from a lofty throne, more enduring than bronze, the Florentine poet pronounces terrible condemnations which have not yet been canceled. He seems verily, by the power of his art, to compel God to ratify his sentences.
III
Only one man since Dante's time has achieved a conception of equal grandeur—and that man is Michelangelo. The Sistine Chapel is the only worthy illustration of the Divine Comedy.
I have sometimes imagined a tremendous drama of the Last Judgment, the words to be written by Dante, the music to be composed by Palestrina—save that for the trumpets of the angel who is to wake the dead (think of the sound of trumpets that will wake even from the sleep of death!) I should have sought the aid of Richard Wagner.
Should there come to the throne of St. Peter a Pope with daring and initiative, he might well cover the quattrocentist frescoes on the side walls of the Sistine Chapel—frescoes that yield but incidental charm—and in their place inscribe, in fair red characters, the whole Divine Comedy, in the presence of its only worthy interpretation: the Last Judgment of Michelangelo.
