Without wishing to deny all that the Arts owe to Leo X., his services must be accepted with some reserve. Accomplished, and of amiable manners, but crafty and blundering; always vacillating between France and the Emperor; ambitious above everything to find places for his family; and to counterbalance such faults, having neither the valour, nor the affection for Italy which Julius II. undeniably displayed, his political character can not, I think, be defended. He had the merit of being the patron of Raphael, whose compliant and easy character pleased him, and who, thanks to his patronage, left the impress of a master-piece upon every moment of his short life. We must not forget that it was by heedless extravagance, and by a general traffic, that Leo encouraged the pleiad of artists which has cast such lustre upon his name. His obstinacy in employing Michelangelo despite his repugnance and entreaties, upon a work which his own versatility of character and the embarrassments of the Lombard war ought to have made him abandon, has doubtless robbed us of some wonderful works. Michelangelo might have finished the tomb of Julius, and we should now have a gigantic monument which would rival the greatest works of ancient sculpture. Some expressions of Condivi show us into what a state of annoyance and discouragement Michelangelo was thrown by the instability of Leo, and the uselessness of such work. "On his return to Florence he found the ardour of Leo quite subsided; there he was for a long time filled with vexation, unable to do anything, having been hurried about from one scheme to another up to that time, to his intense disgust." It was, however, about this period, in 1520, that Leo ordered the tombs of his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo for the Sacristy of San Lorenzo, which he did not execute till ten years afterwards. He also ordered plans for the Laurentian Library, where the wonderful collection of manuscripts by Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent, which had been dispersed during the troubles of 1494, were to be brought together. He was at Florence when the Academy of Santa Maria Nuova, of which he was an energetic member, resolved to bring the ashes of Dante from Ravenna to Bologna, and addressed that beautiful petition to the Pope, which Gori has preserved for us, bearing the signatures of the most celebrated men of the time, among others that of Michelangelo, with this memorial:-"I, Michelangelo, the sculptor, also supplicate your Holiness, and offer to execute a tomb worthy of the divine poet in a place of honour in the city." Leo did not entertain the idea favourably, and it was abandoned. The Statue of Christ on the Cross, which had been ordered by Antonio Metelli, and which is in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, was probably executed during the rare sojourns which Michelangelo made in Rome during Leo's pontificate. So great had become his discouragement that he had it finished and set up by a Florentine sculptor named Federigo Frizzi, at the end of 1521. The statue of the Christ, one which bears marks of the highest finish and intelligence of all that came from the hands of Michelangelo, is in my opinion far from equalling other works of the great sculptor. It was, however, the rapidly-acquired celebrity of the work finished by Federigo Frizzi which decided Francis I. to send Primaticcio into Italy, under orders to copy for him the Christ of the Minerva, to order a statue from Michelangelo, and to put into his hands that flattering letter which is preserved in the precious collection at Lille. Leo X. died on the 1st of December, 1521, a year after Raphael. His successor, the humble and stern Adrian, knew nothing of painting except that of Van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer. His simple manners were in most striking contrast with the ostentatious habits of Leo. Under his pontificate all the great works were stopped in Rome and slackened in Florence. While Michelangelo was working quietly on the Laurentian Library, the grand age of Art was coming to an end. Raphael and Leonardo were dead, and their pupils were rapidly hurrying on a downward course. Character began to decline with talent, and Michelangelo, who had, so to speak, opened this great epoch, was destined to remain alone when all had gone, like those lofty peaks which are the first to receive the morning rays, and the last to lose the light, even when night is deepening and all about them is becoming dark. |