372 ARIADNE FLORENTINE 



36. Therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly, and 

 chiefly, in the form of the Cumaean Sibyl, it must be of fading 

 virginal beauty, of enduring patience, of far-looking into fu- 

 turity. "For after my death there shall yet return," she says, 

 " another virgin." 



Jam redit et virgo ; redeunt Sa|;urnia regna, 

 Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas. 



Here then is Botticelli's Cumaean Sibyl. She is armed, for 

 she is the prophetess of Roman fortitude ; but her faded 

 breast scarcely raises the corslet ; her hair floats, not falls, in 

 waves like the currents of a river, the sign of enduring life ; 

 the light is full on her forehead : she looks into the distance 

 as in a dream. It is impossible for art to gather together 

 more beautifully or intensely every image which can express 

 her true power, or lead us to understand her lesson. 



37. Now you do not, I am well assured, know one of 

 Michael Angelo's sibyls from another : unless perhaps the 

 Delphian, whom of course he makes as beautiful as he can. 

 But of this especially Italian prophetess, one would have 

 thought he might, at least in some way, have shown that he 

 knew the history, even if he did not understand it. She might 

 have had more than one book, at all events, to burn. She 

 might have had a stray leaf or two fallen at her feet. He 

 could not indeed have painted her only as a voice ; but his 

 anatomical knowledge need not have hindered him from paint- 

 ing her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching age, or 

 her inspired hope of a holier future. 



38. Opposite, fortunately, photograph from the figure it- 

 self, so that you can suspect me of no exaggeration, is 

 Michael Angelo's Cumaean Sibyl, wasting away. It is by a gro- 

 tesque and most strange chance that he should have made the 

 figure of this Sybil, of all others in the chapel, the most fleshly 

 and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous license of show- 

 ing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded over 

 them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved 

 of Apollo, the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and com- 



