Personal feeling was very
apparent in his work, and in this he was as far removed as possible
from the Greeks, and nearer to what one would call to-day a
romanticist. There was little of the objective about him. He was not
an imitator of facts but a creator of forms and ideas. His art was a
reflection of himself--a self-sufficient man, positive, creative,
standing alone, a law unto himself.
Technically he was more of a sculptor than a painter. He said so
himself when Julius commanded him to paint the Sistine ceiling, and he
told the truth. He was a magnificent draughtsman, and drew magnificent
sculpturesque figures on the Sistine vault. That was about all his
achievement with the brush. In color, light, air, perspective--in all
those features peculiar to the painter--he was behind his
contemporaries. Composition he knew a great deal about, and in drawing
he had the most positive, far-reaching command of line of any painter
of any time. It was in drawing that he showed his power. Even this is
severe and harsh at times, and then again filled with a grace that is
majestic and in scope universal, as witness the Creation of Adam in
the Sistine.
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