But the supreme point even of Doomsday, of the Dies Irae, has not been seized.

We do not hear the still small voice of pathos and of human hope which thrills through Thomas a Celano's hymn:-- _Quaerens me sedisti lassus, Redemisti crucem passus: Tantus labor non sit cassus._ The note is one of sustained menace and terror, and the total scheme of congregated forms might be compared to a sense-deafening solo on a trombone.

While saying this, we must remember that it was the constant impulse of Michelangelo to seize one moment only, and what he deemed the most decisive moment, in the theme he had to develop.

Having selected the instant of time at which Christ, half risen from his Judgment-seat of cloud, raises an omnific hand to curse, the master caused each fibre of his complex composition to thrill with the tremendous passion of that coming sentence.

The long series of designs for Crucifixions, Depositions from the Cross, and Pietas which we possess, all of them belonging to a period of his life not much later than 1541, prove that his nature was quite as sensitive to pathos as to terror; only, it was not in him to attempt a combination of terror and pathos.
"He aimed at the portrayal of the human body.