abesques and vizored helmets surmounting their garlands, the great
unsigned artist of the fourteenth century, be he Sienese or Florentine,
be he Orcagna, Lorenzetti, or Volterra, painted the typical masterpiece
of mediaeval art, the great fresco of the Triumph of Death. With
wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the
prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs
and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with
Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the
gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in
a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of
beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their
withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their
arms, their stumps, and their crutches. Further on, three kings in long
embroidered robes and gold-trimmed shovel caps, Lewis the Emperor,
Uguccione of Pisa, and Castruccio of Lucca, with their retinue of ladies
and squires, and hounds and hawks, are riding quietly through a wood.
Suddenly their horses stop, draw back; the Emperor's bay stretches out
his long neck sniffing the air; the kings strain forward to see, one
holding his nose for the stench of death which meets him; and before
them are three open coffins, in which lie, in three loathsome stages of
corruption, from blue and bloated putrescence to well-nigh fleshless
decay, three crowned corpses. This is the triumph of Death; the grim and
horrible jest of the Middle Ages: equality in decay; kings, emperors,
ladies, knights, beggars, and cripples, this is what we all come to be,
stinking corpses; Death, our lord, our only just and lasting sovereign,
reigns impartially over all.

But opposite, all along the sides of the painted cloister, the amazons
are wrestling with the youths on the stone of the sarcophagi; the
chariots are dashing forward, the Tritons are splashing in the marble
waves; the Bacchantae are striking their timbrels in their dance with the
satyrs; the birds are pecking at the grapes, the goats are nibbling at
the vines, all is life, strong and splendid in its marble eternity. And
the mutilated Venus smiles towards the broken Hermes; the stalwart
Hercules, resting against his club, looks on quietly, a smile beneath
his beard; and the gods murmur to each other, as they stand in the
cloister filled with earth from Calvary, where hundreds of men lie