THE MOSES.
In the Medicean tombs Michelangelo may be said to have equalled if not surpassed the masterpieces of ancient sculpture. We have selected the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici for our illustration, as the statues which adorn it, symbolizing Evening and Dawn, although conceived in the same spirit of profound melancholy, are, if possible, even more beautiful than the Day and Night of Giuliano's tomb. Evening is represented by an old man, brooding and dejected, but hardly less powerful and muscular than the giant Day. It is evident that he is not suffering from bodily fatigue, but that he is sinking under the weight of some unbearable, irremediable calamity.
The virgin Dawn is perhaps the most beautiful female figure of modern or of ancient art. She is represented as only half awake and almost unable to rise from her couch, while there is a suggestion of ineffable bitterness in the expression of the face with its half-closed eyes wearily greeting another day of sorrow. The powerful yet graceful limbs are magnificently modelled, and the whole figure may be regarded as the perfection of the female form, redeemed from any breath of sensuality by a commanding loftiness of expression, such as the Greeks gave to the statues of their goddesses.
Michelangelo's Last Judgment is a work of so colossal a nature that it would be impossible to give even a remote idea of the whole composition in this unpretentious little book. We have therefore selected for our illustration the central group representing Christ the Judge, a dread figure enthroned on clouds, with hand upraised in an attitude of stern command, surrounded by the Blessed, who press round the Son of God with eager, frightened looks and gestures, as if hardly secure of their final salvation in that terrible day of retribution, "cum vix Justus sit securus." Nestling timorously close to her Son, half sitting, half crouching, with head averted, as if to avoid seeing the coming wrath, and arms crossed on her bosom, is the Mother of God, a wonderfully sweet and pathetic figure, full of pity and sorrow for the condemned souls, and contrasting strangely with the inexorable Judge rising in his stern majesty to pronounce sentence on the frightened, shuddering mass of humanity. The action of the Judge, and indeed every part of the composition, forcibly remind us of the Last Judgment in the Campo Santo of Pisa, but there is not a figure or a detail in the whole of this colossal work which does not bear the imprint of that powerful originality and that wonderful gift to express the most varied emotion and to interpret the loftiest themes, which were the principal characteristics of Michelangelo's genius.
LIST OF CHIEF WORKS
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
VIENNA, ALBERTINA GALLERY.