overed, there arose a general murmur of
disapprobation that the figures were all nude. As society became more
vicious, it grew nice. Messer Biagio, the Pope's master of the ceremonies,
remarked that such things were more fit for stews and taverns than a
chapel. The angry painter placed his portrait in Hell with a mark of
infamy that cast too lurid a light upon this prudish speech. When Biagio
complained, Paul wittily answered that, had it been Purgatory, he might
have helped him, but in Hell is no redemption. Even the foul-mouthed and
foul-hearted Aretino wrote from Venice to the same effect--a letter
astounding for its impudence.[328] Michael Angelo made no defence. Perhaps
he reflected that the souls of the Pope himself and Messer Biagio and
Messer Pietro Aretino would go forth one day naked to appear before the
judge, with the deformities of sin upon them, as in Plato's "Gorgias." He
refused, however, to give clothes to his men and women. Daniel da
Volterra, who was afterwards employed to do this, got the name of
breeches-maker.

We are hardly able to appreciate the "Last Judgment;" it has been so
smirched and blackened by the smoke and dust of centuries. And this is
true of the whole Sistine Chapel.[329] Yet it is here that the genius of
Michael Angelo in all its terribleness must still be studied. In order to
characterise the impression produced by even the less awful of these
frescoes on a sympathetic student, I lay my pen aside and beg the reader
to weigh what Henri Beyle, the versatile and brilliant critic, pencilled
in the gallery of the Sistine Chapel on January 13, 1807:[330] "Greek
sculpture was unwilling to reproduce the terrible in any shape; the
Greeks had enough real troubles of their own. Therefore, in the realm of
art, nothing can be compared with the figure of the Eternal drawing forth
the first man from nonentity. The pose, the drawing, the drapery, all is
striking: the soul is agitated by sensations that are not usually
communicated through the eyes. When in our disastrous retreat from Russia,
it chanced that we were suddenly awakened in the middle of the dark night
by an obstinate cannonading, which at each moment seemed to gain in
nearness, then all the forces of a man's nature gathered close around his
heart; he felt himself in the presence of fate, and, having no attention
left for things of vulgar interest, he made himself ready to dispute his
life with destiny. The sight of Michael Angelo's pic