The eye will dwell longest on the great fresco of the Creation of Adam, Figure 199. It is all noble energy in the figure of God giving life by His touch, all noble languor in the relaxed form of Adam only dimly conscious of himself and wistful. There could be no truer or more striking illustration of the pessimistic view that life was imposed upon the earth and brought sadness with it. The titan form of Adam has a singular and enigmatic relaxation. He undergoes a gift he has never besought and faces it with something between confusion, mistrust and resignation. Perhaps the splendid body would have been more at ease, had the soul not been added. So in a spirit of Christian pessimism Michelangelo represents Deity sharing its divine powers with the first man. At the centre of the ceiling is the creation of Eve, again an extraordinary study in lassitude, but with a significant difference in the figure of Eve. The woman, the chosen receptacle and transmitter of life, accepts the gift eagerly. She presses up to God in thankful adoration. No doubts or ambiguities here. And what a figure—fit to be the mother of a race, exulting already in a fecundity that is to be most grievous. Compare her action with the languid and almost disdainful gesture of Adam in the last fresco, and learn that if the world is still peopled it is due to the unreflective and unshaken fealty to life of all Eve’s true daughters. [Illustration: FIG. 200. Michelangelo. The Temptation and Expulsion from Eden. ] Perhaps the most decorative subject, if one may use the word of themes so morally impressive, is that which represents the sin of the forbidden fruit and the expulsion from Eden, Figure 200. The elements of pathos which are strong in the story of Genesis are absent. Michelangelo has not deigned to show us a habitable or desirable Eden. We see instead the swiftly changing episodes of a great doom, which culminates in this scene. Marvelous are the paired groups, superb the contrast between careless appetite under the tree of knowledge and utter shame in the exiled pair. One feels that Eve, who shrinks most, will soonest recover. Her mission is still valid in the world of sin and shame. The composition is the first one made up entirely of nudes. We may pass quickly over the three compartments devoted to the story of Noah. The scale of the figures, especially in the Deluge, is too small to count at the distance from the eye. These three frescoes were the beginning of the work, the proper scale being arrived at through trial and error. Inherently the two small oblongs are among the most beautiful in the ceiling, having a stylistic grace that is less marked in the earlier more august themes. With the charm of Greek intaglios these stories of Noah combine monumentality. [Illustration: FIG. 201. Michelangelo. The Prophet Jeremiah. ]