Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/247

Rh MICHELANGELO 233 much of his art, as has been thought, the pain and per plexity of this conflict have cast their shadow. For the present the consequence to him of the rise to power of the Medici was a fresh interruption of his cherished work on the tomb of Julius. Leo X. and his kinsmen insisted that Michelangelo, regardless of all other engagements, must design and carry out a great new scheme for the enrich ment of their own family church of San Lorenzo in Florence. The heirs of Julius on their part showed an accommodating temper, and at the request of Leo allowed their three-years -old contract to be cancelled in favour of another, whereby the scale and sculptured decorations of the Julian monument were again to be reduced by nearly a half. Unwillingly Michelangelo accepted the new com mission thus thrust upon him for the church faade at Florence; but, having once accepted it, he produced a design of combined sculpture and architecture as splendid and ambitious in its way as had been that for the monu ment of Julius. In the summer of 1516 he left Rome for Carrara to superintend the excavation of the marbles. Michelangelo was now in his forty-second year. Though more than half his life was yet to come, yet its best days had, as it proved, been spent. All the hindrances which he had encountered hitherto were as nothing to those which began to beset him now. For the supply of materials for the fafade of San Lorenzo he had set a firm of masons to work, and had himself, it seems, entered into a kind of partnership with them, at Carrara, where he knew the quarries well, and where the industry was hereditary and well understood. When all was well in progress there under his own eye, reasons of state induced the Medici and the Florentine magistracy to bid him resort instead to certain new quarries at Pietrasanta, near Serravalle in the territory of Florence. Hither, to the disgust of his old clients at Carrara and to his own, Michelangelo accordingly had to transfer the scene of his labours. Presently he found himself so impeded and enraged by the mechanical difficulties of raising and transporting the marbles, and by the disloyalty and incompetence of those with whom he had to deal, that he was fain to throw up the commission altogether. The contracts for the facade of San Lorenzo were rescinded in March 1518, and the whole magnificent scheme came to nothing. Michelangelo then returned to Florence, where proposals of work poured in on him from many quarters. The king of France desired something from his hand to place beside the two pictures he possessed by Raphael. The authorities of Bologna wanted him to design a facade for their church of St Petronius ; those of Genoa to cast a statue in bronze of their great commander, Andrea Doria. Cardinal Grimani begged hard for any picture or statue he might have to spare ; other amateurs importuned him for so much as a pencil drawing or sketch. Lastly his friend and partisan Sebastian del Piombo at Rome, ever eager to keep up the feud between the followers of Michelangelo and those of Raphael, besought him on Raphael s death to return at once to Rome, and take out of the hands of the dead master s pupils the works of painting still remaining to be done in the Vatican chambers. Michelangelo complied with none of these requests. All that we know of his doing at this time was the finishing a commission received and first put in hand four years previously, for a full-sized statue of a nude Christ grasping the Cross. This statue, completed and sent to Rome in 1521 (with some last touches added by subordinate hands in Rome itself), stands now in the church of Sta Maria sopra Minerva ; there is little in it of the Christian spirit as commonly understood, although, in those parts which Michelangelo himself finished, there is extreme accomplishment of design and workmanship. The next twelve years of Michelangelo s life (1522-34) were spent at Florence, and again employed principally in the service of his capricious and uncongenial patrons, the Medici. The plan of a great group of monuments to deceased members of this family, to be set up in their mortuary chapel in San Lorenzo, seems to have been formed, and preparations to have been made by Michelangelo for its execution, as early as 1519. It was not, however, until 1524, after Leo X. had died, and his successor Adrian VI. had been in his turn succeeded by another Medicean pope, Clement VII., that any practical impulse was given to the work. Even then the impulse was a wavering one. First Clement proposed to associate another artist, Sansavino, with Michelangelo in his task. This proposal being on Michelangelo s peremptory demand abandoned, Clement next distracted the artist with an order for a new archi tectural design, that, namely, for the proposed Medicean or &quot; Laurentian &quot; library. When at last the plans for the sepulchral monuments took shape, they did not include, as had been at first intended, memorials to the founders of the house s greatness, Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even to Pope Leo X. himself, but only to two younger members of the house lately deceased, Giuliano, duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, duke of Urbino. Michelangelo brooded long over his designs for this work, and was still engaged on its execution his time being partly also taken up by the building plans for the Medicean library when political revolutions interposed to divert his industry. In 1527 came to pass the sack of Rome by the Austrians, and the apparently irretrievable ruin of Pope Clement. The Florentines seized the occasion to expel the Medici from their city, and set up a free republican government once more. Naturally no more funds for the work in San Lorenzo were forthcoming, and Michelangelo, on the invitation of the new signory, occupied himself for a while with designs for a colossal group of Samson and the Philistines, to be wrought out of a block of marble which had been rough-hewn already for another purpose by Baccio Bandinelli. Soon, however, he was called to help in defending the city itself from danger. Clement and his enemy Charles V. having become reconciled, both alike were now bent on bringing Florence again under the rule of the Medici. In view of the approaching siege, Michelangelo was appointed engineer-in-chief of the fortifications. He spent the early summer of 1529 in strengthening the defences of San Miniato ; from July to September he was absent on a diplomatic mission to Ferrara and Venice. Returning in the middle of the latter month, he found the cause of Florence hopeless from internal treachery and from the overwhelming strength of her enemies. One of his dark seizures overcame him, and he departed again .suddenly for Venice. Not cowardice, but despair of his city s liberties, and still more of his own professional pro spects amid the turmoil of Italian affairs, was the motive of his departure. For a while he remained in Venice, negotiating for a future residence in France. Then, while the siege was still in progress, he returned once more to Florence ; but in the final death-struggle of her liberties he bore no part. When in 1530 the city submitted to her conquerors, no mercy was shown to most of those who had taken part in her defence. Michelangelo believed himself in danger with the rest, but on the intervention of Baccio Valori he was presently taken back into favour and employment by Pope Clement. For three years more he still remained at Florence, engaged principally on the com pletion of the Medici monuments, and on the continuance of the Medicean library, but partly also on a picture of Leda for the duke of Ferrara. The statues of the Medici monument take rank heside the Moses and the Slaves as the finest work of Michelangelo s central time in sculpture ; moreover, though some of the figures are unfinished, they constitute as actually executed a complete scheme. They XVI. - 30