Phillipps, Evelyn March: The frescoes in the Sixtine chapel (London: John Murray, 1901)

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 guilty 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
fallen, 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 allusion, of
course, to the Archbishop’s sacrilegious
epithet—applied to the Pope.