The principal pictures, such as the creation of Adam, Michael Angelo's most philosophical and most exquisite painting, I had had before my eyes upon my wall every day for ten years. The expression in Adam's face was not one of languishing appeal, as I had thought; he smiled faintly, as if calmly confident of the dignity of the life the finger of God is about to bestow upon him. The small, bronze-painted figures, expressed the suspension and repose of the ceiling; they were architectonic symbols. The troops of young heroes round about the central pillars were Michael Angelo's ideals of Youth, Beauty and Humanity. The one resting silently and thoughtfully on one knee is perhaps the most splendid. There is hardly any difference between his build and that of Adam. Adam is the more spiritual brother of these young and suffering heroes.
I felt the injustice of all the talk about the beginnings of grotesqueness in Michael Angelo's style. There are a few somewhat distorted figures, Haman, the knot of men and women adoring the snake, Jonas, as he flings himself backwards, but except these, what calm, what grandiose perfection! And which was still more remarkable, what imposing charm! Eve, in the picture of "The Fall," is perhaps the most adorable figure that Art has ever produced; her beauty, in the picture on the left, was like a revelation of what humanity really ought to have been.
It sounded almost like a lie that one man had created this in twenty-two months. Would the earth ever again produce frescoes of the same order? The 360 years that had passed over it had damaged this, the greatest pictorial work on earth, far less than I had feared.
A large aristocratic English family came in: man, wife, son, daughter, another daughter, the governess, all expensively and fashionably dressed. They stood silent for a moment at the entrance to the hall. Then they came forward as far as about the middle of the hall, looked up and about a little, said to the custodian: "Will you open the door for us?" and went out again very gracefully.
VII.
I knew Raphael's Loggias from copies in l'École des Beaux Arts in Paris. But I was curious to see how they would appear after this, and so, although there was only three-quarters of an hour left of the time allotted to me on my permesso, I went up to look at them. My first impression, as I glanced down the corridor and perceived these small ceiling pictures, barely two feet across, was: "Good gracious! This will be a sorry enjoyment after Michael Angelo!" I looked at the first painting, God creating the animals, and was quite affected: There goes the good old man, saying paternally: "Come up from the earth, all of you, you have no idea how nice it is up here." My next impression was: "How childish!" But my last was: "What genius!" How charming the picture of the Fall, and how lovely Eve! And what grandeur of style despite the smallness of the space. A God a few inches high separates light from darkness, but there is omnipotence in the movement of His arm. Jacob sees the ladder to Heaven in his dream; and this ladder, which altogether has six angels upon it, seems to reach from Earth to Heaven, infinitely long and infinitely peopled; above, we see God the Father, at an immense distance, spread His gigantic embrace (which covers a space the length of two fingers). There was the favourite picture of my childhood, Abraham prostrated before the Angels, even more marvellous in the original than I had fancied it to myself, although it is true that the effect of the picture is chiefly produced by its beauty of line. And there was Lot, departing from Sodom with his daughters, a picture great because of the perfect illusion of movement. They go on and on, against the wind and storm, with Horror behind them and Hope in front, at the back, to the right, the burning city, to the left, a smiling landscape. How unique the landscapes on all these pictures are, how marvellous, for instance, that in which Moses is found on the Nile! This river, within the narrow limits of the picture, looked like a huge stream, losing itself in the distance.
It was half-past five. My back was beginning to ache in the place which had grown tender from lying so long; without a trace of fatigue I had been looking uninterruptedly at pictures for four hours and a half.
VIII.
Noufflard's best friend in Rome was a young lieutenant of the Bersaglieri named Ottavio Cerrotti, with whom we were much together. Although a Roman, he had entered the Italian army very young, and had consequently been, as it were, banished. Now, through the breach at Porta Pia, he had come back. He was twenty-four years of age, and the naïvest Don Juan one could possibly meet. He was beloved by the beautiful wife of his captain, and Noufflard, who frequented their house, one day surprised the two lovers in tears. Cerrotti was crying with his lady-love because he had been faithless to her. He had confessed to her his intimacy with four other young ladies; so she was crying, and the end of it was that he cried to keep her company.
At meals, he gave us a full account of his principal romance. He had one day met her by chance in the gardens of the Palazzo Corsini, and since that day, they had had secret meetings. But the captain had now been transferred to Terni, and tragedy had begun. Letters were constantly within an ace of being intercepted, they committed imprudences without count. He read aloud to us, without the least embarrassment, the letters of the lady. The curious thing about them was the moderation she exercised in the expression of her love, while at the same time her plans for meetings were of the most foolhardy, breakneck description.