ric and landscape effects he was quite by
himself. He had a large number of pupils and followers, but most of
them deserted him later on to follow Michael Angelo. Pontormo
(1493-1558) and Franciabigio (1482-1525) were among the best of them.

Michael Angelo (1474-1564) has been called the "Prophet of the
Renaissance," and perhaps deserves the title, since he was more of the
Old Testament than the New--more of the austere and imperious than the
loving or the forgiving. There was no sentimental feature about his
art. His conception was intellectual, highly imaginative, mysterious,
at times disordered and turbulent in its strength. He came the nearest
to the sublime of any painter in history through the sole attribute of
power. He had no tenderness nor any winning charm. He did not win, but
rather commanded. Everything he saw or felt was studied for the
strength that was in it. Religion, Old-Testament history, the antique,
humanity, all turned in his hands into symbolic forms of power, put
forth apparently in the white heat of passion, and at times in
defiance of every rule and tradition of art. Personal feeling was very
apparent in his work, and in this he was as far removed as possible
from the Greeks, and nearer to what one would call to-day a
romanticist. There was little of the objective about him. He was not
an imitator of facts but a creator of forms and ideas. His art was a
reflection of himself--a self-sufficient man, positive, creative,
standing alone, a law unto himself.

Technically he was more of a sculptor than a painter. He said so
himself when Julius commanded him to paint the Sistine ceiling, and he
told the truth. He was a magnificent draughtsman, and drew magnificent
sculpturesque figures on the Sistine vault. That was about all his
achievement with the brush. In color, light, air, perspective--in all
those features peculiar to the painter--he was behind his
contemporaries. Composition he knew a great deal about, and in drawing
he had the most positive, far-reaching command of line of any painter
of any time. It was in drawing that he showed his power. Even this is
severe and harsh at times, and then again filled with a grace that is
majestic and in scope universal, as witness the Creation of Adam in
the Sistine.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--RAPHAEL. LA BELLE JARDINIERE. LOUVRE.]

He came out of Florence, a pupil of Ghirlandajo, with a school feeling
for line, stimulated by the frescos of Masaccio and S