Part 9 (2/2)

They were the earliest of the Popes, St Peter probably in the centre

Lastly, below again, the great series of frescoes of the History of Christ and the History of Moses by Sandro Botticelli, Doino, Bernardino Pintoricchio, Luca Signorelli, and Bartolomeo della Gatta This splendid series forelo above; that they are worthy the one of the other is the highest compliment that can be paid to either These stories well repay prolonged study, and help to keep our eloIt is very instructive to compare his ith these frescoes of men ere almost his contemporaries Above the altar three of this series were destroyed to ino, and represented the assuht, and the finding of Moses on the left

At the opposite end, over the great door, were two pictures by Do the Resurrection of Christ, and Michael contending with Satan for the Body of Moses, co the series of the lives of the Redeemer and of his prototype in the Old Testament: Moses, the Deliverer These last torks were destroyed for the ridiculous caricatures of Arrigo Fiao and Mattei da Lecce Ultimately the Tapestry woven after the cartoons by Raphael, now at South Kensington Museuround level

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THE PROPHET EZEKIEL

SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME (_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)

When Pope Julius prevented Michael Angelo fro on with his beloved project of the Tomb and made him paint the vault, the master set to work to produce a similar conception to the Toreat temple of painted marble and painted sculptures raised in mid-air above the walls of the chapel The cornices and pilasters are of simple Renaissance architecture, the only orna similar to those he would have used as a sculptor Acorns, the family device of the della Rovere, rams' skulls, and scallop shells, and the one thehted in-the huure The Prophets and Sibyls took the positions occupied by the principal figures designed for the Toreat statue of Moses

The Athletes at the corner of the ribs of the roof were in place of the bound captives, two of which are now in the Louvre, and the nine histories of the Creation and the Flood fill the panels like the bronze reliefs of the Tomb The detail and completeness of this fresco are the best refutation of the frequent criticiselo did not finish his work The fact is, that he finished elo done no work but this vault of the Sistine Chapel, it would have represented an output equal in quantity alone to that of the most prolific of his brother Italian artists It is veritably a large picture-gallery of his works in itself An idea of its nu it up into its co an inventory of the to Heath Wilson, is one hundred and thirty-one feet six inches long, by forty-five feet two and a half inches wide at the large door end, and forty-three feet two and a half inches at the altar end, an area of nearly six thousand square feet, which apparently does not represent the arch measurement but only the plane covered by the arch, nor does it take account of the triangular and semicircular spaces above the s This vast surface is divided into:-

Four large pictures stretching overfroures, soht

Five pictures, half the size of the last, with froures of Athletes

Ten circular ures of Prophets

Five large figures of Sibyls; these Prophets and Sibyls would be eighteen feet high if they stood upright, and el boys between them, twenty-three in all

Twenty-four decorative pilasters of two children each, in e 26]

THE PROPHET DANIEL

SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME (_By pere triangular co the Rede froular spaces above the s, representing the Ancestors of Christ, containing froroups in the semicircular spaces above the s, also of the Ancestors of Christ, of froures of children forures of Prophets and Sibyls, at the springing of the arches between the s

Twenty-four bronze-coloured colossal figures filling up the spaces in the architectural fraallery of one hundred and forty-five separate pictures by Michael Angelo There is one reservation, and that is, that the twenty-four groups of two children for pilasters are in pairs, of the sahted they may still be taken as different pictures These pilasters form the sides of the thrones of the Prophets and Sibyls, and repeating them in reversed outline on either side of the same throne has a very valuable decorative effect, well known to the old Italian workmen, who frequently repeated the forms of their fruit and flower decorations in thisfro to find Michael Angelo resorting to this siure decoration The light and shade of the reversed figures follow the general scheures traced from the same cartoons look very dissimilar when painted, but if the outlines are traced froures, they will be seen to coincide

It seems impossible to explain the exactness in any other way, a few measurements on the vault itself would make it certain Probably the sa the twenty-four bronze-coloured decorative figures also

The historical sequence of the events in the nine pictures on the central space of the vault represents the Story of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the second entry of Sin into the world, de the need for a scheme of Salvation, promised by the Prophets and Sibyls in the second part of the decoration The series represented is an old invention, and all the scenes may be found in Byzantine and early Italian works; but the new treatrandeur only equalled by the Old Testaures and els appear to be do doom, but they nobly act their part in a fateful present, although they know that the future cannot be changed by any effort of theirs, however noble it may be They are all fatalists, but all noble in their pessimism; they reflect the ures, their grouping and their action, are frequently taken from earlier art, especially sculpture, and they sho carefully and reverently Michael Angelo studied the works of his predecessors, Massaccio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Jacopo della Quercia

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