeed, so much is this the case, that, during the sixteenth century, not a single sculptor appears who is not to be ranked either as a disciple or imitator. Even to this our own time, the influence in some respect continues. In sculpture more than in painting or architecture, though for the first he did less than for the second art, was his genius paramount. Of contemporaries, then, and successors, from his death in 1564, to the end of the century, the only distinction is between those who imitated and those who studied under this great leader. Among the most eminent of the former was Baccio Bandinelli, a rival, who contended with less generous weapons than those of talent: yet he must receive justice,—as a sculptor he is second only, sometimes hardly inferior, to Buonarotti. Baccio di Monte Lupo was an original artist of considerable power. Andrea Contucci founded the school of Loretto. Francisco Rustici, an excellent founder, more eminent still as the master of Leonardo da Vinci, carried the manner of this school into France, dying at Paris in 1550. Giacomo Tatti, better known as Sansovino, presided over the Venetian works of sculpture and architecture with much reputation, having studied along with Michael Angelo at Rome, whence he fled in 1527, on the sack of that capital by Bourbon. He survived the great Florentine, and became founder of a numerous and respectable school, where Cattaneo and Vittoria supported the credit of their instructor: the latter perfected working in stucco. In Milan, Agostino Busti, and Guglielmo della Porta, were highly distinguished, especially the latter; as were also, in Naples, Marliano Nola, and Garolamo St Croce. In these schools, however, we trace the most rapid decay of the art, in simplicity and correct design, from the splendour of the courts demanding employment of the arts on objects of temporary interest, when rapidity was preferred to excellence of execution.

Among the real disciples of the Florentine, the following were the chief:—Raphael di Monte Lupo, a favorite pupil, who assisted his master in the tomb of Julius, the greatest undertaking in modern sculpture, if completed; Nicolo di Tribulo, an excellent founder, by whom are the bronze doors of the cathedral at Bologna; Giovanni del Opera, whose name is significant of his industry; Danti, the closest imitator of his instructer. Ammanati subsequently transferred his attention to architecture. Giovanni di Bologna, a Frenchman by birth, an Italian as a sculptor, was the most eminent of all the scholars of Michael Angelo; and, on the death of the latter, continued to be the leading master in Europe till the end of the century.

Beyond the confines of Italy, the art had yet made few advances worthy of notice; and what little had been accomplished was upon the principles of the Tuscan school. Thus, at the close of the sixteenth century, the genius and principles of Michael Angelo extended their influence over the whole of Europe. During the last thirty years of this era, however, the art had been on the decline. These principles could be maintained only by that genius by which they had been invented and matured; and by it alone could the errors of the system be consecrated or concealed.