[103] Michelangelo in the last period of his life, when he seemed entirely devoted to architecture and poetry, had many other ambitious plans, like that of continuing the arcade of the Loggia dei Lanzi around the palace of the Signory at Florence, of connecting the Farnese palace and the Farnesina by a bridge, of raising in the court of the Belvedere a Moses striking water from the rock, etc. It was that taste for the colossal, and what we might even dare to call the uselessly colossal, which was handed down through his school as far as Bernini.
[104] In 1553. See Condivi. This is the famous Pietà of the cathedral of Florence. Blaise de Vigenère in "Les Images de Philostrate," Paris, 1629, speaks of a Pietà on which Michelangelo was working in 1550 for his own tomb.
[105] All his life he suffered from insomnia brought on by overwork, a fever which continually consumed him and his ascetic sobriety.
[106] Two other unfinished Pietàs have been preserved. One is in the court of the Rondanini palace in Rome, the other has just been found in Palestrina.
[107] The figures are not on the same scale, especially the figure of the Magdalen, which is too small. She is colder than the rest of the group and more finished, and we may suspect that it was upon her figure that Calcagni worked.
[108] Among these artists he knew particularly well Francesco Granacci, Giuliano Bugiardini, Jacopo Sansovino, Aristotele da San Gallo, Rosso, Pontormo, Guglielmo della Porta, Vignole, and the musician Archadelt.
[109] Correspondence between Sebastiano del Piombo and Michelangelo has been published by Gaetano Milanesi with a French translation by A. LePileur and an introduction by E. Müntz in the Bibl. Internationale de l'Art (Librairie de l'Art, 1890).
[110] Donato Giannotti has, as we have said, preserved the memory of these relations in his "Dialoghi," 1545. Michelangelo was particularly intimate with Luigi del Riccio through their mutual friendship with the beautiful Cecchino dei Bracci, whose premature death in 1544 inspired Michelangelo with a cycle of verses.
[111] "La Vita di Michelangelo," by Ascanio Condivi, appeared in July, 1553, in Rome, published by Antonio Blado and dedicated to Julius III. The first edition of Vasari's "Vite" had already appeared in 1551 and Vasari had sent it to Michelangelo, who had thanked him in the sonnet "Se con lo stile."
[112] See Benvenuto Cellini.