“THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 225

lifeless, and sensual though fine in feature. The group of mendicants occupying the centre are especially interesting, as being among the first existing examples of hard study from the model: all are evidently portraits-and the effect of deformity on the lines of the countenance rendered with appalling truth; the retractile muscles of the mouth wrinkled and fixed-the jaws projecting-the eyes hungry and glaring-the eyebrows grisly and stiff, the painter having drawn each hair separately: the two stroppiati¹ with stumps instead of arms are especially characteristic, as the observer may at once determine by comparing them with the descendants of the originals, of whom he will at any time find two, or more, waiting to accompany his return across the meadow in front of the Duomo: the old woman also, nearest of the group, with grey dishevelled hair and grey coat, with a brown girdle and gourd flask, is magnificent, and the archetype of all modern conceptions of witch. But the crowning stroke of feeling is dependent on a circumstance seldom observed. As Castruccio and his companions are seated under the shade of an orange grove, so the mendicants are surrounded by a thicket of teazles, and a branch of ragged thorn is twisted like a crown about their sickly temples and weedy hair.

55. We do not altogether agree with our author in thinking that the devils exhibit every variety of horror; we rather fear that the spectator might at first be reminded by them of what is commonly known as the Dragon pattern of Wedgwood ware.² There is invention in them however-and energy; the eyes are always terrible, though simply drawn-a black ball set forward, and two-thirds surrounded by a narrow crescent of white, under a shaggy brow; the mouths are frequently magnificent; that of a demon accompanying a thrust of a spear with a growl, on the right of the picture,

served as a soldier in England, France, and Lombardy, till he returned to Italy in 1313, when he was chosen chief of the Ghibellines. For other references to him, see Val d’ Arno, § 278, and Fors Clavigera, Letters 18 and 51.]

¹ [Cripples; literally “maimed.”]

² [Compare the extract from Ruskin’s diary given at Vol. IV. p.159 n.]

XII. P

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