tic contrast and a masterly power of varying while
combining the composition. Their chief aim, however, is to produce the
utmost realism of effect, to translate the poignancy of passion, the dread
certainty of doom, into forms of unmistakable fidelity. Therefore they do
not shrink from prosaic and revolting details. The knight who has to hold
his nose above the open grave, the lady who presses her cheek against her
hand with a spasm of distress, the horse who pricks his ears and snorts
with open nostrils, the grooms who start aside like savage creatures, all
suggest the loathsomeness of death, its physical repulsiveness. In the
"Last Judgment" the same kind of dramatic force is used to heighten a
sublime conception. The crouching attitude and the shrouded face of the
Archangel Raphael, whose eyes alone are visible above the hand that he has
thrust forth from his cloak to hide the grief he feels, prove more
emphatically than any less realistic motive could have done, how
terrible, even for the cherubic beings to whose guardianship the human
race has been assigned, will be the trumpet of the wrath of God.[134]
Studying these frescoes, we cannot but reflect what nerves, what brains,
what hearts encased in triple brass the men who thought and felt thus must
have possessed. They make us comprehend not merely the stern and savage
temper of the Middle Ages, but the intense and fiery ebullition of the
Renaissance, into which, as by a sudden liberation, so much imprisoned
pent-up force was driven.

A different but scarcely less important phase of mediaeval thought is
imaged in the frescoes of the Cappella degli Spagnuoli in S. Maria
Novella.[135] Dogmatic theology is here in the ascendant. While S. Francis
bequeathed a legend of singular suavity and beauty, overflowing with the
milk of charity and mildness, to the Church, S. Dominic assumed the
attitude of the saint militant and orthodox. Dante's words about him--

L'amoroso drudo[136]
Della fede Cristiana, il santo atleta,
Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nemici crudo,

omit nothing that is needed to characterise the impression produced upon
the Christian world by this remorseless foe of heresy, this champion of
the faith who dealt in butcheries and burnings. S. Francis taught love; S.
Dominic taught wrath: and both, perhaps, were needed for the safety of the
mediaeval Church--the one by resuscitating the spirit of the Gospels, the
other by resisting th