the competent student to recognise that this composition must
have been the greatest masterpiece in figure art of modern times.

That Michelangelo had faults of his own is undeniable. As he got older,
and his genius, lacking its proper outlets, tended to stagnate and
thicken, he fell into exaggerations--exaggerations of power into
brutality, of tactile values into feats of modelling. No doubt he was
also at times as indifferent to representation as Botticelli! But while
there is such a thing as movement, there is no such thing as tactile
values without representation. Yet he seems to have dreamt of presenting
nothing but tactile values: hence his many drawings with only the torso
adequately treated, the rest unheeded. Still another result from his
passion for tactile values. I have already suggested that Giotto's types
were so massive because such figures most easily convey values of touch.
Michelangelo tended to similar exaggerations, to making shoulders, for
instance, too broad and too bossy, simply because they make thus a more
powerful appeal to the tactile imagination. Indeed, I venture to go even
farther, and suggest that his faults in all the arts, sculpture no less
than painting, and architecture no less than sculpture, are due to this
self-same predilection for salient projections. But the lover of the
figure arts for what in them is genuinely artistic and not merely
ethical, will in Michelangelo, even at his worst, get such pleasures as,
excepting a few, others, even at their best, rarely give him.

* * * * *

[Page heading: CONSTANT AIMS OF FLORENTINE ART]

In closing, let us note what results clearly even from this brief
account of the Florentine school, namely that, although no Florentine
merely took up and continued a predecessor's work, nevertheless all,
from first to last, fought for the same cause. There is no opposition
between Giotto and Michelangelo. The best energies of the first, of the
last, and of all the intervening great Florentine artists were
persistently devoted to the rendering of tactile values, or of movement,
or of both. Now successful grappling with problems of form and of
movement is at the bottom of all the higher arts; and because of this
fact, Florentine painting, despite its many faults, is, after Greek
sculpture, the most serious figure art in existence.

INDEX TO THE WORKS OF THE PRINCIPAL FLORENTINE PAINTERS.

NOTE.

The following l