Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1892 — MICHEL ANGELO. [ARTICLE]

MICHEL ANGELO.

The American Engraver Colo on the Groat Artl»t. I remember a picture by Gerome that represents Raphael in his first visit to the Sistine Chapel—that stot len visit recorded by Vasari, and in which Raphael is shown to be shrinking to the ground as he steals along with his head raised to the stupendous creations above him. Something of this feeling of shrinking always comes over me when I go into the Sistine Chapel. I have been much impressed, while engraving the “Cumman Sibyl,” with the incessant movement of Michel Angelo. It is endless, but most subtle. All is form with him—grandeur of form. Yet he has grand repose—the repose of the ocean—never at rest. If he should give way to the terrible within him. But he is always contained, and they are, to my thinking, mistaken in him who say he always “letshimself out.” Where is there any such excess about him? It would be the height of all absurdity and weakness, found, no doubt, among his followers, with whom let those compare him who think he is “all blow,” and they may then, perhaps, see or feel the profound depth and grandeur and forbearance he is possessed of, and the terrible inward power he suggests. Note the marvelous finish of his things, '.even to the minutest portions. His flesh is so highly finished that you feel its softness, and, when he sets his hand to finish, he slights nothing, and it is amazing what delicacy he can give. He paints the twisted thread in his “Three Fates” with the utmost fidelity; you note its twisted character throughout, and the light upon it, relieving it from the drapery here and there, and then the bunch of flax in its sheaf, most remarkable for lightness and delicacy of touch. I could not reproduce, should I engrave never so fine, the amazing quantity of work he puts in, and the finish and delicacy he gives to everything. Michel Angelo’s coloring is not what is generally known as rich, but it is perfection in the harmony and softness of tints. The frescos of the Vatican have darkened from dampness and smoke of incense, but it is easy to see that they must have been light in coloring—painted in a very high key. The highest lights even now approach pure white, while the darkest portions are gray and soft. The scheme of coloring in the whole is very refined; nothing is pronounced or, positive. The tints are laid in broadly, arid float tenderly into one another. The backgrounds to the figures acd the skies are gray, the lightest portions nearly pure white, while the coloring of the robes is sometimes blue of a fresh, pure, delicate tint, red of a fine, soft, grayish tone, [fSßow inclining to old gold, and green of a most delicate soft gray tone; and then there are mixtures of these tones of fine subtle hues impossible to describe, but darkish and gray in tone. His flesh tints are finely worked, of a darkish warm gray tone. It is a grandeur and depth of coloring quite befitting the nobleness of the theme and execution. —The Century.