Yale University Library

39002005915120

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY In Memory of
William Hutchinson Cowles
i 866-1946
Yale College 1887
Yale Law School 1889
The gift of
William H. Cowles, Jr.
Yale '24

THE FRESCOES IN THE
SIXTINE CHAPEL

First Edition, February igoi.
Reprinted, August 1907.
Cheap Edition ( net) November 191 5.

¦HHHS

Michel Angelo. ]

THE DELPHIC SIBYL.

[Photo, Alinari*
[Frontispiece*

THE FRESCOES IN THE
SIXTINE CHAPEL

By EVELYN MARCH PHILLIPPS

The one, far-off, Divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1915

50 1 Ft

TO
MY SISTER
HELEN UNWIN

PREFACE
I do not propose, within the limits of
a small portable volume, to make an
exhaustive examination of the Sixtine
Chapel; but short of that, much may
be done to help the passing visitor to
understand and appreciate this treasure-
house of axt.
My aim here has been to indicate the
place in the history of Itahan Art occupied
by this great work and its executors, to
explain briefly the religious scenes depicted,
and the great religious scheme which the
series of pictures embodies, to recount the
historical scenes commemorated and the
portraits identified, and to concentrate ideas

viii PREFACE
which have struck me, or which I have
collected from the works of others. I
have also included such extracts from
the Bible history as it is interesting
to read in immediate connection with
the frescoes.
As far as I can learn, the attempt has
never hitherto been made to describe the
frescoes in this manner in a single volume.
The information here collected is scattered
through many different works written in
various languages.
Many pass through the Sixtine Chapel
who have neither the mind nor the eye
to receive its message, who listen with care
less ears to the mechanical patter of a
guide, or read a dry enumeration of
its contents, and turn away with a be
wildered recollection of begrimed walls and
imperfectly-seen shapes, which will presently
be confused in their minds with Raphael's

PREFACE ix
Stanze, and further complicated by a few
minutes' stare at the Borgia Apartments.
But others there are who come with a
genuine and anxious wish to enjoy and to
comprehend what they have heard of all
their lives as worthy of the deepest admira
tion. Perhaps to some of these the visit is
the opportunity of a lifetime, one which
may never recur. They long to make the
most of it, to gain a real treasure which
shall enrich the memory in after years,
but they may not have the opportunity
for reading and research, and may be
unable to give long study to one subject.
Too often, if they would confess the truth,
the feeling aroused by the Sixtine Chapel
is one of disappointment: the effort to
understand it results in bewilderment, in
baffled attempts to grasp its beauty, in
vexation and waste of precious time.
Here and there these seekers receive the

x PREFACE
impression of a stupendous creation ; some
sublime figure awakens the imagination
and gives an enlarged outlook on life;
but they go away feeling how much has
been overlooked, part, at least, of which
might have unfolded itself if they could
have applied to its examination more
thought and knowledge.
Like all things worth having, the secrets
of the Sixtine Chapel cannot be got at
without labour. I would urge you, there
fore, to give up some mornings to its
study, begging you to believe that its fame
will be justified, that its interest and its
fascination will grow upon you from day
to day, and that you will carry away a
possession which will enrich and furnish
the mind far more than the superficial
recollection of a dozen hastily visited
churches and palaces. The time given
may not be enough, the study may be

PREFACE xi
incomplete — for the frescoes are a creation
calculated to satisfy the deepest intellectual
sense and the most cultivated artistic
feeling ; but the generosity of Art is great,
and she will sometimes yield her richest
treasures to a passing stranger who seeks
them with loving patience.
I gratefully acknowledge the help afforded
me by the late Heath Wilson's exhaustive
book on Michel Angelo ; by several of the
works of the late J. A. Symonds ; by
Monsieur Julien Klaczsko in his "Jules II.,"
and Dr. Miintz in the "Life of Raphael";
and especially by the " Rom in der Renais
sance " of Dr. Ernst Steinmann, to whose
patient research and brilliant insight we owe
nearly all the discoveries concerning the
historical incidents and portraits in the
wall-frescoes.
February 1901.

CONTENTS

PAGE
PRACTICAL INFORMATION AND ADVICE ... 1
PART I
THE WALL FRESCOES  4
PART II
THE ROOF  73
THE LAST JUDGMENT  . 12V
APPENDIX
THE TAPESTRIES AND CARTOONS  145
INDEX . .  155
KEY TO THE DIAGRAM OF THE CEILING OF THE SIXTINE
CHAPEL ... . 160

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Delphic Sibyl  Frontispiece
The Journey of Moses (Part of Fresco) . To face page 18
Moses and Zipporah (Part of Fresco) . ,, 26
The Cleansing of the Leper (The Temptation) „ 28
Florentine Portraits (Calling of Apostles) . , , 30
The Cleansing of the Leper (Detail of Fresco) , , 32
Crossing the Red Sea  , , 34
The Destruction of Korah (Part of Fresco). ,, 48
Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter . ,, 54
The Last Testament of Moses . , , 60
God Creating the Luminaries . . ,, 96
Isaiah .... . ,, 118
Judith  122
Angels with Instruments of the Passion
(Last Judgment)  ,, 134
Christ as Judge (Last Judgment) . ,, 136
The Last Trump (Last Judgment) . ,, 140

[Michel Angelo. ]

GOD CREATING THE LUMINARIES.

[Photo, Anderson.
[To face page 96.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
It is absolutely necessary to choose a bright
day — fortunately bright days are not rare in
Rome; the morning light is best. It is
important to make sure that the Chapel is
open, as it is a private one, and may be
closed to the public at the Pope's pleasure.
Nominally it is open every day from 10 to
3, but it is closed on festivals and for some
Church ceremonies and general receptions
by the Pope. When these are held in the
Chapel itself, it is generally inaccessible on
the eve and on the following day. It is
difficult to get accurate information on this
point except from the custode of the Chapel
itself. The porters at the hotels often
know. The best way, perhaps, is to obtain
a fist of ceremonies at one of the booksellers,
a *

2 PRACTICAL INFORMATION
and to draw one's own conclusions. Provide
yourself with a good pair of glasses.
Inferior ones may be obtained of the
custode (50 centimes). He will also supply
a sheet of looking-glass, which is a great
help in studying the ceiling ; a small cushion
to stick under the back of the neck is useful.
Entrance, gratis (20 or 30 centimes to ticket-
clerk, optional) ; umbrellas, 10 centimes; use
of looking-glass, 30-50 centimes.
" Right " and " left " are used as on the
right or left of the spectator when facing
the altar.
It is sometimes possible to mount into
the palchi, or raised stands of seats, after
a Church ceremony, and in this way to
obtain a closer view of the frescoes. The
Chapel is comparatively empty after 12
o'clock, and, though the light is not quite
so good, the absence of crowd is a com
pensating advantage.
The beautiful photographs by Alinari, or
Anderson, are not only valuable as posses
sions, but useful in clearing up indistinct
portions of the frescoes.

COPIES OF THE FRESCOES 3
An excellent series of copies of the wall-
frescoes is exhibited in the two rooms set
aside for the original drawings for the publi
cations of the Arundel Society, in the
basement of the National Gallery.
I desire, here, to express my thanks to
Messrs. Alinari for permission to copy some
of their photographs of the Frescoes.

PART I
THE WALL FRESCOES
In 1471, Francesco di Savona, a Cardinal of
obscure origin, who had won his way by
a reputation for blameless life and learning,
was elected to the headship of the Catholic
Church by the title of Sixtus IV. On elec
tion he assumed the family name of Rovere,
from a family of Piedmont in which he had
been tutor. His great aim throughout his
reign was to increase the Papal power, and
to advance the honour and interests of his
own house. He was a man of vigorous
personality, of great political energy, a
mighty organiser, full of schemes for the
improvement of his city, and for the en
couragement of art. He built the Sixtine

SIXTUS IV. 5
Bridge (from blocks of the Colosseum, alas!),
re-arranged the chief streets of the capital,
built fountains, and did more than any of his
predecessors to improve and beautify Rome.
In the Vatican he erected a block of build
ings; on the ground floor was the library,
which he first founded. It has long out
grown its original home, and the rooms are
now used as offices. Above it was the
famous chapel which still bears his name,
and by which he is best remembered. It is
an oblong, bare, almost barn-like building,
lighted by twelve round-headed windows,
showing the modest beginnings of the
triumph of the Renaissance over Gothic
architecture. Free from all other decora
tions, it is specially adapted to receive that
of fresco-painting.
Melozzo da Forli * has painted a striking
group, now in the Vatican Gallery, which
is of peculiar interest in connection with the
Sixtine Chapel. Sixtus IV. is represented
as founding his new Vatican Library, the
walls of which Melozzo's fresco originally
1 Melozzo da Forli, Umbrian, 1438-1494.

6 THE WALL FRESCOES
adorned. He sits surrounded by the near
relations whom he had aggrandised, a man
with hard, regular profile, cold and aristo
cratic. In front, pointing to lines in praise
of the Pope, kneels the Scholar, Platina,1
whom Sixtus is appointing librarian, his
finely-cut mouth and keen eyes contrasting
with the sensual, red-cheeked Piero Riario,
son of the Pope's sister. Behind Platina is
Count Girolamo, brother of Piero, married
to Catherine Sforza, and behind the Pope is
the son of his brother, Raffaello — that
Giuliano, who was to succeed him hereafter
as Julius II., and to be so intimately con
cerned with the artistic life of his day. We
see him here at thirty-one, a man with a
dark, energetic face, compressed lips, and
look of sombre fire and sadness.
The great age of painting has left us
many buildings which contain magnificent
picture shows, the work of the painter, or
painters, still remaining in the place for
1 A famous historian and member of the Roman
Academy who had been persecuted, imprisoned, and
tortured under Paul II., but who was honoured and
distinguished by Pope Sixtus. He died of pestilence, 1481.

THE ROVERE CHAPEL 7
which it was originally designed. Among
such are the Trecentisti at Assisi, the
Giottos in the Church of the Arena at
Padua, the Fra Angelicos at San Marco,
the Memlings at Bruges, the Stanze of
Raphael, the Signorellis at Orvieto, the
Tintorettos in the Scuola of San Rocco;
but there is no grander exhibition, none
more full of artistic significance, or which
presents a nobler whole, than that afforded
by the fading designs which cover every inch
of the Rovere Chapel.
As painting, this is a monument of the
most pregnant interest; the wall frescoes
were executed by representative men of a
moment when painting was emerging from
struggle into all the glory of victory. The
artists were the immediate heirs to the toil
of others who had striven with nature and
with science, forcing their secrets, one by
one. Giotto had broken down Byzantine
traditions and had given the final touch of
fife to painfully reviving art ; Masaccio
had disclosed the magic secrets of light
and shade ; men like Paolo Uccello, Pier

8 THE WALL FRESCOES
dei Franceschi, and the brothers Pollaiuoli,
had drunk in force and truth and know
ledge from Donatello, " the master of those
who know"; Andrea del Castagno and
Domenico Veneziano had brought that
characterisation and individuality which so
distinguishes their saints and portraits;
Verrocchio held his famous school in
Florence, Fra Lippo taught the glory of
colour. The message was handed on from
one to another, amplified, enriched ; difficul
ties were overcome, truths which had been
dimly guessed at became facts of common
knowledge, men came up by by-ways
through architecture and sculpture and
ivory-carving and the goldsmith's art, all
moving to the most perfect victory over
painting that the modern world has ever
known — a victory which was almost at its
height when the cream of the artists of
Florence and of Umbria was called to
Rome. Four or five of the greatest were
chosen, and combined to put forth their best
strength, full of emulation, and proudly
conscious of the distinction of their task.

THE PAINTERS 9
And so the walls were painted, and after a
brief interval, when art was at its crowning
culmination, the ceiling was completed as
his master-work by one of the most
stupendous geniuses of all time. Nor must
we forget, though they are no longer in
their place, that the tapestry hangings were
designed by one of Michel Angelo's only
rivals in fame, and then he, in his old age,
failing, yet still a giant, left on the wall
above the altar that overmastering study of
the nude, which has been the wonder and
despair of every scientific painter since that
time. In no other place can they be studied
side by side, on the very spot for which
they wrought, each observant of the other,
and with one great purpose running through
their task.
When we turn from the first coup d'osil
of the vast and faded walls, our preliminary
step must be to realise what that continuity
of meaning is which fuses all parts into one
harmonious whole. The wall decoration is
concerned with the proclamation of the Old
and New Covenants, the type and the anti-
B

10 THE WALL FRESCOES
type. In the time of Sixtus IV. this was
more completely carried out by the paintings
on the altar wall, which, besides an Assump
tion of the Virgin, as the central theme, had
on one side, the Finding of Moses, and on
the other, the Birth of Christ. The hves of
the founders of the old and new dispensation
are carried through, down to their death,
followed by a tradition in one case, which
answers to the resurrection in the other.
All the outline of the Jewish and Christian
testaments had been utilised, when Michel
Angelo came to consider how the roof could
be made to harmonise with the scheme.
How forcibly the rich conception of genius
strikes us as Michel Angelo unfolds his
plan: the creation of the world and its
preparation, from the earliest moments, for
the coming of Christ! He transcends the
first idea, while blending with it, turning a
not uncommon plan into one full of power
and originality. The Last Judgment and
the Saints in the rest of Paradise carried on
the sacred story; and when Raphael was
called upon to paint cartoons for the tapestry

PRELIMINARIES 11
in the lower panels, he added scenes from
the lives of the Apostles. We have there
fore the whole scheme of redemption, the
larger outlines filled in and connected by a
hundred smaller details, all bearing on the
main purpose, which is the key to the whole
composition. Some time in 1480 the builders left the
chapel. At the end of that year the Pope's
nephew Giuliano set out on a journey to
France, and stopping on his way in Florence,
arranged with some of the principal artists
then painting there, that they should come
to Rome forthwith, to undertake the task of
decoration. Nearly two years, however,
elapsed before they arrived there, and it is
probable that the preparation of the walls,
the patterns round the windows, and the
niches for the portraits of the Popes, were
completed beforehand; for Raphael Maffei
writes at Christmas, 1481: "The great
chapel is not yet finished; they continue
painting it with emblems and ornaments."
It has been suggested that these were
designed by Melozzo da Forli, whose picture

12 THE WALL FRESCOES
of the Pope we have already noticed, and
who was then Court painter. It may indeed
be owing to his influence that so large
a share of patronage was given to Umbrians.
In the autumn of 1482 the painters arrived —
Pietro Vanucci, il Perugino,1 the undisputed
head at that time of the Umbrian school;
with him Bernardino Betti, il Pintoricchio,2
a young man of twenty-eight, just rising
into fame, but with his spurs still to win ;
there came, too, Sandro Botticelli,8 who had
already painted several pictures for Lorenzo
the Magnificent, and Cosimo Rosselli,4 a
master of Florence, who, however second-
rate posterity has pronounced him to be, had
at that time a firmly established reputation
as a religious painter. He brought with him
his favourite pupil, called from their associa
tion Piero di Cosimo,6 whose skill in land
scape painting was beginning to attract
notice. Vasari also tells us that Luca
SignorehV came from Cortona. The last
to arrive was Domenico Bigordi, called
1 Umbrian, 1446-1524. * Florentine, 1439-1507.
• Umbrian, 1454-1513. 6 Florentine, 1462-1521.
» Florentine, 1446-1510. 8 Umbrian, 1421-1623.

SUPERINTENDENCE 13
Ghirlandaio,1 the son of the Garland-maker
of Florence. He had stopped on the way
at San Gimignano, and did not reach Rome
until November. They all brought assist
ants, among whom there remain to us the
names of Fra Diamante, Rocco Zoppa, and
Bartolommeo della Gatta.
Opinions have varied as to whether Peru-
gino or BotticeUi was appointed master of
the band. Vasari writes of Botticelli that
"he had acquired in Florence, and outside
it, such a measure of fame, that Pope Sixtus
having built a chapel in his palace in Rome,
and wishing to have it painted, ordered
that he should be made the head man or
overseer" (capo).2 A contract of 27th
October, 1481, made between the Pope and
the painters, reads as though originally
Perugino alone was to undertake the super
intendence. This was borne out by the fact
that though to Botticelli was entrusted three
frescoes, to Perugino was given the whole
of the west end and the portrait of the
Pope which was painted there. However,
1 Florentine, 1449-1494. • Vasari, voL iii. p. 317.

14 THE WALL FRESCOES
documentary evidence lately discovered tends
to prove that Vasari was accurate, and that
BotticeUi and not Perugino had the general
command of the work.
It is very probable that the choice of
subjects was decided upon, and perhaps
originated with, Pope Sixtus himself, who
was one of the foremost theologians of the
day, and had taken part in controversies
between the Dominicans and Franciscans,
was the author of several important
works, and was regarded as a profound
scholar. In examining the waU scenes, I propose
to take the sides alternately — the type and
the anti-type. We must recoUect the great
Assumption that, as was fitting in a chapel
dedicated to St. Mary of the Assumption,
occupied the chief space at the end, with
a portrait of the Pope kneehng as donor,
and others of the Rovere family, and was
flanked by the Finding of the Infant Moses
and its companion scene in the Birth of
Christ. Then foUowed naturaUy on either side the

PINTORICCHIO'S SHARE 15
Jewish ceremony of Circumcision and the
Christian rite of Baptism.
Fresco I. — Left Side. — The Journey of
Moses. — PINTORICCHIO.
In both this and its companion, it is stiU
a disputed point how much was painted by
Pintoricchio, and what parts, if any, are due
to Perugino. When we consider the great
ness of the undertaking and the untried
position of the young assistant, we can easily
believe that the older master gave a good
deal of superintendence, and only left the
execution more and more to Pintoricchio as
he found him equal to the task. Dr Stein-
mann assigns to Perugino in this fresco the
figure of Moses, on the right, the woman with
the chfld upon her knee, and the mother who
performs the rite. The two heads of Moses
assuredly differ in type ; the one on the
right is more sharply drawn, the hair painted
more finely. Though the women are very
Peruginesque in style in the " Venetian
Sketch Book " of drawings so long assigned

16 THE WALL FRESCOES
to Raphael, but of which the majority are
now aUowed to be by Pintoricchio, we find
unmistakeable studies for these two women,
as well as for the heads of the two on the
opposite side of the picture.
It is curious that this fresco should have
been assigned for some centuries to the
widely - differing hand of SignoreUi. (See
Manni's "Life of SignoreUi" in the "Raccolta
Milanese di vari opuscoli," vol. i. fol. 29).
Burckhardt at length disputed Signorelli's
claim, and both he and Crowe and Caval-
caseUe gave it, with more reason, to Perugino,
the latter critics indeed noticing a resem
blance to Pintoricchio. It remained for
MoreUi 1 to recognise the peculiar character
istics of Pintoricchio, and, by means of
existing designs and weighty arguments, to
establish his claim to this and the opposite
fresco of the Baptism, which was for long
attributed without question to Perugino.2
Pintoricchio, to whom two such impor-
1 For a full account of this, see Morelli's "Italian Painters
in German Galleries," pp. 265-283.
3 Pintoricchio has left no fewer than eleven studies for
heads and figures in the fresooes.

