"Michel Angelo has made use of the same ferocious-looking model
on other occasions--see an instance in the well-known 'Head of
Satan' engraved in Woodburn's Lawrence Gallery (No. 16), and
now in the Malcolm Collection.

"The study on the reverse of the leaf is more lightly executed;
it represents a man of powerful frame, carrying a hog or boar
in his arms before him, the upper part of his body thrown back
to balance the weight, his head hidden by that of the animal,
which rests on the man's right shoulder.

"The power displayed in every line and touch of these drawings
is inimitable--the head was in truth one of the 'teste divine,'
and the hand which executed it the 'mano terribile,' so
enthusiastically alluded to by Vasari."

234. Passing, for the moment, by No. 10, a "young woman of majestic
character, marked by a certain expression of brooding melancholy," and
"wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban;"--by No. 11, a bearded
man, "wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open," and his
expression "obstreperously animated;"--and by No. 12, "a middle-aged or
old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair," we
will go on to the fairer examples of Divine heads in No. 32.

"This splendid sheet of studies is probably one of the 'carte
stupendissime di teste divine,' which Vasari says (Vita, p.
272) Michel Angelo executed, as presents or lessons for his
artistic friends. Not improbably it is actually one of those
made for his friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who, when young, was
desirous of learning to draw."

But it is one of the chief misfortunes affecting Michael Angelo's
reputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has a
natural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. And this
sheet of Vasari's "teste divine" contains, in fact, not a single drawing
of high quality--only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricatured
heads, one of a satyr with hair like the fur of animals, and one of a
monstrous and sensual face, such as could only have occurred to the
sculptor in a fatigued dream, and which in my own notes I have classed
with the vile face in No. 45.

235. Returning, however, to the divine heads above it, I wish you to
note "the most conspicuous and important of all," a study for one of the
Genii behind the Sibylla Libyca. This Genius, like the young