The movement of these two plays is not impeded by the sanctity of the subject. When, however, the legend belongs more immediately to the narrative of Christ's life, the form of the Representation is more severe. This is especially true of Castellani's _Cena e Passione_, where the incidents of the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the trials before Pilate and Caiaphas, the Flagellation, and the Crucifixion are narrated with reverential brevity.[430] In reading these scenes, we must summon to our memory Luca della Robbia's bass-reliefs or the realistic groups of the Lombard Sacri Monti. The colored terra-cotta figures in those chapels among the chestnut trees above the Sesia are but Castellani's poetry conveyed in tableaux, while the Florentine actors undoubtedly aimed at presenting by their grouping, dresses and attitudes a living image of such plastic work. But the peculiar pathos of the Italians found finer expression in picture or fresco--in Luini's "Flagellation" at S. Maurizio or the pallid anguish of Tintoretto's women sunk beneath the Cross in the Scuola di San Rocco--than in the fluent stanzas of the sacred playwrights. On the walls of church or oratory the sweetness and languor of emotion became as dignified in beauty as the melodies of Pergolese, and its fervor touched at times the sublimity of tragic passion. Not words but plastic forms were ever the noblest vehicle of Italian feeling. Yet each kind of art may be profitably used to illustrate the other, and the simple phrases of the _Rappresentazioni_ are often the best comments on finished works of painting. Here, for example, is Raphael's _Lo Spasimo_ in words[431]:
Oimè, figliuol, è questo il viso Ch'era tanto formoso e tanto bello? Omè, dove si specchia el paradiso Oggi è percosso in tanto gran flagello! Io vengo a morte, figliuol mio diletto, Se non ti tengo nelle braccia stretto.
Mary faints, and the Magdalen supports her, weeping[432]:
Omè, che per dolor Maria vien meno: Noi perderem la madre col figliuolo. Pallido è il volto già tanto sereno, Quale è tutto mutato pel gran duolo. El polso manca, e nel sacrato seno El cuor suo resta respirante solo. Soccorso, aiuto; ognun gli dia conforto, Sendo aghiacciato il corpo e quasi morto.