136 EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. Chap. IV. to have combined in the same degree skill in composition and grouping, with boldness of attitude, foreshortening and vigour of handling, — a deep study of nature and ana tomy with lofty character and expression. The body of the Saviour, still supple in death, had just been taken from the cross and was held in the powerful grasp of Joseph of Arimathea. On his shoulder the head, recumbent on the outstretched arm, hung powerless. That arm the Virgin tenderly embraced, whilst S. John carefully upheld the other. Nicodemus strove to extract the nail from one of the feet. A youthful soldier near the evangelist, leant on a staff and grasping the hilt of his sword, seemed inspired with the wish to avenge the cruel agony of the Saviour. At his feet knelt one with a spunge on a plate waiting for the washing of the body, whilst behind the Virgin stood two of the Marys. In the Saviour’s supple ness of limb and frame, fine foreshortening, and perfect proportion, in the figures around, force allied to natural movement, might fetter the attention of the most careless spectator, whilst the more critical observer, remarking a certain squareness of stature and a slight overcharge of drapery, — some feebleness of frame and classic imitation in the females might point to these as the only defects that could possibly be noticed. If compared with the earlier works of Pisa and Sienna, it would be admitted that the artist had gradually freed himself from much of that merely imitative character which previously marked the school; and had given power and animation to figures by the study of nature; yet that, to the last, religious sentiment remained as foreign to his mind, as it was later to that of Donatello or Michael Angelo. Equally interesting as a monument of the revival under the teaching of Niccola and Giovanni is the tomb of S. Margaret in the church dedicated to that saint at Cor tona, where excellent distribution of space and grouping combined with progress in the rendering of form, and va ried character in expression or attitudes, mark one of the finest productions of mixed architecture and sculpture in the thirteenth century.