and the Philistines—the latter to be wrought out of a block
of marble which had been rough-hewn already for another
purpose by Baccio Bandinelli. Soon, however, he was called
to help in defending the city itself from danger. Clement and
his enemy Charles V. having become reconciled, both alike
were now bent on bringing Florence again under the rule of
the Medici. In view of the approaching siege, Michelangelo
was appointed engineer-in-chief of the fortifications. He spent
the early summer of 1529 in strengthening the defences of San
Miniato; from July to September he was absent on a diplomatic
mission to Ferrara and Venice. Returning in the middle of
the latter month, he found the cause of Florence hopeless from
internal treachery and from the overwhelming strength of her
enemies. One of his dark seizures overcame him, and he departed
again suddenly for Venice. There for a while he remained,
negotiating for a future residence in France. Then, while the
siege was still in progress, he returned once more to Florence;
but in the final death-struggle of her liberties he bore no part.
When in 1530 the city submitted to her conquerors, no mercy
was shown to most of those who had taken part in her defence.
Michelangelo believed himself in danger with the rest, but on
the intervention of Baccio Valori he was presently taken back
into favour and employment by Pope Clement. For four
years more he continued to work at intervals on the completion
of the Medici monuments, with the help from 1532 of Giovanni
Montorsoli and other pupils, and on the building of the Laurentian
library. In 1531 he suffered a severe illness; in 1532 he
made a long stay at Rome, and entered upon yet another contract
for the completion of the Julian monument, to be reduced now
to a still more shrunken scale and to be placed not in St Peter’s
but in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. In the autumn of
1534 he left Florence for good. What remained to be done in
the Medici chapel was done by pupils, and the chapel was not
finally opened to view until 1545.
The statues of the Medici monument take rank beside the “Moses” and the “Slaves” as the finest work of Michelangelo’s central time in sculpture. They consist of a Madonna and Child and of the two famous monumental groups, each composed of an armed and seated portrait-statue in a niche, with two emblematic figures reclining on each side of a sarcophagus below. The “Madonna and Child” (left unfinished because the marble was short in bulk) combines astonishingly the divers qualities of realistic motive and natural animation with learned complexity of design and imposing majesty of effect. It was set up finally—not at all in accordance with the artist’s first intention—against a blank wall of the chapel, and flanked at wide intervals by statues of Sts Cosmo and Damian, the work of pupils. The portraits are treated not realistically but typically. In that of Lorenzo seems to be typified the mood of crafty brooding and concentrated inward thought; in that of Giuliano, the type of alert and confident practical survey immediately preceding action. To this contrast of the meditative and active characters corresponds a contrast in the emblematic groups accompanying the portraits. At the feet of the duke Giuliano recline the shapes of “Night" and “Day”—the former a female, the latter a male, personification; the former sunk in an attitude of deep but uneasy slumber, the latter (whose head and face are merely blocked out of the marble) lifting himself in one of wrathful and disturbed awakening. But for Michelangelo’s unfailing grandeur of style, and for the sense which his works convey of a compulsive heat and tempest of thought and feeling in the spirit that thus conceived them, both these attitudes might be charged with extravagance. As grand, but far less violent, are those of the two companion figures that recline between sleep and waking on the sarcophagus of the pensive Lorenzo. Of these, the male figure is known as “Evening,” the female as “Morning” (Crepusculo and Aurora). In Michelangelo’s original idea, partly founded on antique precedent in pedimental and sarcophagus groups, figures of “Earth” and “Heaven” were to be associated with those of “Night” and “Day” on the monument of Giuliano, and others—no doubt of a corresponding nature, with those of the Morning and Evening Twilight on that of Lorenzo. These figures afterwards fell out of the scheme and the recesses designed for them remain empty. Michelangelo’s obvious and fundamental idea was, as some words of his own record, to exhibit the elements and the powers of earth and heaven lamenting the death of the princes. River-gods were to recline on the broad bases at the foot of the monuments. These too are lacking. They were never finished, but a bronze cast from a small model of one of them, and the torso of a large model, have lately been identified, the former in the National Museum and the latter in the Academy at Florence.
