Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/407

1564] and Nemours. As before, however, Michelangelo found himself sadly hampered in the execution of his project, and although Clement treated him with more consideration than his predecessors, his kindly intentions were frustrated by the disastrous events of 1527. Rome was taken and sacked by the Imperial troops, the Medici were expelled from Florence, and a Republic was once more proclaimed. Two years later, Charles V. made peace with Clement, and Florence was sacrificed to the Pope's vengeance. In 1529, the Imperial armies besieged the city, and Michelangelo was appointed director of the fortifications by the Signoria. He took an active part in the defence, and traces of the works which he constructed on the heights of San Miniato are still in existence. All through the siege, however, he worked in secret at the Medici tombs, and when Florence was betrayed to her foes, and the Imperial troops entered the city in August, 1530, he was left at liberty, by the Pope's orders, in order that he might resume his work in S. Lorenzo. His plans for the decoration of the Sacristy were never carried out, his colossal Madonna remains unfinished, and the figures of Cosimo and Damiano were executed by assistants. But his statues of the two dukes, and recumbent figures of Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn, are among the grandest works of Renaissance sculpture. There is no attempt at portraiture. As he said himself: "Who will care in another thousand years if these features are theirs or not?" This warrior Duke, with the helmet overshadowing his dark face, as, wrapt in gloomy meditation, he broods over the doom of Florence this martial youth with the bâton on