sculpture of Giovanni Pisano as seen in the pilasters of the pulpit of
the Church of San Andrea at Pistoia.

It would be endless to try and tell all the thoughts and emotions, both
literary and artistic, suggested by the contemplation of these figures and
by the groups representing the Ancestors of Christ. Suffice it to say,
that all the thoughts that come into the minds of the beholders are as
nothing compared to the thoughts that passed through the mind of the
solitary artist composing and painting upon the high scaffolding of the
quiet chapel.

The series of the Ancestors of Christ illustrate the life of a being upon
this earth, from the terrible moment when the pregnant woman first feels
the pangs of approaching labour, in the semicircle of the window
(inscribed Roboam, Abias) to the lean and slippered pantaloon, who needs a
stick to help him rise from his seat (over the window inscribed Salmon,
Boaz, Obeth); there is the happy mother sleeping with her infant wrapped
in swaddling-clothes (Salmon, Boaz, Obeth); and the old man playing with
the children, (Eleazr, Matthew); the student attentively poring over his
book regardless of the female figure, possibly Inspiration, speaking to
him from the other side of the window (Naason). These figures, the
Ancestors of Christ, are more slightly painted than the rest of the vault.
They loom out of the darkness, caused by contrast to the light of the
windows they surround, grow in and out of the background and have an
atmospheric effect unequalled in fresco painting. Those who walk from the
Ponte Saint Angelo up the Borgo to the Vatican any morning early may see
at the back of the dim recesses of the arched cellar-like shops such
groups as these. The series may be regarded as the sketch-book of Michael
Angelo, in which he recorded his impressions of the life about him as he
trudged to his work.

The four triangular compositions that fill the corners of the chapel, the
four great Redemptions of Israel, are absolute masterpieces of space
arrangement, different methods of overcoming the same difficulty being
used in each picture, from the two principal figures and the tent in the
David and Goliath to the marvellous crowd of twisted limbs in the story of
the Brazen Serpent. In the composition of the Death of Holofernes Judith
covers with a napkin the severed head, which is carried in a basket on the
head of her handmaid; a most lovely group, said to have been taken from an
intagl