e past and within view of the present and the future, to conceive
of God as other than an angry judge, vindictive and implacable.

The "Last Judgment" has long been the most celebrated of Michael Angelo's
paintings; partly no doubt because it was executed in the plenitude of his
fame, with the eyes of all Italy upon him; partly because its size arouses
vulgar wonder, and its theme strikes terror into all who gaze on it. Yet
it is neither so strong nor so beautiful as the vault-paintings of the
Sistine. The freshness of the genius that created Eve and Adam, unrivalled
in their bloom of primal youth, has passed away. Austerity and gloom have
taken possession of the painter. His style has hardened into mannerism,
and the display of barren science in difficult posturing and strained
anatomy has become wilful. Still, whether we regard this fresco as closing
the long series of "Last Judgments" to be studied on Italian church-walls
from Giotto downwards; or whether we confine our attention, as
contemporaries seem to have done, to the skill of its foreshortenings and
groupings;[327] or whether we analyse the dramatic energy wherewith
tremendous passions are expressed, its triumph is in either case decided.
The whole wall swarms with ascending and descending, poised and hovering,
shapes--men and women rising from the grave before the judge, taking their
stations among the saved, or sinking with unutterable anguish to the place
of doom--a multitude that no man can number, surging to and fro in dim
tempestuous air. In the centre at the top, Christ is rising from His
throne with the gesture of an angry Hercules, hurling ruin on the guilty.
He is such as the sins of Italy have made Him. Squadrons of angels,
bearing the emblems of His passion, whirl around Him like grey
thunder-clouds, and all the saints lean forward from their vantage ground
to curse and threaten. At the very bottom bestial features take the place
of human lineaments, and the terror of judgment has become the torment of
damnation. Such is the general scope of this picture. Of all its merits,
none is greater than the delineation of uncertainty and gradual awakening
to life. The middle region between vigilance and slumber, reality and
dream, Michael Angelo ruled as his own realm; and a painting of the "Last
Judgment" enabled him to deal with this metaichmios skotos--this
darkness in the interval of crossing spears--under its most solemn aspect.

When the fresco was unc