riety of tortures which he expressed, showing an
unexampled richness in imaginative powers, that people came to see it
from the remotest parts of Italy. It made a great sensation, like the
appearance of an immortal poem, and was magnificently rewarded; for the
painter received a pension of twelve hundred golden crowns a year,--a
great sum in that age.

But Michael Angelo did not paint many pieces; he confined himself
chiefly to cartoons and designs, which, scattered far and wide, were
reproduced by other artists. His most famous cartoon was the Battle of
Pisa, the one executed for the ducal palace of Florence, as pendant to
one by Leonardo da Vinci, then in the height of his fame. This picture
was so remarkable for the accuracy of drawing, and the variety and form
of expression, that Raphael came to Florence on purpose to study it; and
it was the power of giving boldness and dignity and variety to the human
figure, as shown in this painting, which constitutes his great
originality and transcendent excellence. The great creations of the
painters, in modern times as well as in the ancient, are those which
represent the human figure in its ideal excellence,--which of course
implies what is most perfect, not in any one man or woman, but in men
and women collectively. Hence the greatest of painters rarely have
stooped to landscape painting, since no imaginary landscape can surpass
what everybody has seen in nature. You cannot improve on the colors of
the rainbow, or the gilded clouds of sunset, or the shadows of the
mountain, or the graceful form of trees, or the varied tints of leaves
and flowers; but you can represent the figure of a man or woman more
beautiful than any one man or woman that has ever appeared. What mortal
woman ever expressed the ethereal beauty depicted in a Madonna of
Raphael or Murillo? And what man ever had such a sublimity of aspect and
figure as the creations of Michael Angelo? Why, "a beggar," says one of
his greatest critics, "arose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the
hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his infants are men, and
his men are giants." And, says another critic, "he is the inventor of
epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel which
exhibits the origin, progress, and final dispensation of the theocracy.
He has personified motion in the cartoon of Pisa, portrayed meditation
in the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel and in the Last
Judgment, traced