Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/276

264 copying certain passages from other writings, with indescribable eagerness of attention; the weight of the book is supported by a boy, who stands before the Prophet, and the beauty of that child is such that no pencil, by whatever hand it may be borne, will ever equal it. As much may be said for the Lybian Sybil, who, having completed the writing of a large book taken from other volumes, is on the point of rising with a movement of feminine grace, and at the same time shows the intention of lifting and putting aside the book, a thing so difficult that it would certainly have proved impossible to any other than the master of this work.

And what shall I say of the four pictures which adorn the angles of the Corbels on this ceiling? In the first is David, exerting all his boyish force in the conquest of the gigantic Philistine, and depriving him of his head, to the utter amazement of numerous Soldiers, who are seen around the Camp. Equally beautiful are the attitudes in the picture of Judith, which occupies the opposite angle, and wherein there is the lifeless body of Holofernes, so recently decapitated that it seems yet to palpitate with life. Judith meanwhile is placing the head of the General in a basket, which is borne by an old servant, on her head. The handmaid is tall of stature, and is stooping to facilitate the due arrangement of her burden by the hands of her mistress. She is endeavouring at the same time to uphold, and also to conceal, what she bears, being impelled to the last-mentioned act, by the sound arising in the tent from the body of Holofernes, which although dead, has drawn up an arm and a leg, thereby causing the sound in question. The face of the servant betrays her fear of some one entering from the Camp, as well as the terror caused her by the dead body, a picture which is certainly most remarkable.

But more beautiful and more divine than even this, or indeed than any of those yet described, is the Story of the Serpents of Moses, which Michelagnolo has placed above the left side of the Altar, and wherein there are represented the dropping of the Serpents on the people, their stings and the bites they inflict, as is also that Serpent of Brass, which Moses himself erected on a staff. In this picture the different modes in which death seizes the sufferers is rendered vividly apparent, many of those not yet dead are obviously hopeless of recovery; others die convulsed with the fear and horror