Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/37

Rh similar beauty and excellence to the night-piece described above, several portraits of persons then living are preserved to us in the persons of the bearers who support the chair wherein Pope Julius is borne along; the figure of the Pontiff is most life-like. While the populace, among whom are many women, make way for his Holiness to pass, they give to view the furious approach of an armed man on horseback; he is accompanied by two others who are on foot, and together they smite and overthrow the haughty Heliodorus, who, by the command of Antiochus, is about to despoil the Temple of all the treasures deposited for the widows and orphans. The wares and treasures are already in process of being borne away, but the terror awakened by the new occurrence of Heliodorus, struck down and scourged by the three figures above-mentioned, who are seen and heard by himself alone, being only a vision, causes those who are bearing the spoils away to let all drop from their hands, while they themselves fall stumbling over each other, possessed as they are by a sudden affright and horror which had fallen on all the followers of Heliodorus. Apart from these stands the High Priest, Onias, in his pontifical robes, his hands and eyes are raised to heaven, and he is praying most fervently, being moved to compassion for the poor, whom he has beheld on the point of being despoiled of their possessions, but is yet rejoiced at the succour which he feels that Heaven has sent to them. With felicitous invention Raphael has placed various figures about the different parts of the building, some of whom climb on the socles of the columns, and clasping the shaft, thus stand, maintaining themselves with difficulty in their inconvenient position, to obtain a better view of the scene passing before them; the mass of the. people meanwhile, astounded at what they behold, remain in divers attitudes awaiting the result of the wondrous event.