The tone, the Stimmung, of these designs corresponds so exactly to the sonnets of the same late period, that I feel impelled at this point to make his poetry take up the tale.  But, as I cannot bring the cloud of witnesses of all those drawings into this small book, so am I unwilling to load its pages with poems which may be found elsewhere.  Those who care to learn the heart of Michelangelo, when he felt near to God and face to face with death, will easily find access to the originals.

Concerning the Deposition from the Cross, which now stands behind the high altar of the Florentine Duomo, Condivi writes as follows:  “At the present time he has in hand a work in marble, which he carries on for his pleasure, as being one who, teeming with conceptions, must needs give birth each day to some of them.  It is a group of four figures larger than life.  A Christ taken from the cross, sustained in death by his Mother, who is represented in an attitude of marvellous pathos, leaning up against the corpse with breast, with arms, and lifted knee.  Nicodemus from above assists her, standing erect and firmly planted, propping the dead Christ with a sturdy effort; while one of the Maries, on the left side, though plunged in sorrow, does all she can to assist the afflicted Mother, failing under the attempt to raise her Son.  It would be quite impossible to describe the beauty of style displayed in this group, or the sublime emotions expressed in those woe-stricken countenances.  I am confident that the Pieta is one of his rarest and most difficult masterpieces; particularly because the figures are kept apart distinctly, nor does the drapery of the one intermingle with that of the others.”

This panegyric is by no means pitched too high.  Justice has hardly been done in recent times to the noble conception, the intense feeling, and the broad manner of this Deposition.  That may be due in part to the dull twilight in which the group is plunged, depriving all its lines of salience and relief.  It is also true that in certain respects the composition is fairly open to adverse criticism.  The torso of Christ overweighs the total scheme; and his legs are unnaturally attenuated.  The kneeling woman on the left side is slender, and appears too small in proportion to the other figures; though, if she stood erect, it is probable that her height would be sufficient.

The best way to study Michelangelo’s last work in marble is to take the admirable photograph produced under artificial illumination by Alinari.  No sympathetic mind will fail to feel that we are in immediate contact with the sculptor’s very soul, at the close of his life, when all his thoughts were weaned from earthly beauty, and he cried—­

  Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest
  My soul, that turns to his great love on high,
  Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread.

As a French critic has observed:  “It is the most intimately personal and the most pathetic of his works.  The idea of penitence exhales from it.  The marble preaches the sufferings of the Passion; it makes us listen to an act of bitter contrition and an act of sorrowing love.”