work, which has been
celebrated by Vasari, Moderni, and other writers on Italian art, was
at once magnificent and original; and the countenance and figure of
Lucifer, upon which the artist appeared to have concentrated all the
rays, as it were, of his genius, were conceived in a manner fearfully
sublime. Spinello disdained the vulgar method of binding together, by
an arbitrary link, all the attributes of ugliness, which artists have
generally pursued when they would represent the greatest of the fallen
angels; and, after meditating long upon the best mode of embodying
the principle of evil, determined to clothe it with a certain form of
beauty, though of a kind not calculated to delight, but on the contrary
to awaken in the soul all those feelings of uneasiness, anxiety,
apprehension and terror, which usually slumber in the abysses of our
nature, and are disturbed only on very extraordinary occasions.

From the moment in which he began to delineate this miraculous figure,
a singular change seemed to have taken place in his whole nature.
His imagination, like a sea put in motion by the wind, appeared to
be in perpetual agitation. He was restless and uneasy when any other
occupation kept him away from his picture. As his health was good, and
his frame vigorous though susceptible, this state of excitement was at
first rather pleasing than otherwise. He indulged himself, therefore,
with those agitating visions, as they may be called, which the
contemplation or recollection of his Lucifer called up before his mind.
At length, however, the idea of the mighty fallen angel, whose form he
had delighted to clothe with terror and sublimity, began to present
itself under a new character to his mind; and instead of being a subject
to be fondled, as it were, and caressed by the imagination, seemed as
it approached maturity to manifest certain mysterious qualities, which,
engendered terror and apprehension rather than delight.

Spinello's _studio_ now began to be a place of torture to him, and
he turned his eyes towards the amusements of the world, which he had
hitherto shunned and scorned. He frequented the society of other young
artists, with whom he often strolled into the woods, or rather groves,
for which this portion of Etruria was always remarkable, sometimes
traversing or descending the Val d'Arno, at others roaming about the
ruins, or visiting the site of Pliny's Tuscan Villa. On returning in
high spirits from one of these