Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/284

 254 Sculpture in the Renaissance Period. in the sides, adorned with figures of Victory supporting a massive block surrounded by colossal statues of prophets and sibyls, from which a pyramid covered with bronze figures should have sprung. All that was executed was the Victory, now at Florence, the two Captives, now in the Louvre, and the Moses.* The Medici chapel, in the church of San Lorenzo at Florence, built by order of Clement VII. , w r as decorated almost entirely by Buonarroti. In front of the altar is a group of the Virgin and the Holy Child ; on one side of it is the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, in which the statue of the Duke is placed over allegorical figures of Day and Night ; on the other the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, with whose statue are figures of the Dawn and Evening. The statue of Lorenzo, known as II Pemieroso, is remarkable for the expression of intense melancholy which pervades it. Of the allegorical figures — all alike full of gloomy grandeur — that of Night has been the most admired. In the National Museum, Florence, is an Ivy-crowned Bacchus, full of tender grace and beauty, and admirably expressive of the lassitude peculiar to the self-indulgent god. Among his important works we must not forget to mention a bronze figure of Pope Julius II., which was executed for the Cathedral of Bologna, but destroyed in a revolt and converted into cannon. Whilst Michelangelo was working at Rome, Jacopo Tatti (1479 — 1570), surnamed Sansovino, after the great master with whom he studied, was founding a school in Venice, in which the influence of Buonarroti was clearly perceptible ; but much of the stern realism of the master was laid aside of Bruges are in the South Kensington Museum.
 * Casts of the Moses, the two Slaves, the David, and the Madonna