The Victory, of the Bargello, was said by Vasari to have been designed for the Tomb, but it may just as well have been intended for an angel overcoming a demon, part of the ruined scheme for the façade of San Lorenzo. The lower figure is still left in the rough, and is supposed to be like the artist. The head of the upper figure is so dull that it cannot have been carved by the sculptor who finished the torso so exquisitely. It may have been left a mere block, like the head of one of the captives of the Boboli. The man who carved the head, and also worked on other portions of the group, turned the neck round too much. If we imagine the head less turned and looking down towards the crouching figure, conquered by the young genius of beauty and [pg 229]victory, we shall see the grace in the pose of the torso to greater advantage. We imagine a somewhat similar story for the figure in the Bargello, called the Adonis. The boar cannot be by Michael Angelo's hand, and, indeed, very little of the figure suggests his grasp of plastic possibilities; the figure cannot have been much more than blocked out by him, and was finished after his death by some artist of the type of Vincenzio Danti.
CHAPTER X
THE CHAPEL OF POPE PAUL, AND THE PIETÀ OF SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE
Michael Angelo wrote a number of sonnets and made many drawings for his friends, especially for the Marchioness of Pescara and Messer Tomaso dei Cavalieri, a noble Roman gentleman. For him they were generally subjects from Greek and Roman mythology, but for the Marchioness the drawings always represented episodes from the story of the Passion of our Lord. A Pietà, drawn for this lady, was engraved by Giulio Bonasoni and Tudius Bononiensis in 1546. There are several drawings in the Print Room of the British Museum and the Windsor and Oxford Collections of this character and period. One at Oxford was probably the original sent to Vittoria, but all are of the same sacred inspiration; in fact, the religious element becomes very strong indeed in all his later work, just as in the later work of Titian. These artists had the near prospect of death in view, and thus they turned their thoughts entirely to work from which they hoped for reward in the world to come. The fear of hell was not without its influence upon both of them.
Some of the drawings made by Michael Angelo for his friend, Tomaso Cavalieri, are mentioned in one of Tomaso's letters, dated 1533.[156]
THE CRUCIFIXION OF SAINT PETER