Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/406

354 produced the famous Moses and the two Slaves of the Louvre which, in perfection of manly beauty, rival the genii of the Sistina, while in power of expression they equal his finest works in marble. It was with the greatest reluctance that he once more abandoned his unfinished work at the new Pope's command, and left Rome "with tears in his eyes." In spite, however, of his repeated protests that architecture was not his profession, he soon threw himself with habitual energy into this new work, and wrote from Carrara, where he was engaged in quarrying marbles with an army of stone-cutters and road-makers under his orders, that he "hoped with God's help to produce the finest thing that Italy had ever seen." He built large workshops in Florence, and brought huge columns and blocks of marble from Carrara and Serravezza. Suddenly the Pope changed his mind and cancelled the contract for the façade, to the bitter indignation of the master, who justly complained of the insult to himself, and of the cruel waste of his time and powers during these five years. But Leo X. had never fully appreciated Michelangelo's work, and found, as he said to Sebastian del Piombo, that he was too terrible a man for him.

The next Medici Pope, Clement VII., employed the great master to build the Laurentian Library and design the new Sacristy of S. Lorenzo, to contain the tombs of his kinsmen. The interior of the Sacristy was to be decorated with frescoes and bas-reliefs, and six sarcophagi placed in the midst, adorned with portrait-statues of the great Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano, of Popes Leo X. and Clement VII., and of the Dukes of Urbino