Page 270 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

heaven. The long swathe of drapery held by the of the Virgin's classicizing profile assumes an air meaning through the physical impact of figures of
boy on the stairs and the barely defined child of stoic foreboding. unprecedented grandeur. Particularly striking is
behind the Virgin seem to prefigure the funeral Although the genre of low relief sculpture of the Herculean potential of Christ's back and arm,
shroud of Christ, while one of the pair of putti at the Virgin and Child might seem to offer little modeled with a far from infantile muscularity
the top of the stairs appears to be consoling the scope for the exercise of originality in figure style, which may be intended to emphasize the cor-
other. In such a context, the impassive solemnity Michelangelo conveys the essence of the subject's poreal reality of God's son on earth. J.M.M.

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