Eurydice struggles in the clutch of bestial devils; Pluto, like a mediaeval Satan, frowns above the scene of fiendish riot; the violin of Orpheus thrills faintly through the infernal tumult.

Gazing on the spasms and convulsions of these grim subjects, we are inclined to credit a legend preserved at Orvieto to the effect that the painter depicted his own unfaithful mistress in the naked woman who is being borne on a demon's back through the air to hell.
No one who has studied Michelangelo impartially will deny that in this preference for the violent he came near to Signorelli.

We feel it in his choice of attitude, the strain he puts upon the lines of plastic composition, the stormy energy of his conception and expression.

It is what we call his _terribilita_.

But here again that dominating sense of harmony, that instinct for the necessity of subordinating each artistic element to one strain of architectonic music, which I have already indicated as the leading note of difference between him and the painter of Cortona, intervened to elevate his terribleness into the region of sublimity.