DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51585#0060
56
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
as inspired merely by wrath and vengeance ?—as a
thick-set athlete, who, with a gesture of sullen
anger, is about to punish the wicked with his fist ?
It has been already observed that Michael Angelo
borrowed the idea of the two figures of the Virgin
and Christ from the old fresco of Orcagna in the
Campo Santo; but in improving the drawing he
has wholly lost and degraded the sentiment. In
the groups of the pardoned, as Kugler has well
observed, we look in vain for “ the glory of heaven
—for beings bearing the stamp of divine holiness
and renunciation of human weakness : everywhere
we meet with the expression of human passion,
human efforts ; we see no choir of solemn tranquil
forms—no harmonious unity of clear grand lines
produced by ideal draperies ; but in their stead a
confused crowd of naked bodies in violent atti-
tudes, unaccompanied by any of the characteristics
made sacred by holy tradition.” On the other
hand, the groups of the condemned, and the asto-
nishing energy and variety of the struggling and
suspended forms, are most fearful: and it is quite
true that when contemplated from a distance the
whole representation fills the mind with wonder
and mysterious horror. It was intended to repre-
sent the defeat and fall of the rebel angels on the
opposite wall (above and on each side of the prin-
cipal door), but this was never done; and the
intention of Michael Angelo in the decoration of
EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS.
as inspired merely by wrath and vengeance ?—as a
thick-set athlete, who, with a gesture of sullen
anger, is about to punish the wicked with his fist ?
It has been already observed that Michael Angelo
borrowed the idea of the two figures of the Virgin
and Christ from the old fresco of Orcagna in the
Campo Santo; but in improving the drawing he
has wholly lost and degraded the sentiment. In
the groups of the pardoned, as Kugler has well
observed, we look in vain for “ the glory of heaven
—for beings bearing the stamp of divine holiness
and renunciation of human weakness : everywhere
we meet with the expression of human passion,
human efforts ; we see no choir of solemn tranquil
forms—no harmonious unity of clear grand lines
produced by ideal draperies ; but in their stead a
confused crowd of naked bodies in violent atti-
tudes, unaccompanied by any of the characteristics
made sacred by holy tradition.” On the other
hand, the groups of the condemned, and the asto-
nishing energy and variety of the struggling and
suspended forms, are most fearful: and it is quite
true that when contemplated from a distance the
whole representation fills the mind with wonder
and mysterious horror. It was intended to repre-
sent the defeat and fall of the rebel angels on the
opposite wall (above and on each side of the prin-
cipal door), but this was never done; and the
intention of Michael Angelo in the decoration of