Voglia sfrenata el senso è, non amore, Che l'alma uccide....[138]
Painting, therefore, seemed to him, as it did to Plato, less virile and less pure than sculpture, because of its seductive quality, its illusive magic which imitates the appearance of things and merely creates illusions. He disdained it inasmuch as it appealed through the attraction of colours at the expense of the idea. He could not endure painting in oils, which he said was only good for women.[139] He rejected landscape, and like Plato only saw in it a vague and deceiving illusion--a sport for children and ignorant people. He had a horror of portraits. They seemed to him a form of flattery for the gratification of vain curiosity and the imperfect illusion of the senses.[140] It is curious to contrast with these principles which were adopted by a part of the Italian school in the sixteenth century, the naïve confession of faith of Dürer at almost the same period. "The art of painting is used in the service of the Church to show the sufferings of Christ and of many other models of virtue, and it also preserves the faces of men after their death." (1513)
That pious and bourgeois realism of Germany and Flanders filled Michelangelo with the same sort of contempt that many artists of to-day feel for subject-painting. "It is," he says, "an anecdotal and sentimental art, which aims only at success and obtains it easily, not by its own value, but by the choice of its subjects. These are pious figures for which tears are always ready, or else rags, ruins, very green fields shaded by trees, rivers and bridges--what they call landscapes--with many figures here and there. That sort of thing is always popular; the least artistic spirit can find something there that appeals to it; it is enough to be inquisitive and to have good eyes." Again--"Flemish painting seems beautiful to women, especially to those who are either old or very young, and to monks and nuns and to a few people of quality who are deaf to true harmony. Although it makes a good effect in the eyes of some people, in truth there is neither reason nor art in it, no proportion, no symmetry, no selection, and no grandeur. In fact, such painting is without body or vigour. The only real paintings are those done in Italy. These are not, like the Flemish pictures, made for the pious.[141] They will never cause anyone to shed a tear."[142]