JOURNEY OF MOSES 17
tant works were confided, was not even
named in the contract which the Pope
made with the painters, and it is only
within the last few years that he has
received the recognition he undoubtedly
deserves. Looking at these characteristic
and unmistakeable works of his brush, it is
almost impossible to believe that it was so
long before their real authorship was dis
cerned, and this in spite of Vasari's mention
that Pintoricchio worked with Perugino in
the Sixtine Chapel and took a third of the
payment. In these frescoes the old fashion is adhered
to of bringing several scenes of an event into
the same composition. Accordingly, in the
centre of the background, Moses, clad in the
yeUow robe and green mantle which the
Church decreed as his attire, is taking leave
of Jethro. Behind is a group of maidens,
one with a water-jar on her head. On the
left hand at the back, in one of Pintoricchio 's
idyllic landscapes, are the shepherds dancing,
for rejoicing at the wedding-feast. The fore
ground iUustrates the departure of Moses

18 THE WALL FRESCOES
with his wife and two sons, in obedience
to the command that he shaU go and
release the people of Israel.
Exod. iii. 7. And the Lord said, I have surely seen
the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have
heard their cry.
10. Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto
Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the
children of Israel out of Egypt.
iv. 17. And thou shalt take this rod in thy hand,
with which thou shalt do signs.
18. And Moses returned unto Jethro his father-
in - law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray
thee, and return unto my brethren which are in
Egypt. . . . And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.
20. And Moses took his wife and his sons ....
and he returned to the land of Egypt : and Moses took
the rod of God in his hand.
On the left side is Zipporah, holding
one child by the hand. The other beauti
ful little boy walks in front of her; her
women foUow, with burdens on their heads ;
one graceful damsel steps lightly along
with a jar of incense for the evening sacri
fice; beyond her are their guards, whose
heads are evidently fine portraits. In the
middle, Moses is met by a splendid vision

Phitoricchio.~\

THE JOURNEY OF MOSES (PART OF FRESCO).

[Photo, Alinari
[To face f age 18.

THE FLORENTINE COLONY 19
in white, an angel with floating locks and
gold, shimmering wings, bearing a drawn
sword, and reminding him of the neglected
commandment (Genesis xvii. 14), to circum
cise his son ; and on the other side Zipporah
performs the rite. In the young men who
are guarding the Exodus, and in the circle
gathered together on the right, we see an
entirely different type, both of face and cos
tume, from the traditional personages of
religious history. These strong-faced and
individualised personages in the dress of the
period, with square cut hair and smaU, close
caps, are portraits of members of the Floren
tine colony, which was then gathered in
Rome, men, many of them great and power
ful, already patrons of the painters and their
friends. They made much of the new
comers, feasted them, doubtless came in
parties, after the fashion set by Lorenzo the
Magnificent, to criticise the progress of their
work, and in return, the artists introduced
them into the attendant crowds, to the great
advantage of the pictures, and no doubt
much to the satisfaction of the models. By

20 THE WALL FRESCOES
the help of sculptured effigies upon monu
ments and contemporary pictures and docu
ments, more and more of these portraits are
being identified. I shaU give the results of
these researches as far as they have gone at
present — others may be added from time to
time. So far, it does not appear that any
have been named in Fresco I.
While the whole of the frescoes must have
been planned beforehand, and the cartoons
prepared, it is fairly evident that the artists
began in the natural way, with the earlier
history on the left side. Perugino being
sufficiently occupied with the west end,
Pintoricchio, BotticeUi, and Cosimo RosseUi
set to work side by side. To Ghirlandaio,
who was the last to arrive in Rome, was
assigned the third and last spaces on the
right. We may conjecture that the two
spaces on either side of the altar had been
reserved for Perugino and his immediate
assistants, and that, discovering the abiUty of
Pintoricchio, he gave them up to him for the
main part, and himself took one of the later
scenes. At any rate, Pintoricchio is now

PERUGINO'S INFLUENCE 21
acknowledged by aU competent critics to be
mainly, if not entirely, responsible for the
Circumcision and its companion picture.
Fresco II — The Baptism of Christ. —
Pintoricchio.
It has been suggested that Perugino is the
author of the two principal figures in this
fresco. However this may be, they are un
doubtedly copied from his Baptism (at
Rouen), but it was common at that day
for pupils to copy their master's work, and,
indeed, only esteemed a proper compliment,
so that this reaUy proves nothing, indeed the
angels above and those holding the garments
behind are taken, though not quite so ex
actly, from the same source,1 and the figure
of St. John, in the background on the right,
wiU recaU Perugino very strongly.
In the far distance we see a little town
with its towers and campamle. In the
middle distance is a Roman buUding,
apparently meant for the Colosseum, a
1 Perugino, in the first instance, had borrowed his com
position from Verrocchio's Baptism (Acad., Florence).

22 THE WALL FRESCOES
Christian church and the arch of Constan-
tine. On the left, the half-draped figure of
the Baptist stands above the crowd, to which
he is delivering his message ; a woman with
two chUdren clinging to her is a most grace
ful figure, and one of those of which the
" Venetian Sketch Book " contains a drawing.
Just behind her, St. John Baptist, in his
garment of camel hair, is coming down
towards the stream with his foUowers ; on
the other side, Christ Himself is preaching
to the hearers who gather round Him. On
the right is a finely painted old man, who
stands with his hands firmly clasped over
his white towel, and who has a rich gold
chain round his shoulders. We can trace
the same sharply cut and compressed
features in the tomb in the side chapel of
S. Maria del Popolo, and are able to
identify him as Giovanni Basso deUa
Rovere, the Pope's chamberlain, who died
two years after this portrait was painted.
A thick-featured young man turns to him
and lays his hand on his shoulder and
breast, as if in persuasive argument. We

BOTTICELLI 23
do not know who he was, any more than
we can identify the two handsome pages
with long, rippling hair, or the stately figure
on the opposite side, to whom a sceptical-
looking man is indicating the leading
incident. In the sky above, Pintoricchio
has painted a beautiful mandorla of the
Father surrounded by cherubs, and with
two figures of angels flying forward on
either hand, in wrapt contemplation of the
scene below : angels here fuU of worship
and reverence, in contrast to the stern
Guardian of the heavenly commands, in
the opposite picture.
Fresco III. — The Leading into the
Wilderness. — Botticelli.
Into this fresco, which many wiU think
the most beautiful of the series, BotticeUi
has brought no less than seven scenes. On
the extreme right, we see the death of the
Egyptian, whom Moses slew in his early
days in Egypt, because he saw him
smiting a Hebrew. Above is seated the

24 THE WALL FRESCOES
Egyptian's wife. In the background we
can discern the green-and-yeUow robe, as
Moses flees into the wilderness to avoid
the wrath of Pharaoh.
Exod. ii. 15. Now when Pharaoh heard this thing,
he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face
of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian : and he
sat down by a well.
16. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters :
and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs
to water their father's flock.
17. And the shepherds came and drove them away :
but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered
their flock.
18. And when they came to Reuel their father,
(elsewhere called Jethro), he said, How is it that ye
are come so soon to-day ?
19. And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of
the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough
for us, and watered the flock.
20. And he said unto his daughters, And where is
he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him,
that he may eat bread.
21. And Moses was content to dwell with the man :
and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.
22. And she bare him a son, and he called his name
Gershom : for he said, I have been a stranger in a
strange land.
BotticeUi, with true artistic feeling, has
here seized upon the incident of Moses and

MOSES AT THE WELL 25
the daughters of Jethro, has painted an
exquisite idyU, and has concentrated upon
it the chief interest of the picture. It lacks
in some degree his charm of colour, yet
nothing can be more beautiful than the soft
rich tones round the welL the manly grace
of the figure of Moses, as, draped in his
rich green mantle, he stoops and pours the
water, the dark expressive head, which
might be the ideal for a Christ, the shepherds
stealing away ashamed into the distance,
and, in contrast, the wild and gentle figures
of the shepherdesses, fuU of expression and
shy idyllic romance. Their long hair is
gathered carelessly into plaits, their gar
ments are swathed and tied, in the way
BotticeUi loved ; as they lean together and
watch their sheep quenching their thirst at the
hands of the young stranger who has come
to their assistance, we feel that in painting
this group BotticeUi has been fired with
dramatic feeling, and filled with deep con
sciousness of the beauty of his work.
Pintoricchio, at his side, was painting the
interview with Jethro and the leaving of
D

26 THE WALL FRESCOES
the father's house; so BotticeUi, in one of
his subordinate scenes, supplies the iUus-
tration of the preceding incident, when
Moses, keeping his father-in-law's sheep,
came to the mountain of Horeb.
Exod. iii. 2. And the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush :
and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire,
and the bush was not consumed.
3. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see
this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
4. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to
see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush,
and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
5. And he said, Draw not nigh hither : put off thy
shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground. . . .
Exod. iii. 7-10.
In the background we see Moses taking
off his sandals, and again he is represented
kneeling in adoration before the burning
bush. In the foreground, on the left, is a
procession of the going forth of the Israelites
into the wUderness. Moses goes before with
the staff, his wife and children foUow, one
grasping a dog. Behind is the black beard
and turban of Aaron, and the long train

Botticelli. ~\

MOSES AND ZIPPORAH (PART OF FRESCO).

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 26.

THE TEMPTATION 27
foUows, burdened with household goods.
AU the phases of the Ufe of Moses are
brought before us. The strong man, the
defender of his people, the friend of God,
the father and husband, the champion of
the oppressed, and the loveable and chival
rous helper of women.
Fresco IV. — The Temptation. — Botticelli.
As a pendant to the early Ufe of Moses,
and to his entry upon his life-work,
BotticeUi has painted the fresco usuaUy
caUed the Temptation in the WUderness,
and here again he has been captivated by
one dramatic conception, so that the osten
sible subject is entirely overpowered. The
splendid Renaissance buUding in the middle,
indeed, serves as the pinnacle of the Temple,
from which Satan, in the disguise of a
Capuchin monk, exhorts the Saviour to
cast Himself down. On the left, in the
background, is the appeal to command
that these stones be made bread, and on
the right, in the background, the tempta-

28 THE WALL FRESCOES
tion of the kingdoms of the world is
forcibly rendered. It is the moment when
Christ exclaims, "Get thee behind Me,
Satan," and with great energy is expressed
the indignation of a pure soul and the
despairing dowrifaU of the evil spirit, as,
tearing off the monk's dress, throwing aU
attempt at concealment to the winds, and
casting one look of impotent hatred behind,
the hideous creature plunges headlong into
the abyss. Above and behind, the painter
has brought in, in that idyllic fashion that
he loves, the table spread with fair white
linen and decked with bread and wine, and
the angels who have descended, their
garments fluttering, their great wings
rusthng, to minister to their Lord. No
part of the picture is more delightfuUy
painted than this corner, and it deserves
careful examination through a glass.
For hundreds of years the significance
of the busy scene that fills the forefront of
the picture was lost sight of — it was merely
considered as a representation of people fiU-
ing the courts of the Temple. It has been

Botticelli.]

THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER (THE TEMPTATION).

[Photo, Anderson.
[To face page 28.

THE LAW OF THE LEPER 29
left to a critic of to-day (Dr E. Steinmann)1
to unravel its meaning. The ceremony is
the cleansing of the leper.
Levit. xiv. 2. This shall be the law of the leper
in the day of his cleansing : He shall be brought unto
the priest :
3. And the priest shall go forth out of the camp ;
and, behold, if the plague of the leprosy be healed in
the leper ;
4. Then shall the priest command for him that is
to be cleansed two birds alive and clean, and cedar
wood, and scarlet, and hyssop :
5. And the priest shall command that one of the
birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water :
6. As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the
cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall
dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed over
the running water :
7. And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be
cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pro
nounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose
into the open field.
8. And he that is to be cleansed ... on the eighth
day shall take two he lambs without blemish, and one
ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, and three
tenth deals of fine flour for a meat offering, mingled
with oil, and one log of oil.
11. And the priest that maketh him clean shall
present the man that is to be made clean, and those
1 " Rom in der Renaissance."

30 THE WALL FRESCOES
things, before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle
of the congregation : . . .
21. And if he be poor, and cannot get so much ;
then he shall take one lamb for a trespass offering to
make an atonement for him . . . and two turtledoves,
or two young pigeons, such as he is able to get. . . .
23. And he shall bring them on the eighth day for
his cleansing unto the priest, unto the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation, before the Lord. . . .
31. . . . And the priest shall make an atonement
for him before the Lord.
The altar burns in the middle. In front
of it the High Priest, in his gorgeous robes,
receives from the hands of a servitor of the
Temple a tray containing the sacrificial
blood. On the right, a woman hurries
forward, bearing on her head the bundle of
cedar wood. Beyond her, on the right side
of the altar, are two lepers ; one, stiU weak
and helpless, is upborne by the hands of his
friends ; another kneels in thanksgiving.
On the left of the altar, a woman, perhaps
the wife of the sick man, is seen with the
doves in a basket on her head. Friends,
spectators, and servitors cluster round. On
the left are two of BotticeUi's characteristic
female heads. The group of young men

Ghirlandaio.] [Photo, Alinari.
FLORENTINE PORTRAITS (CALLING OF APOSTLES). [To face page 30.

THE LEPER HOSPITAL 31
leaning forward from the seat on the left,
afterwards suggested to Raphael the stoop
ing boys who look upward on the left of the
Disputa. And now we ask, Why has this ancient
and elaborate ceremony been portrayed for
the first and only time in art in the private
chapel of the Pope ? The answer is so clear,
that it is strange that it has for so long
escaped recognition. The great Renaissance
facade is that of the old leper hospital of San
Spirito, which had at this time just been
completely restored by Sixtus IV. It was
a reminder upon which the Pope's eyes
could rest with pleasure whenever he went
into his chapel. The Pope, too, was a
member of the Franciscan Order, and the
first act of St. Francis after his institution of
the Order had been the care and succour of
lepers ; and Botticelli, with his appreciation
of the mystical, would go further, and would
see the interpretation of the Church's power
to cleanse the sins of the soul, even as the
old Jewish dispensation declared the patient
free from sins of the body.

32 THE WALL FRESCOES
Now we see the reason why the oak tree
of the house of Rovere (from robur, an oak)
shadows the temple so proudly. Here, too,
the portraits of the nephews of the house
find a place. GiuUano stands in front of
the other spectators, in his Cardinal's dress,
and holding a white napkin. It is a face
fuU of melancholy and intensity, and has
something of the same expression which we
find again in the proud old man, painted
years later by Raphael. On the extreme
right is Girolamo Riario, the husband of
Catherine Sforza, who, since 1480, had been
Gonfaloniere or chief governor of the Church
of S. Maria del Popolo. He holds the
golden sceptre, which he had received a few
months before from the hands of his uncle
the Pope.
We have no grounds for naming any
others, but probably they were aU patrons
of the hospital, for it was fashionable to
belong to the confraternity of S. Spirito.
The names of most of the nobles of the
day are inscribed upon its rolls. In front
is a child laden with fruit, and with a

Botticelli.]

THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER (DETAIL OF FRESCO).

[Photo, Anderson.
[To face page 32.

PIERO DI COSIMO 33
serpent coiling round its leg ; and in this
httle figure, throwing itself back, holding
up its hand in alarm and looking down
at the reptile, we find that the painter has
taken for model the marble statue of the
girl and serpent in the Capitol, no doubt
as an aUegorical representation of innocence
trampUng upon sin.
Fresco V. — The Passage of the Red Sea. —
Piero di Cosimo.
The whole of this fresco which, until
lately, was attributed to Cosimo RosseUi, is
given by recent authorities1 to Piero di
Cosimo, his pupU, and a much finer artist,
who, having been brought to Rome in
order to execute the landscape backgrounds,
proved himself capable of painting such
strong and spirited figures as we see here.
A poUtical crisis in the last years of the
Pope's Ufe led to its painting. Possibly it
was the commemoration of the buUding of
the hospital in BotticeUi's second work
1 Fritz Knapp, "Piero di Cosimo," pp. 19, 20.
S

34 THE WALL FRESCOES
which suggested to the painters and their
patron that it was feasible to make the
frescoes serve a double end, and to bear a
poUtical as weU as a religious significance.
For a long time the southern powers of
Italy had been conspiring against the papal
throne, and, at length, Alphonso, Prince of
Calabria, advanced with an army, which,
after a victorious march, actuaUy approached
the capital, and Alphonso, like a second
Hannibal, was threatening the very gates
of Rome. On 15th August 1482, Pope
Sixtus sent forward a great body of troops
under the command of Roberto Malatesta,
illegitimate son of the famous Sigismondo
Pandolfo of Rimini, and son-in-law of the
Good Duke Federigo of Urbino. A few
days later, on the Feast of the Assumption,
a glorious battle was fought at Campo
Morto, in the marshy plain lying towards
Ostia, when the Pope's troops won a great
victory and utterly vanquished the enemy.
Girolamo Riario held a magnificent triumph
to celebrate the joyful event, but the vic
torious General, the chief hero, died on the

Piero di Cosimo,]

CROSSING THE RED SEA.

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 34.

ROBERTO MALATESTA 35
1st of September of malarial fever, con
tracted in those deadly swamps. The Pope
himself administered the last sacraments.
He aUowed Malatesta's men to erect a
monument in St. Peter's to their leader,
and desired one of his band of artists to
commemorate the glorious event and the
dead hero, in the chapel which it was then
decided to dedicate speciaUy to Our Lady
of the Assumption.1
The young Florentine artist has painted
the host of Egypt struggUng in the waves ;
a bUnding storm breaks over the city from
which they have fled, but the rescued
Israehtes are gathered on the left bank of
the river, singing songs of dehverance as
they press around their leader.
Exod. xiv. 26. And the Lord said unto Moses,
Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters
may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots,
and upon their horsemen.
27. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the

1 This display of gratitude did not prevent the wily
Sixtus from sending a hurried mission (which failed in its
purpose) to Rimini, to endeavour to wrest the lands of the
dead Malatesta from his widow and infant son,

36 THE WALL FRESCOES
sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the
morning appeared ; and the Egyptians fled against it ;
and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of
the sea.
28. And the waters returned, and covered the
chariots, and the horsemen, and all the hosts of Pharaoh
that came into the sea after them : there remained not
so much as one of them. . . .
30. Thus the Lord saved Israel that day out of the
hand of the Egyptians ; and Israel saw the Egyptians
dead upon the sea-shore.
31. And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did
upon the Egyptians : and the people feared the Lord,
and believed the Lord, and his servant Moses.
Foremost among the Israelites stands
Moses, now typifying to the beholders
God's Vicar, to whom the Divine protec
tion had been speciaUy vouchsafed. By his
side stands Aaron, at his feet kneels Miriam,
with her timbrel and her song of triumph,
"Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath
triumphed gloriously; the horse and his
rider hath He thrown into the sea." And
on the left, with his back partly turned to
us, we see the splendid figure of the
valorous Malatesta himself, the last of the
great captains of condottieri, or free com-

PORTRAITS 37
panions, clad in shining armour, with his
visor raised. Facing him is his captain,
Virginio Orsini, a famous soldier and
intriguer of the fifteenth century, and the
other young men are Orsini's sons. One of
these young captains on the left of Moses
(as we face the fresco), and a white-bearded
Cardinal on the other side, hold the chaUce
and wafer, the elements of the Blessed
Sacrament, thus Unking the Christian faith
with the Old Testament history. The
captain of Pharaoh's host, on his white
horse, struggling in the waves, is intended
for the Prince of Calabria. In the same
way, Juhus II. afterwards records in
Raphael's fresco of the Destruction of
Hehodorus, his triumph over his enemies
and those of the Church. Immediately
behind Moses is the head of a young man ;
this is Piero di Cosimo himself, — Piero, who
was afterwards the master, in his turn, of
Andrea del Sarto, whose many eccentricities
amuse us in Vasari's history, and whom, as
an old man, George Eliot introduces into
" Romola."

