[33] The two Slaves were given in 1544 by Michelangelo to Robert Strozzi, who was at that time banished from Florence and had taken refuge in France. They finally reached the Constable de Montmorency's Château of Ecouen, and Henri de Montmorency when he died in 1632 gave them to Cardinal de Richelieu. From the Château de Richelieu they were moved in the seventeenth century to the gardens of the Maréchal de Richelieu in Paris. It is thanks to Lenoir that they were preserved to France in 1793.
[34] Condivi wrote that according to Michelangelo the statues of the bound men which were to be placed against the pilasters of the lower part of the tomb "represented the liberal arts, painting, sculpture and architecture each with its characteristic attributes, in such a way that they could be easily recognised. At the same time they expressed the idea that all the virtues were prisoners of death with Pope Julius and that they would never find anyone to encourage them and to support them as he had done."
Some sketches at Oxford show a number of these prisoners struggling against their chains. The large statues of the upper story were to personify St. Paul, Moses, Adam, Life and Contemplation; Julius II was represented asleep on an open sarcophagus which was supported by two angels, "one smiling to express the joy of heaven, and the other weeping to represent the sorrow of earth."
A large pen-and-ink drawing in the Ufizzi partly shows the architecture of the monument—that Charles Garnier called the architecture of a goldsmith—and which is indeed a frame to group the sculptured figures together as well as possible. I would like to believe that this drawing refers not to the plan of 1513, but to the simplified plan of 1516.
[35] Cardinal Giulio Medici, future Clement VII.
[36] A brasse is 1.62 metres.
[37] Appeal of the Academicians of Florence to Leo X, signed by Michelangelo. (Gotti, Vol. II, p. 84.)
[38] Michelangelo ended his work in April, 1520. The Christ was sent to Rome in March, 1521. Pietro Urbano worked at it from June until the middle of August when he suddenly left Rome.
Sebastiano del Piombo writes to Michelangelo in September, 1521: "Pietro Urbano has mutilated everything. In particular he has shortened the right foot and you can see clearly that he has cut off the toes: he has even shortened the fingers, especially those of the right hand which held the cross. Frizzi says that they look as if they had been made by a 'baker.' That hand does not even look like marble; you would think it had been made by a pastry cook, so stiff are the fingers. You can see, too, that he has worked at the beard and you would think he had modelled it with a blunt knife. He has also mutilated one of the nostrils, and almost spoilt the nose."
Michelangelo had to commission the sculptor, Federigo Frizzi, to finish the work. With his customary honesty he offered to make an entirely new statue for Metello Varj, who had ordered the work from him, but Varj declined. Michelangelo was so ashamed of the Christ of the Minerva that when the statue was unveiled in December, 1521, Lionardo Sellajo, one of his friends in Rome, took great care that everyone should know that it was not by Michelangelo, but that he had simply retouched it.