The sorrow in the face is such as Jesus might have shown as he turned to Judas at the Last Supper.  The gentleness in it is of the quality so attractive to children.  There is, too, something of the sympathetic element in it which Mary and Martha found.

The countenance is not without intellectuality, though it scarcely shows the keenness which the lawyers found it hard to outwit.  It has rather the refinement of a lover of all that is beautiful.  Nor is there much in expression or attitude to suggest the more commanding qualities of Jesus.  These stronger elements the statue seems to lack.

It is rather puzzling to one who is trying to form standards of taste to learn that critics are divided in their opinion about this statue.  It is, therefore, well to know that Michelangelo is not wholly responsible for the work as we now see it.  Though he designed and began it, he left it to some unskilful apprentices to finish.  The effect of the lines is injured by the bronze drapery which was added later.  A bronze sandal has also been put on the right foot to protect it, as it had become much worn by kisses.

In criticising a statue one must always remember that it is best seen in the surroundings for which it is designed.  It is said, even by one who does not greatly admire Michelangelo’s Christ, that in the dim light of the church where it stands, “it diffuses a grace and sweetness which no reproduction renders."[18]

[Footnote 18:  Symonds, in Life of Michelangelo Buonarotti.]

VIII

THE CREATION OF MAN

Science has long been trying to solve the problem of the origin of the human race.  Great books are published by learned men to explain how the being called man came to be what he is.  But centuries before the beginnings of science a wonderful poem was written on the same subject of the creation.  This poem is called Genesis, that is, the Birth or Origin of things, and it forms a part of the first book of our Bible.  Ever since it was written it has been one of the sacred books of many people.

This story of creation was once the favorite subject of artists.  In the period before the invention of printing, people depended for their instruction upon pictures about as much as we now do upon books.  Painters sometimes covered the walls and ceiling of churches with illustrations of the book of Genesis, transforming them into huge picture-books, from which the worshippers could learn the Bible stories which they were unable to read in books.

Michelangelo was one of the last Italian painters to do this, and he profited by all the work that had been done before to make the grandest series of Genesis illustrations ever produced.  It is from this series that our illustration is taken, representing the subject of the Creation of Man.  The painter did not try to follow the text very literally.  In the book of Genesis we read:[19]—­