Gli arroncigliò l’impegolate chiome;
E trasse ’l sù, che mi parve una lontra.
None has noticed as imitations of Dante in the xxivth book, the astonishing groups in the Lunetta of the brazen serpent; none the various hints from the Inferno and Purgatorio scattered over the attitudes and expressions of the figures rising from their graves. In the Lunetta of Haman, we owe the sublime conception of his figure to the subsequent passage in the xviith c. of Purgatory:
Poi piobbe dentro al’ alta phantasia
Un Crucifisso, dispettoso e fiero
Nella sua vista, e lo qual si moria.
The bassorelievo on the border of the second rock, in Purgatory, furnished the idea of the Annunziata, painted by Marcello Venusti from his design, in the sacristy of St. Giov. Lateran, by order of Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, the select friend and favourite of Michael Angelo.
We are told that Michael Angelo represented the Ugolino of Dante, inclosed in the tower of Pisa; if he did, his own work is lost: but if, as some suppose, the bassorelievo of that subject by Pierino da Vinci, be taken from his idea, notwithstanding the greater latitude, which the sculptor might claim, in divesting the figures of drapery and costume; he appears to me, to have erred in the means employed to rouse our sympathy. A sullen but muscular character, with groups of muscular bodies and forms of strength, about him, with the allegoric figure of the Arno at their feet, and that of Famine hovering over their heads, are not the fierce Gothic chief, deprived of revenge, brooding over despair in the stony cage; are not the exhausted agonies of a father, petrified by the helpless groans of an expiring family, offering their own bodies for his food, to prolong his life.
Dixeris egregiè, notum si callida verbum