38 THE WALL FRESCOES

Fresco VI — The Calling of the Apostles. —
Ghirlandaio.
Ghirlandaio was the only one of the
painters who had been in Rome before,
having been employed five years previously
in the Vatican library, though no traces
of his work there now remain. He was
at this time thirty-three— the youngest of
the acknowledged masters, and, Uke them,
had not yet produced the greater works
which have made his fame — but he was
weU known as an able and conscientious
painter, on a par in reputation with the
other Florentines gathered in Rome, and to
him the sixth fresco was intrusted. Moses,
starting on his great journey with the people
whose salvation he was to accompUsh, was
the prototype of the Saviour calling together
His band of foUowers and preparing them to
aid in His mission of salvation ; but, instead
of the Red Sea, with its turbulent waves
and its tragic destruction, the sea pictured
here is the calm and sunny Lake of Gahlee,

THE APOSTLES 39
with the fishermen washing their nets upon
the sand. Ghirlandaio's temperament was
very far from the passionate artistic spirit of
BotticeUi, and in this weU-balanced and
exceUently composed, but somewhat prosaic,
scene, he has not aUowed himself to be
carried away by any caprices. The result
leaves us comparatively unmoved, though
aU must acknowledge the dignity of the
fresco, and its fine and clear arrangement.
The Sea of Galilee gives him a splendid
opportunity for showing his mastery of the
art of aerial perspective. It stretches away
into the distance, soft and luminous. In
the background, on the left, is the first caU.
Jesus walks by the sea, and summons Peter
and Andrew, who are coming out of the
water, drawing up their nets. On the right,
He caUs the sons of Zebedee, who come
ashore in a boat (Mark i. 19, 20). In the
foreground, the interest is concentrated on
the three central figures. Christ is laying
His behest on the two earhest apostles. He
looks down on the two kneeling figures, and
pronounces the words, " Come and foUow

40 THE WALL FRESCOES
Me, and I wiU make you fishers of men."
St. Peter, clad in the traditional blue and
yeUow garments, looks up at his Master,
while Andrew kneels a little behind.
In many of his later works, Ghirlandaio
showed his love for bringing in portraits,
and here he has introduced a number of the
Florentine colony in Rome. The head
which comes sixth in the foremost row on
the right has been recognised as no other
than that of Giovanni Tornabuoni, the rich
uncle of Lorenzo de' Medici, and ambassador
to Sixtus IV Tornabuoni, though he had a
beautiful villa in Florence, Uved most of the
year in Rome. It was for him that, a few
years later, Ghirlandaio painted the choir of
S. Maria NoveUa in Florence, there, too,
introducing a number of portraits of the
Tornabuoni family. Very possibly it was
the success of this likeness which decided
his later employment by the Florentine
noble. The boy standing in front of him
with the green doublet is Giovanni's first
born son, Lorenzo, the same whom
BotticeUi brings in, as an eighteen-year-

FLORENTINE PORTRAITS 41
old bridegroom, to the ViUa Lemmi fresco
of the Circle of Sciences, now in the Louvre.
StiU more interesting is the grey-bearded
man on the right of Giovanni ; this is the
famous Greek phflosopher, the Argyropou-
lous, who, after having been loaded with
honours by Lorenzo, had been called to his
court by Pope Sixtus, and with whom all
the papal circle was pursuing the study of
Greek, in the newly-revived enthusiasm for
classic learning. Further researches of
Steinmann have discovered the Ukeness
between the fine and interesting head which
divides Christ and the disciple standing
behind Him, and the effigy on the tomb in
S. Maria Sopra Minerva, of Neroni Diostis-
alvi, another learned Florentine. The
sumptuous figure of an archbishop in violet
robes is Rainaldo Orsini, Archbishop of
Florence, a churchman who cared little
about his diocese, and escaped from it for
as much of the year as possible, to enjoy
the pleasures of the capital. The ecclesi
astic in red robe and cap, half turning his
back, on the extreme right, is an important

42 THE WALL FRESCOES
member and patron, Guid' Antonio Ves
pucci, a relative of GiuUano de' Medici's
beautiful mistress, Simonetta. It would be
interesting to know who stood for the pro
minent figure on the left, which is one of the
finest of all. Perhaps it is a portrait of one
of the great Roman nobles, for its character,
with broad brow, thick throat and black
hair, is peculiarly Roman.
Fresco VII — The Giving of the Law to the
Israelites. — Cosimo Rosselli.
It seems surprising that Cosimo Rosselli,
who we now see plainly to be so inferior to
his confederates, was aUowed to paint so
many panels. We must recollect, however,
that he was from ten to seven years older
than the others (if we except the possible
presence of SignoreUi), that his reputation
had long been an accepted fact, and that it
was not as yet recognised that he was to be
unmistakeably surpassed by men who were
in the early stages of their career. The
steady development of each generation was

THE LAW OF MOSES 43
not consciously recognised by the men who
witnessed its unfolding, and though we
see now that at no stage could Cosimo have
competed with any but the second class, he
was certainly highly thought of, and looked
upon as worthUy upholding the Florentine
fame. It is said too that the Pope much
admired the lavish use he made of gold in
decorating his figures. Three of the four
teen waU frescoes are by his hand, their
mediocrity being to some extent relieved
by the landscape backgrounds of the young
Piero. In many places this fresco has been
repainted and the colours darkened, and we
no longer see the gold which, according to
Vasari, pleased the Pope so much.
Exod. xxiv. 12. And the Lord said unto Moses, Come
up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will
give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments
which I have written ; that thou mayst teach them.
13. And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua :
and Moses went up into the mount of God.
V. 10. and xxx. v. 18.
In the middle distance we see Moses
receiving the tables from the Father, sur-

44 THE WALL FRESCOES
rounded by cherubim and seraphim; the
angels in this part are charming figures, and
can be weU seen with a glass. At the foot
of the mount a young man awaiting Moses,
leaning upon the rock, is evidently meant
for Joshua, who again foUows Moses as he
comes down from the mountain, holding
the tablets.
Exod. xxxii. 1. And when the people saw that Moses
delayed to come down out of the mount, the people
gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto
him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us ; for as
for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
2. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden
ear-rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of
your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them
unto me.
3. And all the people brake off the golden earrings-
which were in their ears, and brought them unto
Aaron. 4. And he received them at their hands, and fashioned
it with a graving-tool, after he had made it a molten
calf: and they said, These be thy gods, 0 Israel, which
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
5. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before
it. . . .
6. And they rose up early on the morrow, and
offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and

THE GOLDEN CALF 45
the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to
play. 15. And Moses turned, and went down from the
mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his
hand. . . .
17. And when Joshua heard the noise of the people
as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of
war in the camp.
18. And he said, It is not the voice of them that
shout for mastery, . . . but the noise of them that sing
do I hear.
19. And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh
unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing :
and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out
of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.
In the middle distance, to the right,
stands an altar on which the golden calf
is set up, and the people kneel in adoration
before it. In the middle Moses advances,
dashing the tables to the ground, while the
young attendant, Joshua, stands looking
on, with clasped hands and an air of sad
severity. On the right is a group of
persons, a lively company, a young man
in front leads forward a lady in the dance :
this is among the best painted parts of the
picture. On the left a number of other

46 THE WALL FRESCOES
figures are grouped. The one kneeUng with
upheld hands may be meant for Aaron,
excusing his misconduct at the expense
of his foUowers. In the distance we see
Moses giving his commands to the Levites
to slay the idolaters. The painter has
conscientiously carried out the Scripture
narrative, striving to show the calm and
benignant aspect of Moses as he nears the
camp after his heavenly vision, and the
sudden change to righteous indignation.
He makes the moment when the patriarch's
wrath culminates and contrasts with the
careless bearing of the dancers, the most
prominent, as it is the most dramatic, of
the story.
Fresco VIII — The Giving of the Law to
Christians. — Cosimo Rosselli.
This is one of the least attractive of the
scenes, and has no historic interest to atone
for its weakness and want of art. The
fresco is divided into two parts, is crowded
with figures and confused in composition.

THE LAW GIVING OF CHRIST 47
Christ stands upon a raised mound, which
does duty for the mountain, His hearers
are gathered at His feet, women with
chUdren, the disciples grouped around,
interspersed with portraits. The most
prominent of these are the two men in
voluminous robes, evidently personages of
importance, who are depicted as expressing
their wonder to each other, in the fore
ground. In the other part, the Saviour
coming down from the mountain, meets
the leper, who, covered with a very realistic
eruption, kneels at His feet, while St. Peter
seems to commend him to mercy. Im
mediately above St. Peter we fancy we can
again make out Giovanni Tornabuoni and
his son. The redeeming part of this fresco
is the landscape of Piero di Cosimo. The
young painter is particularly happy in Ught
and shade and solemnity of effect. The
sky is bright with evening sunset, convey
ing the idea that the preaching has lasted
tiU the day is far spent, but the people
stiU Unger, eagerly Ustening. On the right
a httle Wind God blows away the clouds,

48 THE WALL FRESCOES
a traditional personification which we often
find in mediaeval painters, and which dates
from classic times.

Fresco IX. — The Gainsaying of Korah. —
Botticelli.
Here we have BotticeUi's work again, and
he shows us the traitors struck by the hand
of God, with aU that picturesque intensity
of which he was master.
In the sixteenth chapter of Numbers we
read how Korah, Dathan, and Abiram
gathered together 250 princes of the
assembly against Moses and Aaron to resist
their authority, and accused them of taking
too much upon themselves, and the answer
of Moses : —
Numb. xvii. 5. . . . To-morrow the Lord will show
who are his, and who is holy. . . .
16. And Moses said unto Korah, Be thou and all
thy company before the Lord, thou, and they, and
Aaron, to-morrow.
17. And take every man his censer, and put incense
in them, and bring ye before the Lord every man his
censer. . . .

Botticelli.]

THE DESTRUCTION OF KORAH (PART OF FRESCO).

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 48.

DESTRUCTION OF KORAH 49
18. And they took every man his censer, and put
fire in them, and laid incense thereon, and stood in the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation with Moses
and Aaron.
28. And Moses said, Hereby ye shall know that the
Lord hath sent me to do all these works ; for I have
not done them of mine own mind.
29. If these men die the common death of all men,
or if they be visited after the visitation of all men ; then
the Lord hath not sent me.
30. But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth
open her mouth, and swallow them up . . . and they
go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand
that these men have provoked the Lord.
31. And it came to pass, as he had made an end of
speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder
that was under them :
32. And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed
them up, and their houses, and all the men that
appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.
33. They, and all that appertained to them, went
down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon
them : and they perished from among the congregation.
35. And there came out a fire from the Lord, and
consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered
incense. 36. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
37. Speak unto Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest,
that he take up the censers out of the burning, and
scatter thou the fire yonder ; for they are hallowed.
38. The censers of these sinners against their own
souls, let them make them broad plates for a covering
G

50 THE WALL FRESCOES
of the altar; for they offered them before the Lord,
therefore are they hallowed : and they shall be a sign
unto the children of Israel.
40. . . . That no stranger, which is not of the seed
of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the Lord ;
that he be not as Korah, and as his company. . . .
The choice of this subject was determined
by an incident that just at this time had re
dounded to the glory of the Pope. Andrea
Zanoumetic, Archbishop of Krain, in Austria,
indignant at certain abuses in the Church
which had come to his knowledge, proposed
to undertake a crusade of purification against
the Holy See itself. He had gone so far as
to caU a council at Basel, in March 1482, in
which he had denounced the Pope, and
caUed him "a child of the Devil." The
decision of the council, however, resulted in
a triumph for Sixtus, and in the confusion
and utter rout of the Archbishop. In July
of the foUowing year his conduct was
publicly condemned, and in December the
Papal Nuncio visiting Krain, found that he
had faUen from power, had been imprisoned,
and, in despair, had died by his own hand in
his prison ceU. The paraUel is clear and

THE PRIESTHOOD 51
complete, and served once more to impress
upon aU men the Divine authority of the
Church and the protection miraculously
vouchsafed to Her Vicar. To aU good
Catholics it appeared as an obvious visita
tion of providence, and BotticeUi Ulustrated
it with unquestioning conviction. In the
background, against the arch of the first
Christian Emperor, is the great High Priest,
wearing the triple crown, and casting away
from the haUowed vessel the fire that has
poUuted the Altar, Moses in the foreground,
his white beard shining out against his dark
green robe, holds aloft the rod of God and
caUs down the wrath of Heaven upon the
conspirators. This fine and venerable figure
of Moses is a fitting climax to the one
already painted by BotticeUi, with the
shepherdesses at the weU, and we may even
compare it not unworthfly with the grand
heads of Michel Angelo above. With
what splendid energy the destruction of the
traitors is rendered, as they are struck down
and faU headlong in aU the attitudes of
annihilation and agony before the calm but

52 THE WALL FRESCOES
terrible denunciation of the Lord's chosen
servant. The censer of Korah falls clanging
to the earth. Behind Moses, Eleazar seizes
another, and scatters the sacrilegious fire in
an abandonment of indignant repudiation.
There is no finer figure than this young
man, full of life and grace, and the colour
ing of the whole, his dark head and brown
dress, is a thoroughly harmonious study.
To left and right are subsidiary scenes. On
the left Moses stands over the opening in
the earth, in which the guUty ones are
disappearing. The two figures above, in
white, with raised hands, are taken to
represent Eldad and Medad, the two men
upon whom the spirit of the Lord had
faUen, so that though not belonging to the
elders who were gathered round the taber
nacle, they received the gift of prophecy
(Numbers xi. 24-29). On the other side the
punishment decreed for those who blas
phemed against the Lord is about to be
meted out to an offender, in aUusion, of
course, to the Archbishop's sacrilegious
epithet — applied to the Pope.

THE KEYS 53
Levit. xxiv. 23. And Moses spake to the children
of Israel, that they should bring forth him that had
cursed out of the camp, and stone him with stones.
And the children of Israel did as the Lord commanded

BotticeUi has contrived to throw a certain
pathetic interest into the figure of the guUty
man, hurried out to meet his fate at the
hands of the servants of the Temple, urged
on by the fierce High Priests. Above is a
row of portraits, that of the painter him
self second from the end, looking towards
the right.
Fresco X. — The Giving of the Keys to Peter.
— Perugino.
The connection between the assertion of
the hierarchical authority of the Jewish High
Priest and this, the greatest historical event
in the Church of Rome, is obvious. The
choice of Perugino as the painter of what
must, in many ways, have been regarded as
the most important of the series, is weU
justified by the result, for nowhere has the
Umbrian master produced a more dehghtful

54 THE WALL FRESCOES
painting. " It is the golden joyous colour,
the fine rhythm of the groups, and, above
aU, the buoyant spaciousness of this fresco,
that win and hold us." 1 As the axis of the
sphere within which we find ourselves is
that stately temple with its airy Renaissance
porticoes, which perhaps originated in
Itahan art with BruneUeschi, was adopted
by Bramante, appears in the Sposalizio at
Caen (now attributed to Lo Spagna), and
was copied by Raphael in 1504 in his
Sposalizio. The radiation in perspective
of the pavement lends itself to the plan by
which the figures are spaced out, and the
composition kept clear and distinct. So
successful has Perugino been, that our
abiding impression is of cool, calm space, a
great poUshed marble floor, almost bound
less, upon which symmetrical groups are
harmoniously arranged. The httle scenes
that fill the background iUustrate on the
one hand the text: "Are ye come out to
take Me as agamst a thief with swords and
with staves ? I was daily with you in the
1 Berenson's " Central Italian Painters," p. 108.

Perugino. ]

CHRIST GIVING THE KEYS TO ST. PETER.

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 54.

CHRIST'S VICAR 55
temple" ... On the other: "And they
took up stones to cast at Him, but Jesus hid
Himself and went out of the temple." But
they merely give the effect of the ordinary
hfe going on as an adjunct to the great
event taking place in the foreground. Here
Christ dehvers the great symbol, and pro
nounces the tremendous declaration: "What
soever ye shaU bind upon earth is bound
in Heaven, and whatsoever ye shall
loose upon earth is loosed in Heaven." It
is in keeping with the visible giving of the
symbol that the painter, instead of the
historical background of the Sea of Galilee,
has placed his personages in front of the
temple, which typifies the Church of God
on earth. This fresco is a triumph for
Perugino. It is difficult to say whether he
is happiest in his ideaUy rehgious heads or
in his portraits. The principal figure perhaps
seldom altogether satisfies anybody, but in
the kneeling St. Peter, St. James beyond
him, and St. John immediately behind, he
leaves httle to desire, either in form,
colour, or expression. The fervent atten-

56 THE WALL FRESCOES
tion of St. Peter, as with painful intensity
he receives with one hand the Divine
charge intrusted to him, and presses the
other to his heart, is as beautifuUy ex
pressed as the yearning love of St. John and
the unquestioning acceptance of St. James.
Immediately behind the Saviour stand two
apostles, evidently by a different hand ;
these are beheved to be the work of Signor-
eUi's school.1 Further back stands Judas,
his restless eyes looking askance out of the
picture, his hand thrust into the money-bag.
The fire of imagination with which
BotticeUi can fiU his creations is not missed
here, where aU the saints contemplate the
act of grace with calm beatitude, and stand
rapt in heavenly contemplation, in the
golden haze of a summer afternoon.
Perugino has contrived to bring in his
contemporaries and himself without shocking
our sensibihties. Certain solemn personages
mingle with the apostles, and their dignified
1 Vasari says that Don Bartolommeo Delia Gatta, a
follower of SignoreUi, was employed upon this fresco in
company with Perugino, which would account for the
resemblance (Vasari, vol. iii. 565).

PORTRAIT OF PERUGINO 57
robes and look of grave interest blend with
sufficient vraisemhlance into the sacred
throng. Immediately behind the sixth
apostle on the right, it is very easy to re
cognise the artist's own head, with the
heavy jowl and tight compressed Ups which
we find in that other portrait in the Cambio,
or in the head by Raphael in the Borghese
GaUery, both, however, painted some years
later than this. Here we have a man in
the prime of hfe, full of self-confidence and
with strong purpose looking out of the
clear, sagacious eyes. The benevolent-look
ing and finely -drawn elderly man at his
side, we judge by his dress and bag to be a
treasurer of the Pope, and behind, with
square and compasses, stand two architects
or buflders, perhaps Bramante or the
brothers San GaUo. In the distance, on
either side, rises a graceful Renaissance arch
with a laudatory inscription to Sixtus IV.

58 THE WALL FRESCOES

Fresco XL — The Testimony and Death of
Moses.
The authorship of the other frescoes is
now practicaUy undisputed, but that of the
eleventh cannot be said to be settled beyond
controversy. For centuries it was, on the
authority of Vasari, assigned to Luca Sig
noreUi. Vasari's information is vague, even
for him. He makes passing mention of
SignoreUi's being summoned by Pope Sixtus
to work at the chapel in company with
"several other painters," and says that he
painted two histories : one of the law-giving
of Moses, the other of his death.1 This
account is evidently entirely confused, as
these two scenes are included in Fresco XI.
No record exists of the employment of the
master of Cortona, nor can any documentary
evidence be discovered, to show that he
visited Rome at this time. Crowe and Caval-
caseUe accept the traditionary account, and
give him an honourable place in the Sixtine
1 Vasari, vol. iii. p. 691.

CONTROVERSY 59
Chapel. They class this fresco in merit with
those of BotticeUi and Perugino.1 A critic
of such weight as MoreUi 2 speaks unhesita
tingly of his being represented in Rome by
this fresco, though he aUows that Barto-
lommeo DeUa Gatta may have had a share
in it. Rumohr and minor critics accept the
attribution to SignoreUi. On the other
hand, Mr. Berenson believes the whole
fresco to be by the hand of Don Barto-
lommeo DeUa Gatta.3 Miss Maud Crutt-
weU, a critic of close observation, though
unwilling to pronounce a decided opinion as
to who did paint it, is certain it is not
by SignoreUi ; whUe Vischer i maintains that
a great part of the execution reveals the
hand of DeUa Gatta. Unpublished criticism
by experts points in the same direction, and
the opinion prevails that though closely
resembling in style the work of this great
master, it is not executed by his hand.
If this painting is the work of DeUa
1 "History of Painting in Italy," vol. iii. p. 8.
2 " Italian Painters," vol. i. p. 92.
8 " Luca SignoreUi," M. Cruttwell, p. 6.
* "Luca SignoreUi," p. 119.

