Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/300

288 those thus brought to judgment, the other as being the founder of the Christian religion. At the feet of Christ is a most beautiful figure of San Bartolommeo, holding forth the skin of which he was deprived; with a nude figure of San Lorenzo, and those of other saints male and female, to say nothing of the many other forms of men and women, some near and some at greater distance, who embrace each other and express their joy; they, by the grace of God and as the reward of their good works, having secured eternal blessedness. Beneath the feet of our Saviour are the seven Angels with the seven trumpets, described by St. John the Evangelist; and as they summon all to judgment, the terrible expression of their faces causes the hair to stand on end. Among the angels, there are two holding the Book of Life; while near them on one side, and not without admirable forethought, are the seven mortal sins in the form of demons; they are struggling to drag down to hell the souls which are flying, with beautiful attitudes and admirable foreshortenings, towards heaven.

Nor has our artist hesitated to show the world how, in the resurrection of the dead, these forms retake their flesh and bones from the earth itself, and how, assisted by others, already risen to life, they are soaring into the heavens, the blessed spirits above also lending them aid; every part exhibits the peculiarities that may be supposed best suited to such a work: the master having made sketches and endured fatigues of all kinds, as indeed may be clearly perceived throughout the whole. This is, perhaps, more particularly manifest in the barque of Charon, who stands in an attitude of furious anger, striking with his oars at the souls which are dragged into the boat by the devils; as Michelagnolo’s most beloved author, Dante, has described him, when he says,— Charon, the demon, with the eyes of brass, Calls the sad troops, and having gathered all, Smites with raised oar the wretch that dares delay.

Nor would it be easy adequately to describe the variety displayed in the heads of those devils, which are truly monsters of hell. In the sinners also, the crimes they have committed, with their fear of eternal punishment for the same, are equally manifest; and, to say nothing of the beauty of this work, the harmony with which it is executed is so extraordinary that the pictures appear as if all painted in the same