elo only a vehicle for the display of his own powers of
drawing limbs and trunks: and having resolved, and made the world of his
day believe, that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficult
attitude, he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with an
upholsterer's ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit, but
with total absence of any legible meaning. Nor do I suppose that one
person in a million, even of those who have some acquaintance with the
earlier masters, takes patience in the Sistine Chapel to conceive the
original design. But Botticelli's mastership of the works evidently was
given to him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and the
moment when he came to Rome to receive it, you may hold for the crisis
of the Reformation in Italy. The main effort to save her priesthood was
about to be made by her wisest Reformer,--face to face with the head of
her Church,--not in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection to
him; and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and more
than delight, if it might be.

208. Sandro brings to work, not under him, but with him, the three other
strongest and worthiest men he knows, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and Luca
Signorelli. There is evidently entire fellowship in thought between
Botticelli and Perugino. They two together plan the whole; and
Botticelli, though the master, yields to Perugino the principal place,
the end of the chapter, on which is to be the Assumption of the Virgin.
It was Perugino's favorite subject, done with his central strength;
assuredly the crowning work of his life, and of lovely Christian art in
Europe.

Michael Angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead bodies all over
the wall instead. But there remains to us, happily, the series of
subjects designed by Botticelli to lead up to this lost one.

209. He came, I said, not to attack, but to restore the Papal authority.
To show the power of inherited honor, and universal claim of divine law,
in the Jewish and Christian Church,--the law delivered first by Moses;
then, in final grace and truth, by Christ.

He designed twelve great pictures, each containing some twenty figures
the size of life, and groups of smaller ones scarcely to be counted.
Twelve pictures,--six to illustrate the giving of the law by Moses; and
six, the ratification and completion of it by Christ. Event by event,
the jurisprudence of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close in
this cor