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Home  »  Complete Poetical Works by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  »  Part Second. V. Palazzo Belvedere

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893.

Michael Angelo: A Fragment

Part Second. V. Palazzo Belvedere

TITIAN’S studio. A painting of Danaë with a curtain before it. TITIAN, MICHAEL ANGELO, and GIORGIO VASARI.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
SO you have left at last your still lagoons,

Your City of Silence floating in the sea,

And come to us in Rome.

TITIAN.
I come to learn,

But I have come too late. I should have seen

Rome in my youth, when all my mind was open

To new impressions. Our Vasari here

Leads me about, a blind man, groping darkly

Among the marvels of the past. I touch them,

But do not see them.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
There are things in Rome

That one might walk barefooted here from Venice

But to see once, and then to die content.

TITIAN.
I must confess that these majestic ruins

Oppress me with their gloom. I feel as one

Who in the twilight stumbles among tombs,

And cannot read the inscriptions carved upon them.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
I felt so once; but I have grown familiar

With desolation, and it has become

No more a pain to me, but a delight.

TITIAN.
I could not live here. I must have the sea,

And the sea-mist, with sunshine interwoven

Like cloth of gold; must have beneath my windows

The laughter of the waves, and at my door

Their pattering footsteps, or I am not happy.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Then tell me of your city in the sea,

Paved with red basalt of the Paduan hills.

Tell me of art in Venice. Three great names,

Giorgione, Titian, and the Tintoretto,

Illustrate your Venetian school, and send

A challenge to the world. The first is dead,

But Tintoretto lives.

TITIAN.
And paints with fire,

Sudden and splendid, as the lightning paints

The cloudy vault of heaven.

GIORGIO.
Does he still keep

Above his door the arrogant inscription

That once was painted there,—“The color of Titian,

With the design of Michael Angelo”?

TITIAN.
Indeed, I know not. ’T was a foolish boast,

And does no harm to any but himself.

Perhaps he has grown wiser.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
When you two

Are gone, who is there that remains behind

To seize the pencil falling from your fingers?

GIORGIO.
Oh, there are many hands upraised already

To clutch at such a prize, and hardly wait

For death to loose your grasp,—a hundred of them:

Schiavone, Bonifazio, Campagnola,

Moretto, and Moroni; who can count them,

Or measure their ambition?

TITIAN.
When we are gone,

The generation that comes after us

Will have far other thoughts than ours. Our ruins

Will serve to build their palaces or tombs.

They will possess the world that we think ours,

And fashion it far otherwise.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
I hear

Your son Orazio and your nephew Marco

Mentioned with honor.

TITIAN.
Ay, brave lads, brave lads.

But time will show. There is a youth in Venice,

One Paul Cagliari, called the Veronese,

Still a mere stripling, but of such rare promise

That we must guard our laurels, or may lose them.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
These are good tidings; for I sometimes fear

That, when we die, with us all art will die.

’T is but a fancy. Nature will provide

Others to take our places. I rejoice

To see the young spring forward in the race,

Eager as we were, and as full of hope

And the sublime audacity of youth.

TITIAN.
Men die and are forgotten. The great world

Goes on the same. Among the myriads

Of men that live, or have lived, or shall live,

What is a single life, or thine or mine,

That we should think all nature would stand still

If we were gone? We must make room for others.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
And now, Maestro, pray unveil your picture

Of Danaë, of which I hear such praise.

TITIAN, drawing back the curtain.
What think you?

MICHAEL ANGELO.
That Acrisius did well

To lock such beauty in a brazen tower,

And hide it from all eyes.

TITIAN.
The model truly

Was beautiful.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
And more, that you were present,

And saw the showery Jove from high Olympus

Descend in all his splendor.

TITIAN.
From your lips

Such words are full of sweetness.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
You have caught

These golden hues from your Venetian sunsets.

TITIAN.
Possibly.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Or from sunshine through a shower

On the lagoons, or the broad Adriatic.

Nature reveals herself in all our arts.

The pavements and the palaces of cities

Hint at the nature of the neighboring hills.

Red lavas from the Euganean quarries

Of Padua pave your streets; your palaces

Are the white stones of Istria, and gleam

Reflected in your waters and your pictures.

And thus the works of every artist show

Something of his surroundings and his habits.

The uttermost that can be reached by color

Is here accomplished. Warmth and light and softness

Mingle together. Never yet was flesh

Painted by hand of artist, dead or living,

With such divine perfection.

TITIAN.
I am grateful

For so much praise from you, who are a master;

While mostly those who praise and those who blame

Know nothing of the matter, so that mainly

Their censure sounds like praise, their praise like censure.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Wonderful! wonderful! The charm of color

Fascinates me the more that in myself

The gift is wanting. I am not a painter.

GIORGIO.
Messer Michele, all the arts are yours,

Not one alone; and therefore I may venture

To put a question to you.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Well, speak on.

GIORGIO.
Two nephews of the Cardinal Farnese

Have made me umpire in dispute between them

Which is the greater of the sister arts,

Painting or sculpture. Solve for me the doubt.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Sculpture and painting have a common goal,

And whosoever would attain to it,

Whichever path he take, will find that goal

Equally hard to reach.

GIORGIO.
No doubt, no doubt;

But you evade the question.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
When I stand

In presence of this picture, I concede

That painting has attained its uttermost;

But in the presence of my sculptured figures

I feel that my conception soars beyond

All limit I have reached.

GIORGIO.
You still evade me.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Giorgio Vasari, I have often said

That I account that painting as the best

Which most resembles sculpture. Here before us

We have the proof. Behold these rounded limbs!

How from the canvas they detach themselves,

Till they deceive the eye, and one would say,

It is a statue with a screen behind it!

TITIAN.
Signori, pardon me; but all such questions

Seem to me idle.

MICHAEL ANGELO.
Idle as the wind.

And now, Maestro, I will say once more

How admirable I esteem your work,

And leave you, without further interruption.

TITIAN.
Your friendly visit hath much honored me.

GIORGIO.
Farewell.

MICHAEL ANGELO to GIORGIO, going out.
If the Venetian painters knew

But half as much of drawing as of color,

They would indeed work miracles in art,

And the world see what it hath never seen.