ize and shape,
represent the preaching of Antichrist, the destruction of the world by
fire, the resurrection of the body, the condemnation of the lost, the
reception of saved souls into bliss, and the final states of heaven
and hell. These main subjects occupy the upper spaces of each wall,
while below them are placed portraits of poets, surrounded by rich and
fanciful arabesques, including various episodes from Dante and antique
mythology. Obeying the spirit of the fifteenth century, Signorelli did
not aim at what may be termed an architectural effect in his
decoration of this building. Each panel of the whole is treated
separately, and with very unequal energy, the artist seeming to exert
his strength chiefly in those details which made demands on his
profound knowledge of the human form and his enthusiasm for the nude.
The men and women of the Resurrection, the sublime angels of Heaven
and of the Judgment, the discoloured and degraded fiends of Hell, the
magnificently foreshortened clothed figures of the Fulminati, the
portraits in the preaching of Antichrist, reveal Luca's specific
quality as a painter, at once impressively imaginative and crudely
realistic. There is something in his way of regarding the world and of
reproducing its aspects which dominates our fancy, does violence to
our sense of harmony and beauty, leaves us broken and bewildered,
resentful and at the same moment enthralled. He is a power which has
to be reckoned with; and the reason for speaking about him at length
here is that, in this characteristic blending of intense vision with
impassioned realistic effort after truth to fact, this fascination
mingled with repulsion, he anticipated Michelangelo. Deep at the root
of all Buonarroti's artistic qualities lie these contradictions.
Studying Signorelli, we study a parallel psychological problem. The
chief difference between the two masters lies in the command of
aesthetic synthesis, the constructive sense of harmony, which belonged
to the younger, but which might, we feel, have been granted in like
measure to the elder, had Luca been born, as Michelangelo was, to
complete the evolution of Italian figurative art, instead of marking
one of its most important intermediate moments.

The decorative methods and instincts of the two men were closely
similar. Both scorned any element of interest or beauty which was not
strictly plastic--the human body supported by architecture or by rough
indications of th