Enough of ruined splendor still
remains to convince the spectator of all that has departed; but methinks
I have seen hardly anything else so forlorn and depressing as it is now,
all dusky and dim, even the very lights having passed into shadows, and
the shadows into utter blackness; so that it needs a sunshiny day, under
the bright Italian heavens, to make the designs perceptible at all. As
we sat in the chapel there were clouds flitting across the sky; when the
clouds came the pictures vanished; when the sunshine broke forth the
figures sadly glimmered into something like visibility,--the Almighty
moving in chaos,--the noble shape of Adam, the beautiful Eve; and,
beneath where the roof curves, the mighty figures of sibyls and prophets,
looking as if they were necessarily so gigantic because the thought
within them was so massive. In the "Last Judgment" the scene of the
greater part of the picture lies in the upper sky, the blue of which
glows through betwixt the groups of naked figures; and above sits Jesus,
not looking in the least like the Saviour of the world, but, with
uplifted arm, denouncing eternal misery on those whom he came to save.
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