n the limbs of Michael
Angelo's sitting Madonna in the Uffizii; all artifices, also, of deep
and sharp cutting being allowed, to gain the shadowy and spectral
expressions about the brow and lip which the mere actualities of form
could not have conveyed;--the sculptor never following a material model,
but feeling after the most momentary and subtle aspects of the
countenance--striking these out sometimes suddenly, by rude chiseling,
and stopping the instant they are attained--never risking the loss of
thought by the finishing of flesh surface. The heads of the Medici
sacristy we believe to have been thus left unfinished, as having
already the utmost expression which the marble could receive, and
incapable of anything but loss from further touches. So with Mino da
Fiesole and Jacopo della Quercia, the workmanship is often hard,
sketchy, and angular, having its full effect only at a little distance;
but at that distance the statue becomes ineffably alive, even to
startling, bearing an aspect of change and uncertainty, as if it were
about to vanish, and withal having a light, and sweetness, and incense
of passion upon it that silences the looker-on, half in delight, half in
expectation. This daring stroke--this transfiguring tenderness--may be
shown to characterize all truly Christian sculpture, as compared with
the antique, or the pseudo-classical of subsequent periods. We agree
with Lord Lindsay in thinking the Psyche of Naples the nearest approach
to the Christian ideal of all ancient efforts; but even in this the
approximation is more accidental than real--a fair type of feature,
further exalted by the mode in which the imagination supplies the lost
upper folds of the hair. The fountain of life and emotion remains
sealed; nor was the opening of that fountain due to any study of the far
less pure examples accessible by the Pisan sculptors. The sound of its
waters had been heard long before in the aisles of the Lombard; nor was
it by Ghiberti, still less by Donatello, that the bed of that Jordan was
dug deepest, but by Michael Angelo (the last heir of the Byzantine
traditions descending through Orcagna), opening thenceforward through
thickets darker and more dark, and with waves ever more soundless and
slow, into the Dead Sea wherein its waters have been stayed.

56. It is time for us to pass to the subject which occupies the largest
portion of the work---the History

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"of Painting, as develope