- ried 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."
MICHAEL ANGELO'S GRACE.
"It is a vulgar error," says Lanzi, "to suppose
that Michael Angelo had no idea of grace and
beauty; the Eve in the Sistine chapel turns to thank
her Maker, on her creation, with an attitude so fine
and lovely, that it would do honor to the school of
Raffaelle. Annibale Caracci admired this, and
many other naked figures in this grand ceiling, so
highly that he proposed them to himself as models
in the art, and according to Bellori, preferred them
to the Last Judgment, which appeared to him to be
too anatomical."
