Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/405

1564] spandrels in the angles of the roof, four special mercies to God's people—the Brazen Serpent, the Death of Goliath, the Punishment of Haman, and the Triumph of Judith—are represented as types of the world's redemption. Twelve figures of Sibyls and Prophets in the spaces between the windows, bear witness to the coming of Christ, and the lunettes above are filled with family groups of the royal line of David and ancestors of the Virgin Mary. But Michelangelo's labours did not end here. After unfolding the story of the great Christian epic on the stone vault, he filled up the angles, curves, and cornices of the roof with nude forms of youths and children in every variety of attitude. And there, prominent among this great army of living creatures, he placed those twenty heroic figures, in whose youthful strength and loveliness we see the most perfect expression of the painter's dream.

Unfortunately, just at this moment when Michelangelo's powers were at their best and his style was fully developed, his time and strength were frittered away upon a series of architectural and engineering schemes which consumed the most precious years of his life. Four months after the completion of the Sistina frescoes, Julius II. died, and was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who assumed the title of Leo X. The new Pope, who had known Michelangelo as a boy in his father's home, was anxious to employ him for his own ends, and, in 1514, he summoned him to erect a façade for the church of S. Lorenzo in Florence.

During the last year, Michelangelo had devoted all his energies to the Tomb of Julius II., and had