represent the same man; and only cavillers will raise the question
whether both were fashioned by one hand. Such discrepancies as occur
between them are just what we should expect in the work of a craftsman
who sought first to obtain an accurate likeness of his subject, and
then treated the same subject on the lines of numismatic art. The wax
shows a lean and subtly moulded face--the face of a delicate old man,
wiry and worn with years of deep experience. The hair on head and
beard is singularly natural; one feels it to be characteristic of the
person. Transferring this portrait to bronze necessitated a general
broadening of the masses, with a coarsening of outline to obtain bold
relief. Something of the purest truth has been sacrificed to plastic
effect by thickening the shrunken throat; and this induced a
corresponding enlargement of the occiput for balance. Writing with
photographs of these two models before me, I feel convinced that in
the wax we have a portrait from the life of the aged Buonarroti as
Leoni knew him, and in the bronze a handling of that portrait as the
craftsman felt his art of metal-work required its execution. There was
a grand manner of medallion-portraiture in Italy, deriving from the
times of Pisanello; and Leoni's bronze is worthy of that excellent
tradition. He preserved the salient features of Buonarroti in old age.
But having to send down to posterity a monumental record of the man,
he added, insensibly or wilfully, both bulk and mass to the head he
had so keenly studied. What confirms me in the opinion that Mr.
Fornum's cameo is the most veracious portrait we possess of
Michelangelo in old age, is that its fragility of structure, the
tenuity of life vigorous but infinitely refined, reappears in the weak
drawing made by Francesco d'Olanda of Buonarroti in hat and mantle.
This is a comparatively poor and dreamy sketch. Yet it has an air of
veracity; and what the Flemish painter seized in the divine man he so
much admired, was a certain slender grace and dignity of
person--exactly the quality which Mr. Fortnum's cameo possesses.

Before leaving this interesting subject, I ought to add that the blind
man on the reverse of Leoni's medal is clearly a rough and ready
sketch of Michelangelo, not treated like a portrait, but with
indications sufficient to connect the figure with the highly wrought
profile on the obverse.

Returning now to the passage cited from Vasari, we find that he
reckons o