ief by Jacopo della
Quercia at Bologna. The Almighty is shrouded in a voluminous mantle; Eve
joins her hands in worship. The figure is modelled with a delicious
softness, and the pearly colour is a delightful rendering of the lighter
flesh tints of woman, something like the quality sought by Correggio in
later times. The Adam reclining in the corner fills that part of the space
as a good medal design fits its circumference; the grey of the shadow,
especially in the darker parts, envelops the figures in a way that had
never been attempted in fresco painting, but is somewhat like a hand in
shadow by Rembrandt. The representations of the Fall and the Expulsion
fill the next compartment, a large one. Here we have another rendering of
a female nude; the type, and especially the modelling of the flank, is a
prophecy of the figure of Dawn in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo. The upper
part of the serpent has a woman's form, and the junction is most admirably
managed after the manner of the sea maidens in Graeco-Roman art. In this
story is the only foreground tree in full leaf ever painted by Michael
Angelo, and yet it is as supreme as everything else. It is remarkable that
the Paradise of Michael Angelo should be such a rocky place, like the side
of a marble mountain, for in his time such places were regarded with
distaste. The landscape into which Adam and Eve are expelled is a lone
flat desert, where no marble could be found. This part of the composition
is taken almost exactly from Massaccio's version in the Brancacci Chapel.
The Sacrifice of Noah fills the next, a smaller compartment. It is placed,
historically, before the Deluge, and must be taken to represent how Noah,
the just man and perfect, and his family, found grace in the eyes of the
Lord. As there are five male persons present, this scene cannot represent
the sacrifice immediately after the Flood, nor is any rainbow to be seen
as was usual in the traditional representations of that subject, like the
one in the Chiostro Verde at Santa Maria Novella. Raphael also gives more
figures than can be accounted for as having been in the ark in his
composition of the sacrifice of Noah, in the series called the Bible of
Raphael in the Loggia. The large composition of the Deluge gives us some
idea of what the cartoon of Pisa may have been like. There never was a
collection of naked figures so many and so beautiful. One is filled with
sorrow at the idea of their being drowned. They ar