ally drunken man: we see it in the
comatose fall of the limbs, in the drooping features, the languid
inanition of the arms. The veins throb in his hands and feet: the
spine has ceased to be rigid, and were it not for the support of
Judith's hands buried in his hair, he would topple over inanimate. The
treatment of the bronze is successful and its patina is admirable.
Judith's drapery, it is true, has a restless crackling appearance. It
is furrowed into small and rather fussy folds, almost suggesting, like
the figures of the Parthenon pediment, the pleats of wetted linen on a
lay figure. Judith's arm is overweighted by the heavy sleeve. There
are, however, pleasing details, especially the band of embroidery over
her breast decorated with the flying _putti_; and her veil, Michael
Angelesque in its way, is treated with skill and distinction. The base
consists of three bronze reliefs joined into a triangle, separated at
each angle by a narrow bronze plaque, beyond which is a curved
pilaster giving extra support to the figures above. These reliefs are
bacchic in idea and Renaissance in execution. Children dance, play and
sleep around the mask from which the jet of water would issue. These
reliefs, much inferior to the bronze capital at Prato, have been
over-rated. As a group the Judith is not really successful. It is a
pile of figures, less telling in some ways than the Abraham and Isaac,
though, having no niche, it has to undergo the severer test of
criticism from every aspect. But before Michael Angelo the Italian
free-standing group was tentative. Even in Michael Angelo's sculpture,
when we consider its massive scale, the extent and number of his
commissions, and the ease with which he worked his material, it is
astonishing how few free-standing groups were made. His grouping was
applied to the relief. The free group is, of course, the most
comprehensive vehicle of intensified emotion or action; it gives an
opportunity of doubling or trebling the effect on the spectator.
Sculpture has never realised to the full the chances offered by
grouped plastic art of heroic proportions. Classical groups cannot be
fairly judged by the Laocoon, the Farnese Bull, or even the Niobe
reliefs. Their theatrical character is so patent, that it is obvious
how far inferior they must be to the work of greater men whose genuine
productions have perished. But, even so, the group being the medium
through which emotions could be intensified to the u