ible for a man with an innate sense of grandeur of
line to make them. Italian models have been posed in the positions of most
of them, and drawings from them compared with the photographs of these
figures; they are marvellously true, to the very wrinkles of the skin
under the arms and about the knees, and the drawing of the curves and
creases of the torso as the body bends. So naturalistic are they that
Michael Angelo must have posed a model and made drawings in the chapel
itself, perhaps even on the scaffolding, and worked straight away. He
appears to have used only three models for this purpose. The Athletes
drawn from the same model can easily be distinguished; they are actual
portraits. One was the man who sat for the Adam, and was of a noble
proportion with a small head, a beautiful brow, and a solemn mouth. His
hair was wavy and of a wispy character; he had broad shoulders; his
extremities were small, the thighs large and well developed, showing the
individual muscles by large forms with flat planes. He may be seen, as we
have said, in the Adam, and in the four figures surrounding the fresco
representing God dividing the Light from the Darkness; in the two figures
near the Adam in his creation of Eve; and best of all, for comparison, in
the figures near the foot of Adam in the creation of Man. Another model
was of a rounder and more bacchanalian character, not unlike the Dancing
Fawn in the Uffizi; but he was not in such good training. He was decidedly
fat, his face was mobile, and very easily took jovial expressions, his
cheeks dimpled, his eyes round and large, the pupils very dark and the
whites very white; his hair went into short, soft, frizzy curls; his
shoulders were small and round, the arms feeble, the thighs short, round,
and formless; his back was well developed, the folds of the skin in the
torso, when he bent, were very large and fat in line. It was probably for
this that Michael Angelo chose him. He is well seen in three of the
figures surrounding the third panel from the High Altar representing The
Spirit of God upon the Face of the Waters, and the two figures nearest to
the Adam and Eve in the scene of the Expulsion. The other model was of
more ordinary but of still very fine proportion. His head was rather
large, and his mouth petulant in expression, the upper eyelids very thick;
his hair is broken into large, hard curls. He is seen in the figures
surrounding the Sin of Ham, and was probably the firs