It has often been asked what the male nudes have got to do with the subject.

Nevertheless, Ruskin is right in telling us that no Italian modelled a female nude equal to the Aphrodite of Melos, or a male nude equal to the Apoxyomenos of the Braccio Nuovo.

First comes the abstract nude, illustrated by the "Resurrection" and the arabesques at Orvieto.

But the true force of the man, what made him a commanding master of the middle period, what distinguished him from all his fellows of the quattrocento, is the passionate delight he took in pure humanitythe nude, the body studied under all its aspects and with no repugnance for its coarsenessman in his crudity made the sole sufficient object for figurative art, anatomy regarded as the crowning and supreme end of scientific exploration.

This master's engraving of three lovely nudes, the most charming memento preserved to us from the Cartoon, introduces a landscape of grove and farm, field and distant hill, lending suavity to the muscular male body and restoring it to its proper place among the sinuous lines and broken curves of Nature.

As a collection of athletic nudes in all conceivable postures of rest and action, of foreshortening, of suggested movement, the Last Judgment remains a stupendous miracle.

Flesh-tints, varying from the strong red tone of Jonah's athletic manhood, through the glowing browns of the seated Genii, to the delicate carnations of Adam and the paler hues of Eve; orange and bronze in draperies, medallions, decorative nudes, russets like the tints of dead leaves; lilacs, cold greens, blue used sparingly; all these colours are dominated and brought into harmony by the greys of the architectural setting.