Before we pass on to another question, it is impossible not to make a few remarks upon one of the most beautiful and affecting of all the works in ivory which have come down to us from mediæval times. This is a piece, small in size and carved upon both sides, which has probably been in the volute of a bishop’s pastoral staff. On one side is a group of our Lord in the garden of Gethsemane, praying in His agony, and with the apostles lying asleep below. On the other is a second group, a Pietà; the blessed Virgin seated and holding the dead body of our Lord upon her lap. A woodcut is given of this important sculpture. Perhaps there are few works of Michael Angelo which have been more praised, or which have excited more enthusiasm than his group of the same subject in St. Peter’s. We will listen for a minute to two or three writers who have especially drawn attention to his famous Pietà. [Illustration] One says: “The celebrated Pietà now adorns the first right-hand chapel on entering the great door of St. Peter’s. It consists of two figures, the Virgin Mother, seated in a dignified attitude, and supporting on her knees a dead Christ, Whom she regards with inexpressible reverence, tenderness, and grief.... Its touching pathos, its dignified conception, and its masterly execution, are incontestable.” A French critic writes: “Cette Pietà fut la première œuvre de Michel Ange qui l’éleva au premier rang et apprit son nom à tous les échos du monde civilisé;” and the same author further speaks of the group as having been “the conception” of the artist, and “a creation” of his imagination. Another writes: “When this group was finished it was universally admired,” and goes on to state that “one of the great sculptors of the present day, our fellow-countryman Gibson, expressed himself in terms of high admiration.” Once more; a writer upon the Tuscan school: “In this admirable group the dead body of our Lord lies upon the lap of the Madonna, while her left hand is half opened and slightly turned back, with a gesture which carries out the pitying expression of her face. The Christ shows a purity of style and deep feeling, combined with a grandeur which Michel Angelo drew from himself alone.” The same writer tells us a few pages before: “Michael Angelo, who was an enemy to tradition in art, as well as to a positive imitation of nature, took a path diametrically opposed to that followed by the conventionalists, the realists, and the worshippers of the antique.”