n absolute power in
heaven and upon the earth, but I can do nothing in hell; therefore you
must remain there."

While Michael Angelo was working at his picture of _The Last Judgment_,
he fell from the scaffold and seriously injured his leg. Soured by pain
and seized with an attack of misanthropy, the painter shut himself up in
his house and would not see any one.

But he reckoned without his physician; and the physician this time was
as stubborn as the invalid.

This excellent disciple of AEsculapius was named Baccio Rontini. Having
learned by chance of the accident that had befallen the great artist, he
presented himself before his house and knocked in vain at the door.

No response.

He shouted, he flew into a passion, and he called the neighbours and the
servants in a loud voice.

Complete silence.

He goes to find a ladder, places it against the front of the house, and
tries to enter by the casements. The windows are hermetically sealed and
the shutters are fast.

What is to be done? Any one else in the physician's place would have
given up; but Rontini was not the man to be discouraged for so little.
With much difficulty he enters the cellar and with no less trouble he
goes up into Buonarroti's room, and, partly by acquiescence and partly
by force, he triumphantly tends his friend's leg.

It was quite time: exasperated by his sufferings, the artist had
resolved to let himself die.

_Trois Maitres_ (Paris, 1861).

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dante, _Inferno_ III.

MAGDALEN IN THE DESERT

(_CORREGGIO_)

AIME GIRON

Correggio was a painter and a poet at the same time, interpreting
Nature, flattering her, idealizing her, and realizing her creations in
their double aesthetic expression, with undulating outlines and tender
tones. His drawing was modelled and supple, with a certain vigour of
line and a certain solidity of relief. He had a charming imagination of
conception and a voluptuous grace in its accomplishment, which are
requisites in the painting of women and children. He therefore excelled
in rendering _bambini_. With a note-book in his hand, he studied them
everywhere. This explains why his Loves and his Cherubs have such rare
truth of mien, of flesh, and of life. His knowledge of anatomy is great
and he foreshortens on canvas and ceiling astonishingly before the
advent of Michael Angelo. His enchanting colouring, impasted like that
of Giorgione, vivid as that of Titian, ran through the mo