The compositional principle of zonal structure keeps, under the influence of Neoplatonism, on being used in his monumental works, such as the Sistine Ceiling, the Medici Chapel and the Tomb of Julius II, but is discarded in the Last Judgment. This change has been interpreted as an artistic expression of his religious outlook in relation to the Italian Catholic Reformation. This interpretation is right in large part, but we can nevertheless point out the inner, though transformed, continuance between them, when we pay attention to the analytical composition of the Sistine Ceiling and the Last Judgment : we can connect them with each other through the motif of "jubaku" which reveals a state of mind captured by something invisible and enormous. In the former this motif is found in the part of the spandrels and lunettes where figures are imprisoned and huddle together within a dark and rigidly framed space. In the latter it is evolved and enlarged on to a cosmological level where all figures are captured by the resolving movement in a unlimited gloomy space. And this transformation of motif creates a unified vision of the world as fatum (fatality). It is this vision that comes into existence through the enlargement of jubaku-motif and the disappearance of zonal structure, and that also shows his last religious stage, judging from the fact that his crushed portrait is interpolated in the Last Judgment itself.

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Il est impossible d'identifier le nu de droite du tableau a Gabrielle d'Estree a cause de sa dissemblance d'avec le portrait dessine de Gabrielle d'Estree du Cabinet des Estampes. D'autre part, la date presumee de l'execution du tableau-entre 1593 et la fin du XVI^e siecle-peut egalement etre mise en question, du fait de la difference de style d'avec les tableaux contemporains. La Dame au bain (Washington et Dijon), qui est en relation etroite avec notre tableau, montre des roses et des perles, attributs ordinaires de Venus, et le geste de la servante, au fond, est identique a celui que l'on trouve dans la Venus d'Urbino par Titien (Florence, Uffici). Un tableau du Louvre, qui represente Venus assise au bord de la baignoire, suggere la frequence du theme du bain en association a celui de Venus. Quant aux analogies entre les deux dames dans ce tableau, elles nous evoquent les Deux Venus (l'Amour sacre et l'Amour profane) par Titien. La Joconde nue (Chantilly, Leningrad etc.), qui se situe entre la Joconde et le St. Jean de Leonard de Vinci est sans doute un des prototypes de la Dame nue au bain. Ces deux dames semblables sont aussi inspirees de l'idee des personnages doubles de Leonard, fondee sur le platonisme. En consequence, ce tableau doit, donc, etre considere comme les Deux Venus au bain, refletant la pensee platonicienne a travers l'art de Leonard au milieu de XVI^e siecle.

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Since J. A. Cramer published the fragment of a theory of comedy for the first time in 1839, from the Tractatus Coislinianus, manuscript of the 10th century, No.120 of the "De Coislin collection" in Paris, it has been discussed for a long time whether the Tractatus represents the lost comedy-section of Aristotle's Poetics. Some parts of it are inferred not directly to be derived from his works and some other parts show a worse acquaintance with the Poetics. It shows, however, many skillful combinations of materials from the Poetics, the Rhetoric and the Ethics. Adding to this, the following three points are of great significance for the positive estimate of the Tractatus : (1) the list of the sources of comic effects. (2) the differentiation of comic ethos from comic dianoia. (3) its actual correlation with the phenomena of ancient comedies. Thus we can conclude that the loss caused by the disappearance of the second book of the Poetics could be compensated by the study of the Tractatus, as far as the comedy part is concerned.

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