60 THE WALL FRESCOES
Gatta, it must be his masterpiece.. It is
strange that such an important fact should
not be clearly recorded, but in the case of
Pintoricchio and Piero di Cosimo, we find
that those who came as assistants, and were
employed as principals, have had to wait
long for their rightful recognition. Later
researches have confirmed the facts Vasari
gives in his life of this painter. According
to him, he was born about 1408 and died
1491, so that this fresco was the work of
his old age. Vasari speaks of him as working
in the Sixtine Chapel in company with Luca
of Cortona and Pietro Perugino.1 Piero di
Antonio Dei, who afterwards, as the Abbot
of San Clemente at Arezzo, was known
as Don Bartolommeo Delia Gatta, studied
under the missal painters of Arezzo ; but
that he was equal to more ambitious work
is proved by the recent discovery of a
document, dealing with an altar-piece by
him in the Church of San Francesco at
Castiglione Fiorentino, a fine work which
still exists. Mr. Berenson assigns to him
1 Vasari, vol. iii. p. 213.

Uncertain. ]

THE LAST TESTAMENT OF MOSES.

[Photo, Alinari.
[ To face page 60.

SIGNORELLI'S "PAN" 61
a beautiful Madonna in the Christ Church
CoUection at Oxford, hitherto believed to be
by Pier dei Franceschi, and this attribution,
if correct, would show that he came under
the influence of that great painter from
whom SignoreUi obtained his inspiration.
He has left several other works, which aU
who have studied them pronounce to be
reminiscent of SignoreUi.
I should like to call attention to the
resemblance between several of the figures
on the right hand of this fresco and those
in SignorelU's "Pan," now at Berlin.
Any one who compares the two wiU notice
that the old man who leans upon his staff in
front of Moses is the same figure as in the
oil painting, but draped in a mantle, and
with the inclination of the body and one of
the arms altered. The pose of the patri
arch, sitting on a raised seat, the knees
apart, feet together, and staff in hand, taken
in conjunction with the rest, recaUs the
attitude of Pan. The young man in tight-
fitting doublet and hose, on the left, is drawn
almost precisely from the flute-playing nude,

62 THE WALL FRESCOES
reversed; while one model seems to have
served for the head and shoulders of Pan,
and for those of the woman with her child
upon her back, and a figure lies across the
picture below, in each. No one figure
is exactly copied, but, taken altogether,
they surely have considerable signifi
cance ? The general arrangement, and
the fact of Pan and his satellites being
in the nude, confirm the presumption
that the oU-painting was executed before
the fresco, in which case the former is an
earUer work than is usuaUy supposed. It
was painted for the private coUection of
Lorenzo de' Medici, consequently is less
Ukely to have been seen and copied than a
fresco, and one is led to speculate whether a
part, at least, of the Sixtine fresco may not
have been designed by SignoreUi, and the
execution left to Bartolommeo DeUa Gatta.
It is, of course, quite possible that the latter
may have had drawings of SignoreUi in
his possession, and yet the old tradition of
Vasari may have some foundation after
aU.

LAST COMMANDS 63
To examine the subject of the fresco.
Here Moses caUs the twelve tribes to
gether, to give them his last commands.
Debt. xxxi. 1. And Moses went and spake these
words unto all Israel.
2. And he said unto them, I am an hundred and
twenty years old this day ; I can no more go out and
come in : also the Lord hath said unto me, Thou shalt
not go over this Jordan.
3. The Lord thy God, he will go over before thee,
and he will destroy these nations from before thee, and
thou shalt possess them : and Joshua, he shall go over
before thee, as the Lord hath said.
6. Be strong, and of a good courage, fear not, nor
be afraid of them : for the Lord thy God, he it is that
doth go with thee : he will not fail thee nor forsake
thee. To the right of the picture Moses sits
upon a throne. He leans upon his staff
and reads from the book of the law to the
congregation who are gathered round him.
A very old man stands in front, a group of
women and chfldren cluster on the left,
others are sitting at his feet. The artist
has fafled very much in the children, who
are ugly, gnome-like httle beings, and who
contrast very unfavourably with Pinto-

64 THE WALL FRESCOES
ricchio's beautiful httle boys in Fresco I.,
but the woman in the middle with her
baby on her shoulders is a noble and grace
ful figure. Conspicuous is a young man
sitting on a tree, nude, save for a scarf
over his shoulder, with his eyes fixed
earnestly upon the Patriarch, as if drinking
in his words. An old man with clasped
hands bends his head over him; a young
one turns and contemplates him with a
gesture of surprise; the woman with the
chUd looks wistfuUy towards him. These
old painters were not apt to fill their can
vases with ulterior meaning, and especiaUy,
if of the school of SignoreUi, would ask
nothing better than to introduce the study
of a nude as a scientific exercise ; but here
we can hardly doubt the underlying of some
aUegorical meaning. Dr. Steinmann makes
the interesting suggestion that we see here
personified the tribe of Levi, naked, to
signify that, alone of aU, it was to have no
inheritance, but to be devoted to the service
of the sanctuary in the priesthood, and to
be cut off from aU family ties.

THE LEVITES 65
Numbers xviii. 22. Neither must the children of
Israel henceforth come nigh the tabernacle of the
congregation, lest they bear sin, and die.
23. But the Levites shall do the service of the
tabernacle of the congregation, and they shall bear their
iniquity. It shall be a statute for ever throughout your
generations, that among the children of Israel they
have no inheritance.
24. But the tithes of the children of Israel, which
they offer as a peace-offering unto the Lord, I have
given to the Levites to inherit.
Detjt. xxxiii. 9. Who said unto his father and to
his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he
acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children :
10. They shall teach Jacob thy judgments and
Israel thy law ; they shall put incense before thee, and
whole-burnt sacrifice upon thine altar.
11. Bless, Lord, his substance, and accept the work
of his hands : smite through the loins of them that rise
against him, and of them that hate him, that they rise
not again.
Thus another opportunity occurs of
demonstrating the divine institution and
authority of the order of the priesthood, of
which the Pope was the head in the second
dispensation. On the left hand, Moses gives his rod
to a stately young man kneeling on the
ground.

66 THE WALL FRESCOES
Detjt. xxxi. 7. And Moses called unto Joshua, and
said unto him in sight of all Israel, Be strong and
of a good courage : for thou must go with this people
unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their
fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to
inherit it.
8. And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee ;
he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake
thee : fear not, neither be dismayed.
The background shows us an aged
man propped upon a staff, and supported
by an angel, who points away to the
bright distance. So Moses looks across
to that Promised Land, which he shaU
never enter, and then the old prophet
drags himself slowly down from the moun
tain to die in the land of Moab. At
the left of the background his death is
pictured, surrounded by his sorrowing
friends. This fresco, like most of the others, is no
doubt full of portraits. In a letter written
by a certain PineUi, in 1585, from Padua,
he asks his friend Orsini to get him a
portrait of Teodoro Gaza, the celebrated
Greek Professor who was secretary to

PORTRAITS 67
Cardinal Bessarione1 in the preceding
century. Orsini answers that he knows
of no existing portrait, but that he recoUects
Cardinal St. Angelo telling him that in one
of the frescoes of the Sixtine Chapel was a
portrait of Bessarione with four of his
foUowers, among whom was Gaza. This
is beheved to be the group on the right of
Moses. As Bessarione died in 1475, his
portrait at least must have been painted
from recoUection, or from some previous
one, but we gather how strong the wish
was to introduce memorable personages of
the time.

Fresco XII. — The Last Supper. —
Cosimo Rosselli.
As Moses assembles the twelve tribes,
so here Christ caUs together His twelve
1 Bessarione of Trebizonde was the celebrated proteotor of
learned Greeks who emigrated into Italy. He seceded from
the Greek to the Latin Church, hut his palace remained the
rendezvous of all his fugitive countrymen. His friend Gaza
was reckoned the first soholar of the time. His sumptuous
illustrated edition of Aristotle is preserved in the Vatican
library.

68 THE WALL FRESCOES
foUowers to receive His last commands.
Cosimo RosseUi has painted the scene after
the dispassionate traditions of the Middle
Ages, and it is easy to see that he had
in his mind the frescoes of Andrea del
Castagno, in the Convent of S. ApoUonia
and of Ghirlandaio in the Church of
Ognissanti, in Florence. Yet he has con
trived to show some originality, and the
praises which Vasari bestows on him for
the use he made of perspective are not all
undeserved. From Ghirlandaio he has
taken and enlarged upon the idea of the
distant scenes, seen through open archways.
Both the above-named artists adopted the
naive mediaeval expedient of distinguishing
Judas by placing him on the near side of
the table, and also further marked him by
the absence of the halo. In Giotto's Last
Supper, at Padua, Judas is dipping his hand
in the dish with the Lord. Afterwards, in
Leonardo's fresco, where none of the heads
have a halo, we recognise Judas by the hand
that clutches the money-bag and upsets the
salt. Here RosseUi has placed a little black

THE LAST SUPPER 69
demon on the shoulder of the betrayer,
whispering in his ear.1 Christ is blessing
the Bread and Wine, the moment gener-
aUy chosen for illustration ; it remained for
Leonardo to choose the more dramatic one
of the words : " One of you shaU betray
Me," and to paint the variety of startled
expression which they caUed forth. Here
aU sit calmly, and the heads, drawn from
the painter's stock of ideal types, are suffi
ciently meaningless, and lack the strong
drawing and the individualisation of the
other Florentine artists who have painted
the Last Supper. RosseUi succeeds better
when he goes to nature and brings in four
portraits standing on either side. In the
background are the three scenes of the
Agony in the Garden, the Betrayal, and
the Crucifixion.
1 It was a mediaeval superstition that the Evil Spirit
entered a man by the mouth. If he spoke too fast, the
demon endeavoured to make him yawn and then slipped
in. This was the origin of placing the hand before the
mouth when yawning, and in parts of the Tyrol the peasants
stiU say, "God keep you," when any one yawns. It is
common in mediaeval paintings to see the demon coming
out of the mouth of a possessed person. It is much rarer
to see him depicted as waiting to enter.

70 THE WALL FRESCOES
Of the two remaining frescoes there is
httle to be said. The life and death of
Moses was foUowed by his burial upon
Mount Nebo, and Francesco Salviati illus
trated it by the legendary incident of the
contest over his body between the archangel
Michael and Satan, a circumstance which
is related by St. Jude in his Canonical
Epistle. It is impossible to say if it ever
had any merit, but any that it may have
had was destroyed at its restoration by
Matteo da Lecce.
On the other side, the Resurrection, by
Ghirlandaio, no doubt once formed a fitting
chmax to the Life of Christ. It is a matter
for deep regret that what was almost
certainly a beautiful concluding scene
should have entirely perished. WhUe
^ Gregory XIII. was celebrating Mass on
Christmas Day, 1562, the architrave feU,
crushing to death two of the Swiss Guard,
and so damaging the fresco that it had to
be entirely repainted, and the choice of
Arrigo di Mahnes, a second-rate Flemish
artist, for the purpose, cannot be looked

THE MARTYRED POPES 71
upon as a happy one. No precious
moments of time should be wasted in the
study of these worthless productions. We
are only interested to notice that the
subjects are the natural completion of the
cycle on either hand. AU round the
chapel, in a series of simulated niches,
are ranged the so-caUed portraits of the
twenty-eight Popes who suffered martyr
dom, from Linus, 79 a.d. down to
Eusebius, 309. Those on the right side
of the chapel, over the frescoes of Botti
ceUi and Ghirlandaio, are by far the best
painted, and are from the hand of these
masters. Cornehus, Stephen I. and Sixtus
II. are attributed to Botticelh. Hyginus,
Victor I. and Felix I., to Ghirlandaio.
The others are assigned in great part to
Fra Diamante, a Carmehte, who had been
an assistant of Fra Lippo Lippi in the
cathedral at Prato.
In August, 1483, the chapel was finished ;
a year later Pope Sixtus died, and was
succeeded by Innocent VIIL, who was
foUowed after eight years by Alexander

72 THE WALL FRESCOES
VI., the infamous Borgia. During twenty
years the chapel remained unaltered. In
1503 Giuliano da Rovere became Pope by
the title of Juhus II., and a few years
afterwards, mindful of the great artistic
achievement which he had superintended
for his uncle, decided upon its extension,
and commanded Michel Angelo to paint
the ceihng.

PART II
THE ROOF
Alfred de Musset says something like
this : " If by Art you mean that which
guides the use of materials and determines
results, if you want to give the name of Art
to that being who has a thousand names,
inspiration, meditation, respect for rule, cult
of beauty, dreams and reahsations, if you
want so to baptise an abstract being, then
what you call Art is in reality Man.'"
Such words may weU apply to Michel
Angelo,1 and we lose the fuU significance of
his Art if we examine it without knowing
the man of whom it is the outpouring, pro
duced with his heart's blood. He himself
1 Michel Angelo Buonarroti, Florentine, b. 1474— d. 1564,
K n

74 THE ROOF
furnishes us with his own clue, and the man
is even more interesting than the marvels
that he wrought.
We have to bear in mind, too, the age
in which he was bound up : " That strange,
over-cultured, strong, yet dying age, the very
height of the Renaissance, the fuU richness
pausing for a moment ere the decline." All
art is in more or less measure the outcome
of its age, but that of Michel Angelo was
produced, not in foUowing its tendencies,
but by dint of strenuously battling against
them. The man felt so bitterly aU that
Italy had been — how great the promise of
the revival, how deep the corruption which
followed. Most of the painters of the
Golden Age were enwrapped in their art,
searching out its secrets, discovering in it
its own exceeding great reward, like Fra
Angelico, Masaccio, BotticeUi, or Da Vinci ;
often fuU of the joie de vivre, successful,
beloved, like Giotto, Raphael, or the great
Venetians. Michel Angelo's art was a
weapon and a voice — one long, deep pro
test of a noble spirit against conditions he

STATE OF ITALY 75
was powerless to alter, and an unceasing
effort to exalt physical and moral grandeur.
In Symonds's " Renaissance " we get a
terrible picture of Italy in the last half of
the fifteenth century.
The world was passing through a great
revolution, spiritual, moral, and pohtical.
The Middle Ages had run their course to
give place to a new order. Principle had
decayed. Religion had lost its hold as the
standpoint of right and wrong — the old
mythological studies and tone of thought
were revived, the fascination of paganism
without the old faith and reality. It was
an age of unblushing grossness and im-
moraUty. The world had lost virtue and
simplicity, and had not learnt self-restraint.
A reaction had set in against the severe
rule of early Christianity, and in pohtics
aU the franchises, bulwarks, and hberties of
the Middle Ages were openly attacked or
secretly undermined. The Church had be
come the accomplice of every wrong and
tyranny. Popes who had been great, pious,
and devoted to Rome, were succeeded by

76 THE ROOF
others who were nothing but Italian princes,
turning aU spiritual power to the acquire
ment of gold and lands, no matter by what
means, for themselves and their families.
The hfe of Michel Angelo Buonarroti
had not been a fortunate or happy
one. The death of his patron, Lorenzo
the Magnificent, had foiled his artistic
career at the outset ; his relations with
his master Ghirlandaio had been strained;
his scornful, sarcastic temper had em
broiled him with his feUow-students, and
an early fight with one of these had left
him disfigured for hfe. It was when he
was old enough to understand that age
of profound corruption, that the voice of
Savonarola feU upon his ear. In his father's
house Michel Angelo had dwelt much on
the work of Dante, and in some sort Savona
rola was Dante's successor — there was the
same lofty austerity, the same realisation of
the unseen, and the power of bringing it
before his hearers. The two were alike in
love of country and hatred of injustice. The
purity and disinterestedness of Savonarola

SAVONAROLA 77
stood out against the darkness of the times.
The high and ardent nature of Michel
Angelo was drawn irresistibly to such a
soul. He Ustened to the scathing denuncia
tions of the preacher with more than
common insight. He had nothing to burn
or cast aside himself — his work had been
stern and austere from the beginning, but
to the end of his days the tones of the
great prophet of purity and freedom rang
in his ears; he always remained the child
of liberty, and when aU around was decay,
he stiU tried to infuse into art the breath of
rehgion and rectitude.
His first visit to Rome, which lasted five
years, was paid in 1496. His fame as a
sculptor was already estabhshed, and the
artist in him was fuUy formed. Hard
working and laborious, he supported his
father and brothers through life, stinting
himself in order to maintain them. His
relations were continuaUy writing him
begging letters, grumbhng, draining him
of funds, and showing rapacity and in
gratitude. His own hfe was simple and

78 THE ROOF
ascetic in the extreme, and his strong filial
affection is one of his most attractive traits.
He returned to Florence, where he pro
duced the famous David and other great
works, and in 1505 was again summoned to
Rome by Juhus II., and there begun what
his historian and devoted friend, Condivi,
caUs, " The Tragedy of the Sepulchre " ; the
long-protracted, oft-thwarted, and finaUy
abandoned project of the mausoleum of
Julius. The monument was to have been
a colossal basilica adorned with more than
forty statues, but the design was never
realised, the Moses and two groups of
slaves being aU that remain. It would
take too long here to teU of the vicissi
tudes, the mortifications, and disappoint
ments, which Michel Angelo underwent at
the hands of the Pope and of jealous com
panions while engaged on this work. His
letters to his old father at this time are
sad and worried. He cannot get the
money the Pope owes him, his sensitive
and suspicious nature is drawn into quarrels,
and, moreover, he hears that his good-for-

CALL TO ROME 79
nothing brothers are threatening and
neglecting the old father of whom he is
so fond. He writes to his brothers that
he has wandered for twelve years, working
hard, " and now, just as I am beginning
to set my house on its legs, you, with your
escapades and bad deeds, come to undo in
an hour the toU of years."
And now he had come to the great work
of his manhood. He was in Florence, and
had just decided to settle in his beloved
city, when the Pope again summoned him
to Rome. He assumed that he was to
proceed with the monument, but on reach
ing Rome he found that it was laid aside,
and the project of the Sixtine roof was
unfolded. He rebeUed strongly for a time,
saying that he was no painter, and urging
that it should be given to Raphael, but the
Pope had heard of the magnificent cartoon
he had lately produced in competition with
Leonardo, and overruled aU his objections.
The Pope had his suggestions ready. He
proposed that the lunettes or arches above
the windows should be fiUed by the Twelve

80 THE ROOF
Apostles, and that the rest of the roof should
be decorated with an ornamental design.
Michel Angelo, on beginning to prepare the
cartoons, soon found this inadequate. " It
seemed to me that it would appear a poor
thing, and I said to the Pope that to re
present the Apostles only, would appear a
poor thing. He asked me why? I said
because they were poor also. Then he
gave me a new commission, that I should
do what I pleased." The commonplace,
the monotony, of a mere row of figures,
the want of any overmastering idea, was
patent to the mind of the man who yet
had succeeded more grandly than any other
with single figures. How and when was it
that the matchless conception took place?
Was it suggested from without, or evolved
from within? We may never know.
Michel Angelo stood in that long chamber,
and looked round on the forms left there
by his predecessors. There were the waUs
painted by his own not too weU loved
master, Ghirlandaio, and by Perugino,
whom he had caUed "a dunce in art,"

THE PLAN 81
with the contempt of the earnest, scientific
student for the mechanical prettiness of the
Umbrian's later years. He could recoUect
BotticeUi, though he himself was but eight
years old when the masters of the early
Renaissance were here, and the affection he
shared in common with BotticeUi for Dante
and Savonarola, may have appealed to him.
Perhaps he made some scathing remark
about Cosimo RosseUi. At any rate, for
good or iU, the frescoes were there — the
immortal story had been told, rounded, com
pleted — what was there to add? Nothing
to add, but how about the beginning ? By
what inspiration did he decide to go back
far and farther yet, and to convey the im
pression of the whole universe from before
its creation, preparing for and leading up
to the one chief event of Time and
Eternity? We can weU imagine that his
reluctance died away as the scheme unfolded
itself to his mind, but there was much
trouble to come, and his heart had time to
fail again before his preparations could be
completed.

