The figure is nude, save for the mauve drapery
about the loins. The head is singularly noble and
dignified, and the torso modelled with the delicacy
of sentiment which is so marked in his sketches in
the UlEzi, the dead Christ on the knees of the
Virgin, and the dead Christ in the sepia drawing of
the Trinity. . . . Sodoma's Christ is silent, the lips
are parted in the intensity of pain, the flesh upon
the arm is livid where the tense ropes bind it to the
column, and where the thorny crown has pressed
into the brow great drops of blood still ooze. Yet
it is the intellectual suffering of the figure which
strikes and holds one's attention. Far grander than




Page 46.
Il Sodoma. Christ bound to the Column.
Alinari,



TUSCAN TYPES 47

the personal insult, overpowering all sense of
momentary pain, there is present a touch of the
universal sorrow, of the Weltschmerz which the
prophet must feel. In this work the painter touched
his most ideal creation."

Another conception of the Christ, almost equal in
beauty and still more original in treatment, is
Sodoma's Christ of the Resurrection morn, in which
the risen Redeemer is represented as leaping from
the tomb with superabundant life, bearing in his
hand a flag, emblem of victory. Around Him the
angels seem to be singing that joyful Resurrection
Hymn which Goethe in his " Faust " puts into the lips
of the Disciples on the dawn of the Easter morn.
" He, who was buried,

Hath burst from the grave !

From death re-assuming
The life that He gave.
Is risen in glory.
