to the
figures he was creating of the scorn and bitterness he was feeling, then
in the lack of harmony between his genius and what he was compelled to
execute. His passion was the nude, his ideal power. But what outlet for
such a passion, what expression for such an ideal could there be in
subjects like the "Last Judgment," or the "Crucifixion of
Peter"--subjects which the Christian world imperatively demanded should
incarnate the fear of the humble and the self-sacrifice of the patient?
Now humility and patience were feelings as unknown to Michelangelo as to
Dante before him, or, for that matter, to any other of the world's
creative geniuses at any time. Even had he felt them, he had no means of
expressing them, for his nudes could convey a sense of power, not of
weakness; of terror, not of dread; of despair, but not of submission.
And terror the giant nudes of the "Last Judgment" do feel, but it is not
terror of the Judge, who, being in no wise different from the others, in
spite of his omnipotent gesture, seems to be _announcing_ rather than
_willing_ what the bystanders, his fellows, could not _unwill_. As the
representation of the moment before the universe disappears in
chaos--Gods huddling together for the _Goetterdaemmerung_--the "Last
Judgment" is as grandly conceived as possible: but when the crash comes,
none will survive it, no, not even God. Michelangelo therefore failed in
his conception of the subject, and could not but fail. But where else
in the whole world of art shall we receive such blasts of energy as from
this giant's dream, or, if you will, nightmare? For kindred reasons, the
"Crucifixion of Peter" is a failure. Art can be only life-communicating
and life-enhancing. If it treats of pain and death, these must always
appear as manifestations and as results only of living resolutely and
energetically. What chance is there, I ask, for this, artistically the
only possible treatment, in the representation of a man crucified with
his head downwards? Michelangelo could do nothing but make the
bystanders, the executioners, all the more life-communicating, and
therefore inevitably more sympathetic! No wonder he failed here! What a
tragedy, by the way, that the one subject perfectly cut out for his
genius, the one subject which required none but genuinely artistic
treatment, his "Bathers," executed forty years before these last works,
has disappeared, leaving but scant traces! Yet even these suffice to
enable