82 THE ROOF
The architect Bramante, who was no
friend to Michel Angelo, was employed to
erect the scaffolding. He did so without
consulting the artist, and suspended the
wooden floor by ropes passing through holes
made in the vault. Michel Angelo asked
how he thought the holes could be con
cealed afterwards. Bramante could not
answer this, but he refused to attempt any
alteration, and Michel Angelo had to obtain
the Pope's permission to design his own
scaffold. When a boy in the service of
Ghirlandaio, he had made a remarkable
design for the scaffolding of Santa Maria
NoveUa. His constructive powers were
once more brought into play, and the
scaffolding he now erected became a model
for future architects, while the quantity of
rope taken down, being sold, provided a
dowry for the contractor's daughter. By
his new plan he provided a complete deck
upon which to move about, with portable
scaffolds upon it to enable him to reach the
various curves of the roofs, and he also had
to arrange for a free passage for the light,

PREPARATIONS 83
and for the possibility of temporarily re
moving parts of the wood-work, so as to
judge of the effect from below.
He arrived in Rome to enter upon his
task, the beginning of AprU, 1508. By the
10th of May his scaffolding was up, and the
rough plastering was begun. The last coat
was laid with Roman hme and fine marble
dust, only as much as the artist required
being laid each day.
Between May and August of that year
Michel Angelo worked on the cartoons, and
he also had to prepare the designs for the
general architectural plan of the vault, the
whole of which is fuU of elaboration, yet
clear and unconfused. Careful examination
of the ceihng has shown how great were the
pains taken, how accurately his framework
was designed, how exact were his measure
ments and calculations. It was quite true,
as he had told the Pope, that he was no
painter, and beyond having learned the daUy
routine when he was a boy in Ghirlandaio's
workshop, we have no proof that he under
stood fresco-painting. There remain sketches

84 THE ROOF
which show that he first made his designs
on a very smaU scale, then drew them
larger from the model, and then prepared
his fuU-sized working drawing. The little
holes by which the outhne of these were
"pounced" on to the plaster can stiU be
traced, and also the marks of the naUs
which fastened the cartoons to the waU;
there even remains one of the original nails,
close to the figure of Ezekiel, and it can also
be seen how he marked in the muscles and
draperies, in many instances with the point
of a penknife. By turning it over, one
cartoon is made to do duty for two of the
pairs of boys who support the piers.1
It is evident that he intended at first in
the usual way to employ assistants, which
was one reason for making the cartoons
so careful, but, unlike Raphael and many
masters who made painting their profession,
he had no school of pupils working under
him and understanding his methods. His
friend Francesco Granacci, the painter of
1 AU these details are due to the researches of the late
Heath Wilson.

TROUBLES 85
Florence, sent him several artists, and the
letters which passed between him and
Michel Angelo stiU exist. But Michel
Angelo soon found that this plan would not
succeed. Their colouring and manner did
not harmonise with his own, and he speedUy
dismissed them and apphed himself single-
handed to his task. This does not imply
that he did not keep a body of helpers for
the more mechanical parts, to grind his
colours, trace the cartoons, and fill in the
architectural portions. Opinions are divided
as to the possibility of one man doing the
whole of the painting proper; but Michel
Angelo was a marveUous man, of great
industry, and a rapid worker. It is most
unlikely, setting aside the intrinsic harmony
of the whole, that if any one had seriously
assisted in such a famous work, his name as
a coadjutor should not be weU known.
During the time he was painting he was
much distracted by fairuly worries and by
hearing of the ill-behaviour of his worthless
brothers to his old father, whom he supported,
and to whom he was deeply devoted. He

86 THE ROOF
writes to him in August, wishing it were
possible to ride to Florence to look after him,
adding: "AU the labour which I have
endured has been more for your sake than
my own." He was weU aware, too, that
his enemies had urged his being employed
as a painter, in the fond hope that he would
fail. He knew this, and before beginning
he distrusted his own powers; but once
started, he cast aside aU cares, aU misgivings :
We cannot doubt that he discovered himself
to be fuUy equal to the task, and that there
must have been times when he knew the
joy and intoxication of supreme mastery and
creation. It was in the autumn of 1508 that he at
length began the painting. For some time
he found the practice of fresco-painting
difficult, and though there is no sign of
a prentice hand in any of the existing work,
it is easy to trace a progress to greater
freedom and perfection. Vasari relates his
despair when in the winter the damp ap
peared on some of his pictures ; this, which
arose from some defect in the lime, had to

PAYMENT 87
be set right, and caused further delay. He
writes to his father in great despondency,
saying that he gets no money from the
Pope, but he does not ask for it, as his
work makes no progress. The payment
which had been agreed upon for the initial
plan of the Twelve Apostles was three
thousand ducats. Vasari, however, men
tions a much larger sum, and it is reason
able to suppose that the later much more
elaborate design was more highly paid.
The Pope was very irregular in his pay
ments, and Michel Angelo often complains
bitterly of the difficulty he has in getting
money. As none of the other artists who
worked for Juhus suffered in the same
degree, it is supposed that they, with more
tact, timed their demands when the Pope
was in a good humour, but that Buonarroti's
irritable and uncompromising temper stood
in his way, and inclined Juhus to thwart him.
He gives a half-painful, half-comic account
of himself as he goes on. " Thanks to my
strained position, I have acquired a goitre.
I feel my brain going down my back, while

88 THE ROOF
my brush, ever dropping, makes a magnifi
cent, parti-coloured pavement of my face.
I cannot see where I am going. My mind
wiU dehver none but false or absurd judg
ments ; a crooked weapon cannot aim
straight."1 After three years of feverish work the
first half was finished. The old Pope
returned suddenly to Rome after a ten
months' absence, and paid him a visit on
the high scaffold, the painter respectfiiUy
assisting him up the steps. His admiration
of what he saw was unbounded, and he
was full of anxiety to show it to the
people. As the year wore on he became
impatient, especiaUy when he found Michel
Angelo pausing for a day or two, and he
exclaimed in half-jesting impatience : " Must
I then throw you from the scaffold ? " At
length Michel Angelo consented to open
the chapel for a few days. Perhaps he
wished to humour the old man, so near

1 " Rime di Michelangelo, ed. Guasti," p. 158. This is
in rhyme, and on the edge of the original is a caricature
of himself in the position he describes.

THE FIRST VIEW 89
the end of his life, between whom and
himself, notwithstanding all rubs, we can
gather that a sort of rough affection had
sprung up ; perhaps he was not sorry to
show the triumphant master of Urbino
and his foUowing, what he could do. On
the Feast of the Assumption, 15th August,
1511, the Pope came to view the uncovered
frescoes, and next day aU Rome — Raphael,
we may be sure, among the number —
thronged into the chapel. It thriUs us
even now to think of that day's exhibition :
the wonder and admiration of the pro
fessional rivals, the satisfaction of the old
Pope, and surely something of the pride
of victory in the man who had so strenu
ously fought against difficulty and dis
appointment. It says a great deal for
the artistic feeling of the day, that the
work should have been so immediately
and completely appreciated ; that coming
straight from the Stanze, the spectators
should at once have been seized by its
force — Raphael thanking God that he had
been born in the same century.
M

90 THE ROOF
Sixteen months of arduous labour fol
lowed. There is a story that Bramante,
furious at the triumph which foUowed the
exposure of the first part, urged the Pope
to let Raphael finish the ceihng; but the
Pope was fortunately too wise to be in
fluenced, and Michel Angelo's contract
was confirmed. The frescoes were finaUy
finished in the dying year of 1512, though
Michel Angelo had not worked aU the
four years without intermission ; he had
been to Florence to visit his father and
favourite brother, and had taken intervals
of rest and dehberation.
Just at the last, he writes to his " dearest
father," sending him money, and adds : " It
is enough to have bread and to Uve in the
faith of Christ, even as I do here, for I
Uve humbly, nor do I care for the Ufe, nor
for the honours of this world. I endure
great weariness." The Pope, by urging
him to work beyond his strength, and
capriciously withholding his just and hard-
earned payment, had added to the diffi
culties of his task; but at length he is

ORDER OF PAINTING 91
able to write, "I have finished the chapel
which I painted. The Pope is very well
satisfied." The ceiling was painted in sections, in
cluding the historical scenes, the Prophets
and Sibyls, the " Ignudi," or nude figures
which support the central scenes, and the
other decorative figures. At the last the
lunettes and triangles were added. Michel
Angelo began with the Deluge, but as a
matter of course had aU the cartoons pre
pared and the space exactly mapped out
beforehand. We can weU imagine that if he had
employed assistants and left the inter
mediate spaces to their fancy, the whole
would have been filled in with arabesques,
grotesques, musical mstruments, like the
loggie of Raphael; but we see the pre
eminence the human figure occupied in his
mind. Michel Angelo cares nothing for
landscape; only for man in every attitude,
beautiful form, lending itself to grand treat
ment. Klaczsko points out how entirely he avoids

92 THE ROOF
aU the conventions, types, and emblems of
Christian art — no wings to the angels, no
aureoles to the saints, no crown to the
Father. He casts aside aU legends and
traditions, which had lost their old simphcity
of significance, and become a mere hack
neyed repetition.
The Old Testament history had always
supphed favourite subjects for iUustration,
rich, fanciful, idyllic and picturesque. To
Savonarola, too, it had appealed, but in a
different way. The story of Noah, the
Prophets of Israel, Judea before the intro
duction of monarchical institutions, had aU
united to inspire that stern and eloquent
preaching to which Michel Angelo had
listened so earnestly, and now he takes the
Old Testament throughout as his inspiration.
He treats its stories in a solemn and sombre
fashion, suited to his own strong and melan
choly temperament. He becomes the very
Prophet or Seer of the Renaissance.
We wiU now examine the chief scenes.
Nine central panels fill the middle of the

THE ARRANGEMENT 93
roof, and first we notice the variety given to
the arrangement by the alternation of the
four large scenes with five smaUer ones.
These nine scenes may be divided into three
sections of three each. 1. The Creation of
the world. 2. The Creation and FaU of
Man. 3. The human sacrifice for sin, and
its faUure. In these are summed up the
whole preliminary act to the Birth of Christ.
1. The world, which was very good, man
and woman in all their first promise. 2.
The temptation and the imperfection of
humanity. 3. Man's struggle to regain
innocence by his own efforts, typified in
the sacrifice of Noah, the deluge making a
clean sweep of corruption, and leaving one
famUy to make a fresh start, and the faU of
Noah, expressing the hopelessness of man's
unaided effort. So are we brought to a
point where all is lost without a Saviour, as
yet unknown, whUe around are grouped
those sUent and colossal figures, searching
for the supreme moment for which the
universe is yearning.
1. — God dividing the Light from the

94 THE ROOF
Darkness. — Here we have chaos, which has
lain hitherto dim, stagnant and brooding.
As a strong wind chases the fogs, the
Divine Spirit, embodied in a form which
seems to fill the whole space, whirls through
it, bringing hfe and movement. The light
and darkness part, the world is alive. Time
goes forward on its long journey. "The
world is not yet, nor time nor space have
begun to be. From obscure and misty
depths an isolated figure emerges, wildly
sublime, as if astonished at its sohtude. It
is God, Who comes to unravel chaos. He
mounts from the infinite deep. He has
traversed the floods of silence. He emerges
on the surface of darkness, and He pro
nounces ' Let there be Light I ' " 1
In how smaU a space is the effect of
abandonment to movement rendered. The
free and hssome tossing of the arms, the
swirl of the drapery, the hurrying clouds of
air. As we stop now and again to take a
1 Bmile Montegret, "Philosophic de la Sixtine" (Eevue
ties Dens Mondes, 15th February 1870).

SUN AND MORN 95
comprehensive view of the whole roof, we
reaUse how much mystery and aerial feeling
it gains from the hght, soft colouring
employed. Michel Angelo was no colourist,
but had the whole been rich and definite as
a Venetian piece of work, the effect would
have been lost of the vast, dim space
peopled by these vague and suggestive
shapes. Nor does he condescend to deceive
the eye with illusions of foreshortening and
perspective, and his severe and simple
treatment gives far more of grandeur and
detachment. No. 2. — God creates the Luminaries. —
Day and night begin. The cherubs veil
their faces from the sun's radiance as it
passes out of sight, showing us only a trail
of its burning garment, and the moon
foUows on its silent way. Here God is a
different conception from the calm, serene
Deity of the ancient Greeks, or even from
the benign old man who represented the
First Person of the Trinity to mediaeval
minds. This fiery Being, with hair stream
ing back from a god-like brow, borne along

96 THE ROOF
as by a rushing mighty wind, is a God of
energy and action; the God of Israel, of
supreme direction and of grasp of detail,
with will and unfaltering purpose expressed
in every gesture, and with the elements and
the angels, as ministering spirits, waiting
upon His commands. " Fire and hail, snow
and vapours, wind and storm fulfilling His
word." 3. — God blesses the Earth. — " Thou visitest
the earth and blessest it; Thou makest it
very plenteous." Michel Angelo, who was
a diligent student of the Bible, must have
had this or some paraUel verse in his mind
as he drew this figure of Power and Good
ness, descending and, as it were, pouring
itself out in blessing upon the earth which
was rolling on its way beneath Him.
The world was created, fresh and perfect,
and this completed the first section of the
main design.
4. — The Creation of Adam. — In most of
the pictures by early Italian masters iUus-
trating this event, God animates Adam by
a flame of fire, or raises him by taking his

CREATION OF MAN 97
hand : here He communicates the electric
spark of hfe by His outstretched fingers,
and seems to draw Adam towards Him by
magnetic power. And here we are pene
trated at once with the sadness of the
picture. The exuberant joy and energy of
creation is past. The Eternal One looks
reluctant, almost apprehensive, as if weighed
upon by the out-look on aU man's future
destiny. Creator and created pause on the
threshold of that wonderful course of events
which were to be shaped by human life,
and look "aU along the mighty ages, all
adown the solemn time." The man wakes
to hve, to love, and to suffer. " There is no
elation in the son of earth at the moment of
such a magical awakening, no flash in the
eyes that have just opened upon a world ;
rather is there almost anguish in his gesture ;
he sinks exhausted, and in his large, sad gaze
is a dumb reproach."1 He hes out on the
purple hiUside stretching away into the
unknown world. It is much the same
attitude that Michel Angelo afterwards
1 Klaczsko: "Jules IL," p. 358.
N

98 THE ROOF
gives to his Dawn, in the Medici Chapel,
the woman who implores that she shaU not
be awakened while wrong and miseiy
endure. No one could have painted it who
had not felt the possibilities of waste and
weariness which life enfolds. We compare
this beautiful figure, almost irresistibly, with
that of the Theseus in the Elgin marbles,
the perfect Greek statue with the perfect
Christian painting, very much ahke in
attitude and in beauty of young, vigorous
form, but how divergent in spirit ! the one
dignified, passionless, calm, throned for ever
on Olympian heights ; the other fuU of glow
ing hfe, instinct with a pathetic appeal for
love and sympathy, doubting, hoping, daring.
WeU might Goethe write : " Phidias created
serene gods : Michel Angelo, suffering
heroes." The angels in these scenes have been de
scribed as being the manifest expressions of
the spirit. Gone are the dainty messengers,
with radiant faces, bright robes, and many-
coloured wings, who stand with musical
instruments and fluttering ribbons upon the

WISDOM 99
shining clouds, or play in and out of the
sunny gardens of Paradise ; these, as Renan
says,1 are from myriads of the sons of God,
surrounding Him like hving embodiments
of His thought. In this tableau a female
form presses close within the Father's arm,
and various suggestions have been made as
to its significance. M. JuUen Klaczsko 's is
an interesting interpretation. May it not
represent Wisdom as described in Proverbs
vni. 22 ?
Prov. viii. 22. The Lord possessed me in the begin
ning of his way, before his works of old.
23. I was set np rrom everlasting, from the begin
ning, or ever the earth was.
24. When there were no depths, I was brought
forth ; when there were no fountains abounding with
water. 25. Before the mountains were settled, before the
hills was I brought forth. . . .
27. When he prepared the heavens, I was there :
when he set a compass upon the face of the depth :
28. When he established the clouds above : when he
strengthened the fountains of the deep :
29. When he gave to the sea his decree, that the
waters should not pass his commandment : when he
appointed the foundations of the earth :
1 "Histoire d'Israel," iv. p. 164.

