Alinari Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. TOMB OF GIULIANO DE MEDICI. FLORENCE.
Alinari Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. TOMB OF LORENZO DE MEDICI. FLORENCE.
Another great monumental work in which his architectural and sculptural genius come out are the tombs of the Medici in the Church of San Lorenzo. The seated figures of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici are placed in the recesses of a Renascence arcade, in front of which are marble sarcophagi, and upon the lids recline figures of Night and Morning, and of Dawn and Twilight respectively. They are very bold and powerful in design, and extremely characteristic in style and treatment, having a certain titanic energy and tragic unrest, as well as pensive mystery, about them, which belong to the strong personality of their designer.
Poet, as well as painter, architect, and sculptor, we see him moving amid the political troubles and vicissitudes of his time, a proud and stormy spirit, a man of extraordinary energy, which impresses itself upon all his works. The designer of St. Peter's, the painter of the Sistine, and anon as engineer called to fortify Florence; austere and abstemious of habit, proud and imperious, and yet tenderly solicitous for his aged father, and devoted to his old servant Urbino, whom he tenderly nursed in his last illness.
The great artist lived till eighty-nine, and died in Rome, the scene of his monumental labours, on February 18th, 1564.
As showing the alertness and activity of his mind in old age, he is said to have made a drawing of himself as an aged man in a go-cart, with the motto, Ancora impara (still learning), a true emblem for a great man who, in spite of his knowledge, feels that in view of the unknown he knows nothing.