Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/293

Rh all that the art of design is capable of elfecting; while on the opposite wall, and over the principal door, the Pontiff directed that the Fall of Lucifer, and that of the Angels who sinned with him, should be depicted, with their Expulsion from Heaven and Precipitation to the centre of Hell. Of these subjects, it was found that Michelagnolo had long before made sketches and designs, one of them being afterwards put into execution, in the Church of the Trinità in Rome, by a Sicilian painter, who had been many months with Michelagnolo, and had served him in the grinding of his colours. The picture, which is in fresco, is in the Transept of the church, at the Chapel of San Gregorio namely; and although badly executed, there is nevertheless a certain force and variety in the attitudes and groups of those nude figures raining down from heaven; and of the others, which having fallen to the centre, are then turned into frightful and horrible forms of Demons, which certainly give evidence of extraordinary power of fancy and invention.

While Michelagnolo was thus busied with his painting of the Last Judgment, no day passed that he did not have contentions with the agents of the Duke of Urbino, who accused him of having received sixteen thousand crowns for the Tomb of Pope Julius II. He was much grieved at this charge, and though now become old, wished to finish the tomb, since so unlooked-for an opportunity had been presented to him of returning to Rome, whence indeed he desired never to depart, not being willing to remain in Florence, because he greatly feared the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, whom he knew to be no friend of his; nay, when the latter had intimated to him, through the Signor Alessandro Vitelli, that he must repair to Florence, there to select a better site for the forts and citadel, Michelagnolo replied that he would not go thither, unless compelled to do so by Pope Clement.

An agreement being finally arrived at, in respect to the Tomb of Julius, the matter was arranged on this wise: the edifice was no longer to be an isolated fabric, but merely a single façade, executed as Michelagnolo should think best, he being held nevertheless to supply to it six Statues by his