100 THE ROOF
30. Then I was by him, as one brought up with
him : and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always
before him.
5. — The Creation of Eve. — There is less
to detain us in the next fresco, though the
figure of Eve is a very beautiful one. It is
an entire contrast in spirit to that of Adam.
The conception of the first woman is a
simple and natural one. She who is to be
the mother of aU hving is a being fuU of
the joy of hfe. Happy, buoyant and fresh,
she brims over with gratitude to her Creator,
and hastens to throw herself, adoring, at His
feet. Michel Angelo's picture of woman
face to face with her Maker, pouring out
her love and thanksgiving in aU the
confidence of joyous affection, is a higher
one than that of MUton, that she should
only approach the highest through human
affection. The painter was never married, saying
that, "Art was his wife, and already too
strong for him," and his Ufe, pure and austere
in an unusual degree, had httle connection
with women. He has not given us many

EDEN 101
examples as full of soft and feminine quality
as this.
6. — The Temptation and Fall. — As a
scene, this is one of the most beautiful.
The space is filled with extraordinary grace
of line, without crowding. In the centre,
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
rises, spreading and stately. The serpent's
great coUs are twisted round its trunk, and
the EvU One, after the example of many a
mediaeval painter, and by the permission of
the early Church's book of rules for sacred
pictures, is given a woman's head and body.
WhUe Adam stretches out and grasps the
fruit with violent and irresistible longing,
Eve receives it straight from the serpent's
hand, as if between them were some subtle
mutual understanding, and her expression
and gesture, half-calculating, half-mechani
cal, is that of one who is counting the cost,
and who feels the fascination of the sin.
Never has Michel Angelo shown more
feeling for beauty than in these two figures ;
the line and sweep of both bodies is at once
grand and graceful, and the little head and

102 THE ROOF
up-turned face of Eve are full of loveliness.
Without apparent effort, the balance is very
strikingly kept between the two sides of the
picture, with the over-reaching arms, on
either side of Adam, of the Evil One and
the Destroying Angel. The painter has
contrived to fill the figure of Adam, as he
wanders out into the wild, with a world of
remorse and self-reproach ; while he gives to
Eve a mean, almost mahgnant air, and she
turns her head and seems to look back
longingly at the joys she has forfeited: a
not unnatural rendering by one who accepted
the story, in all its detaUs, with undoubting
faith. 7. — The Sacrifice of Noah.
8. — The Deluge.
9. — The Drunkenness of Noah.
Noah's sacrifice foUowed the deluge, and
was offered when he and his family came
out of the Ark ; but we see very clearly how
¦much more important the scene of the
Deluge was, and how immediately the
difficulty of making this one of the smaU,
alternating frescoes must have been reahsed,

THE DELUGE 103
so that Michel Angelo, who was the last
person to be bound by mere mechanical
conventions, in this instance, placed the
Deluge, which was so infinitely the fuUest
of dramatic interest, in the middle of the
two minor situations, and the three must
be considered in this way. The Deluge was
the first episode painted, and it has been
suggested that the smaUer scale of the
figures was at first intended to be carried
into every panel, but that the painter, not
liking the effect, increased the size in the
later ones. It seems hardly possible that
such a contention has been serious, or that
any one can reaUy think that Michel Angelo,
who made such careful measurements and
drew such elaborate cartoons, should have
done anything by chance, or should have
finished his scene without considering the
effect from below. In the Deluge it was
difficult to single out any special incident ;
and to give anything Uke the general survey
for which he wished, it was necessary to
make the figures smaU. As it is, the fresco
is fuU of tragic episodes. In the distance

104 THE ROOF
stands the ark, with the family of Noah at
work upon its wooden waUs. The waters
are rising aU round, and a wan and stormy
sky fades away in vague and misty hght.
In the middle a boat has put out ; it is
already filled to overcrowding, and those in
it are leaning out, and, with a wUd instinct
of self-preservation, are beating off the
unhappy ones who are clinging to the sides
and struggling with the waves. On the
high points of land that still remain un
covered, men and women are cowering
together. On one side they have run up
a forlorn shelter, from under which an old
white-bearded man and a young woman
hold out their arms to a man who is carry
ing another, who seems already to be a
corpse. The splendidly drawn group which
stands out boldly in front is massed round
a ragged tree, up which a young man has
clambered. Those clinging together beneath
him look up to him in envy. Up the steep
pitch from the devouring flood come persons
laden with household goods. Other men
have lost aU thought of aught but precious

THE SACRIFICE 105
life, and are staggering up, carrying their
wives. A mother holding her little child,
smiling, unconscious of fear, is looking
wistfuUy towards the comparative safety of
the tree ; another has thrown herself despair
ing on the ground, heedless of the child
crying behind her. Any conventional
tradition of the flood is thrown aside. It
might be a great catastrophe anywhere,
conveying aU the helplessness of humanity
in face of the forces of nature, aU the
strength of the primary passions, the great
reahties of hfe and death, and of love
as strong as death.
In the Sacrifice after the Deluge, we can
imagine that Buonarroti must have looked
long at the Jewish sacrifice which his great
feUow-townsman BotticeUi had left in the
Healing of the Leper ; but he has put on one
side aU that traditional magnificence which
would have been so great an anachronism
in his theme, and he seems inspired by classic
models. The men and women kneeling
before the altar, grasping the armful of
wood, hurrying forward with oil and offer-

106 THE ROOF
ings, may have been taken, more or less
consciously, from some of the Greek bas-
reliefs in Rome. The other incident of the
FaU of Noah is treated with great restraint ;
the heads of the three sons are turned away,
as in the Scriptural account, and through
the whole goes the mournful and piercing
thought — the thought of human weakness,
of the hopelessness of earthly retribution,
however severe, of the wrath of God, and
the misery of sinful man.
These central scenes worked out, it
remained for the painter to connect them
in a worthy and consistent manner, both
visibly and in spirit, with the rest of the
frescoes, and to make a harmonious whole.
The different compartments are set in
a painted architectural frame. The
balance is kept between the large and
smaU scenes by fiUing in the latter at
each corner with a figure sitting on a
pedestal. These are the famous " Ignudi,"
or nudes, and are among the finest
studies of the human form that even
Michel Angelo ever produced. They

THE "IGNUDI" 107
might be taken to personify life in aU its
exuberance — sad, calm, apprehensive, and
merry — crowned with vine leaves, or carry
ing sheaves of the oak leaves of Rovere.
We must go back to classic^lays, and to the
best of these, for anything so grand and so
impersonal. "In this region of pure
plastics, art drops the wand of the inter
preter, and aUows physical beauty to be a
law unto itself."1 One of the finest of aU
is the young man at the right-hand corner
of Fresco I. He sits with the perfect ease
of flawless strength, in an attitude almost
exactly resembling that of the Theseus
(which Michel Angelo could never have
seen). One, near Fresco IX., has faUen
away, leaving only a beautiful fragment of
head, and the ceihng has been plastered
over. Each pair of figures holds between
them a huge medal. These, which are now
quite black, were once briUiant with gilding.
We can trace upon them such scenes as the
Sacrifice of Abraham, the Death of Abel and
of Absalom, and the Emperor Barbarossa
1 Ruskin.

108 THE ROOF
on his knees before Pope Alexander III.
The seat of each "ignudo" is supported by a
pair of caryatid forms in monochrome, and
the space between each of these pedestals
provides an architectural setting for the
figures, in heroic size, of the Prophets and
Sibyls.1 Of aU the great Florentine's work, nothing
has made his name more famous than these
ten stately figures, to which he has given
names, and which he has succeeded in en
dowing with such extraordinary personality
and individuality, that they haunt us aU
our hves. The arrangement wiU be easfly
understood from the plan. It may very
weU be that, in painting these, Michel
Angelo was influenced by the Pope's first
wish to have single figures of the Apostles,
and though he had rejected the suggestion,
he shows what an effect he is able to
produce by means of single figures, how
capable he is of endowing them with
1 Michel Angelo has often been described as a sculptor
who painted; any of these single figures may well be
compared with the statue of Moses in S. Pietro in
Vincolo.

THE SIBYLS 109
grandeur and of rescuing them from mono
tony. The idea of introducing the Sibyls
was no new one. Hardly a painter of note
of the Renaissance but had left his concep
tion of them. Giotto paints them in the
Church of the Arena; Castagno has left
them on the waUs of S. ApoUonia ; Perugino
on those of the Cambio ; a series had been
completed under Melozzo for the Ducal
Palace at Urbino; Pintoricchio drew them
again and again in the Borgia Apartments,
in Santa Maria del Popolo, at SpeUo. A
long series of artists had engraved them and
their cabalistic sayings on the floor of the
great Cathedral at Siena. We look at them
aU, and compare them and study their
artistic quahties, the pose and line of dress
and drapery, we recognise their books of
sacred writings, and we visit the Temple
of the Sibyl at Tivoh, or the place where
her altar stood in Ara Cceli, and we become
familiar with the Sibyls in Itahan art ; but
how often do we stop to consider what we
reaUy know of them — who they were, how
they came into art and into religion, how

110 THE ROOF
far they were authentic beings, and what
was their place in ancient faith?
Among them aU, the Cumaean Sibyl
alone seems to have certainly existed.
Her temple was in a rock at Cumae, near
Naples, the furthest point reached by
the old civihsation of Greece. Eighteen
hundred years ago, Justin Martyr and
Pausanias speak of a round cinerary urn
being found here, which was said to contain
her ashes. Justin Martyr has left us an
account of her cave as he saw it. She
had lived nearly six hundred years before
his time, but tradition was very explicit
as to her utterances, some of which remain
to us, and are sufficiently remarkable.
Greece knew also of a Delphic, an
Erythraean, a Phrygian, and a HeUespontine
Sibyl, but we cannot say if they were
merely legendary.1 A legend soon asso
ciates the Cumaaan Sibyl with the building
of the Temple of Juno, on the Capitoline
1 Aristotle and Plato only knew of one. Heraclides, a
pupil of Plato, is the first to distinguish several.
According to researches of Klausen, the oldest collection
of Greek sayings was about the time of Solon and Cyrus.

THE SIBYLLINE BOOKS 111
HiU, in the Etruscan dynasty. A myste
rious woman, beheved to be Deiphobe,
the Cumaean Sibyl, daughter of Circe
and Glaucus, is said to have appeared to
Tarquin, and offered him for a certain price
her prophecies in nine books. Tarquin,
ignorant of the value of the books, refused
to buy them. She departed and burned
three of them, and then offered the re
mainder at the same price. Tarquin again
refused, when she burnt three more, and
returning the third time made the same
demand. The king was struck by this,
and consulted the augurs, who recom
mended that the books should be bought,
after which the Sibyl vanished. So much is
true of this legend, that the SibyUine Books
written in Greek, at that time the tongue of
South Italy, did reaUy exist, and were held
in the greatest veneration. They were
buried in a stone chest in the ground in
the Temple of Juno, and consulted in
times of public danger and calamity. From
ten to fifteen guards of high rank were
responsible for their safety. When the

112 THE ROOF
Capitol was burned in the Marsic War,
82 B.C., they perished in the flames. Am
bassadors were sent to Greece and Asia
Minor to try to recover some of the oracles,
and in Erythraea and Samos a number of
mystic verses were found. These were
placed in the Temple of ApoUo on the
Palatine, but were never venerated hke
the old coUection. The consultation of
them feU into disuse, and, at last, they
were publicly burned by Stilicho, about
400 A.D.
These oracles were the only authoritative
writings possessed by the Greeks, and
formed their sacred scriptures. They were
inscribed on palm leaves, and it is to this
that Virgil aUudes, when he speaks of the
sayings of the Cumaean SybU being written
on the leaves of the forest. When counsel
was needed, a leaf was drawn at random,
and the custom of the Sortes VirgilianxB is
often aUuded to by classic authors. The
earhest bronze statues in Rome were those
of the Sibyls placed in the middle of the
Forum. One, whom Rome knew as the

VIRGIL 113
Tiburtine Sibyl, is said to have appeared to
Augustus, and to have foretold the great
ness and the faU of Rome, and the dim old
Church of Ara Cceli, on the site of the
Temple of Jupiter, derives its name from
a Roman altar bearing the inscription, " Ara
Primo-geniti." The few fragments of the
genuine Sibylline Books which remain are
to be found in the writings of Ovid and
VirgU. Virgil speaks of the prophecy of
one, that a ChUd should be born whose
advent should bring peace to the world.
VirgU was, in effect, speaking of the chUd
of a Roman consul, and of the time of
prosperity which was always beheved to
accompany the dawn of a new century, but
to the Christian world after its conversion
these words seemed a manifest inspiration.
In the first, second, and third centuries,
stories of the Sibyls multiphed, and their
numbers increased. We now hear of a
Samian, a Persian, a Libyan, a Cimmerian
Sibyl. The early sayings, which were of
a historical and political character, were
ignored by the mediaeval world. Instead,

114 THE ROOF
we have pseudo-prophecies, belonging to
the pseudo - Johannine hterature. These
refer almost exclusively to the Christian
era, and profess to foreteU the birth of a
Saviour and other Divine events. They had
an immense circulation, and were accepted
by the early Church as genuine. There
also arose a hterature of pre - Christian
Judaism, attributed to the inspired women,
and written, like the genuine Sibylline
Books, in the metrical form, which the
old Greek traditions had consecrated to re
ligious use, and in style closely resembling
religious prophecies.
We possess a large coUection of the
Jewish and pseudo- Christian oracles. These
were coUected by a writer of the seventh
century, and were found in the eighteenth
century in the Vatican archives. They date
from 124 b.c. down to the seventh century.
The early ones have interesting connection
with other apocryphal Jewish writings, such
as the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Apoca
lypse of Henoch, and Book of Jubilees.
The earher books show only a faint and

THE EARLY CHURCH 115
feeble hope of a Messiah, though they touch
on a King to be sent by God, who will
destroy war and bring prosperity to Israel.
Later ones give the history of Christ mixed
with that of Roman Emperors.
In the early controversies between Pagans
and Christians, the authority of the Sibyls
was often cited. Christian theologians of
the second century read their sayings with
awe and reverence, and rehed on them as
proofs to support their contentions. Clement
of Alexandria speaks of the Cumaean Sibyl
as a true prophetess, and St. Augustine
includes her among those who belong to the
City of God. The idea of the Sibyls'
sacred character continued for some centuries
in the Christian Church, and in processions
of witnesses for the faith they had a place
beside the prophets. In the Middle Ages
they seem to have been forgotten, but
with the dawn of the Renaissance they were
rehabilitated, in common with other classic
personages, and in the thirteenth century
they appear again in art. However over
laid with legend, superstition, or imposture,

116 THE ROOF
a nucleus in the story of the early Sibyls
remains fuU of interest. It is at least
authentic that in that remote past, a woman
or women, existed, who endeavoured to
prophesy what would happen in a thousand
years, who realised that the world had a
long and eventful future in store, who
stretched forward to another age, and fore
saw the dawn of a wider day. Such a
spirit, hopeful, and fuU of faith, makes a
wonderful appeal to the imagination, and
belongs to the more exalted side of a
Pagan religion.
Perugino and Pintoricchio had painted
graceful decorative figures under the old
classic names. Michel Angelo makes
them sublime in Titanic grandeur. Each
holds the roU, her traditional attribute, and
it forms a link between the isolated figures.
On the right of the altar the Libyan
Goddess, young and beautiful, lifts her book
and turns her head, glancing back over her
shoulder, a type of vigorous life and youth
devoted gladly to study and research.
Beyond, alternately with one of the

THE PROPHETS 117
prophets, is the Great Seer of Cumae, poring
over the fateful leaves, a being of vast and
masculine form, and in contrast, the beauti
ful head of the Sibyl of Delphi, holding her
roU carelessly, and looking out with inspired
eyes at the secrets of the future. On the
other side, whUe her attendant putto trims
the burning lamp, the Erythraean Sibyl
calmly turns the leaves of her volume, and
pauses as if thinking over what she has
read, and the figure of her of Persia, clad
from head to foot in white, graceful in the
beauty of beautiful old age, pores over
the mystic tablets.
Alternately with the Sibyls are the
prophets. Immediately over the altar the
wonderfuUy foreshortened figure of Jonas
proves how weU Michel Angelo might, if
he had chosen, have forecast the feats of a
Correggio or a Tiepolo. Jonah is shadowed
by the gourd, and behind him is what we
are fain to look upon as a symbolical whale,
introduced here as a type of the Resurrec
tion. On the right side of the altar the
fresco of the prophet Daniel is of little

118 THE ROOF
importance ; the head and the whole of the
arm have been replastered and repainted,
and we cannot guess what was the original
effect. The other prophet on this side is
one of the most perfect. Is there anything
in art more true and subtle than the ex
pression in the head and hand of Isaiah ?
Behind him, the young boy-angel throws
back his arm with a gesture which compels
attention, full of energetic assurance and
confident indication, and Isaiah closes his
book, turns his head half aside, and listens,
speU - bound — hstens to the far-off, faint
strain, the first whisper of the immense hope
for the human race, the first revelation to a
great soul of the Divine purpose ; a promise
almost too exquisite for behef, yet growing
on the ear to certainty. So may we have
heard in some dim cathedral aisle, the thin,
sUver note stealing on the silence : —
Isa. xl. 1, 2. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith
your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto
her, that her warfare is accomplished, and her iniquity
is pardoned ; for she hath received at the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.

Michel Angelo. 1

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 118-

LAMENTATIONS 119
The grand figure of Jeremiah on the left
side of the altar is a picture of depression,
almost of despair. Lost in thought, absorbed
in contemplation of the sufferings of Zion, he
is an illustration of his own description in
Lamentations.
Lam. ii. 10. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit
upon the ground, and keep silence : they have cast dust
upon their heads; they have girded themselves with
sackcloth. So Jeremiah may have sat, thinking of
the young chUdren perishing in the streets
of Jerusalem, of the mothers driven by
famine to eat their offspring, of the virgins
and young men carried away captive, and
himself powerless to help or to see a way of
escape. Lam. v. 17. For this our heart is faint ; for these
things our eyes are dim.
18. Because of the mountain of Zion, which is
desolate, the foxes walk upon it. . . .
20. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and for
sake us so long time ?
21. Turn us unto thee, 0 Lord, and we shall be
turned ; renew our days as of old.
22. But thou hast utterly rejected us ; thou art veiy
wroth with us.

120 THE ROOF
Ezekiel foUows, fuU of fiery visions and
parable, and Joel musing over the blessed
words of promise.
Joel iii. 16. . . . The Lord will be the hope of his
people, and the strength of the children of Israel.
17. So shall ye know that I am the Lord your God
dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain : then shall
Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass
through her any more. . . .
21. Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from
generation to generation.
These great creations personify the faith
and hope of the human race through aU
those centuries of doubt and darkness, and
the whole is a picture of the human inteUect
at work, struggling against the darkness, in
aU the aspects of thought; study, medita
tion, research, intuition, discouragement,
ecstasy, that cycle of emotions which has
marked every stretching of great minds
towards the hght, and which must have
spoken strongly to a mind like Michel
Angelo's. It is striking that whUe these figures are
drawn with such a sweep of design, and such
large hnes, the painting is fine and soft,

THE TRIANGLES 121
faces, draperies, and veils being finished with
the utmost deUcacy.1 In pale harmonious
colours, dim reds and blues, faint greens
and greys, the mysterious beings soar above
us on the time-worn vaulting, and as we
look, we seem to hear the words of a
Scandinavian bard —
" Three things diminish day by day,
Hatred, injustice, ignorance.
Three things strengthen day by day,
Love, science, justice.
Three things continually diminish,
Darkness, error, Death.
Three things continually grow,
Light, truth, life."
Michel Angelo has further introduced at
each corner of the vault, in a large triangular
frame, a leading event in the history of the
Israehtes, showing God's protection of His
chosen people. On the left side of the door
we have David slaying Goliath. It is
interesting to contrast this representation of
David with the famous statue which had
1 Large-sized photographs show that the figures are
modelled with loose, easy line- work, quite startling in the
power and knowledge of form it reveals. — C. J. Herringham,
« Cennino Cennini," p. 219. Q

122 THE ROOF
long before been erected in Florence. There
David stands calm and confident, " with aU
the verses of the Psalms in his eyes." Here
he sweeps down upon his enemy with an
irresistible torrent of supernatural strength.
Michel Angelo has shown his skUl in
portraying a moment — we can almost hear
the whistle of the sword through the air,
and feel the heave of the great giant, before
his quivering hmbs relax in death.
Opposite is a group of intense tragedy.
Judith has accomphshed her terrible mission.
She leaves the chamber, and she and her
maid prepare to fly with their ghastly
burden. The two women's figures are
thrown out against the background ; within
lies the dim room and that silent Thing.
She looks back for a moment, and what a
moment it is ! Holding their breath, they
look and listen — was aU indeed so silent ?
Did it move again, or was it only the sighing
of the night wind through the tented canopy?
The tension is horrible, and yet besides, the
painter has contrived to convey, in that
turned head, that long look, some suggestion

JUDITH.

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 122.

