Michelangelo

by Romain Rolland

First: An inferior order of eight fluted columns, eleven brasses[36] high, three portals with four statues five brasses high and seven bas-reliefs; and around the sides on each lateral face two columns, and between them a figure in high relief.

Second: A superior order of eight pilasters from six to seven brasses high; on the façade four seated bronze statues; and on each side two pilasters and a statue.

Third: The upper cornice carrying an entablature of eight pilasters in front and two on the side, with four niches in the façade, and one on each side intended for six marble statues five and a half brasses high.

There were besides on the façade, undoubtedly in the lower story, seven bas-reliefs of marble with life-size subjects, five squares and two round plaques. In the centre a pediment with the arms of the Medici.[{54}]

Michelangelo had the choice of executing the work himself or of having it done after his models. The heirs of Julius II were obliged to give way to the order of Leo X and to be satisfied with the permission which he gave to Michelangelo still to go on with the work on the monument of Julius in Florence. Even that permission was very soon withdrawn, according to Michelangelo. "Pope Leo," he writes, "does not want me to do the monument of Julius." When he began to work on it again in his atelier in Florence he says: "The Medici, who later on became Pope Clement and who was then in Florence, saw that I was working at the tomb and he would no longer permit it. For that reason I was prevented from doing anything until the Medici became pope."

Michelangelo always sought excuses for not finishing his undertakings. The real culprit was his eager and changeable genius, uncontrollable and constantly seized with enthusiasm for some new idea. He no more succeeded in raising the façade of S. Lorenzo than in finishing the tomb.

His terrible mania for doing everything himself drove him—instead of staying and working in Florence—into going to Carrara to oversee the quarrying of the blocks of marble. There he found himself in all sorts of difficulties. The Medici wanted to use the quarries of Pietra Santa, which[{55}] had been lately bought by Florence, instead of those of Carrara and Michelangelo, because he took sides with the Carrarese, found himself suspected by the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici of having been bought by them; and because he was forced in the end to obey the strict orders of the pope he was persecuted by the people of Carrara, who made an arrangement with the Genoese boatmen at Pisa so that he could not secure any barge to transport his marble. He had to build a road several miles in length across the mountains with pick and shovel. The ill-will of the people of Pietra Santa and the stupidity of the workmen who did not understand their work so upset him that he fell ill at Seravezza from over-strain and worry. He felt that his vigour, his health and his ideas were being wasted in this life of an engineer and contractor. He was dying with impatience to begin the façade, but the blocks of marble did not reach Florence because the barges were stopped or the Arno was dry. They arrived at last and the marble was unloaded, but instead of setting to work Michelangelo returned to Seravezza and Pietra Santa. He was obstinately determined not to begin until he had gathered in Florence, just as he had done before in Rome for the tomb of Julius II, all the material which would be necessary for the entire undertaking, a veritable mountain of[{56}] marble. He kept putting off the moment of beginning. Was it not the truth—though he did not admit it even to himself—that he was really afraid of the great architectural undertaking into which he had imprudently plunged and for which he had so little training? How, indeed, could he have acquired this new art which he had had no chance of practising? Had he not promised too much and did he not feel himself in a blind alley with no way out, where he no longer dared either to advance or retreat?

All his efforts were unsuccessful, even those for the transportation of the marble. He was cheated by his workmen, and four of the six monolithic columns sent to Florence were shattered on the way, one of them at Florence itself. At last the pope and Cardinal de' Medici grew impatient at this useless loss of so much precious time in the marshes and quarries of Pietra Santa and on March 10, 1520, an order of the pope clearly and completely released Michelangelo from the agreement of 1518 concerning the façade of S. Lorenzo and from all obligations in regard to it. Michelangelo only knew of this through the arrival at Seravezza of the gangs of workmen sent by Cardinal Giulio to take his place. He was cruelly hurt.

"I do not begrudge the cardinal," he says, "the[{57}] three years which I have lost here. I do not blame him because I am exhausted by this work for S. Lorenzo. I do not blame him for the great affront of having ordered me to do this work and then of taking it away from me—I do not even know for what reason. I do not count against him all that I have spent, which amounts to this: Pope Leo takes back the quarry with the blocks already cut; I have left the money that I have in hand—500 ducats—and I am given my liberty."

He could not hold his patrons responsible. The fault was his own, as he well knew, and that was his worst punishment. Justi has said, not unreasonably, that he committed the sin against the Holy Ghost in wasting so many years in such unimportant work. What did he accomplish from 1515 to 1520 in the fulness of his vigour? Plans which he could never carry out, plans for the façade of S. Lorenzo, plans for the tomb of Julius II, plans for the tomb of Dante, whose remains the Academicians of Florence wanted to bring back from Ravenna to his own country[37]—for in October, 1519, in the midst of the very worst of his difficulties he had not hesitated to offer his services to Leo X to "raise to the divine poet a monument worthy of him."[{58}]