224 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

his father, Cione, he always designated himself; that, however, of Orcagna, a corruption of Arcagnuolo, or ‘The Archangel,’ was given him by his contemporaries, and by this he has become known to posterity.

“The earliest works of Orcagna will be found in that sanctuary of Semi-Byzantine art, the Campo Santo of Pisa. He there painted three of the four ‘Novissima,’ Death, Judgment, Hell, and Paradise-the two former entirely himself, the third with the assistance of his brother Bernardo, who is said to have coloured it after his designs. The first of the series, a most singular performance, had for centuries been popularly known as the ‘Trionfo della Morte.’ It is divided by an immense rock into two irregular portions. In that to the right, Death, personified as a female phantom, bat-winged, claw-footed, her robe of linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth, Castruccio Castracani and his gay companions, seated under an orange-grove, and listening to the music of a troubadour and a female minstrel; little genii or Cupids, with reversed torches, float in the air above them; one young gallant caresses his hawk, a lady her lap-dog,-Castruccio alone looks abstractedly away, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. But all are alike heedless and unconscious, though the sand is run out, the scythe falling and their doom sealed. Meanwhile the lame and the halt, the withered and the blind, to whom the heavens are brass and life a burthen, cry on Death with impassioned gestures, to release them from their misery,-but in vain; she sweeps past, and will not hear them. Between these two groups lie a heap of corpses, mown down already in her flight-kings, queens, bishops, cardinals, young men and maidens, secular and ecclesiastical-ensigned by their crowns, coronets, necklaces, mitres and helmets-huddled together in hideous confusion; some are dead, others dying,-angels and devils draw the souls out of their mouths; that of a nun (in whose hand a purse, firmly clenched, betokens her besetting sin) shrinks back aghast at the unlooked-for sight of the demon who receives it-an idea either inherited or adopted from Andrea Tafi. The whole upper half of the fresco, on this side, is filled with angels and devils carrying souls to heaven or to hell; sometimes a struggle takes place, and a soul is rescued from a demon who has unwarrantably appropriated it; the angels are very graceful, and their intercourse with their spiritual charge is full of tenderness and endearment; on the other hand, the wicked are hurried off by the devils and thrown headlong into the mouths of hell, represented as the crater of a volcano, belching out flames nearly in the centre of the composition. These devils exhibit every variety of horror in form and feature.”-Vol. iii. pp. 130-134.

54. We wish our author had been more specific in his account of this wonderful fresco.¹ The portrait of Castruccio ought to have been signalized as a severe disappointment to the admirers² of the heroic Lucchese: the face is flat,

¹ [For other references by Ruskin to the “Trionfo della Morte,” see Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 123, above, p. 146; and Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. iv. § 20, ch. viii. § 6.]

² [Among whom was Ruskin: see Verona and its Rivers, § 22. Castruccio Castracani (1283-1328), a native of Lucca having been exiled from his native city,

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