"And do the pictures at the corners, and the single figures, have anything to do with this subject?" asked Malcom, after a pause, during which all were busy following the thoughts awakened by Mr. Sumner's words.
MICHAEL ANGELO. SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME. THE DELPHIAN SIBYL.
"Yes, indeed; nothing here is foreign to the one great thought of the painter. The four irregular spaces at the corners are filled with representations of important deliverances of the Jewish people from evil,—David slaying Goliath, the hanging of Haman, the serpent raised in the wilderness, and Judith with the head of Holofernes. The connection in Michael Angelo's mind evidently was that God, who had always provided a help for His people, would also in His own time give a Saviour from their sins.
"Ranged along the sides you see seven prophets and five sibyls: the prophets foretold Christ's coming to the Jewish world, and the sibyls sang of it to the Gentile world.
"Nowhere, however, do we see the waiting and the longing for the coming of the Redeemer more strikingly shown than in these families,—'Genealogy of the Virgin' they are commonly called,—that are painted in the triangular spaces above the windows. Each represents a father, mother, and little child, every bit of whose life seems utterly absorbed with just the idea of patient, expectant waiting. When troubled and weary, as we all are sometimes, you know, I have often come here to gain calmness and strength by looking at one or two of these groups;" and Mr. Sumner paused, with his eyes fixed on one of the loveliest of the Holy Families, as they are sometimes called, as if he would now drink in its spirit of hopeful peace.
"They are waiting," he resumed after a few minutes, "as only those can wait who confidently hope; and, therefore, there is really nothing in the rendering of all this grand conception that more clearly points to the Saviour's coming than do these.
"I think this part of the frescoes has not generally received the attention it merits.
"The decorative figures, called Athletes, that you see seated on the apparently projecting cornice, at each of the four corners of the smaller great divisions of the ceiling, are a wholly unique creation of the artist, and serve as a necessary separation of picture from picture. They are with reason greatly admired in the world of art.