And in this light we ought to contemplate a great part of the Capella
Sistina. Its plan was monumental, and some of its compartments were
allotted to Apposition, not because M. Agnolo was a sculptor, but
because it was a more comprehensive medium to exhibit his general plan
than the narrower scale of composition. He admitted and like a master
treated composition, whenever his subject from the primeval simplicity
of elemental nature retreated within the closer bounds of society: his
Patriarchs, his Prophets and his Sibyls, singly considered or as groups,
the scenery of the Brazen Serpent, of David and of Judith, of Noah and
his sons, are models of the roundest and grandest composition. What
principle of composition do we miss in the creation of Adam and of Eve?
Can it grasp with more unity, characterise with more propriety, present
with brighter perspicuity, give greater truth of place or round with
more effect? If collateral arrangement be the ruling plan of the Last
Judgment, if point of sight and linear and aerial perspective in what is
elevated, comes forward or recedes, if artificial masses and
ostentatious roundness, on the whole, be absorbed by design or
sacrificed to higher principles, what effects has the greatest power of
machinery ever contrived to emulate the conglobation of those struggling
groups where light and shade administered to terror or sublimity? What,
to emulate the boat of Charon disemboguing its crew of criminals, flung
in a murky mass of shade across the pallid concave and bleak blast of
light that blows it on us? A meteor in the realms of chiaroscuro which
obscures whatever the most daring servants of that power elsewhere
produced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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