| Show STUDENT LIFE Although two of the reclining forms are masculine and the other two feminine they represent neither man or woman nor do they express the natural day of the world but are purely types of ideas In making them the unexplained mystery of life and death haunted him the strugeles longings and unrealized lie hopes of man oppressed him was stung by the shameful condition into which his country had fallen These statues have a greater sense of vagueness and mysticism about them than almost any of his other works They touch the vast realm of music where thoughts define themselves and fade away Thev possess a world of suggestion a spirit of mystery which strongly touches the imagination Nearly all of Angelo’s creations are titanic They represent a race of giants which live in a world outside of our own In struggling for fuller expression and movement he 39 was led to distort and greatly exaggerate He has almost given the human form a new anatomy But these qualities which had meaning and were virtues with him become vices in the hands of the men who followed They grasped at the letter and failed to comprehend the spirit With Angelo art must always have been a struggle His emotions were so powerful that anything with such definite limits as painting and sculpture must have And hampered him continually there is in his work as always in the work of the higher artist in any line the feeling that he never knew all that restraint which tells one that all secrets have not been divulged that there is something beyond that what we have is only a mere suggestion of a limitless amount unexpressed which lies outside of the province of material form |
