Note 74 — THIRD LECTURE. INVENTION. PART I.
Reading edition
Much has been said of the loss we have suffered in the marginal drawings which Michael Angelo drew in his Dante. Invention may have suffered in being deprived of them; they can, however, have been little more than hints of a size too minute to admit of much discrimination. The true terrours of Dante depend as much upon the medium in which he shews, or gives us a glimpse of his figures, as on their form. The characteristic outlines of his fiends, Michael Angelo personified in the dæmons of the last judgment, and invigourated the undisguised appetite, ferocity or craft of the brute, by traits of human malignity, cruelty, or lust. The Minos of Dante, in Messer Biagio da Cesena, and his Charon, have been recognized by all; but less the shivering wretch held over the barge by a hook, and evidently taken from the following passage in the xxiid of the Inferno:
Et Graffiacan, che gli era più di contra Gli arroncigliò l’impegolate chiome; E trasse ’l sù, che mi parve una lontra.
None has noticed as imitations of Dante in the xxivth book, the astonishing groups in the Lunetta of the brazen serpent; none the various hints from the Inferno and Purgatorio scattered over the attitudes and expressions of the figures rising from their graves. In the Lunetta of Haman, we owe the sublime conception of his figure to the subsequent passage in the xviith c. of Purgatory:
Poi piobbe dentro al’ alta phantasia Un Crucifisso, dispettoso e fiero Nella sua vista, e lo qual si moria.
The bassorelievo on the border of the second rock, in Purgatory, furnished the idea of the Annunziata, painted by Marcello Venusti from his design, in the sacristy of St. Giov. Lateran, by order of Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, the select friend and favourite of Michael Angelo.
We are told that Michael Angelo represented the Ugolino of Dante, inclosed in the tower of Pisa; if he did, his own work is lost: but if, as some suppose, the bassorelievo of that subject by Pierino da Vinci, be taken from his idea, notwithstanding the greater latitude, which the sculptor might claim, in divesting the figures of drapery and costume; he appears to me, to have erred in the means employed to rouse our sympathy. A sullen but muscular character, with groups of muscular bodies and forms of strength, about him, with the allegoric figure of the Arno at their feet, and that of Famine hovering over their heads, are not the fierce Gothic chief, deprived of revenge, brooding over despair in the stony cage; are not the exhausted agonies of a father, petrified by the helpless groans of an expiring family, offering their own bodies for his food, to prolong his life.