MICHAEL ANGELO’S COLORING.

The coloring of Michael Angelo has been generally criticised as being too cold and inharmonious, but the best critics now consider that it was admirably adapted to his design. His chief characteristics were grandeur and sublimity, and whatever partook of the sublime and the terrible, he portrayed with a fidelity that intimidates the beholder. It is an error to suppose that he could not color delicately and brilliantly when he chose. During his residence at Florence, he painted an exquisite Leda for Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara. Michael Angelo was so much offended at the manner of one of the courtiers of that prince, who was sent to bring it to Ferrara, that he refused to let him have it, but made it a present to his favorite pupil, Antonio Mini, who carried it to France. Vasari describes it as “a grand picture, painted in distemper, that seemed as if it breathed on the canvass”; and Mariette, in his notes on Condivi, affirms that he saw the picture, and that “Michael Angelo appeared to have forgot his usual style, and approached the tone of Titian.” D’Argenville informs us that the picture was destroyed by fire in the reign of Louis XIII. Lanzi says, “In chiaro-scuro, Michael Angelo had not the skill and delicacy of Correggio; but his paintings in the Vatican have a force and relief much commended by Renfesthein, an eminent connoisseur, who, on passing from the Sistine chapel to the Farnesian gallery, remarked how greatly in this respect the Caracci themselves were eclipsed by Buonarotti.”