THE ANCESTORS OF CHRIST 123
of momentary reaction from stern purpose
at sight of such a wreck of noble manhood.
Instead of a vulgarly exultant murderess, we
see the instrument of the Lord, but yet a
woman. On either side of the altar is the death of
Haman and the lifting up of the brazen
serpent, the triumph of the Jews over
their enemy and the sacrifice for sin — in
each the thought, " So shaU the Son of Man
be lifted up." In the brazen serpent we see
the inspiration of the Laocoon, so much
suffering of mind and body, such terror and
pity within so smaU a space.
In the eight smaU triangular compart
ments, four of which run down each side of
the roof, are the groups which are known as
the ancestors of Christ. The artists of the
early Church and the Middle Ages have
given us different conceptions of these.
In the Mosaics at Ravenna or in Gothic
statues, they give us long processions
of figures with diadems and sceptres,
"Princes of the House of Judah," but
Michel Angelo, as if taking the words of

124 THE ROOF
Savonarola, " The poor are the true farmly
of Christ," has shown us generations of
humble people, who in poverty, obscurity,
and suffering awaited the coming of a
Saviour. Here were famihes hving out
their appointed time, each one a prototype
of the Holy Household of Bethlehem, some
times content with daUy toU, sometimes
bowing the head in weariness, seeing no
hope or help beyond this short Ufe of sorrow
and disappointment; widowed, seeking
solace in the clasp of httle chUdren, or
again, as in the figure between the Libyan
Sibyl and Daniel, looking with asking eyes
into the future, just as the Sibyl was doing
in her cave at Cumae. Into these smaU
triangles Michel Angelo has brought some
beautiful groups and single figures — the
woman in green with plaits wound round
her head, beyond the Cumaean Sibyl, the
mother holding her chUd in her arms in the
next group, or she on the opposite side who
holds the httle face in her two hands and
bends to kiss it ; almost every one gives us
some new picture, true and touching, of

THE LUNETTES 125
mother love and famUy life and of the
charm of childhood. These homely,
intimate scenes are a link between the
Divine and human, coming down from the
heights of imagination and tragic expression,
to remind us that day by day the stream of
life was flowing by — day by day, year by
year, generation after generation, as the
long-waited-for drew near.
In the lunettes over the windows he
gives us as by a sort of reaction the
common things of every day. A woman
looks into a mirror, a young man leans
back reading. A fierce-eyed man, robed
and hooded, might be Saul with the young
David, and opposite him is a woman wind
ing wool on just such a stand as you may
see any day in an Itahan village. A mother
sits by her sick chUd and holds one dead in
her arms, a child stretches over its mother's
shoulder for its evening meal, a man leans
his head on his knee and hangs his arm by
his side in the lax abandonment of sound
sleep. An old pUgrim prepares to go
forward on a journey, a woman begins to

126 THE ROOF
wash the boy at her knee, and between them
come figures of old men wrapped in medita
tion who might compare with portraits by
Titian. It is difficult to say if Michel
Angelo meant anything by these groups, if
he had any intention in his mind, if it was
caprice that guided him in his choice, or if
he intended merely to suggest the multi
coloured variety of human events, trivial
and weighty, which fiUed the hves of men,
then, as now.
It is said that the Pope wished the chapel
to be enriched with gold, and found fault
with it for being poor in colour, and that
Michel Angelo answered : " Those painted
here were poor also, they were devout and
despised riches." It was intended to gild
the pedestals of the Ignudi, but this was
never carried out, but the great painter
laid down his brush at last, and could say
that the Pope was satisfied, and we, for our
part, as we gather up the whole scheme in
its outline and its details, may weU "feel
our spirit burdened with the weight of
thought of Michel Angelo."

THE LAST JUDGMENT.
Twenty-three years passed away. Pope
Clement, just before bis death, began
negotiations with Michel Angelo for
painting the Last Judgment. Every
conspicuous waU in the Vatican had been
adorned, and the example had been set
by Raphael's employers of sweeping away
the work of his predecessors to make
room for the new school. The work of
Perugino and his school was too recent for
veneration, and was despised for its want of
science. Clement, too, seeing the admira
tion which the Sixtine Chapel excited, may
have wished to associate his name with
those of Sixtus and Juhus, and it was by
his special wish that the altar wall was
fixed upon to receive a scene which had
generaUy been placed at the west end of a
127

128 THE LAST JUDGMENT
church. On his death in 1534, Alexander
Farnese became Pope, as Paul III., and,
having inspected the designs and cartoons
in progress, he ordered the work to go on.
Negotiations occupied some months, and
careful preparations were made. Peru-
gino's Assumption with the Nativity and
Finding of the Infant Moses, on either
side, were ruthlessly sacrificed. The two
windows were blocked up, and Vasari relates
that the whole waU was refined with bricks,
and constructed to lean forward a httle at
the top, so that dust might he less easUy
on the picture. A year later Pope Paul
signed a brief, nominating Michel Angelo
as Chief Architect, Painter, and Sculptor
of the Apostohc Palace, at a salary of 1200
golden crowns a year.
It is curious that the moment when
Michel Angelo was contemplating the
sternest of aU his creations, was that in
which he formed what his contemporary
biographer, Ascanio Condivi, caUs "that
most pure and dehghtful friendship" with
Vittoria Colonna, a friendship which lasted

VITTORIA COLONNA 129
eleven years, and had such a softening and
cheering influence upon his life. At this
time Vittoria was forty-five years old, and
had for ten years been the widow of the
Marquis of Pescara, to whose memory she
was devoted. A brilliant woman of high
culture and poetical feeling, with unbounded
appreciation of Michel Angelo's genius, it
is easy to gather from their correspondence,
that she gave him, what he never had known
before, affectionate sympathy, tactful com
prehension, the companionable friendship
of a dehghtful woman, which must have
been as soothing as it was new to the old
painter. At this time he painted for her
"a sweet and tender picture" of Christ,
and she receiving it, promises to pray for
his success in his task.
It was some time in 1535 that the great
fresco was begun. 1536, the greater part
of 1537 passed away, and it was stiU in
progress. Its fame had spread over Italy,
and in 1536 Michel Angelo received a
letter from Pietro Aretino, the satirist, the
profligate companion of Titian, in which he
R

130 THE LAST JUDGMENT
sets forth his ideas of the treatment such a
subject requires. Underlying aU his pages
of suggestions is the design of obtaining
from the painter the gift of one of his works,
of which Aretino well knew the value.
Michel Angelo's answer is fuU of courteously
vefied sarcasm.
" I have experienced both joy and sorrow
at receiving your letter," he writes, "joy
that you, who are so unique a genius, should
write to me, and sorrow inasmuch as having
completed a great part of the picture, I
cannot avaU myself of your imagination,
which is so just that, had Doomsday come,
and had you actuaUy seen it, no words could
describe it better than yours."
A great many masters had dealt with
the same subject — Giotto, Orcagna, Fra
Angehco and their foUowers, but their
rendering had always had in it a mixture
of the fairy tale and the almost ludicrous.
The nearest in point of time was the
splendid conception left by SignoreUi thirty-
seven years before , in the Cathedral at
Orvieto. No visit of Michel Angelo to

SIGNORELLI AND DANTE 131
Orvieto is recorded, but the fame of this
masterpiece must have attracted him to a
city which lay on the direct route from
Tuscany to Rome, and it does not need
Vasari to teU us that "Michel Angelo
studied the works of SignoreUi, as every one
may see."
His admiration for and knowledge of
Dante shaped his scheme. It is said that
his copy of the " Divine Comedy " was illus
trated on the margins with his ideas of
the poet's characters. He is as energetic,
but less violent than SignoreUi, and succeeds
in elevating his subjects into the subhme.
His profound studies of hfe stood him in
good stead, for, whUe he is said to have
dispensed in great measure with models, no
fault has been found with his drawing. On
the other hand, such a mass of nudities
has been objected to as unsuited to the
sanctity of the place. Successive popes
proposed to efface the great work; finaUy
Pius IV. employed Daniele da Volterra to
clothe a number of the figures, a commission
which earned him the nickname of the

132 THE LAST JUDGMENT
"Breeches-maker." This wholesale altera
tion has naturally upset the balance and
destroyed the harmony of the composition.
The smoke from altar-lights and from the
burning of documents has combined with
the dust and dirt of centuries to inflict
further injuries, so that what we see is
hardly more than a great phantom, partly
travestied, of what the master originaUy
bequeathed. The first impression of the Last Judg
ment is a mass of figures, indistinct, incom
prehensible, blackened and antagonistic to
all one's prejudices in favour of the beauti
ful or the religious. Perhaps it never
becomes dear to us for its sentiment. To
the end, we look on it more as a stupendous
tour de force in the realms of art than as
a rehgious scene; and yet there is much
in it to appeal to the emotions as weU
as to our artistic sense. The architectural
framework, which has been so carefully
planned to enclose the ceihng figures, is
here omitted, and the whole has a bare,
unfinished look which accentuates more

THE " INSTRUMENTS " 133
strongly the sudden change in the scale of
the figures.
Let us first disentangle it from confusion,
confusion which is only apparent, for it is
really aU arranged in the most careful and
symmetrical order.
In the arches at the top, on either side,
are two groups: the angels with the in
struments of the Passion. While we
recognise that Michel Angelo saw in all
the groups great opportunities for gratifying
his enthusiasm for the nude, there are,
besides, figures and faces which prove how
strong, too, was the emotional feeling with
which he worked. He has cast aside here
aU recoUections of peaceful, pitying saints,
looking pensively at the sacred relics. The
dear instruments of the Master's Passion
are being received into Heaven by the host
of sinless servants and messengers who were
with Him before His earthly Ufe, with a
very dehrium of welcome and honour.
Those who hail the return from battle of
a victorious chief may, borne out of them
selves with exultation, kiss his war-horse,

134 THE LAST JUDGMENT
his sword, his armour. With such a spirit
intensified, these splendid young men,
without wings or haloes, but upborne by
the rushing air, bear away the cross and
column. They cling to the visible tokens
of the Great Sacrifice, each one striving to
be nearest. One throws himself at the foot
of the cross and rests it on his head ; two
magnificent young figures hold up the
column, and one of them, whUe clasping
it in his arms, looks up at it in adoring love
and reverence. On the left, others, bearing
the crown and nails with ineffable tender
ness, fly towards the throne. On the right,
fresh figures are sweeping forward, eager to
have their part in transporting the beloved
burden. The storm of movement, the
unanimity of overpowering feeling with
splendid variety of action, as the angels
hurl themselves through the cloudy space,
and pour out their devotion on these
inanimate sharers of their Master's agony,
are rendered with a courage and a whole-
heartedness which alone could justify so
exceptional a treatment.

Michel Angelo. 1

ANGELS WITH INSTRUMENTS OF THE PASSION (LAST JUDGMENT).

[Photo, Alinari.
[To face page 134.

CHRIST AS JUDGE 135
In the centre, immediately below, sits the
figure of the Judge of aU men. Close
beside Him is His mother; aU around are
gathered the Apostles and Prophets, the
Patriarchs and Saints, with a group of the
Blessed beyond, on either hand. In the
space below, the angels thunder forth the
caU to Judgment. On their right, a cloud
of the redeemed are rising towards Paradise ;
on the left, the doomed faU headlong. On
the plain below, the dead are breaking out
of the earth on one side, while, on the other,
a boat lies at the dread ferry to the nether
world. Christ, here, is no tender, merciful
Saviour, sad and regretful; He is the
stern, inexorable Judge, nearer akin to
Jove hurling the thunderbolts than to a
Christian ideal. The colossal figure, the
unmoved face, the relentless gesture, aU
proclaim that the Day of Grace is past, the
Day of Reckoning at hand. Michel
Angelo was penetrated to the heart with
the sin, the tyranny, that he saw around
him, the ruin of his own beloved city by

136 THE LAST JUDGMENT
treachery and corruption, a retrogression of
good and a triumph of evil in the world,
against which the few faint struggles and
protests he could make were powerless,
voiceless, and he poured out his heart here.
Here was the ultimate tribunal, here was
retribution and power before which all
earthly power must bow; here was what
might make the most reckless pause, the
wicked tremble, and the wretched hope.
AU was dark, all was cruel; God's face
seemed hid, and tyranny triumphed over
light and liberty ; but the end was not yet.
A reckoning would come for these things,
and who should be afraid upon whose side
the Lord would be in that day ? No gentle
Saviour could have so expressed the
yearning that must have been in the
hearts of aU good men for a tower of
strength, a shelter from the storm, an
avenger of the wronged. So, too, aU the
saints look upwards, as if offering, not only
their sufferings at the foot of the throne,
but reminding Christ of their persecutors.
St. Bartholomew holds up his knife, and his

Michel Angelo. 1

CHRIST AS JUDGE (LAST JUDGMENT),

[Photo, Anderson.
[To face page 136.

THE SAINTS 137
skin traUs from his hand ; St. Lawrence has
his gridiron on his shoulder; St. Peter,
offering the great keys, seems to say that
he has been faithful to his trust. On the
extreme right, St. Catherine bends over her
wheel ; St. Blaise grasps his carding combs,
and St. Sebastian his arrows ; whUe Simon
of Cyrene, one of the grandest forms,
shoulders the cross. Adam and Eve are
prominent figures on the left side, and
above, on either hand, a throng of the
Blessed stretch towards the throne, or look
into one another's eyes. A daughter clings
about the knees of a mother, who clasps
her, looking upward; others seem as if
resting after their flight heavenward. On
the right, a young man turns and leans
backward to some one who comes to him
through the crowd ; and further behind are
two couples who, regardless of aU else, are
locked in a fast embrace, or straining to meet
each other's kiss, deaf and blind to the
Judgment around them, and conscious only
of the rapture of reunion. Below the
trumpeters, who spend themselves in a
s

138 THE LAST JUDGMENT
tremendous blast, sits a calm figure, leaning
forward and looking down at the rising
dead as if recognising each face. The
recording angel this, bearing the Book upon
his knees.
Those who rise upwards on our left (the
right hand of the throne) are, some soaring
exultantly, borne on high without a mis
giving, some helped by friends and kindred,
others just managing to struggle up, drawn
by a rosary, one or two drowned in a vision
of ecstasy, some looking anxiously down
wards to see if loved ones are foUowing.
The figures of an old man and woman look
from a sort of balcony, and hold out
welcoming hands to a young man who
flies towards them. Below, the dead
struggle out of the earth at that shriU
summons ; one, with outstretched arms,
seems to be darting straight to the feet of
Christ from the grave. They climb out,
shrouded, dizzy, stupefied, gasping for air,
skeletons not yet clothed upon with flesh ;
aU around them is in a twilight, but aU are
making for the light that faUs from on

A LOST SOUL 139
High. Opposite, is the mass of despairing
forms, hurled downwards by avenging
angels. Conspicuous amongst them is one
man, half his face covered by his hand,
whUe, with a ghastly expression, he stares
into vacancy. A fiend is clutching him,
but he does not seem to feel the grasp ; aU
sensation is lost in a moment of dreadful
introspection, of the recognition of irre
vocable loss, and of terrible awakening
to reahty. It brings to one Rossetti's
words : — " The Lost Days of my Life.
I do not see them now, but after death,
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self ; with low, last breath,
' I am thyself, what hast thou done to me ?
' And I, and I, thyself,' so each one sayeth,
'And thou thyself to all eternity.' "
Below are the boat, and the demon
ferryman —
" Charon, demoniac form,
With eyes of burning coal collects them all,
Beckoning, and each that lingers, with his oar
Strikes."— Inf. iii.

140 THE LAST JUDGMENT
and the appaUed looks on the faces of those
who close their ears to shut out the sounds
that greet them, or stare forward at the
gulf into which they are about to plunge.
It was a stern and unflinching reminder to
aU those to whom such a material heU was
a certainty, which scarcely a whisper of
doubt had as yet assaUed.
At the edge of the waU, above the door
which leads to the sacristy, stands Minos, as
Dante describes him, with long ass's ears,
and a snake coUed round his body. This
is a likeness of Biagio da Cesena, Chamber
lain to the Pope, who, having angered
Michel Angelo by declaring that the fresco
was only fit for a house of ill-fame, was
punished in this way by the painter, who
has painted fissures in the waU just over his
head, as if it were about to faU upon him.
Biagio, according to the weU-known story,
was very indignant, and appealed to the
Pope to have the fresco altered ; but Paul
III., with some humour, refused to interfere,
saying if the artist had placed him in
Purgatory he might have been released, but

Michel Angelo.]

THE LAST TRUMP (LAST JUDGMENT).

[Photo, Anderson.
[To face page 140.

THE HUMAN FORM DIVINE 141
even the Pope's power could not take him
out of HeU; so there we stUl see him, a
middle-aged gentleman, of respectable and
even benign appearance, looking very iU
at ease in his incongruous position.
To artists, the drawing of aU these forms
in every attitude is a perpetual study of
limb and muscle, of foreshortening and
movement, and of scale of size. The whole
shows a knowledge of anatomy, of values, of
effect and grouping which is almost over
powering. The qualities which were to Michel
Angelo the very essence of art, are concen
trated in this last great work. The signifi
cance of the nude body, in which every
ripple of skin and play of muscle could
be given, was grasped by him as by no one
else. Other great Florentines had studied
it as a science, and bequeathed to him the
result of their study, and Michel Angelo
felt it as the old sculptors of Greece felt it —
"The dream of a great soul inhabiting a
beautiful body; an ideal of beauty and
force, a vision of a glorious, but possible

142 THE LAST JUDGMENT
humanity."1 AU who have grasped Mr.
Berenson's fascinating theory of tactUe
values, wiU understand how strong is the
hfe-communicating quahty of this work, and
wiU recognise how distinctly their own
energies, their own muscles, respond to the
pictured movements. Michel Angelo gives
us, too, a tactile value of the spirit. There
are many forms from his brush under this
roof that seem, as we look, to strengthen
and to uplift, to give a wider outlook upon
hfe, to preach a sterner purity, and to sweep
aside the mean and trivial. Further his
grand ideals led him and ever further, till
having preached the best he knew, he
writes in his last days : —
" Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul, that turns to His great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were stretched."
It is at High Mass that we ought to see
the Chapel in fuU significance. Then the
acolytes kneel with incense before the altar,
and the Pope sits upon the throne with
1 Berenson, " Florentine Painters, " p. 89.

"THE ONE FAR-OFF, DIVINE EVENT" 143
cardinals and bishops gathered round. The
pictures look down from the waUs, they do
their part in carrying the mind back to
the remote dawn of the great scheme of
Redemption, and as the Host is raised on
high, it bears on into the future a hving
and ever present Reality.

