MICHEL, FRANCISQUE XAVIER , French scholar, was born at Lyons on Jan. 18, 1809. He edited the works of many mediaeval French writers, and the French Government, recognizing their value, sent him to England (1833) and Scotland (1837) to continue his researches there. In 1839 he was appointed professor of foreign literature in the Faculte des lettres at Bor deaux. Between 1834 and 1842 he published editions of a large number of works written between the 11th and 14th centuries in French, English and Saxon, including the Roman de la rose and the Chanson de Roland. He died in Paris on May 18, 1887. MICHELANGELO (MICHELAGNIOLO BL'ONARROTI) (1475 1564), the most famous of the great Florentine artists of the Renaissance, was the son of Ludovico Buonarroti, a poor gentle man of that city, and of his wife Francesca dei Neri. The Buonar roti Simoni were an old and pure Florentine stock of the Guelf faction. Ludovico was barely able to live on the income of his estate, but boasted that he had never stooped to add to it by mercantile or mechanical pursuits. He held the appointment of podesta or resident magistrate for six months, from the autumn of 1474, at Castello di Chiusi and Caprese in the Casentino. At Caprese, on March 6, 1475, his second son Michelagniolo or Michelangelo was born. The child was put to nurse with a marble worker's wife of Settignano. His mother died a few years later, after bearing three more sons. While still a young boy Michel angelo determined, in spite of his father's opposition, to be an artist. He had sucked in the passion, as he used to say, with his foster-mother's milk. After a sharp struggle his stubborn will overcame his father's pride and at thirteen he was articled as a paid assistant in the workshop of the brothers Ghirlandaio. Domenico Ghirlandaio, bred a jeweller, had become by this time the foremost painter of Florence. Michelangelo studied also, like all the Florentine artists of that age, in the Brancacci chapel, where the frescoes of Masaccio, painted some sixty years before, still held their own ; and here, in reply, to a taunt he had flung at a fellow-student, Torrigiano, he received the blow on the nose which disfigured him for life.
couragement and training under the eye of Lorenzo dei Medici. On the recommendation, it is said, of Ghirlandaio, he was trans ferred, before the term of his apprenticeship as a painter had expired, to the school of sculpture established by Lorenzo in the Medici gardens. Here he could learn to match himself against his great predecessor, Donatello, one of whose pupils and as sistants, the aged Bertoldo, was director of the school, and to compare the works of that master and his Tuscan contemporaries with the antiques collected for the instruction of the scholars. Here, too, he could listen to discourses on Platonism, and steep himself in the doctrines of an enthusiastic philosophy which sought to reconcile with Christian faith the lore and the doctrines of the Academy. Michelangelo remained a Christian Platonist to the end of his days; he was also a devoted student of Dante. His powers soon attracted attention, and secured him the favour of his patrons in spite of his rugged exterior and scornful un sociable temper. A notable work of this period is the marble Centauromachia (Casa Buonarroti, Florence), a fine work in full relief : Michelangelo followed the antique in his conception and treatment of the nude but the arrangement is his own.
Michelangelo had been attached to the school and household of the Medici for barely three years when, in 1492, Lorenzo died. Lorenzo's son Piero dei Medici inherited the position but not the qualities of his father; Florence soon chafed under his authority; and towards the autumn of 1494 it became apparent that disaster was impending. Michelangelo was constitutionally subject to dark and sudden presentiments, and without awaiting the popular outbreak, which soon followed, he took horse with two companions and fled to Bologna. There he was received with kindness by a member of the Aldovrandi family, on whose com mission he executed two figures of saints and one of an angel for the shrine of St. Dominic in the church of St. Petronius. After about a year, work at Bologna failing, and his name having been included on the list of artists appointed to provide a new hall of assembly for the great council of Florence, Michelangelo returned home.