Michelangelo’s sternly upright spirit found also much to sadden him in the corruption of the times.  He was a lover of righteousness as well as a lover of liberty, and he greatly mourned the evils which surrounded him.

One of the pleasantest traits in his character was his warm affection for the members of his family and for the few whom he honored with his friendship.  One of the latter was Vittoria Colonna, a woman of strong and beautiful character, who brought much brightness into his life.

Our portrait shows him somewhat past middle life when occupied with many important concerns.  We can read in the face something of the character of the man.  It is certainly not a handsome face, for any good looks he might once have boasted were destroyed by his broken nose.  It is nevertheless a face full of rugged strength, with not a little kindliness in the expression.  Here is a man whose enmity we should avoid, but whose friendship we should value above rubies.

It is the face of a lonely man.  Michelangelo had to suffer the loneliness of genius.  No one could fully understand him.  He stood apart, towering like a giant above his fellow men.

On the four hundredth anniversary of Michelangelo’s birthday, some verses were written by an American poet, Christopher Cranch, which one should read while looking at this portrait:—­

    “This is the rugged face
    Of him who won a place
    Above all kings and lords;
    Whose various skill and power
    Left Italy a dower
    No numbers can compute, no tongue translate in words.

    “Patient to train and school
    His genius to the rule
    Art’s sternest laws required;
    Yet, by no custom chained,
    His daring hand disdained
    The academic forms by tamer souls admired.

    “In his interior light
    Awoke those shapes of might
    Once known that never die;
    Forms of titanic birth,
    The elder brood of earth,
    That fill the mind more grandly than they charm the eye.

    “Yet when the master chose,
    Ideal graces rose
    Like flowers on gnarled boughs;
    For he was nursed and fed
    At beauty’s fountain head
    And to the goddess pledged his earliest warmest vows.”

The poet describes still further the artist’s character, and then enumerates some of his great works.  Whatever occupied him—­

    “Still proudly poised, he stepped
    The way his vision swept,
    And scorned the narrower view. 
    He touched with glory all
    That pope or cardinal,
    With lower aim than his, allotted him to do.

* * * * *

    “So stood this Angelo
    Four hundred years ago;
    So grandly still he stands,
    Mid lesser worlds of art,
    Colossal and apart,
    Like Memnon breathing songs across the desert sands.”