It is nevertheless indubitably true that these incongruous and misplaced elements, crowded together, leave a strong impression of picturesque force upon the mind.

From certain points and angles, the effect of the whole, considered as a piece of deception and insincerity, is magnificent.

It would be even finer than it is, were not the Florentine _pietra serena_ of the stonework so repellent in its ashen dulness, the plaster so white, and the false architectural system so painfully defrauded of the plastic forms for which it was intended to subserve as setting.
We have here no masterpiece of sound constructive science, but a freak of inventive fancy using studied details for the production of a pictorial effect.

The details employed to compose this curious illusion are painfully dry and sterile; partly owing to the scholastic enthusiasm for Vitruvius, partly to the decline of mediaeval delight in naturalistic decoration, but, what seems to me still more apparent, through Michelangelo's own passionate preoccupation with the human figure.

He could not tolerate any type of art which did not concede a predominant position to the form of man.