em to cry,
"Repent, repent! for the kingdom of the spirit is at hand! Repent and
awake, for the judgment of the world approaches!" And above these voices
we hear a most tremendous wail: "The nations have come to the birth; but
there is not strength to bring forth." That is the utterance of the
Renaissance, as it had appeared in Italy. She who was first among the
nations was now last; bound and bleeding, she lay prostrate at the
temple-gate she had unlocked. To Michael Angelo was given for his
portion--not the alluring mysteries of the new age, not the joy of the
renascent world, not the petulant and pulsing rapture of youth: these had
been divided between Lionardo, Raphael, and Correggio--but the bitter
burden of the sense that the awakening to life is in itself a pain, that
the revelation of the liberated soul is itself judgment, that a light is
shining, and that the world will not comprehend it. Pregnant as are the
paintings of Michael Angelo with religious import, they are no longer
Catholic in the sense in which the frescoes of the Lorenzetti and Orcagna
and Giotto are Catholic. He went beyond the ecclesiastical standing ground
and reached one where philosophy includes the Christian faith. Thus the
true spirit of the Renaissance was embodied in his work of art.

Among the multitudes of figures covering the wall above the altar in the
Sistine Chapel there is one that might well stand for a symbol of the
Renaissance. It is a woman of gigantic stature in the act of toiling
upwards from the tomb. Grave clothes impede the motion of her body: they
shroud her eyes and gather round her chest. Part only of her face and
throat is visible, where may be read a look of blank bewilderment and
stupefaction, a struggle with death's slumber in obedience to some inner
impulse. Yet she is rising slowly, half awake, and scarcely conscious, to
await a doom still undetermined. Thus Michael Angelo interpreted the
meaning of his age.

FOOTNOTES:

[197] "La man che ubbedisce all' intelletto" is a phrase pregnant with
meaning, used by Michael Angelo in one of his sonnets. See Guasti, _Le
Rime di Michael Angelo_, p. 173. Michael Angelo's blunt criticism of
Perugino, that he was _goffo_, a fool in art, and his rude speech to
Francia's handsome son, that his father made better forms by night than
day, sufficiently indicate the different aims pursued by the painters of
the two periods distinguished above.

[198] Though Mantegna seems to have