Other works of 1522–1534.—“Victory” marble (National Museum, Florence). A youthful conqueror standing over a bearded enemy, whose shoulders he crushes down with his left knee. Fine and finished work: whether intended for one of the emblematic Victories of the Julian monument, or having some connexion with the “Hercules and Cacus” and “Samson and the Philistine,” subjects undertaken for the Signory in 1528, must remain uncertain. For the former of these two subjects a wax model at the Victoria and Albert Museum, for the latter a plaster model at the Casa Buonarroti, are claimed, perhaps rightly, as original. “David” (formerly called “Apollo”), marble, unfinished (National Museum, Florence). Both the authenticity and the approximate date of this fine work are beyond doubt: of its origin and destination we are uninformed. “Crouching boy,” marble, unfinished (the Hermitage, Petersburg). Another masterly sketch in marble; the seated lad stoops forward between his parted knees, having both hands occupied with his left foot; the figure blocked out of the marble, with the least possible sacrifice of the material; the subject and motive enigmatical. “Cupid,” kneeling, apparently in the act of shooting downward with a bow, marble (Victoria and Albert Museum). Probably, but not quite certainly, authentic; if so, then of 1530 or thereabouts; its identification with the early Cupid done for Jacopo Galli at Rome in 1496 is untenable. “Leda,” painting, done for the duke of Ferrara, but withheld because of the misconduct of his messenger, and given by the master to his pupil Antonio Mini in 1531; lost. A fine injured tempera painting of the subject in the store-rooms of the National Gallery in London may presumably be an early copy.
Michelangelo had fully purposed, as soon as he could get free of his task on the Medici tombs, to devote all his powers to the completion of the Julian monument in accordance with the new contract of 1532. But his intention was again frustrated. Pope Clement insisted that he must complete his decorations of the Sixtine Chapel by painting anew the great end wall above the altar, adorned until then by frescoes of Perugino. The subject chosen was the Last judgment; and Michelangelo began to prepare sketches. In the autumn of 1534, in his sixtieth year, he settled finally, and for the remainder of his life, at Rome. Immediately afterwards Clement died, and was succeeded by a Farnese under the title of Paul III. Even more than his predecessor, Paul insisted on claiming the main services of Michelangelo for himself, and forced him to let all other engagements drift. For the first seven years after the artist’s return to Rome, his time was principally taken up with the painting of the colossal and multitudinous “Last Judgment.” This being completed in 1541, he was next compelled to undertake two more great frescoes—one of the Conversion of Paul and another of the Martyrdom of Peter—in a new chapel which the pope had caused to be built in the Vatican, and named after himself—Capella Paolina.
The fresco of the “Last judgment” in the Sixtine Chapel is probably the most famous single picture in the world. In it Michelangelo shows more than ever the omnipotence of his artistic science, and the fiery daring of his conceptions. But the work, so far as its deplorably deteriorated condition admits comparison, is hardly comparable in the qualities of colour and decorative effect to the earlier and, far more nobly inspired frescoes of the ceiling. It is to these and not to the “Last judgment” that the student must turn if he would realize what is best and greatest in the art of Michelangelo.
The frescoes of the Pauline Chapel are on their part so injured as to be hardly susceptible of useful study or criticism. In their ruined state they bear evidence of the same tendencies that made the art of Michelangelo in its latest phase so dangerous an example to weaker men—the tendency, that, is, to seek for unqualified energy and violence of action, both in place and out, for “terribleness” quand même, and to design actions not by help of direct study from nature, but by scientific deduction from the abstract laws of structure and movement. At best these frescoes can never have been happy examples of Michelangelo’s art.
Other Work of the years 1534–1549. Sculpture.—During the fifteen years when Michelangelo was mainly engaged on these paintings, he had also at last been enabled to acquit himself, although in a manner that can have been satisfactory to none concerned, of his engagements to the heirs of Julius. Once more the influence of the pope had prevailed on them to accept a compromise altogether to their disadvantage. By a final contrast dated 1542, it was agreed that the “Moses” executed thirty years before, seated on
a low plinth in a central recess, should be the chief figure of the new