ronze figures below them, twisted
into the boldest attitudes the human frame can take, or the twinned
children on the pedestals, signify? In this region, the region of pure
plastic play, when art drops the wand of the interpreter and allows
physical beauty to be a law unto itself, Michelangelo demonstrated
that no decorative element in the hand of a really supreme master is
equal to the nude.

Previous artists, with a strong instinct for plastic as opposed to
merely picturesque effect, had worked upon the same line. Donatello
revelled in the rhythmic dance and stationary grace of children. Luca
Signorelli initiated the plan of treating complex ornament by means of
the mere human body; and for this reason, in order to define the
position of Michelangelo in Italian art-history, I shall devote the
next section of this chapter to Luca's work at Orvieto. But Buonarroti
in the Sistine carried their suggestions to completion. The result is
a mapped-out chart of living figures--a vast pattern, each detail of
which is a masterpiece of modelling. After we have grasped the
intellectual content of the whole, the message it was meant to
inculcate, the spiritual meaning present to the maker's mind, we
discover that, in the sphere of artistic accomplishment, as distinct
from intellectual suggestion, one rhythm of purely figurative beauty
has been carried throughout--from God creating Adam to the boy who
waves his torch above the censer of the Erythrean sibyl.

IV

Of all previous painters, only Luca Signorelli deserves to be called
the forerunner of Michelangelo, and his Chapel of S. Brizio in the
Cathedral at Orvieto in some remarkable respects anticipates the
Sistine. This eminent master was commissioned in 1499 to finish its
decoration, a small portion of which had been begun by Fra Angelico.
He completed the whole Chapel within the space of two years; so that
the young Michelangelo, upon one of his journeys to or from Rome, may
probably have seen the frescoes in their glory. Although no visit to
Orvieto is recorded by his biographers, the fame of these masterpieces
by a man whose work at Florence had already influenced his youthful
genius must certainly have attracted him to a city which lay on the
direct route from Tuscany to the Campagna.

The four walls of the Chapel of S. Brizio are covered with paintings
setting forth events immediately preceding and following the day of
judgment. A succession of panels, differing in s