Marco Palmezzano, with inferior beauty, also trenches on Bellini’s ground; but not only is the Christ sitting up, not quite dead, but one of the two child angels is calling out as for aid, so that the restful finality of Bellini is vanished. Still nearer to the Bellini idea approaches a picture in the Academy of Venice attributed to Marco Basaiti and an unknown Lombardian. But if this avoids tragedy, the turn is too much in the direction of comedy. The child angels are made still more infantine, so that there is neither horror nor even perturbation, merely a shade of surprise at so passive a figure. One plays with the Christ’s hair, the other with his feet—the Blake-like tenderness is not absent, but the poetry of this utter unconsciousness is not so penetrating as the wistful yearning of the Bellini angels before some dim, unsounded ocean of tragedy. This precise note I did, indeed, once catch in a corner of Domenichino’s _Madonna del Rosario_, where a baby surveys the crown of thorns; but this is just a side-show in a joyous, thickly populated picture, and the Christ is not dead, but a live _bambino_, who showers down roses on the lower world of martyrdom and sorrow.
He is almost too dead in the fading fresco of the little low-vaulted, whitewashed, ancient church of S. Maria Infra Portas in Foligno. A great gash mutilates his side, his head, horribly fallen back, lies on the Madonna’s lap, his legs and arms droop. The mother’s long hair hangs down from her halo, she clasps her hands in agony, and a child angel on either side looks on commiseratingly. Strange to say, this conserves the poetry, despite the horror, though the horror removes it out of comparison with Bellini’s handling.
In Genoa I found three more variations on the theme, two in the cathedral, the first with four angels, all gravely concerned, and the second with quite a crowd of little boys and angels, nearly all weeping. One of the little angels has taken off the crown of thorns—a good touch in a bad picture. The third variant is by Luca Cambiaso, and in the Palazzo Rosso, with a single agitated boy angel. A _Pietà_ in Pistoja takes its main pathos from its lonely position on the staircase of the fusty town hall: a last rose of summer, all its companions are faded and gone, all save one pretty lady saint blooming in a vast ocean of plaster. Even its own Madonna and Apostles are half obliterated; but the boy angel remains in a curious posture: he has got his head betwixt the legs of the Christ, and with his arms helps to sustain the drooping figure. Still more original touches appear in Andrea Utili’s picture in Faenza. Here the Christ has his arms crossed, and his halo, tilted back over his crown of thorns, gleams weirdly in red and gold, and on his tomb rest pincers and a hammer. The two youthful angels are deeply moved; one holds a cross and the other three nails.