The July following was appointed for a memorial service in his honor; San Lorenzo was splendidly decorated; Varchi delivered an oration. Leonardo, his nephew, erected a monument to him in Santa Croce, for which the Duke gave the marble. His statue stands in the court of the Uffizi with those of other great Florentines, but with no especial prominence. His house in the Ghibelline Street is preserved as a museum, and visitors there see many mementos of this great man.
In 1875 a grand festival was held in Florence to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of his birth. The ceremonies were impressive, and certain documents relating to his life which had never been opened, by command of the king, were given to suitable persons for examination. Mr. Heath Wilson, an English artist, then residing at Florence, wrote a new life of Michael Angelo, and the last signature which Victor Emmanuel wrote before his death was upon the paper which conferred on Mr. Wilson the Order of the _Corona d'Italia_, given as a recognition of his services in writing this book.
The national pride in Michael Angelo is very strong. "All Italians feel that he occupies the third place by the side of Dante and Raphael, and forms with them a triumvirate of the greatest men produced by their country--a poet, a painter, and one who was great in all arts. Who would place a general or a statesman by their side as equal to them? It is art alone which marks the prime of nations."
The genius of Michael Angelo and his spirit were powerful forces. They pervaded the whole art of Italy to such an extent that it may be said that all sculptors were his imitators, both while he lived and after his death. He loved to treat strong subjects, such as demanded violent movement and unusual positions. It was only a man of his genius who could raise such subjects above grotesqueness and the one effect of strange and unnatural exaggeration. As we look over all his works it seems as if the idea of beauty and such things as are pleasing to the ordinary mind rarely, if ever, came to his mind. Noble feeling, depth of thought, strength, and grandeur are the associations which we have with him, and in the hands of weaker men, as his imitators were, these subjects became barren, hollow displays of distorted limbs and soulless heads and faces.