ard; their selfishness, oppression,
cruelty and fraud; the murders of their kinsmen; their labyrinthine
plots and acts of broken faith;--all is tranquil now, and we can
say to each what Bosola found for the Duchess of Malfi ere her
execution:--
Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay's now competent:
A long war disturbed your mind;
Here your perfect peace is signed!
Some of these faces are commonplace, with _bourgeois_ cunning
written on the heavy features; one is bluff, another stolid, a third
bloated, a fourth stately. The sculptors have dealt fairly with
all, and not one has the lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo
Solari's statues of Lodovico Sforza and his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the
palm of excellence in art and of historical interest must be awarded.
Sculpture has rarely been more dignified and true to life than here.
The woman with her short clustering curls, the man with his strong
face, are resting after that long fever which brought woe to Italy, to
Europe a new age, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a slow death
in the prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal robes, they lie in
state; and the sculptor has carved the lashes on their eyelids, heavy
with death's marmoreal sleep. He at least has passed no judgment
on their crimes. Let us too bow and leave their memories to the
historian's pen, their spirits to God's mercy.
After all wanderings in this Temple of Art, we return to Antonio
Amadeo, to his long-haired seraphs playing on the lutes of Paradise,
to his angels of the Passion with their fluttering robes and arms
outspread in agony, to his saints and satyrs mingled on pilasters of
the marble doorways, his delicate _Lavabo_ decorations, and his
hymns of piety expressed in noble forms of weeping women and dead
Christs. Wherever we may pass, this master-spirit of the Lombard style
enthralls attention. His curious treatment of drapery as though it
|were made of crumpled paper, and his trick of enhancing relief by
sharp angles and attenuated limbs, do not detract from his peculiar
charm. That is his way, very different from Donatello's, of attaining
to the maximum of life and lightness in the stubborn vehicle of
stone. Nor do all the riches of the choir--those multitudes of singing
angels, those Ascensions and Assumptions, and innumerable
basreliefs of gleaming marble moulded into softest wax by mastery of
art--distract our eyes from the single round medallion, not larger
t
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