exordium,
Aretino settles down to the real business of his letter, and
communicates his own views regarding the Last Judgment, which he hears
that the supreme master of all arts is engaged in depicting. "Who
would not quake with terror while dipping his brush into the dreadful
theme? I behold Anti-christ in the midst of thronging multitudes, with
an aspect such as only you could limn. I behold affright upon the
forehead of the living; I see the signs of the extinction of the sun,
the moon, the stars; I see the breath of life exhaling from the
elements; I see Nature abandoned and apart, reduced to barrenness,
crouching in her decrepitude; I see Time sapless and trembling, for
his end has come, and he is seated on an arid throne; and while I hear
the trumpets of the angels with their thunder shake the hearts of all,
I see both Life and Death convulsed with horrible confusion, the one
striving to resuscitate the dead, the other using all his might to
slay the living; I see Hope and Despair guiding the squadrons of the
good and the cohorts of the wicked; I see the theatre of clouds,
blazing with rays that issue from the purest fires of heaven, upon
which among his hosts Christ sits, ringed round with splendours and
with terrors; I see the radiance of his face, coruscating flames of
light both glad and awful, filling the blest with joy, the damned with
fear intolerable. Then I behold the satellites of the abyss, who with
horrid gestures, to the glory of the saints and martyrs, deride Caesar
and the Alexanders; for it is one thing to have trampled on the world,
but more to have conquered self. I see Fame, with her crowns and palms
trodden under foot, cast out among the wheels of her own chariots. And
to conclude all, I see the dread sentence issue from the mouth of the
Son of God. I see it in the form of two darts, the one of salvation,
the other of damnation; and as they hustle down, I hear the fury of
its onset shock the elemental frame of things, and, with the roar of
thunderings and voices, smash the universal scheme to fragments. I see
the vault of ether merged in gloom, illuminated only by the lights of
Paradise and the furnaces of hell. My thoughts, excited by this vision
of the day of Doom, whisper: 'If we quake in terror before the
handiwork of Buonarroti, how shall we shake and shrink affrighted when
He who shall judge passes sentence on our souls?'"

This description of the Last Day, in which it is more than doubtf