This masterpiece of highest art combined with pure religious feeling was placed in the old Basilica of S. Peter’s, in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Fever, Madonna della Febbre.  Here, on the night of August 19, 1503, it witnessed one of those horrid spectacles which in Italy at that period so often intervened to interrupt the rhythm of romance and beauty and artistic melody.  The dead body of Roderigo Borgia, Alexander VI., lay in state from noon onwards in front of the high altar; but since “it was the most repulsive, monstrous, and deformed corpse which had ever yet been seen, without any form or figure of humanity, shame compelled them to partly cover it.”  “Late in the evening it was transferred to the chapel of Our Lady of the Fever, and deposited in a corner by six hinds or porters and two carpenters, who had made the coffin too narrow and too short.  Joking and jeering, they stripped the tiara and the robes of office from the body, wrapped it up in an old carpet, and then with force of fists and feet rammed it down into the box, without torches, without a ministering priest, without a single person to attend and bear a consecrated candle.”  Of such sort was the vigil kept by this solemn statue, so dignified in grief and sweet in death, at the ignoble obsequies of him who, occupying the loftiest throne of Christendom, incarnated the least erected spirit of his age.  The ivory-smooth white corpse of Christ in marble, set over against that festering corpse of his Vicar on earth, “black as a piece of cloth or the blackest mulberry,” what a hideous contrast!

VIII

It may not be inappropriate to discuss the question of the Bruges Madonna here.  This is a marble statue, well placed in a chapel of Notre Dame, relieved against a black marble niche, with excellent illumination from the side.  The style is undoubtedly Michelangelesque, the execution careful, the surface-finish exquisite, and the type of the Madonna extremely similar to that of the Pieta at S. Peter’s.  She is seated in an attitude of almost haughty dignity, with the left foot raised upon a block of stone.  The expression of her features is marked by something of sternness, which seems inherent in the model.  Between her knees stands, half reclining, half as though wishing to step downwards from the throne, her infant Son.  One arm rests upon his mother’s knee; the right hand is thrown round to clasp her left.  This attitude gives grace of rhythm to the lines of his nude body.  True to the realism which controlled Michelangelo at the commencement of his art career, the head of Christ, who is but a child, slightly overloads his slender figure.  Physically he resembles the Infant Christ of our National Gallery picture, but has more of charm and sweetness.  All these indications point to a genuine product of Michelangelo’s first Roman manner; and the position of the statue in a chapel ornamented by the Bruges family of Mouscron