The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1876-02-16

around his neck, and he must 90 with the
rest to bis own place That lower deep
opens beneath and an angel at the gate with
lifted scourge whips them in. Here is one
mingling and universal horror of s,inging
snakes, the worm that never dies; of tor
turing demons, bat-winged and bestial-
handed, with jaws set to pitiless cru.
city, and of tortured souls, beaten,
wrenched and lacerated. Lucifer stands
in the midst, monstrous shape, head
wreathed and hands bound with serpents.
He tramples on u heap of sinners and
tears them with his clawed feet. Two de-
mons twist their long necks about his
body and swing the scaly horrors of their
tails around two of the damned, drawing
them within reach TO bite and devour. In
one OF them the depth of misery from ply
steal and moral torture is rendered with q
power which has been pronounced Sun
equalled in sculpture. One Of the dragons
has seized the arm Of the wretched man in
his teeth and is draggngit from the socket,
the head of the sinner falls forward faint
ing, his whole body drops. his knees bend,
his other arm hangs stltlly down; and vet
in the act of swooning there is no sugges-
ton that the sensibilily to the torment be-
comes less or that the swoon reaches fur
ther than the muscles"
This is the last and best example of the
subject, in sculpture, and the last in sculp.
ture or painting which presents the internal
side with any imaginative dignity, till we
come to the 10Th century The painters of
the Renaissance make hell place of hob.
goblinry, with little terror in it, or fancy
of cruelty that is disgusting. These bae-
reliefs, by unknown sculptors, who
wrought to have their work right in Gods
sight, rather than to hand their names down
to men, point in their style to the first of
the l4th century, and 10 the school of John
OF Pisa, son Of Nicholas Pisa,
who did for sculpture what Gina
bue did for painting it from the
ugliness it had sunk to, through divorce
from nature.
The light was breaking in the middle of
the 18th century but the sun did not rise
till the next century. In 1906 Giotto
painted for a wealthy citizen of Padua the
interior of chapel to the Virgin. He was
friend of Dante and the lecturer surmised
that the poet may have suggested some of
the ideas in the Last Judgment painted by
hun in the entrance hall OF the chapel
We have no space for Giotto's angels, or
for the description of Orcagna's Triumph
of Death and Last Judgment, in the Cam
pc Sanio Of Pisa fine piece of word
painting; or for Fra Angelica" painter
to the angels, whose Paradise recalled to
the lecturer Bunyan's Entrance of the Pill
grms to the Beautiful Gate of the Celestial
City or for Signoreli, whose treatment of
the subject was distinguished by the PIE
face of an,i-Chrst But one could do
more than these-and he the greatest, to do
the greatest. Signoreli finished his chapel
in 1902. Within five years Michel Angelo
was painting bis Sisine frcscoes, chief in
its own age of great works, and above any
thing in any age since.
Mr.. Ware did not undertake descrip-
| ton of Michel Angeles Last Judgment,
though he has made it an especial study.
Were / starting on this lecture, instead of
closing it, said he, should be confused,
dubious, anxious where best TO begin
what point to touch OF this large treat
meni their vast conception, and these null
titudinous groups; where to take this i'm.
mensc power, this formidable energy, this
mighty strength; and how, not so much to
treat OF as to present iGyself before this
force of the Masters hand, this triumph of
his genius, this dealing of his conscience,
this judgment Of his own lofty and most
just spirit. This lecture has come, like
Reynolds to the Royal Academy, to speak
last of all, as being first among ALL the
name OF Michel Angelo, " tn duca tn sig
more, tn maestro. And with the con-
fession that his lecture was thus not fin
ished story, but preface, the lecturer
c,Gapd