rks of the greatest artists. Wherever, in the paintings of the early
Renaissance, there is realism, marked by the costume of the times, there
is ugliness of form and vulgarity of movement; where there is idealism,
marked by imitation of the antique, the nude, and drapery, there is
beauty and dignity. We need only compare Filippino's Scene before the
Proconsul with his Raising of the King's Son in the Brancacci Chapel;
the grand attitude and draperies of Ghirlandajo's Zachariah with the
vulgar dress and movements of the Florentine citizens surrounding him;
Benozzo Gozzoli's noble naked figure of Noah with his ungainly,
hideously dressed figure of Cosimo de' Medici; Mantegna's exquisite
Judith with his preposterous Marquis of Mantua; in short, all the purely
realistic with all the purely idealistic painting of the fifteenth
century. We may give one last instance. In Signorelli's Orvieto frescoes
there is a figure of a young man, with aquiline features, long crisp
hair and strongly developed throat, which reappears unmistakably in all
the compositions, and in some of them twice and thrice in various
positions. His naked figure is magnificent, his attitudes splendid, his
thrown-back head superb, whether he be slowly and painfully emerging
from the earth, staggered and gasping with his newly infused life, or
sinking oppressed on the ground, broken and crushed by the sound of the
trumpet of judgment; or whether he be moving forward with ineffable
longing towards the angel about to award him the crown of the blessed;
in all these positions he is heroically beautiful. We meet him again,
unmistakable, but how different, in the realistic group of the
"Thunder-stricken "--the long, lank youth, with spindle-shanks and
egg-shaped body, bounding forward, with most grotesque strides, over the
uncouth heap of dead bodies, ungainly masses with soles and nostrils
uppermost, lying in beast-like confusion. This youth, with something of
a harlequin in his jumps and his ridiculous thin legs and preposterous
round body, is evidently the model for the naked demi-gods of the
Resurrection and the Paradise: he is the handsome boy as the fifteenth
century gave him to Signorelli; opposite, he is the living youth of the
fifteenth century idealized by the study of ancient sculpture; just as
the "Thunder-stricken" may be some scene of street massacre such as
Signorelli might have witnessed at Cortona or Perugia; while the agonies
of the "Hell" are the g