tenances. I am confident that the Pieta is one of his
rarest and most difficult masterpieces; particularly because the
figures are kept apart distinctly, nor does the drapery of the one
intermingle with that of the others."

This panegyric is by no means pitched too high. Justice has hardly
been done in recent times to the noble conception, the intense
feeling, and the broad manner of this Deposition. That may be due in
part to the dull twilight in which the group is plunged, depriving all
its lines of salience and relief. It is also true that in certain
respects the composition is fairly open to adverse criticism. The
torso of Christ overweighs the total scheme; and his legs are
unnaturally attenuated. The kneeling woman on the left side is
slender, and appears too small in proportion to the other figures;
though, if she stood erect, it is probable that her height would be
sufficient.

The best way to study Michelangelo's last work in marble is to take
the admirable photograph produced under artificial illumination by
Alinari. No sympathetic mind will fail to feel that we are in
immediate contact with the sculptor's very soul, at the close of his
life, when all his thoughts were weaned from earthly beauty, and he
cried--

Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
My soul, that turns to his great love on high,
Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.

As a French critic has observed: "It is the most intimately personal
and the most pathetic of his works. The idea of penitence exhales from
it. The marble preaches the sufferings of the Passion; it makes us
listen to an act of bitter contrition and an act of sorrowing love."

Michelangelo is said to have designed the Pieta for his own monument.
In the person of Nicodemus, it is he who sustains his dead Lord in the
gloom of the sombre Duomo. His old sad face, surrounded by the heavy
cowl, looks down for ever with a tenderness beyond expression,
repeating mutely through the years how much of anguish and of blood
divine the redemption of man's soul hath cost.

The history of this great poem in marble, abandoned by its maker in
some mood of deep dejection, is not without interest. We are told that
the stone selected was a capital from one of the eight huge columns of
the Temple of Peace. Besides being hard and difficult to handle, the
material betrayed flaws in working. This circumstance annoyed the
master; also, as he informed Vasari, Urbino kept conti