After finally settling in Rome Michael Angelo’s first task was the sculptured mausoleum of Julius II. Nicholas himself had started to rebuild the old basilica of St. Peter, in which Julius designed to set up his great tomb. Angelo suggested a great marble monument symbolical of the victory of human energy over death. Upon the lower tiers of a great pyramid the sculptor showed the arts and sciences which the Pope had loved to patronize. Above were the prophets and graces, of which the great statue of “[Moses]” was one. The apex of the pyramid was a group in which the earth and the heavens upheld the open tomb where the dead pope awaited the Resurrection hour. In all forty figures. The vastness of the conception can best be realized from the fact that the sculptor spent eight months among the marble mines at Carrara quarrying the necessary stone. The space covered by the design was about twenty-five feet by forty. It was soon found that the basilica was not large enough to contain the monument. “What would be the cost of rebuilding?” asked Julius. “100,000 scudi,” said the sculptor. “Let it be 200,000.” And Michael Angelo set to work.
This great dream was never realized. The sculptor worked upon it for some years and then Julius was persuaded to entrust him with a task at least as great—that of decorating the vault of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
THE MEDICI TOMBS
For almost twenty years Michael Angelo produced no great sculpture. Then came what are perhaps the greatest works of Renaissance sculpture, the monuments in the Medici Chapel at Florence. They were executed at the command of Clement VII., the second Medicean pope. His purpose was to build an abiding testimony to the greatness of his house, which had now become supreme in Italy by making itself as powerful in Rome as it had been in Florence.
Evicted from Florence, the Medici had turned to Rome. Leo X., a son of the Magnificent, had succeeded Julius. He in turn was followed by Clement VII. To Clement came the idea of building a sacristy in San Lorenzo in honour of the Medici family. His intention was that monuments of Cosimo, Lorenzo, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, Leo X. and himself should be placed in the sacristy. Only two—those to the Dukes of Nemours and Urbino—were finished. A grim commentary upon the Medicean record, this. The two groups actually completed are identified, not with the memory of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Leo X., but with two illegitimate scions of the house.
The whole building was designed by Michael Angelo himself and was panelled to receive the sculptures, every architectural feature being planned to enhance the emotional effect of the great marble groups. In these, Michael Angelo cast aside the pretty compliments upon which he had exercised his fancy when planning the vast tomb of Julius II.—the sorrowing arts and sciences, for instance. His aim was to create a perfectly beautiful resting-place for the mighty dead. This, and nothing more.
Let us endeavour to follow the train of Michael Angelo’s imagination as it gradually found the definite forms which were to realize its deepest beliefs: “A perfectly beautiful resting-place for the mighty dead.” Could anything be more fraught with all the mingled emotions and thoughts which human philosophy has tried in vain to unravel? Yet Michael Angelo was never surer of anything than that sculptured marble was capable of expressing it all. Even the feelings aroused by this mystery of mysteries—death—were not beyond the cold stone and hot chisel of the sculptor. Allied to this faith—that there was no thought too profound for marble to express—was his favourite fancy that the form of his finished work dwelt in the rough block. His chisel did but release it from its marble tomb. He was not the author, only the agent through whom his work saw the light. As he himself wrote in one of the sonnets:
“The best of artists hath no thought to show Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell Doth not include; to break the marble spell Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.”
MICHAEL ANGELO
