tter proof of this, than the one fact that
Michael Angelo borrowed from him openly--borrowed from him in the
principal work which he ever executed, the Last Judgment, and borrowed
from him the principal figure in that work. But it is just because
Orcagna was so firmly and unscrupulously true, that he had the power of
being so great when he chose. His arrow went straight to the mark. It
was not that he did not love beauty, but he loved truth first.

[Footnote 35: This incident is not of Orcagna's invention, it is
variously represented in much earlier art. There is a curious and
graphic drawing of it, _circa_ 1300, in the MS. Arundel 83, Brit. Mus.,
in which the three dead persons are walking, and are met by three
queens, who severally utter the sentences,

"Ich am aferd."
"Lo, whet ich se?"
"Me thinketh hit beth develes thre."

To which the dead bodies answer--

"Ich wes wel fair."
"Such scheltou be."
"For Godes love, be wer by me."

It is curious, that though the dresses of the living persons, and the "I
was well fair" of the first dead speaker, seem to mark them distinctly
to be women, some longer legends below are headed "primus _rex_
mortuus," etc.]

124. So it was with all the men of that time. No painters ever had more
power of conceiving graceful form, or more profound devotion to the
beautiful; but all these gifts and affections are kept sternly
subordinate to their moral purpose; and, so far as their powers and
knowledge went, they either painted from nature things as they were, or
from imagination things as they must have been.

I do not mean that they reached any imitative resemblance to nature.
They had neither skill to do it, nor care to do it. Their art was
conventional and imperfect, but they considered it only as a language
wherein to convey the knowledge of certain facts; it was perfect enough
for that; and though always reaching on to greater attainments, they
never suffered their imperfections to disturb and check them in their
immediate purposes. And this mode of treating all subjects was persisted
in by the greatest men until the close of the fifteenth century.

125. Now so justly have the Pre-Raphaelites chosen their time and name,
that the great change which clouds the career of mediaeval art was
affected, not only in Raphael's time, but by Raphael's own practice, and
by his practice in _the very center of his available life_.

You remember, doubtless, what high