ir feet to make
their attitudes intelligible--is a point which must over and over
again be insisted on. In the psychology of the master, regarded from
any side one likes to take, this constitutes his leading
characteristic. It gives the key, not only to his talent as an artist,
but also to his temperament as a man.

Marcantonio seems to have felt and resented the aridity of
composition, the isolation of plastic form, the tyranny of anatomical
science, which even the most sympathetic of us feel in Michelangelo.
This master's engraving of three lovely nudes, the most charming
memento preserved to us from the Cartoon, introduces a landscape of
grove and farm, field and distant hill, lending suavity to the
muscular male body and restoring it to its proper place among the
sinuous lines and broken curves of Nature. That the landscape was
adapted from a copper-plate of Lucas van Leyden signifies nothing. It
serves the soothing purpose which sensitive nerves, irritated by
Michelangelo's aloofness from all else but thought and naked flesh and
posture, gratefully acknowledge.

While Michelangelo was finishing his Cartoon, Lionardo da Vinci was
painting his fresco. Circumstances may have brought the two chiefs of
Italian art frequently together in the streets of Florence. There
exists an anecdote of one encounter, which, though it rests upon the
credit of an anonymous writer, and does not reflect a pleasing light
upon the hero of this biography, cannot be neglected. "Lionardo,"
writes our authority, "was a man of fair presence, well-proportioned,
gracefully endowed, and of fine aspect. He wore a tunic of
rose-colour, falling to his knees; for at that time it was the fashion
to carry garments of some length; and down to the middle of his breast
there flowed a beard beautifully curled and well arranged. Walking
with a friend near S. Trinita, where a company of honest folk were
gathered, and talk was going on about some passage from Dante, they
called to Lionardo, and begged him to explain its meaning. It so
happened that just at this moment Michelangelo went by, and, being
hailed by one of them, Lionardo answered: 'There goes Michelangelo; he
will interpret the verses you require.' Whereupon Michelangelo, who
thought he spoke in this way to make fun of him, replied in anger:
'Explain them yourself, you who made the model of a horse to cast in
bronze, and could not cast it, and to your shame left it in the
lurch.' With these words