Cosimo de' Medici found it impossible to induce him to return to Florence. See B. Cellini's Life, p. 436, for his way of receiving the Duke's overtures.

[322]

See above, p. [62].

[323]

Vasari names the gloomy statue, called by the Italians Il Penseroso, "Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino," the sprightly one, "Giuliano, Duke of Nemours;" and this contemporary tradition has been recently confirmed by an inspection of the Penseroso's tomb (see a letter to the Academy, March 13, 1875, by Mr. Charles Heath Wilson). Grimm, in his Life of Michael Angelo, gave plausible æsthetic reasons why we should reverse the nomenclature; but the discovery of two bodies beneath the Penseroso, almost certainly those of Lorenzo and his supposed son Alessandro, justifies Vasari. Neither of these statues can be accepted as a portrait.

[324]

The "Bacchus" of the Bargello, the "David," the "Christ," of the Minerva, the "Duke of Nemours," and the almost finished "Night," might also be mentioned. His chalk drawings of the "Bersaglieri," the "Infant Bacchanals," the "Fall of Phaëthon," and the "Punishment of Tityos," now in the Royal Collection at Windsor, prove that even in old age Michael Angelo carried delicacy of execution as a draughtsman to a point not surpassed even by Lionardo. Few frescoes, again, were ever finished with more conscientious elaboration than those of the Sistine vault.