perfectly accurate delineation of the tibia in the legs of Christ. Doubtless; but you know I am lecturing at present on the goffi, and not on Michael Angelo; and the goffi are very careless about clavicles and shin-bones; so that if, after being lectured on anatomy, you went into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you would simply find nothing to look at, except three tolerably welldrawn skeletons. But if after being lectured on theology, you go into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you will find not a little to look at, and to remember.
256. For a single instance, you know Michael Angelo is admitted to have been so far indebted to these goffi as to borrow from the one to whose study of mortality I have just referred, Orcagna, the gesture of his Christ in the Judgment. He borrowed, however, accurately speaking, the position only, not the gesture; nor the meaning of it.[1] You all remember the action of Michael Angelo's Christ,—the right hand raised as if in violence of reprobation; and the left closed across His breast, as refusing all mercy.
- ↑ I found all this in M. Didron's Iconographie, above quoted; I had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself.
