72

EAKLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.

doubtful to which side he should turn : here a
hypocritical monk, whom an angel draws back by
the hair from the host of the blessed ; and there a
youth in a gay and rich costume, whom another
angel leads away to Paradise. There is wonderful
and even terrible power of expression in some of
the heads ; and it is said that among them are
many portraits of contemporaries, but unfortu-
nately no circumstantial traditions as to particular
figures have reached us. The attitudes of Christ
and the Virgin were afterwards borrowed by
Michael Angelo, in his celebrated Last Judg-
ment ; but notwithstanding the perfection of his
forms, he stands far below the dignified grandeur
of the. old master. Later painters have also bor-
rowed from his arrangement of the patriarchs
and apostles — particularly Fra Bartolomeo and
Raphael.
The third representation, directly succeeding
the foregoing, is Hell. It is said to have been
executed from a design of Andrea, by his brother
Bernardo : it is altogether inferior to the preceding
representations in execution, and even in the com-
position. Here, the imagination of the painter,
unrestrained by any just rules of taste, degenerates
into the monstrous and disgusting, and even the
grotesque and ludicrous. Hell is here represented
as a great rocky caldron, divided into four com-
partments rising one above the other. In the