lterra. As a necessary consequence of this tribute to
modesty, the scheme of Michelangelo's colouring and the balance of his
masses have been irretrievably damaged.

IV

Vasari says that not very long before the Last Judgment was finished,
Michelangelo fell from the scaffolding, and seriously hurt his leg.
The pain he suffered and his melancholy made him shut himself up at
home, where he refused to be treated by a doctor. There was a
Florentine physician in Rome, however, of capricious humour, who
admired the arts, and felt a real affection for Buonarroti. This man
contrived to creep into the house by some privy entrance, and roamed
about it till he found the master. He then insisted upon remaining
there on watch and guard until he had effected a complete cure. The
name of this excellent friend, famous for his skill and science in
those days, was Baccio Rontini.

After his recovery Michelangelo returned to work, and finished the
Last Judgment in a few months. It was exposed to the public on
Christmas Day in 1541.

Time, negligence, and outrage, the dust of centuries, the burned
papers of successive conclaves, the smoke of altar-candles, the
hammers and the hangings of upholsterers, the brush of the
breeches-maker and restorer, have so dealt with the Last Judgment that
it is almost impossible to do it justice now. What Michelangelo
intended by his scheme of colour is entirely lost. Not only did
Daniele da Volterra, an execrable colourist, dab vividly tinted
patches upon the modulated harmonies of flesh-tones painted by the
master; but the whole surface has sunk into a bluish fog, deepening to
something like lamp-black around the altar. Nevertheless, in its
composition the fresco may still be studied; and after due inspection,
aided by photographic reproductions of each portion, we are not unable
to understand the enthusiasm which so nobly and profoundly planned a
work of art aroused among contemporaries.

It has sometimes been asserted that this enormous painting, the
largest and most comprehensive in the world, is a tempest of
contending forms, a hurly-burly of floating, falling, soaring, and
descending figures. Nothing can be more opposed to the truth.
Michelangelo was sixty-six years of age when he laid his brush down at
the end of the gigantic task. He had long outlived the spontaneity of
youthful ardour. His experience through half a century in the planning
of monuments, the painting of the Sistine vault, t