"He suffered for kind acts to men."
Poetical Works, 1900, iii. 312.]
[ [318] {270}["Transfigurate," whence "transfiguration," is derived from the Latin transfiguro, found in Suetonius and Quintilian. Byron may have thought to anglicize the Italian trasfigurarsi.]
[ [319] The Cupola of St. Peter's. [Michel Angelo, then in his seventy-second year, received the appointment of architect of St. Peter's from Pope Paul III. He began the dome on a different plan from that of the first architect, Bramante, "declaring that he would raise the Pantheon in the air." The drum of the dome was constructed in his life-time, but for more than twenty-four years after his death (1563), the cupola remained untouched, and it was not till 1590, in the pontificate of Sixtus V., that the dome itself was completed. The ball and cross were placed on the summit in November, 1593.—Handbook of Rome, p. 239.
Compare Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza cliii. line i, Poetical Works, 1892, ii. 440, 441, note 2.]
[ [320] {271}["Yet, however unequal I feel myself to that attempt, were I now to begin the world again, I would tread in the steps of that great master [Michel Angelo]. To kiss the hem of his garment, to catch the slightest of his perfections, would be glory and distinction enough for an ambitious man."—Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1884, p. 289.]
[ [321] The statue of Moses on the monument of Julius II. [Michel Angelo's Moses is near the end of the right aisle of the Church of S. Pietro-in-Vincoli.]
SONETTO
"Di Giovanni Battista Zappi.
"Chi é costui, che in si gran pietra scolto,
Siede gigante, e le più illustri, e conte
Opre dell' arte avanza, e ha vive, e pronte
Le labbra si, che le parole ascolto?
Quest' è Mosè; ben me 'l diceva il folto
Onor del mento, e 'l doppio raggio in fronte;
Quest' è Mosè, quando scendea dal monte,
E gran parte del Nume avea nel volto.
Tal' era allor, che le sonanti, e vaste
Acque ei sospese, a se d' intorno; e tale
Quando il Mar chiuse, e ne fè tomba altrui.
E voi, sue turbe, un rio vitello alzaste?
Alzata aveste immago a questa eguale!
Ch' era men fallo i' adorar costui.
[Scelta di Sonetti ... del Gobbi, 1709, iii. 216.]
[And who is he that, shaped in sculptured stone
Sits giant-like? stern monument of art
Unparalleled, while language seems to start
From his prompt lips, and we his precepts own?
—'Tis Moses; by his beard's thick honours known,
And the twin beams that from his temples dart;
'Tis Moses; seated on the mount apart,
Whilst yet the Godhead o'er his features shone.
Such once he looked, when Ocean's sounding wave
Suspended hung, and such amidst the storm,
When o'er his foes the refluent waters roared.
An idol calf his followers did engrave:
But had they raised this awe-commanding form,
Then had they with less guilt their work adored.