Fig. 203. Michelangelo. The Libyan Sibyl.
Magnificent is the indignant sprawling form of the unwilling prophet Jonah, remanded by the sea to an ungrateful mission. He is the active counterpart of the passive Adam on the ceiling. He obeys under protest. The form itself, foreshortened against the curve of the spandrel, is a masterpiece of draughtsmanship. Decoratively it is the link between the nudes of the ceiling and the draped prophets and sibyls.
Below the prophetic figures, in the older frescoes of the side walls, are set the foreshadowing of the work of salvation in the life of Moses and its accomplishment in the life of Christ, and the drama closes with Michelangelo’s Last Judgment on the altar wall. There Christ separates eternally the saved from the damned, echoing the definitive gesture with which God in the adjoining ceiling separates light from darkness. So the scheme closes with the inexorable logic with which it began.
The decorative task of Michelangelo was to mediate between the prophets and sibyls and the ceiling frescoes above, and likewise to link the great figures with the side walls below. Above, he set a multitude of nude forms. On the massive sides of the twelve thrones are four caryatids in two pairs. At the top of these piers are seated the lithe forms of nude youths, Figure [198], forty in all, supporting medallions and bent into every conceivable attitude that might set off the flexibility and power of these superb young bodies. But however extravagant any single pose may be, it is immediately balanced by an opposing thrust from some other body, so that the whole composition is locked together into an active and thrilling equilibrium. Even the triangles over the coves are filled with huddled nudes most adroitly disposed in the narrow and refractory spaces.
Below the prophets and sibyls, the linking motives are made up of draped figures. Weakest are the caryatid geniuses below each throne. The triangular splays at the corners contain those four bloody and sensational acts which assured the perpetuity of God’s Chosen People—the Raising of the Brazen Serpent, the Slaying of Goliath and of Holophernes, the Hanging of Haaman.
Fig. 204. Michelangelo. Decoration of Cove over Window.
In the triangles roofing the coves and in the lunettes about the arched window heads are family groups of the ancestors and precursors of Christ. Figure [204]. The mood of anticipation which has been calm and official in the prophets becomes agitated, passionate, personal in these half hidden groups. So many pilgrims of eternity yearn for the fulfillment that shall give meaning to their wanderings—a promised goal and rest. Very subtle and beautiful is the contrast between the groups sundered by the window heads, individually meditative, and those which blend their longing in the close relations forced by the triangular coves. What has begun as noble abstraction finishes in terms of almost inexpressible tenderness. In color the whole gigantic composition is unified by a sonorous chord of yellow and violet which is moderately asserted in the ceiling and pushed to the utmost in the spandrels. Of the color John La Farge has written: “The unity is so great, the balance of effects so harmonious, that it is only by study that we see expressed in the methods of the painting the ancient rules, handed down by practice, which unite with the latest teaching of modern scientific coloring.” What a mind it took to hold the tumultuous and pathetic details of this great work within an enveloping order and calm!