APPENDIX

THE TAPESTRIES AND CARTOONS
The Sixtine Chapel is divided into two portions by an
exquisitely carved marble screen, presumably the work
of Andrea Bregno, the Florentine, who was for many
years in Rome, working on monuments in S. Maria del
Popolo, and whose hand may be seen again in the rich
cornices of the Borgia Apartments. The lower walls
were draped in tapestries, and to recall the appearance
which the chapel finally presented, we should go to the
Galleria degli Arazzi in the Vatican (open Wed., 10-3),
where they now hang; or, if time presses, we may instead
examine in detail the original cartoons from which they
were worked, and which are now in the South Kensing
ton Museum.
It was yet another Pope, Leo X., almost as munificent
a patron of the arts as Sixtine or Julius had been, who
gave the order for these. The art of tapestry weaving
had been brought to great perfection in Flanders, and
the Flemish workshops were overwhelmed with orders
from Italy. The storehouses of the Vatican were
T i«

146 APPENDIX
packed with these rich tissues, but the Pope determined
to have a fresh set for his beautiful chapel, the designs
for which were to be drawn in Italy and sent to Flanders,
where the tapestries were to be woven. The subject,
which was, no doubt, decided upon by Leo and his
advisers, was to be the Calling of Peter, and scenes from
the Acts of the Apostles, setting forth indirectly the
institution of the Papacy, and the artist who was called
upon to follow in the steps of Michel Angelo and the
great quattrocentisti was no other than Raphael Santi,
the most famous and beloved of artists. Other great
masters, Cosimo Tura, Mantegna, Leonardo himself, had
condescended to design for manufacturers, so that there
was nothing derogatory in the commission.
In 1514, when the order was given, Raphael was at
the height of his fame, courted, honoured by the Pope
and all his Court. Commissions and appointments were
showered upon him. Vasari tells us how the brilliant
young master, surrounded by a throng of admirers, met
the lonely Buonarroti on the steps of the Vatican.
"You go abroad like a prince," was Michel Angelo's
comment; "And you, like an executioner," was the
jesting rejoinder. Indeed Raphael at this time had
far too many distractions ; and if it had not been for the
band of scholars, apprentices, decorators, and craftsmen
of various kinds whom he had collected round him, and
who worked under his eye in a harmony such as the
artistic world had never equalled, he would have found
it impossible to undertake such a weighty task.
From two receipted accounts in the Vatican archives,
dated 15th June, 1515, and 20th December, 1516, we
gather the progress made in the designs. Raphael was

THE TAPESTRIES AND CARTOONS 147
paid 1000 ducats for the ten cartoons, rather less than
he had received for each of the Stanze. The subjects
chosen were : —
1. The Calling of St. Peter.
2. Christ's Charge to St. Peter.
3. St. Peter and St. John Healing the Lame
Man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple.
4. The Death of Ananias.
5. The Martyrdom of St. Stephen.
6. The Conversion of Saul.
7. Elymas the Sorcerer Struck with Blindness.
8. St. Paul and St. Barnabas at Lystra.
9. St. Paul in Prison.
10. St. Paul Preaching at Athens.
The tapestries took about four years to manufacture.
They were woven at Brussels, and not, as used to be,
supposed, and as their name implies, at Arras, where the
famous factories were almost closed, after the capture of
the city by Louis XL, in 1477. Seven pieces were ready
for hanging in 1519, and the whole series was in its
place in 1520. They were first shown to the public on
26th December, 1519. " The whole chapel," writes Paris
di Grassis, a diarist of the day, " was struck dumb by
the sight of these hangings ; by universal consent there
is nothing more beautiful m the world ; they are each
worth 2000 ducats." As a matter of fact, 1500 ducats
was paid for each piece, the immense quantity of gold
thread used adding heavily to the price.
Few art treasures have gone through more curious
vicissitudes than these hangings and the cartoons from
which they were made.
At the death of Leo X., the tapestries were pawned

148 APPENDIX
for 5000 ducats. In the Sack of Rome, in 1527, they
were severely injured, and two of the pieces somehow
found their way to Constantinople, but were restored
by the efforts of the Constable de Montmorenci, in 1554.
During the 250 years that they hung in the place for
which they were designed, they were the object of wide
spread admiration. Louis XIV. had them copied in
oils, and the series now in the Cathedral of Meaux was
made from the copies. After the entry of the French
into Rome in 1798, during the French Revolution, they
were put up to auction and bought for a small sum by
some French brokers. The French Government made
an effort to buy them for the Louvre, but the finances
were at too low an ebb. The tapestries were lost sight
of till 1808, but in that year reappeared at the Vatican
— the exact story of their recovery being still uncertain.
The cartoons had their own adventures, and their
preservation is to be wondered at. After the weaving
was finished they were forgotten, and were left in the
manufactory in Brussels. Two, the Martyrdom of St.
Stephen and St. Paul in prison, disappeared. Another,
the Conversion of St. Paul, found its way to the collection
of Cardinal Grimani, in Venice. In the reign of Charles
L, Rubens came across the seven remaining designs,
and, on his recommendation, the English King bought
them, and had them sent as models to the Royal Factory
at Mortlake. When the King's effects were sold,
Cromwell bought in the cartoons for £300, all cut to
bits as they were, for facility in copying. In the reign
of William III. their full value was at length recognised.
They were carefully restored and pasted on canvas, and
Sir Christopher Wren built a gallery for them at Hamp-

THE TAPESTRIES AND CARTOONS 149
ton Court, where they remained till they were moved
to their present position at South Kensington. The
missing ones have been copied from the tapestries. In
examining the tapestries, it is interesting to notice the
advantage Raphael has taken of the effects to be
obtained from the mixture of wool and silk, gold and
silver thread, in which they are worked ; but they have
very much shrunk and faded, and no longer convey to
us what their original rich brightness must have been.
In choosing the subjects, Pope Leo intended to set
forth the origin of the papal power, as an ordination of
the Divine Founder of Christianity; and following the
story of the roof and walls, the preparation of the world
for the advent of Christ and His life, came the history
of the foundation of His Church upon earth.
No doubt Raphael, as he prepared to design the
cartoons, had a vivid recollection of that day when he
first saw the mighty creations of Michel Angelo over
head ; and while we may regret that he did not elect
to harmonise his work with that of the earlier painters
on the walls, we are not surprised that it was with the
great Florentine's heroic figures that he resolved to
measure his strength. We may judge of the interest
the work aroused in Raphael, from the fact that there
is more sign of his own hand in the execution than in
any other of the great works of his last years, and from
the numerous studies he has left for groups of the
figures. The moment when he came into direct competition
with Michel Angelo must have been an absorbing, if
not altogether a fortunate, one for him, and from the
breadth at which we see him to have aimed, we under-

150 APPENDIX
stand how keenly he realised that their work would
be looked at side by side.
1. The Calling of St. Peter (Luke v.).— This scene is
held to be entirely painted by his own hand, with the
exception of the shells, grasses, and long-legged cranes in
the foreground, which are by his pupil Giovanni da Udine.
There is a life and depth of emotion in St. Peter and
St. Andrew, a grip and strain of muscle in the three men
drawing nets, unlike anything we find in the other panels.
The drawing is more restrained in size and treatment.
The boats are impossibly small, but the men, in their
worn, roughly-made garments, are studied from life ; the
mass of writhing eels, cuttle- and dog-fish, must have
been taken from some landing-place along the Ostian
coast. The landscape is luminous in light and shade.
The reflections along the distant shore and below the boat
give lightness and transparency. Studies for the figure
of Christ are preserved at Windsor and in the Louvre.
2. Christ's Charge to St. Peter (John xxi.). — Standing
in a wide landscape, the Saviour, clad in white draperies,
indicates the flock of sheep behind Him, and turns to
St. Peter, who, foremost among the band of Apostles,
kneels and clasps the keys. It is interesting to compare
this rendering with Perugino's more symbolical treatment
of the same subject. The distant landscape reminds us
of the background in Raphael's earlier paintings.
3. Peter Healing the Lame Man (Acts iii.).— Here
the canvas is crowded to excess with colossal forms.
The naked children have the muscles of a Hercules.
The contrast between these and the beautiful, vigorous
young women and the misshapen cripples at the
Apostles' feet is well marked. The scene is set amid

THE TAPESTRIES AND CARTOONS 151
the gorgeous architecture, the twisted and ornate
columns, of the Vatican basilica, which, tradition said,
had been brought from Jerusalem.
4. Death of Ananias (Acts v.). — The Apostles stand
on a raised platform, accepting offerings. On the left,
the poor are receiving relief from their coffers ; in
front, Ananias falls stricken to the ground. St. Peter
points towards him in executing judgment, and another
Apostle points to Heaven. A spectator, who has run
to the help of the fallen man, turns away on finding
that assistance comes too late. This may be compared
with Raphael's great fresco of the destruction of
Heliodorus, for defrauding the Church. The fore
shortening of the figures of Ananias and the men
bending over him is a fine study of form.
5. St. Stephen (Acts vii.). — This is one of the least
good, and, with St. Paul in Prison (Acts xvi.), does not
present many noticeable points.
6. Conversion of Saul (Acts ix.). — Here the figures
are exaggerated ; Saul, in armour, falls backward, boys
hold his frightened horse, young men rush forward,
wide-open mouths and writhing forms are used to
express horror and surprise.
7. Elymas the Sorcerer (Acts xiii.). — The ruler sits on
a throne, which is engraved with an inscription in Latin.
His followers grouped around, gaze with astonishment at
Elymas, who staggers forward with closed eyes and hands
groping blindly. The planes of the figures here are not
well kept, but the heads of some of the bystanders, not
ably the two boys on the left, have much of Raphael's
grace and beauty of line.
8. SS. Paul and Barnabas at Lystra (Acts xiv.). — In

152 APPENDIX
the foreground is an altar, with two children beside it,
one piping, the other holding a box of incense. The
sacrifice is ready, and the men prepare to sacrifice to
the Apostles as to gods. One prepares to stun the
ox crowned with garlands. Above the crowd stand
the Apostles expostulating, St. Paul tearing his robes
in protest against idolatry. A young man in the
crowd, catching their meaning, throws himself upon
the executioner, calling to him to hold his hand. A
beggar has thrown down his crutches, and springs
forward with clasped hands and eloquent expression.
All around are Greek temples and statues. We recog
nise Raphael in the balance and grouping of the figures,
in some of the heads, and particularly in the children,
but the muscles and limbs are unnatural in size. The
cartoons have been much restored, the deep shadows
and high lights exaggerated.
10. St. Paul Preaching at Athens. — This is the finest,
if we except No. 1. The figures are, on the whole, more
restrained, both in form and expression. Ten years
before, Raphael had worked in the Church of the
Carmine in Florence, and here he borrows from Filippino
Lippi the complete figure of St. Paul. The manage
ment of light, and the arrangement of the whole,
combine to make the preacher the most conspicuous
object. In the expression of the auditors we
trace the varied schools of philosophy in Athens.
Some are cold and careless listeners, others give fixed
attention, or listen wistfully. Doubt, discussion, and
joyful acceptance are all portrayed.
The cartoons were finished with exquisite borders,
illustrating great events in the ecclesiastic history of

THE TAPESTRIES AND CARTOONS 153
Italy, such as Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, at the battle
of Ravenna, and his triumphant entry into Florence.
The Coronation of the Virgin, which was painted
for the altar-piece, was never woven till a later date.
This tapestry bears the arms of Paul III., and Miintz
suggests that the Cardinal of Liege, Everard de la
Marck, who obtained the hat in 1520, finding the
cartoon at Brussels, had it woven as a gift to the
then reigning Pope, as such a present is mentioned
in an inventory of the Vatican treasures in 1556.
In the eighteenth century it was for the first time
hung in the Sistine Chapel.1 It represents our Lord
with St. John Baptist and St. Jerome. In the Oxford
University Gallery is a sketch by Raphael for the
cartoon. The cartoon itself is in the Vatican, where
it was discovered in 1873. The borders are of Flemish
design. These cartoons have been called academic, and it
is evident that they are school work, executed by men
who knew their business, adapted to a special position,
and undertaken for delivery within a stated time.
Mrs Ady (Julia Cartwright) instances them as
occupying a unique position in the history of the art
of the Renaissance. Standing at the close of that
memorable phase of thought, and on the brink of the
decadence, after having in the Stanze set forth the
creed of the past ages, and the pride of the Church,
Raphael here, by his illustration of every detail of the
sacred histories, reflects the new spirit of inquiry and
practice of Bible-reading which were beginning to
gather ground. » Taja, 1750, p. 65.
TJ

INDEX

Ady, Mrs, p. 153, position
of cartoons in Art
Aretino, Pietro, 129, letter to
Michel Angelo
Arrigo di Malines, 70, The
Resurrection

B
Bartolommeo Bella Gatta, 13,
arrival in Rome; 56, re
puted share in Perugino's
fresco; 59, attribution of
Fresco XI. ; 60, facts con
cerning; 62, relations with
SignoreUi
Biagio da Cesena, 140, place
in Last Judgment
Berenson, B., 59, opinion on
Fresco XI. ; 60, work as
signed to B. Delia Gatta;
142, theory applied to
Michel Angelo
Bessarione, Cardinal, 67, Por
trait; protector of Greek
scholars
Botticelli, Samdro, 12, comes
to Rome; 13, appointed
superintendent of work ;
23, The Leading into the

Botticelli, Sandro — continued —
Wilderness ; 25, idyllic
treatment, subordinate
scenes; 27, The Tempta
tion; 31, Cleansing of
Lepers; 40, frescofrom v ilia
Lemmi; 48, Gainsaying of
Korah; 51, Moses in old
age; 56, contrast with
Perugino; 59, comparison
with Fresco XI. ; 71,
Martyred Popes; 74, en
grossing nature of Art;
81, link with Michel
.Angelo; 104, contrast of
Sacrifice with that of
Michel Angelo
Borgia, Alexander VI., 71
Bramante, 54, adoption of
dome; 57, possible portrait;
82, relations with Michel
Angelo; 90, story of jeal
ousy of same
Bregno, Andrea, 145, marble
screen
Bwrckhardt, 16, disputes
Signorelli's claim to Fresco
XL

Andrea del, 7; 68,
Last Supper
Clement, Pope, orders fresco
of Last Judgment

156

INDEX

Colonna, Vittoria, 128, friend
ship with Michel Angelo
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 16, at
tribution of Fresco I. ; 58,
attribution of Fresco XI.
Cruttwell, Maud, 59, criticism
on Fresco XI. D
Dante, 76, influence on
Michel Angelo; 81, shared
with Botticelli; 131, Last
Judgment; 139, Charon;
140, Minos
Donatello, 7, The master
mind

FraAngelicofl, at San Marco;
74, reward of Art; 130,
Last Judgment
Fra Diamante, 13, assistant;
71, painter of popes

Gaza, 66, Portrait; 67, trans
lator of Aristotle
Giotto, 7, at Padua; 68, Last
Supper; 109, painting of
Sibyls; 130, Last Judg
ment
Ghirlandaio, 13, comes to
Rome; 20, space assigned;
38, Calling of Apostles;
39, temperament; 40, love
of portraits; 68, Last
Supper; 70, destruction of
second fresco; 71, portraits
of Popes ; 76, relations with
Michel Angelo; 80, same;
82, 83, same
Granacci, Francesco, 84, sends
artists to Michel Angelo

Innocent VIII. ; 71, succeeds
Sixtus

Julius II. , see Movers
K
Klaczsko, JuUen, 91, Michel
Angelo's freedom from
conventions ; 99, sugges
tion concerning Wisdom

Leo X., 145, orders tapes
tries; 146, decides subjeot ;
147, death; 149, signifi
cance of cartoons
Leonardo da Vinci, 67, Last
Supper ; 69, dramatic
rendering ; 79, competi
tion with Michel Angelo
Lorenzo de Medici, 12, em
ployer of Botticelli; 19,
fashion of visiting artists
at work; 40, Portrait of his
uncle; 62, private collec
tion of paintings; 76, patron
of Michel Angelo M
Malatesta, Roberto, 34, com
mand of papal troops;
35, death after battle; 36,
Portrait
Matteo da Lecce, 70, restora
tion of Fresco XIII
Melozzo da Forli, 5, painter of
Group in Vatican Gal
lery; 11, suggested de
signer of decorations; 109,
series of Sibyls

INDEX

167

Michel Angelo, 9, Tapestries
designed by rivals; 10,
conception of genius; 73,
The Art and the Man;
74, produot of age; 76,
influence of Dante and
Savonarola; 78, disappoint
ments; 80, prepares oar-
toons; 82, relations with
Bramante; 85, letters to
Granacci ; 87, difficulty of
obtaining payment; 88,
opens chapel; 90, contract
confirmed; 91, where work
commenced; 92, inspira
tion of Old Testament; 95,
as colourist; 97, Adam
compared with Dawn; 98,
Goethe; 100, Picture of
Woman; 101, feeling for
beauty; 103, Deluge; 106,
the Ignudi; 108, single
figures; 116, idea of Sibyls;
117, foreshortening; 121,
triangular paintings; 122,
David; 124, The Ancestors
of Christ; 126, Thought;
126, relations with Pope
Clement; 128, appoint
ment by Paul m. ; 129,
relations with Vittoria
Colonna ; 130, letter from
Aretino; 13, influence of
Signorelli ; 133, emotional
feeling; 135, treatment of
figure of Christ; 140, re
taliation on Biagio da
Cesena; 141, feeling for
nude ; 142, tactile values ;
146, meeting with Raphael;
149, influence on Raphael
Montigret, E., 94, God un
ravelling Chaos
Morelli, 16, recognition of
Pintoricchio; 59, attribu
tion of Fresco XI.

Orcagna, 130, Last Judgment
Orsini, Rainaldo, 41, Arch
bishop of Florence
Orsini, Virginio, captain of
papal troops

Paul III., 128, authorises
painting of Last Judg
ment ; 140, appealed to by
Biagio
Perugino, 12, summoned to
Rome ; 13, contract ; 15,
relations with Pinto
ricchio; 16, attribution of
Baptism ; 17, proportion
of payment; 20, West end ;
21, share in Fresco II. ; 53,
Giving of Keys ; 54, space
decoration; 56, portraits,
59, comparison with
painter of Fresco XI.; 60,
relations with Delia
Gatta; 80, described by
Miohel Angelo ; 109, series
of Sibyls; 128, frescoes de
stroyed; 150, comparison
with Raphael's cartoon
Pintoricchio, 12, follower of
Perugino ; 15, attribution
of Fresco I.; 16, " Venetian
Sketch Book"; 17, Vasari's
evidence ; 20, acknow
ledged painter of two
frescoes; 21, Baptism; 63,
painter of children; 109,
many repetitions of Sibyls;
116, conception of Sibyls
Piero di Cosimo, 12, follows
Cosimo to Rome; 33, attri
bution of Fresco V; 37,
portrait of self; 43, land
scape background; 60,
tardy recognition

158

INDEX

Pier dei Franceschi, 7, force
and truth; 61, work at
Oxford
Platina, Portrait in Vatican
R
Raphael, 10, completes scheme
of chapel; 16, Venetian
drawings; 31, suggestion
owed to Botticelli; 54,
derivation of temple; 57,
Portrait of Perugino; 74,
joie de vivre; 89, admira
tion for Michel Angelo ;
90, proposal should finish
ceilmg; 146, called to
design cartoons ; 149,
influence of Michel
Angelo; 150, Landscape;
151, comparison with
Heliodorus ; 152, figure
borrowed from Filippino
Lippi; 153, Sketch at
Oxford
Riario, Piero, 6, Cardinal to
Sixtus IV.
Riario, GiuUano, 6, Portrait in
Vatican; 32, as Governor
of S. Maria del Popolo;
34, celebrates victory of
Campo Morto
Rosselli, Cosimo, reputation ;
33, master of Piero di
Cosimo ; 42, Giving of Law
to Moses ; 43, inferiority ;
46, Law to Christians;
67, Last Supper ; 69, treat
ment of Judas
Rovere, Oiuliamo da, 6, Portrait
in Vatican; 11, collects
painters; 32, Portrait in
Fresco IV.; 72, becomes
Pope ; 78, sepulchre
begun; 87, disagreements
with Michel Angelo
Rovere, Giovanni Basso delta,
22, Portrait

s
Salviati, Francesco, 70, contest
over body of Moses
Savonarola, 76, effect on
Michel Angelo ; 81, shared
by Botticelli
SignoreUi, Luca, 12, tradi
tional presence in Rome;
16, attribution of Fresco I.;
56, Master of Delia Gatta ;
58, mention by Vasari;
59, opinions of critics ; 61,
figures in Pan introduced;
64, scientific studies; 130,
Last Judgment; 131, in
fluence on Michel Angelo
Sixtus IV., 4, becomes Pope ;
5, Portrait in Vatican; 6,
appoints librarian; 10,
original arrangement; 13,
creates Botticelli overseer;
14, probably decides sub
jects; 31, leper hospital
restored; 34, triumph of
papal troops; 35, be
haviour to Malatesta; 41,
Greek philosopher at
Court; 50, triumph at
Basel ; 71, death
Steinmann, E., 15, attribu
tion to Perugino; 29,
identification of scene in
Fresco IV; 41, further re
searches ; 64, suggestion as
to figure in Fresco XI.
Sibyls, 108-117, origin and
history
Symonds, J. A., 75, picture of
Italy in 15th century

Titian, 126, comparison with
old men in roof; 129, com
panion of Aretino

INDEX

159

Vasari, 12, on SignoreUi ; 13,
on BotticeUi; 14, same;
17, on Pintoricchio; 58, on
Fresco XI.; 60, on Delia
Gatta ; 68, on Rosselli; 131,
on Michel Angelo's study
of SignoreUi; 146, en-

oounter of Raphael and
Buonarroti
Fischer, 59, on Fresco XI.
VoUerra, Daniele da, 131, the
" Breeohes-Maker "
w
Wilson, Heath, 84, researches
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