In the same way the history of _Christ's passion_, such as the scenes where He is mocked and crowned with thorns, that of the Ecce Homo carrying the cross, deposition, and burial, are exceptionally appropriate to pictorial presentment. For in these it is precisely the Divinity, in its contrast to its triumph and in the depression of its unlimited power and wisdom, which supplies the content. Art is not merely able to present this, but there is ample room for the play of originality in the composition of such scenes without falling into purely fantastical imagery. God is here set before us as suffering, in so far as He is man and under certain determinate bounds. Such pain is not merely disclosed as human pain over human calamity, but it is an awful suffering, the feeling of an infinite negativity, albeit in human form, as the conscious life of one individual. And withal there is added, for the reason that it is God who suffers, a certain sense of alleviation, a reduction of such anguish which is thus unable to break forth in actual despair, distortion, and horror. This expression of _soul-suffering_ is, more particularly in the works of several Italian masters, an original creation. The pain is in the lower portions of the countenance, a gravity of mien, and nothing more, not as in the Laocoon a contraction of the muscles, which can be interpreted as an actual cry; but in the eyes and on the forehead the billows of soul-anguish are, so to speak, allowed to roll over one another. The sweat drops that bespeak the heart's agony stand forth; and with true instinct on the brow, in which the immovable bone constitutes the determining feature, precisely at the point where nose, eyes, and forehead coalesce, and the life of mind and heart is concentrated and emphasized, we find that just one or two indications of skin-folds and muscles, unable to be distorted to any great extent, are suffered pre-eminently to bear and express in tension this accumulated weight of agony. In particular I can recall a certain head in the gallery of Schleisheim, in which the master--I fancy Guido Reni[256]--and doubtless others in a similar way, have discovered a distinct colour tone for the flesh, which is quite unlike that of human flesh. They had to disclose the night of the Spirit and created for the same a dowry of colour, most admirably adapted to express this tempest, these black clouds of Spirit which are likewise encompassed by the brazen forehead of the Divine Nature[257].