the
architectural framework.

Thus, the vault may be regarded as a gallery of one hundred and forty-five
separate pictures by Michael Angelo. There is one reservation, and that
is, that the twenty-four groups of two children forming pilasters are in
pairs, of the same outline but reversed; as they are differently lighted
they may still be taken as different pictures. These pilasters form the
sides of the thrones of the Prophets and Sibyls, and repeating them in
reversed outline on either side of the same throne has a very valuable
decorative effect, well known to the old Italian workmen, who frequently
repeated the forms of their fruit and flower decorations in this manner,
by the expedient of reversing the paper-pricking from one and the same
cartoon. It is interesting to find Michael Angelo resorting to this simple
trick to get the effect of balance in figure decoration. The light and
shade of the reversed figures follow the general scheme of the
illumination, so that the figures traced from the same cartoons look very
dissimilar when painted, but if the outlines are traced from a photograph,
and reversed on the corresponding figures, they will be seen to coincide.
It seems impossible to explain the exactness in any other way, a few
measurements on the vault itself would make it certain. Probably the same
method was employed in transferring the twenty-four bronze-coloured
decorative figures also.

The historical sequence of the events in the nine pictures on the central
space of the vault represents the Story of the Creation, the Fall, the
Flood, and the second entry of Sin into the world, demonstrating the need
for a scheme of Salvation, promised by the Prophets and Sibyls in the
second part of the decoration. The series represented is an old invention,
and all the scenes may be found in Byzantine and early Italian works; but
the new treatment gives them a character of grandeur only equalled by the
Old Testament narrative which they illustrate. All the human figures and
most of the angels appear to be dominated by an idea of impending doom,
but they nobly act their part in a fateful present, although they know
that the future cannot be changed by any effort of theirs, however noble
it may be. They are all fatalists, but all noble in their pessimism; they
reflect the mind of the artist. The individual motives of the figures,
their grouping and their action, are frequently taken from earlier art,
especially sculpture,