"Most excellent Messer Michelangiolo,
"His Holiness having deigned to [inform] me of his urgent desire to avail himself for some time of your labours, in painting and decorating the new chapel he is making in the Apostolic Palace, and I, esteeming and gratefully acknowledging all service and satisfaction given to his holiness as bestowed on myself, in order that you may more freely give your mind to that matter, am perfectly content that you place on the tomb of my uncle of blessed memory, Pope Julius, those three statues already terminated entirely by your hand, the Moses included. And in order, as nearly as possible, to perfect the whole in terms of our last stipulations, which, as I am informed, you are anxious and ready to do, [I consent] that you commit the execution of the other three statues to some good and esteemed master, but after your own designs and under your superintendence; relying confidently, from your good-will to his sacred memory and to my house, that you will bring the work to a satisfactory issue, and so contrive that it shall be deemed most laudable, and in all respects worthy of you. Such a result will fully satisfy me; and I again beseech you to see to this, as conferring on me a special obligation; offering myself at all times [ready] for all your commands and pleasure."
Under this final alteration of his contract, Michael Angelo forthwith assigned to Raffaele da Montelupo the execution of his designs for a Madonna with a Child in her arms, and for a prophet and a sibyl seated, at the price of 400 scudi; employing at the same time two decorative stonecutters upon the ornamental details of the façade, at a cost of 800 more. The statues from his own hand were to be Moses, and two caryatides holding captives, who had been introduced into the first plan, as allegorical of the cities in Romagna subdued by Julius. But, finding these too large for the reduced design, he proposed to substitute for them two other figures from his chisel, already far advanced, and which he would entrust to be finished by others at a cost of 200 scudi, his Moses being destined to stand between them. All this is stated by him in a petition to the Pope of 20th July, 1542. The two substituted statues were finished by Buonarroti, and, in the documents printed by Gaye, are named by him Active and Contemplative Life. This, however, is a free interpretation of the allegory, the figures being, according to Vasari, Leah and Rachel. The recumbent Pope was the wretched work of one Maso di Bosco or Boscoli; and the prophet and sibyl by Montelupo are said to have greatly dissatisfied Michael Angelo. The two rejected caryatide prisoners found their way to Paris in the time of Francis I., and remain in the Louvre; another similar is in the great hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, at Florence; and some grandiose, half-blocked ideas, still to be seen here and there, whose rough power identifies them with Michael Angelo, may have belonged to his original plan. About the beginning of 1545, forty years after it had been undertaken, the work was placed in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, of which Julius had been Cardinal-presbyter. Though meant as his tomb, it is but his monument; for the bones of that imperious high priest have found a fitter resting-place in the grandest of Christian fanes, his own creation, and best memorial. Few works of art have occasioned greater variety of opinion. In his Lectures, Fuseli has exposed several of his defects, and the impression it most frequently leaves upon the spectator is thus aptly expressed by him in an Italian letter to the translator of Webb on the Beautiful:—
"In the Moses, Michael Angelo has sacrificed beauty to anatomical science, and to his favourite passion for the terrible and the gigantic. If it be true that he looked at the arm of the famous Ludovisi satyr, he probably, also, studied the head, in order to transfer its character to the Moses, since both of them resemble that of an old he-goat. There is, notwithstanding, in the figure a quality of monstrous grandeur which cannot be denied to Buonarroti, and which, like a thunder-storm, presaged the bright days of Raffaele."
This monument must ever be regarded as but the epitome of a grand design, curtailed without scale or measurement, deformed by colossal portions from the original in combination with dwarfish details of its pigmy substitute, marred by incomplete allegories, and eked out by supposititious figures. Yet few will leave the spot without another glance at the tremendous Moses, nor will any connoisseur avert his gaze until the awful majesty of that one statue has eclipsed the petty incongruities of its location. It is among those rare creations of man's mind which, rising above the standard of human forms and human sympathies, demand a loftier test. The pervading sentiment alone challenges our intellectual regard, and bespeaks our verdict; yet with playful prodigality, the artist has lavished an ivory finish upon its details, without detracting from the sublime character of the irate lawgiver.[226]
Although this work is the only link directly connecting Michael Angelo with the ducal house of Urbino, we may be allowed a passing tribute to that genius which has hammered huge rocks into colossal compositions, and embodied themes the most difficult in forms the most daring. Of the simple element of beauty we, indeed, find in him few traces. Gentleness and pathos had no place either in his wayward spirit or in his works.[*227] Discarding the beau-ideal aimed at in antique sculpture, where movement was restrained by the observance of form, and passion modified to the measure of fair proportion, he either startled by impossible postures, gnarled limbs, and sturdy deformity, or, in the words of Fuseli, "perplexed the limbs of grandeur with the minute ramifications of anatomy." Hence, when tried by the rules of art, many of his creations are found wanting; when submitted to the standard of pure taste, their faults become glaring. In straining to shake off the trammels of manner, he often fell into mannerism the most infelicitous; and the impression too commonly left on the spectator is that of energy wasted and talent misapplied. But his mind was of that lofty cast which, soaring above common themes, and spurning conventional restrictions, substituted power for beauty, and challenged our wonder rather than our approbation. Awed by the sublimity of his ideas, we overlook their inadequate development, until, descending to details, we impugn the unfinished sketch, and half-chiselled marble, painfully reminded that superhuman gifts are often marred by very ordinary weaknesses.
Anderson