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

THE SYBILS

109

grandeur and of rescuing them from mono-
tony. The idea of introducing the Sybils
was no new one. Hardly a painter of note
of the Renaissance but had left his concep-
tion of them. Giotto paints them in the
Church of the Arena; Castagno has left
them on the walls of S. Apollonia; Perugino
on those of the Cambio; a series had been
completed under Melozzo for the Ducal
Palace at Urbino; Pintoricchio drew them
again and again in the Borgia Apartments,
in Santa Maria del Popolo, at Spello. A
long series of artists had engraved them and
their cabalistic sayings on the floor of the
great Cathedral at Siena. We look at them
all, and compare them and study their
artistic qualities, the pose and line of dress
and drapery, we recognise their books of
sacred writings, and we visit the Temple
of the Sybil at Tivoli, or the place where
her altar stood in Ara Coeli, and we become
familiar with the Sybils in Italian art; but
how often do we stop to consider what we
really know of them—who they were, how
they came into art and into religion, how