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 was at last persuaded to betake himself. Julius received the truant artist kindly, as indeed between these two volcanic natures there existed a natural affinity, and ordered of him his own colossal likeness in bronze, to be set up, as a symbol of his conquering authority, over the principal entrance of the church of St Petronius. For the next fifteen months Michelangelo devoted his whole strength to this new task. The price at which he undertook it left him, as it turned out, hardly any margin to subsist on. Moreover in the technical art of metal casting he was inexperienced, and an assistant whom he had summoned from Florence proved insubordinate and had to be dismissed. Nevertheless his genius prevailed over every hardship and difficulty, and on the 21st of February 1508 the majestic bronze colossus of the seated pope, robed and mitred, with one hand grasping the keys and the other extended in a gesture of benediction and command, was duly raised to its station over the church porch. Three years later it was destroyed in a revolution. The people of Bologna rose against the authority of Julius; his delegates and partisans were cast out, and his effigy hurled from its place. The work of Michelangelo, after being trailed in derision through the streets, was broken up and its fragments cast into the furnace.

Meanwhile the artist himself, as soon as his work was done, had followed his reconciled master back to Rome. The task that here awaited him, however, was after all not the resumption of the papal monument, but the execution of the series of paintings in the Sixtine chapel which had been mooted before his departure. Painting, he always averred, was not his business; he was aware of his enemy’s hopes that a great enterprise in fresco-painting would prove beyond his powers; and he entered with misgiving and reluctance upon his new undertaking. Destiny, however, so ruled that the work thus thrust upon him remains his chief title to glory. His history is one of indomitable will and almost superhuman energy, yet of will that hardly ever had its way, and of energy continually at war with circumstance. The only work which in all his life he was able to complete as he had conceived it was this of the decoration of the Sixtine ceiling. The pope had at first desired a scheme including figures of the twelve apostles only. Michelangelo began accordingly, but could rest content with nought so meagre, and soon proposed instead a design of many hundred figures embodying the story of Genesis from the Creation to the Flood, with accessory personages of prophets and sibyls dreaming on the new dispensation to come, and, in addition, those of the forefathers of Christ. The whole was to be enclosed and divided by an elaborate framework of painted architecture, with a multitude of nameless human shapes supporting its several members or reposing among them—shapes mediating, as it were, between the features of the inanimate framework and those of the great dramatic and prophetic scenes themselves. The pope bade the artist do as he pleased. By May 1508 the preparations in the chapel had been completed and the work begun. Later in the same year Michelangelo summoned a number of assistant painters from Florence. Trained in the traditions of the earlier Florentine school, they were unable, it seems, to interpret Michelangelo’s designs in fresco either with sufficient freedom or sufficient uniformity of style to satisfy him. At any rate he soon dismissed them, and carried out the remainder of his colossal task alone, except for the necessary amount of purely mechanical and subordinate help. The physical conditions of prolonged work, face upwards, upon this vast expanse of ceiling were adverse and trying in the extreme. After four and a half years of toil the task was accomplished. Michelangelo had during its progress been harassed alike by delays of payment and by hostile intrigue, his ill-wishers casting doubts on his capacity, and vaunting the superior powers of Raphael. That gentle spirit would by nature have been no man’s enemy, but unluckily Michelangelo’s moody, self-concentrated temper prevented the two artists being on terms of amity such as might have stopped the mouths of mischief-makers. Absolute need of funds for the furtherance of the undertaking constrained him at one moment to break off work and pursue his inconsiderate patron as far as Bologna. This was between September 1510, by which time the whole of the great series of subjects along the centre of the vault were completed, and January 1511, when the master set to work again and began filling the complicated lateral spaces of his decorative scheme.

The Sixtine chapel was no sooner completed than Michelangelo resumed work upon the marbles for the monument of Julius. But four months only had passed when Julius died. His heirs immediately entered (in the summer of 1513) into a new contract with Michelangelo for the execution of the monument on a reduced scale. What the precise nature and extent of the original design had been we do not know, only that the monument was to be detached from the wall, and to stand four-square and free—a thing hitherto unknown in Renaissance sepulchral architecture—in one of the chapels of St Peter’s. But the new design was extensive and magnificent enough., It was to consist of a great three-sided structure, two courses high, projecting from the church wall, and decorated on its three unattached sides with statues. On the upper course was to be placed the colossal recumbent figures of the pope, with a vision of the Virgin and Child above him, angels mourning at the sides, and prophetic and allegoric personages at the angles—sixteen figures in all. The lower course was to be enriched with twenty-four figures in niches and on projecting pedestals: in the niches, Victories; in front of terminal pilasters between them,