Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/284

272 ful to have his lantern very different from that of Eilippo Brunelleschi: to which Michelagnolo replied, ‘‘I can make a different one easily; but as to making a better, that I cannot do.” He decorated the inside of the Sacristy with four Tombs, to enclose the remains of the fathers of the two Popes, Lorenzo the elder and Giuliano his brother, with those of Giuliano the brother of Leo, and of Lorenzo his nephew. Desiring to imitate the old Sacristy by Filippo Brunelleschi, but with new ornaments, he composed a decoration of a richer and more varied character than had ever before been adopted, either by ancient or modern masters: the beautiful cornices, the capitals, the bases, the doors, the niches, and the tombs themselves, were all very different from those in common use, and from what was considered measure, rule, and order, by Vitruvius and the ancients, to whose rules he would not restrict himself. But this boldness on his part has encouraged other artists to an injudicious imitation, and new fancies are continually seen, many of which belong to grottesche rather than to the wholesome rules of ornamentation.

Artists are nevertheless under great obligations to Michelagnolo, seeing that he has thus broken the barriers and chains whereby they were perpetually compelled to walk in a beaten path, while he still more effectually completed this liberation and made known his own views, in the Library of San Lorenzo, erected at the same place. The admirable distribution of the W'indows, the construction of the ceiling, and the fine entrance of the Vestibule, can never be sufficiently extolled. Boldness and grace are equally conspicuous in the work as a whole, and in every part; in the cornices, corbels, the niches for statues, the commodious staircase, and its fanciful divisions—in all the building, at a word, which is so unlike the common fashion of treatment, that every one stands amazed at the sight thereof.

About this time Michelagnolo sent his disciple, Pietro Urbano of Pistoja, to Rome, there to execute a figure of Christ on the Cross, which is indeed a most admirable work: