their own, neither human nor divine. It was only in his few Madonnas
that we can trace his feminine ideal, an ideal noble and dignified,
rather than beautiful. The Madonna of the bas-relief is proud rather
than tender, the Virgin of the Pietà is grand rather than lovely.
These were works of his youth. Later in life, when he had known the
blessing of a good woman's friendship, he developed a new ideal in the
gentle and delicate womanhood of the Virgin of the Last Judgment.

Michelangelo has been compared to two great masters of dissimilar
arts, Milton and Beethoven. There are striking points of similarity
in the men themselves, in stern uprightness of character, in scorn of
the low and trivial, in lofty idealism. The art of all three is too
far above the common level to be popular; it requires too much
thinking to attract the superficial. In poetry, in music, and in
sculpture, all three utter the profoundest truths of human experience,
expressed in grand and solemn harmonies.




II. ON BOOKS OF REFERENCE.


The original materials for the study of Michelangelo's life and work
are the two biographies by his contemporaries, Vasari and Condivi.
Vasari's was the first of these (1550), and like the other portions of
his "Lives of the Painters" contained many inaccuracies. It was to
correct these that Condivi published his little book a few years
later. This rival effort aroused Vasari's wrath, and after
Michelangelo's death he issued an enlarged edition of his own book,