Michelangelo's idealism had a powerful corrective in "the sense of the beauty of struggle, and the holiness of suffering." "Nothing approaches nearer to God," he wrote, "than the effort to produce a perfect work, because God is perfection."
No one ever struggled more fiercely than this man, who ceaselessly tormented himself and wept at "losing his time uselessly" while he was working at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, who wrought with his blood the beings whom he created and was dissatisfied with his sublime creations at the moment of finishing them and left them incomplete, who to his last day in agony and tears
Piangendo, amando, ardendo, e sospirando,-- Ch'affetto alcun mortal non mi è più nuovo,--[154]
"Weeping, loving, burning and sighing--for there was no human emotion which he had not felt."
He was vainly seeking the visioned ideal, and in dying he regretted not the joy of living, but his interrupted labours.[155]
Beside that virile modesty what can we think of the absurd vanity of all those little masters who declared that they derived from the great master and believed themselves to be Michelangelos?
"To-day art has been brought to such perfection that while our predecessors produced a picture in six years we produce six in one year. I can bear witness since I have seen this done and have done it myself, and nevertheless our works are much more finished and more perfect than those of the renowned painters who preceded us."[156]
Even the weakest ones had the same feeling. Perino del Vaga considered himself very much superior to Masaccio, and in Cellini vanity ended by touching madness. He felt that antiquity was only valuable as a background to his works, and for his Jupiter he used the bronze castings which Primataccio brought from Rome.[157]
When an artist is so sure of success he no longer takes any trouble to deserve it. "Che cartoni o non cartoni," cries Giorlamo da Treviso, "io, io, ho l'arte su la punta dell pennello" ("Have I need of studies, I who have art on the point of my brush!").
The scruples that Michelangelo had felt no longer checked the artists. They were not afraid to finish what they had begun. Pomeranci, Semino, Calvi, painted four square yards a day. Cambiaso painted, at the age of seventeen, the story of Niobe without studies or sketches. He produced as many works as a dozen painters together, and his wife lighted the fire with bundles of drawings which he tossed off every moment. His contemporaries compare him to Michelangelo, and add that the latter does not gain by the comparison. Santi di Tito made a portrait in less than half an hour. He set up a factory in his house and turned them out in enormous quantities. His pupil, Tempesti, did not succeed in finding sufficient occupation for his talents in the great frescoes at Rome and, as a relaxation from painting, made fifteen hundred engravings. In a month Vasari, Tribolo and Andrea del Cosimo built and decorated a palace. In a day Perino del Vaga painted the Passage of the Red Sea.