Descending again three steps corresponding to those on the opposite side of the church we come to the design of
Samson slaying the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (No. 14).
alluded to above. The workmanship and style of this picture certainly resembles that of Joshua and the Five Kings on the north side, but it is a finer and a grander piece of work. The grouping is bolder and more forcible. Samson, a giant figure, is administering chastisement to a Philistine in the manner of a schoolmaster to a naughty boy. He holds aloft, not merely the jawbone of an ass, but the whole skull. Some of his opponents lie slaughtered on the ground, and a crowd of them cowers away in terror, to the right of the composition. (Ill. XX.)
This design, as we have said before, is mentioned by Tizio[99] among those projected in 1424, and was probably executed by Paolo di Martino in 1426. On either side of it are the single figures of Moses (No. 16) and Judas Maccabeus (No. 15). Milanesi in his Discorso[100] attributes the figure of Moses, like that of Joshua (No. 23), to Paolo di Martino in 1426, while that of Judas Maccabeus, now hidden almost entirely by the balustrade of the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, and also recorded by Tizio (in the notice already more than once referred to), Padre Micheli[101] supposes, and there is no evidence to contradict him, to have been the work of Domenico del Coro in 1424.
Before descending the step to the South Transept, I would wish to draw the reader’s attention to the fact, that this step does not run parallel with the steps above it, and that the platform is narrower at this end than at the other. Consequently, the design of Samson and those in the transept, now to be described, are all more or less irregular in shape. Whether this is due to some structural defect in the original building, or to some inequality in the foundation, it is impossible now to say.
8. THE SOUTH TRANSEPT.
This transept is complicated in its general plan by the irregularity above referred to. It contains two pictures to correspond to the one (the Story of Judith) on the opposite side of the church, and is further broken up by varied designs, of different sizes, before what was once the Porta del Perdono, and is now the Cappella del Voto.
The first picture, that we come to, is very remarkable, especially since it is the only one which is neither biblical, symbolical, nor heraldic. It professes to be a portrait of the
Emperor Sigismund (No. 13),
who in 1433 was a visitor for some months to the city. (Ill. XXI.)