Here the angel, standing, yet scarcely touching the ground, poised on his outspread wings, sets his left foot on the head of his adversary; in one hand he brandishes a sword, in the other he holds the end of a chain, with which he is about to bind down the demon in the bottomless pit. The attitude has been criticised, and justly; the grace is somewhat mannered, verging on the theatrical; but Forsyth is too severe when he talks of the ‘air of a dancing-master:’ one thing, however, is certain, we do not think about attitude when we look at Raphael’s St. Michael; in Guido’s, it is the first thing that strikes us; but when we look farther, the head redeems all; it is singularly beautiful, and in the blending of the masculine and feminine graces, in the serene purity of the brow, and the flow of the golden hair, there is something divine: a slight, very slight expression of scorn is in the air of the head. The fiend is the worst part of the picture; it is not a fiend, but a degraded prosaic human ruffian; we laugh with incredulous contempt at the idea of an angel called down from heaven to overcome such a wretch. In Raphael the fiend is human, but the head has the god-like ugliness and malignity of a satyr; Guido’s fiend is only stupid and base. It appears to me that there is just the same difference—the same _kind_ of difference—between the angel of Raphael and the angel of Guido, as between the description in Tasso and the description in Milton; let any one compare them. In Tasso we are struck by the picturesque elegance of the description as a piece of art, the melody of the verse, the admirable choice of the expressions, as in Guido by the finished but somewhat artificial and studied grace. In Raphael and Milton we see only the vision of a ‘shape divine.’ One of the most beautiful figures of St. Michael I ever saw, occurs in a coronation of the Virgin by Moretto, and is touched by his peculiar sentiment of serious tenderness.[72] In devotional pictures such figures of St. Michael are sometimes grouped poetically with other personages, as in a most beautiful picture by Innocenza da Imola,[73] where the archangel tramples on the demon; St. Paul standing on one side, and St. Benedict on the other, both of whom had striven with the fiend and had overcome him: the Madonna and Child are seen in a glory above. And again in a picture by Mabuse,[74] where St. Michael, as patron, sets his foot on the black grinning fiend, and looks down on a kneeling votary, while the votary, with his head turned away, appears to be worshipping, not the protecting angel, but the Madonna, to whom St. Michael presents him (38). Such votive pictures are not uncommon, and have a peculiar grace and significance. Here the archangel bears the victorious banner of the cross;—he has conquered. In some instances he holds in his hand the head of the Dragon, and in _all_ instances it is, or ought to be, the head of the Dragon which is transfixed:—‘Thou shalt bruise his head.’