This last drawing was given to Cavalieri as Michelangelo had wished. The rest went to Lionardo, who reached Rome three days after his uncle's death, and who acquired also some little sketches which Michelangelo had given to Michele Alberti and Jacopo del Duca—an annunciation and a prayer at Gethsemane. These show how much the thought of the gospel filled Michelangelo's mind.[121]
On February 19th Michelangelo's body was carried by the brotherhood to which he belonged, the Confratelli di S. Giovanni Pecolla, to the church of the SS. Apostoli for the funeral mass. The pope had meant to have the body placed in St. Peter's, but Michelangelo had expressed a desire to return to Florence dead, as he could not do so living,[122] and Lionardo was determined to carry out his last wishes in accordance with the orders of Cosmo de' Medici, who promised to erect a statue to him in the Florentine cathedral. The Romans would not allow the body to be taken away, so it was necessary to wrap[{139}] it secretly in a roll of cloth and to send it to Florence on the twenty-ninth as merchandise.
Thus did Michelangelo return to his country on March 10, 1564. The next day the artists of Florence carried his body by torchlight to the church of Santa Croce. The crowd was so great that they could hardly force their way through the church. In the sacristy Vincenzo Borghini, Director of the Florentine Academy of Painters, had the coffin opened. The body was intact and Michelangelo seemed asleep. He was dressed in black velvet, a felt hat on his head, and on his feet boots and spurs, just as while living he had had the habit of sleeping, dressed and ready to rise and take up his work.[123]
The Academy of Florence had been preparing since March 2d for the solemn obsequies. Varchi was given the funeral oration, Bronzino, Vasari, Cellini and Ammanati the artistic arrangements. On the 14th of July, 1564, in the church of S. Lorenzo, a triumphant memorial service was held in the presence of a hundred artists and an innumerable crowd of people.[124][{140}]
Between the two side doors arose a huge catafalque. Daniele da Volterra had wanted to use for the tomb the fine Victory and other sculptures of the Via Mozza, but this most reverent and appropriate idea for the glorification of the master was not accepted.[125] Instead, a huge arrangement, disproportionate and swollen, was erected, a real tower of Babel to which each sculptor of Florence brought his stone. It was undoubtedly, however, a fine thought to associate all the world of artists in a supreme homage to the man whom Italy considered the incarnation of her genius and the God himself of art.[126] The result of these combined efforts was only to prove more strikingly the contrast between the man who was dead and the men who claimed the right to succeed him. This agglomeration of sculpture recalls also that bitter saying of Michelangelo shortly before his end that "art and death do not go well together."
"L'arte e la morte non va bene insieme."
From 1564 to 1572 Vasari raised in Santa Croce, at the expense of Lionardo Buonarroti, and with the[{141}] collaboration of Borghini, Valerio Cioli and Battista Lorenzi, the monument to Michelangelo. Thode has proved that the so-called tomb of Michelangelo in the SS. Apostoli in Rome has nothing whatever to do with him. It is really the monument of a professor of medicine, Ferdinando Eustacio, and the false attribution dates only from 1823.[{142}]