ST. PETER'S AND CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO, ROME.
They first passed into the great Cathedral in order to give a look at that most beautiful of all Michael Angelo's sculptures—Mary holding on her knees her dead Son. Barbara and Bettina had studied it on a former visit to St. Peter's when Mr. Sumner was not with them. Now he asked them to note the evident weight of the dead Christ,—with every muscle relaxed,—a triumph of the sculptor's art; and, especially, the impersonal face of the mother; a face that is simply the embodiment of her feeling, and wholly apart from the ordinary human!
"This is a special characteristic of Michael Angelo's faces," he said, "and denotes the high order of his thought. In it, he approached more closely the conceptions of the ancient Greek masters than has any other modern artist—and now we will go to the Sistine Chapel," he added, after a little time.
They went out to the Vatican entrance, passed the almost historic Swiss Guards, and climbed the stairs with quite the emotion that they were about to visit some sacred shrine, so much had they read and so deeply had they thought about the frescoes they were about to see.
For some time after they entered the Chapel Mr. Sumner said nothing. The custodian, according to custom, provided them with mirrors; and each one passed slowly along beneath the world-famous ceiling paintings, catching the reflection of fragment after fragment, figure after figure. Soon the mirrors were cast aside, and the opera-glasses Mr. Sumner had advised them to bring were brought into use,—they were no longer content to study simply a reflected image.
At last necks and eyes grew tired, and when Mr. Sumner saw this, he asked all to sit for a time on one of the benches, in a corner apart from others who were there.
"I know just how you feel," he said. "You are disappointed. The frescoes are so far above our heads; their colors are dull; they are disfigured by seams; there are so many subjects that you are confused and weary. You are already striving to retain their interest and importance by connecting them with the personality of their creator, and are imagining Michael Angelo swung up there underneath the vault, above his scaffoldings, laboring by day and by night during four years. You are beginning in the wrong place to rightly comprehend the work.
"It is the magnitude of Michael Angelo's conceptions that puts him among the very first of painters; and it is the conception of these frescoes that makes them the most notable paintings in the world. We must dwell on this for a moment. When the work was begun it was the artist's intention to paint on the end wall, opposite the altar, the Fall of Lucifer, the enemy of man, who caused sin to befall him. This was never accomplished. Then he designed to cover the ceiling (as he did) with the chief Biblical scenes of the world's history that are connected with man's creation and fall—to picture all these as looking directly forward to Christ's coming and man's redemption; and then to complete the series, as he afterward did, by painting this great Last Judgment over the altar. Is it not a stupendous conception?
"Let your eyes run along the ceiling as I talk. God is represented as a most superbly majestic Being in the form of man. He separates light from darkness. He creates the sun and moon. He commands the waters to bring forth all kinds of fish; the earth and air to bring forth animal life. He creates Adam: nothing more grand is there in the whole realm of art than this magnificent figure, perfect in everything save the reception of the breath of eternal life; his eyes are waiting for the Divine spark that will leap into them when God's finger shall touch his own. He creates Eve. In Paradise they sin, and are driven out by angels with flaming swords. Then, a sad sequence to the parents' weakness, Cain murders his brother Abel. The flood comes and destroys all their descendants save Noah. He who has withstood evil is saved with his family in the ark, and becomes the father of a new race."