The idea of death, as conceived by Christians, has to be portrayed.

The repose of the just, the resurrection of the body, and the coming judgment, afford sufficient scope for treatment of good men and bad alike.

Or if the sculptor have sublime imagination, he may, like Michael Angelo, suggest the alternations of the day and night, slumber and waking, whereby "our little life is rounded with a sleep." This digression will hardly be thought superfluous when we reflect how large a part of the sculptor's energy was spent on tombs in Italy.

Matteo Civitali of Lucca was at least Rossellino's equal in the sculpturesque delineation of spiritual qualities; but the motives he chose for treatment were more varied.

All his work is penetrated with deep, prayerful, intense feeling; as though the artist's soul, poured forth in ecstasy and adoration, had been given to the marble.