The Sacrifice of Noah fills the next, a smaller compartment. It is placed,
historically, before the Deluge, and must be taken to represent how Noah,
the just man and perfect, and his family, found grace in the eyes of the
Lord. As there are five male persons present, this scene cannot represent
the sacrifice immediately after the Flood, nor is any rainbow to be seen
as was usual in the traditional representations of that subject, like the
one in the Chiostro Verde at Santa Maria Novella. Raphael also gives more
figures than can be accounted for as having been in the ark in his
composition of the sacrifice of Noah, in the series called the Bible of
Raphael in the Loggia. The large composition of the Deluge gives us some
idea of what the cartoon of Pisa may have been like. There never was a
collection of naked figures so many and so beautiful. One is filled with
sorrow at the idea of their being drowned. They are all, too, engaged in
noble works; charity, energy, and inventiveness are amongst the virtues
they exhibit; there is no panic, or struggling one with another; no anger
or selfishness, excepting only in the boat in the middle distance; a woman
helps her children, a man his wife, an old man bears a young man in his
arms, Priam carrying AEneas, an even more pathetic imagination than
Homer's; others attempt to save their household goods; others erect a
tent; others, again, attempt to scale the sides of the ark or break into
it with axes--one cannot but hope they will succeed.
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