But the austere genius of Michelangelo will not depend for its
sweetness on any mere accessories like these. The world of
natural things has almost no existence for him; "When one speaks
of him," says Grimm, "woods, clouds, seas, and mountains
disappear, and only what is formed by the spirit of man remains
behind"; and he quotes a few slight words from a letter of his to
Vasari as the single expression in all he has left of a feeling for
nature. He has traced no flowers, like those with which Leonardo
stars [75] over his gloomiest rocks; nothing like the fret-work of
wings and flames in which Blake frames his most startling
conceptions. No forest-scenery like Titian's fills his
backgrounds, but only blank ranges of rock, and dim vegetable
forms as blank as they, as in a world before the creation of the
first five days.
Of the whole story of the creation he has painted only the
creation of the first man and woman, and, for him at least, feebly,
the creation of light. It belongs to the quality of his genius thus
to concern itself almost exclusively with the making of man. For
him it is not, as in the story itself, the last and crowning act of a
series of developments, but the first and unique act, the creation
of life itself in its supreme form, off-hand and immediately, in the
cold and lifeless stone. With him the beginning of life has all the
characteristics of resurrection; it is like the recovery of suspended
health or animation, with its gratitude, its effusion, and
eloquence.
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