255. As I have been writing these paragraphs, I have been checking myself almost at every word,--wondering, Will they be restless on their seats at this, and thinking all the while that they did not come here to be lectured on Divinity? You may have been a little impatient,--how could it well be otherwise? Had I been explaining points of anatomy, and showing you how you bent your necks and straightened your legs, you would have thought me quite in my proper function; because then, when you went with a party of connoisseurs through the Vatican, you could point out to them the insertion of the clavicle in the Apollo Belvidere; and in the Sistine Chapel the 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 well-drawn 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. The action is one which appeals to persons of very ordinary sensations, and is very naturally adopted by the Renaissance painter, both for its popular effect, and its capabilities for the exhibition of his surgical science. But the old painter-theologian, though indeed he showed the right hand of Christ lifted, and the left hand laid across His breast, had another meaning in the actions. The fingers of the left hand are folded, in both the figures; but in Michael Angelo's as if putting aside an appeal; in Orcagna's, the fingers are bent to draw back the drapery from the right side. The right hand is raised by Michael Angelo as in anger; by Orcagna, only to show the wounded palm. And as, to the believing disciples, He showed them His hands and His side, so that they were glad,--so, to the unbelievers, at their judgment, He shows the wounds in hand and side. They shall look on Him whom they pierced. [Footnote: I found all this in M. Didron's Iconographie, above quoted; I had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself.]