en, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait
is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in
the Uffizzi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple
of Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore
justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented
faithfully the outline of Savonarola's face, but has also indicated his
peculiar expression. A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders.
Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull,
rounded into extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply
sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye
that blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline,
with wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of
vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is
large, as if made for a torrent of eloquence: it is supplied with
massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and
utterance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheekbone emergent:
between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation
of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the
throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent;
and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine
sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit
machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull,
beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in
the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary
and a monk. The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The
wings of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed
over it. The spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color
of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves were exquisitely sensitive
yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily
overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than
by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were
succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvization.
From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up
the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power,
filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his
discourse by no mere trick o