Note 76 — HENRY FUSELI, Esq. M.A. R.A. (continued 3)

Of the Fall of Lucifer and his Host, which was to face the altar-piece of the Last Judgement, no sketch that could give an idea of the whole has yet been discovered; its place over the grand door of the Chapel was reserved for the sacrilegious 'bravura' of the Neapolitan Matteo da Lecca, under the pontificate of Gregorio XIII.: his composition, if impudence of grouping deserve that name, must be supposed to bear infinitely less analogy to the original conception of Michael Angelo, than the tumultuary fresco of the Sicilian; who, says Vasari, having lived many months with Michael Angelo as a servant and colour-grinder, became possessed of some design of his for that subject, and painted it in fresco in a chapel of the Trinità del Monte. Notwithstanding the incompetence of the adventurer to manage such materials, the naked groups showering from Heaven, and the hubbub of transformed fiends grappling below in the abyss, struck the beholder with terror and surprise;—a mass of Dantesque images, and in Dantesque language described by the biographer.—V. di M.A. t. vi. 237.