Christa Giles

134
He gazes at the . . . spaces in the distance . . .
all the horizons and smiling in his dream,
while the blood flows from his side under the
thirsty beak of the ever insatiable vulture. 364
This suggests a kind of subjectivism, an assertion of the
power of man’s consciousness to triumph over reality – to
create its own reality. An obvious corollary of this
subjectivism, this ˝onanisme mentale,˝ 365 was an
inescapable solitude. Moreau projects this sentiment onto
the figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel:
All the figures of Michelangelo appear to be
arrested in an ideal state of sleep-walking.
Throughout the composition, they are seen to
be moving and acting almost as if they were
unconscious of the movement they are
making.
Explain this almost uniform recurrence, in all
his figures of something like sleep and selfabsorbed
reverie, so much so that they appear
to be rapt in sleep and borne towards other
worlds than ours.
The sublimity of this pictorial contrivance.
The powerful means of expression arising
from this unique combination, sleep in an
attitude of movement.