he designing of
facades and sacristies and libraries, had developed the architectonic
sense which was always powerful in his conceptive faculty.
Consequently, we are not surprised to find that, intricate and
confused as the scheme may appear to an unpractised eye, it is in
reality a design of mathematical severity, divided into four bands or
planes of grouping. The wall, since it occupies one entire end of a
long high building, is naturally less broad than lofty. The pictorial
divisions are therefore horizontal in the main, though so combined and
varied as to produce the effect of multiplied curves, balancing and
antiphonally inverting their lines of sinuosity. The pendentive upon
which the prophet Jonah sits, descends and breaks the surface at the
top, leaving a semicircular compartment on each side of its corbel.
Michelangelo filled these upper spaces with two groups of wrestling
angels, the one bearing a huge cross, the other a column, in the air.
The cross and whipping-post are the chief emblems of Christ's Passion.
The crown of thorns is also there, the sponge, the ladder, and the
nails. It is with no merciful intent that these signs of our Lord's
suffering are thus exhibited. Demonic angels, tumbling on clouds like
Leviathans, hurl them to and fro in brutal wrath above the crowd of
souls, as though to demonstrate the justice of damnation. In spite of
a God's pain and shameful death, mankind has gone on sinning. The
Judge is what the crimes of the world and Italy have made him.
Immediately below the corbel, and well detached from the squadrons of
attendant saints, Christ rises from His throne. His face is turned in
the direction of the damned, His right hand is lifted as though loaded
with thunderbolts for their annihilation. He is a ponderous young
athlete; rather say a mass of hypertrophied muscles, with the features
of a vulgarised Apollo. The Virgin sits in a crouching attitude at His
right side, slightly averting her head, as though in painful
expectation of the coming sentence. The saints and martyrs who
surround Christ and His Mother, while forming one of the chief planes
in the composition, are arranged in four unequal groups of subtle and
surprising intricacy. All bear the emblems of their cruel deaths, and
shake them in the sight of Christ as though appealing to His
judgment-seat. It has been charitably suggested that they intend to
supplicate for mercy. I cannot, however, resist the impression that
they