[39] After the death of Leo X on December 1, 1521, and during all the pontificate of Adrian VI, who died on September 23, 1523, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici had put a "mute" on all his undertakings. It is probable that during that year's respite (1522-23) Michelangelo was able to take up again the tomb of Julius II, and that he worked at the admirable Victory of the Bargello and at the scarcely blocked-in figures of the Boboli Grotto.
[40] Fifty crowns. Michelangelo only asked for fifteen.
[41] He was fifty years old. In 1517, when he was forty-two, in a letter to Domenico Buoninsegni he called himself "old." In 1523 in a letter to Cardinal Domenico Grimani, he emphasised the lessening of his strength through age. "If I work a day," he says, "I must rest for four."
[42] Thode pretends that Michelangelo did not take this seriously and that the letter which follows is "ironisch und humorvolle." Full of humor, yes, but I do not think it ironical. If there is any trace of irony it is rather on the side of the pope, who might have been making fun of Michelangelo's naiveté and of his well-known tendency to grow enthusiastic over any new undertaking, particularly the most fantastic ones. In fact after frequent exchanges of letters in October and November, 1525, Fattucci, a friend of Michelangelo, warned him secretly in December that "the Colossus was only a joke." Michelangelo had not suspected any malice in this scheme and had already pictured in his mind the bizarre Colossus to which he gave a frankly popular character, monstrous and comic, like one of Aristo's giants.
[43] The block of marble abandoned by Michelangelo was taken a little while afterward by his jealous rival, Bandinelli, who made from it a Hercules and Cacus which to-day still stands on the Piazza della Signoria.
[44] Until then Michelangelo had given his services gratuitously to his country.
[45] It was for him that Michelangelo some time after this made his painting of Leda, but he never sent it to him because of some discourtesy on the part of the Ferrarese ambassador.
[46] Michelangelo does not name him, undoubtedly so as not to compromise him.
[47] In entering the chapel of S. Lorenzo the tomb of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, (Action) is on the right; and on the left that of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino (the Thinker); and opposite the altar, the Virgin nursing the Child. Each of the two captains is placed in a rectangular niche flanked by two other niches which are empty. Below each of them on the fluted cover of a sarcophagus arc two allegorical figures half reclining (Day and Night—Dawn and Twilight) with their backs turned. The sarcophagi are designedly much too small; there is hardly room for the figures on them. No doubt Michelangelo wished to emphasise the impression of heroic and agonising effort produced by the sight of these athletic forms turned back upon themselves in involved and constrained portions. The two tombs were finished in 1531. We know the admirable verses which Michelangelo wrote on his figure of Night and which undoubtedly date from a dozen years later, March, 1544. See Frey CIX. pp, 16-17.
[48] At this same time by a savage and instinctive reaction of his nature against the Christian pessimism by which it was stifled, Michelangelo executed some works of daring paganism like the painting of Leda caressed by the Swan (1529-1530) which, originally made for the Duke of Ferrara, was given by Michelangelo to his pupil Antonio Mini, who carried it to France, where it is said to have been destroyed about 1643 by Sublet des Noyers because of its licentiousness. A little later Michelangelo painted for Bart. Bettini a cartoon of Venus caressed by Love from which Pontormo made a picture now in the Uffizi. Other drawings full of a grandiose and severe shamelessness are probably of the same period. To the first months of the siege belongs also the admirable unfinished statue of the Apollo of the Museo Nazionale which he made for Baccio Valori in the autumn of 1530.