their statues were only buried--buried alive--and now, at the command
of wealth and genius, they were dug out of their tomb of ages, and
came forth, unharmed, in their enchanted life and immortal beauty.
Yes, unharmed; for in the head, the torso, the limb, the hand, the
finger, the same principle of life existed as in the entire figure;
and, owing to the sublime law of proportion, which bound all together,
the minutest fragment indicated a perfect whole. The palace of Lorenzo
de Medici was the assembling-place, and the ideal beauty of the Greeks
found a new shrine in the groves of Florence. These became a true
academia, where genius studied and taught, and where the presiding
spirit of the place was Michael Angelo Buonarotti,[A] the
sculptor--painter--architect--poet, whose universal mind appeared to
fit him, not so much to shine in any one department--although shine he
did in all--as to give an impetus to the whole Revival. But Michael
Angelo, as a painter, excelled chiefly in design; while one who was
his contemporary, and being a few years later in the field, has been
supposed by some to be his imitator, was the painter _par excellence_
of the new era--the first great painter of the moderns. This was
RAPHAEL. He was the pupil of Perugino; and while such, contented
himself with imitating, with the utmost fidelity, the works of that
artist; till at length emancipating himself from tutelage, he went for
inspiration to the cartoons of Michael Angelo, to the sculptures of
the Medici gardens, and to nature herself. Vasari makes Michael Angelo
the magnus Apollo of Raphael; but Quatremère de Quincy assigns to the
latter artist a holier worship. In a letter from him, which he quotes,
respecting his famous picture of the Galatea, Raphael says, that in
order to paint a beautiful woman, he must see many, but that, after
all, he must work upon a certain ideal image present in his mind. 'We
thus see,' says the French critic, 'that he really sought after the
beautiful which Nature presents to art, but which the imagination of