slaves or captives denoting, it would seem, either conquered
provinces or arts and sciences in bondage after their patron’s
death. A much injured and not indisputable sketch by the
master at Berlin, with a copy of the same by Sacchetti, are
supposed to show the design at this stage of its reduction.
The entire work was to be completed in nine years’ time. During
the next three years, it would seem, Michelangelo brought to
completion three at least of the promised figures, for which
the blocks had reached Rome from Carrara as early as July
1508; and they are among the most famous of all existing works
of the sculptor’s art—namely, the “Moses,” now in the church
of S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome and the two “Slaves” at the
Louvre.
The “Moses,” originally intended for one of the angles of the upper course, is now placed at the level of the eye, in the centre of the principal face of the monument as it was at last finished, on a deplorably reduced and altered scale, by Michelangelo and his assistants in his old age. The prophet, supposed to have just come down from Mount Sinai and found the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, sits, heavily bearded and draped, with only his right arm bare, his left foot drawn back, his head raised and turned to the left, his left hand laid on his lap and his right grasping the tables of the law—an incarnation of majestic indignation and menace. The work, except in one or two places, is of the utmost finish, and the statue looks like one of the prophets of the Sixtine ceiling done in marble. The “Slaves” at the Louvre are youthful male figures of equally perfect execution, nude but for the band which passes over the breast of one and the right leg of the other. One, with his left hand raised to his head and his right pressed to his bosom, his eyes almost closed, seems succumbing to the agonies of death; the other, with his arms bound behind his back, looks upward still hopelessly struggling; All three of these figures were finished between 1513 and 1516.
By 1516 Michelangelo’s evil star was again in the ascendant. Julius II. had been succeeded on the papal throne by Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici under the title of Leo X. The Medici, too, had about the same time by force and fraud re-established their sway in Florence, overthrowing the free institutions that had prevailed there since the days of Savonarola. Now, on the one hand, this family were the hereditary friends and patrons of Michelangelo; on the other hand he was a patriotic son of republican Florence; so that henceforward his personal allegiance and his political sympathies were in conflict. Over much of his art, as has been thought, the pain and perplexity of this conflict have cast their shadow. For the present the consequence to him of the rise to power of the Medici was a fresh interruption of his cherished work on the tomb of Julius. Leo X. and his kinsmen were full of a vast new scheme for the enrichment and adornment of the façade of their own family church of San Lorenzo in Florence; Michelangelo, carried away by the idea and forgetful of his other still great and onerous task, offered his services for the new façade. They were eagerly accepted, although for a moment the idea had been entertained of entrusting the work to Leonardo da Vinci. The heirs of Julius on their part showed an accommodating temper, and at the request of Leo allowed their three-years’-old contract to be cancelled in favour of another, whereby the scale and sculptured decorations of the Julian monument were again to be reduced by nearly a half. Michelangelo soon produced for the San Lorenzo façade a design of combined sculpture and architecture as splendid and ambitious in its way as had been that for the original monument of Julius. The contract was signed in January 1518, and the artist went to Carrara to superintend the excavation of the marbles.
Michelangelo was now in his forty-fourth year. Though half his life was yet to come, yet its best days had, as it proved, been spent. All the hindrances which he had encountered hitherto were as nothing to those which began to beset him now. For the supply of materials for the façade of San Lorenzo he had set a firm of masons to work, and had himself, it seems, entered into a kind of partnership with them, at Carrara, where he knew the quarries well, and where the industry was hereditary and well understood. When all was well in progress there under his own eye, reasons of state induced the Medici and the Florentine magistracy to bid him resort instead to certain new quarries at Pietrasanta, near Serravalle in the territory of Florence. Hither, to the disgust of his old clients at Carrara and to his own, Michelangelo accordingly had to transfer the scene of his labours. Presently he found himself so impeded and enraged by the mechanical difficulties of raising and transporting the marbles, and by the disloyalty and incompetence of those with whom he had to deal, that he was fain to throw up the commission altogether. The contracts for the façade of San Lorenzo were rescinded in March 1518, and the whole magnificent scheme came to nothing. Michelangelo then returned to Florence, where proposals of work poured in on him from many quarters. The king of France desired something from his hand to place beside the two pictures he possessed by Raphael. The authorities of Bologna wanted him to design a façade for their church of St Petronius; those of Genoa to cast a statue in bronze of their great commander, Andrea Doria. Cardinal Grimani begged hard for any picture or statue he might have to spare; other amateurs importuned him for so much as a pencil drawing or sketch. Lastly his friend and partisan Sebastian del Piombo at Rome, ever eager to keep up the feud between the followers of Michelangelo and those of Raphael, besought him on Raphael’s death to return at once to Rome, and take out of the hands of the dead master’s pupils the work of painting still remaining to be done in the Vatican chambers. Michelangelo complied with none of these requests. All that we certainly know of his doing between 1518 and 1522 is the blocking out in the rough of four more of the “Slaves” for the tomb of Julius, and carrying out a commission, which he had received from three citizens of Rome as early as 1514, for a statue of the risen Christ. The roughed-out “Slaves” now stand immured in a grotto in the Boboli Gardens, Florence; the Christ, practically finished by the master but with the last touches added by pupils, stands in the church, for which it was destined, of Sta Maria sopra Minerva at Rome; there is little in it either of devotional spirit or imaginative power, although, in those parts which Michelangelo himself finished, there is extreme accomplishment of design and workmanship.
The next twelve years of Michelangelo’s life (1522–1534) were spent at Florence, and again employed principally in the service of his capricious and uncongenial patrons—the Medici. The plan of a great group of monuments to deceased members of this family, to be set up in a new sacristy or mortuary chapel in San Lorenzo, was first broached to Michelangelo in 1520 by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. No practical impulse, however, was given to the work until Giulio, after the death of Leo X. and the brief pontificate of the puritanical and iconoclastic Adrian VI., had in his turn become pope in 1523 under the title of Clement VII. Even then the impulse was a wavering one. First Clement proposed to associate another artist, Sansovino, with Michelangelo in his task. This proposal being on Michelangelo’s peremptory demand abandoned, Clement next distracted the artist with an order for a new architectural design—that, namely, for the proposed Medicean or “Laurentian” library. When at last after many changes of scope and scheme the plans for the sepulchral chapel or “Sagrestia nuova” took shape, they did not include, as had been at first intended, memorials to the founders of the house’s greatness, Cosimo (pater patriae) and Lorenzo the Magnificent, or even to Pope Leo X. himself, but only to two younger members of the house lately deceased, Giuliano, duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, duke of Urbino. Michelangelo brooded long over various designs for this work, and was still engaged on its execution—his time being partly also taken up by the building-plans for the Medicean library—when political revolutions interposed to divert his industry. In 1527 came to pass the sack of Rome by the Austrians, and the apparently irretrievable ruin of Pope Clement. The Florentines seized the occasion to expel the Medici from their city, and set up a free republican government once more. Naturally no more funds for the works in San Lorenzo were forthcoming, and Michelangelo, on the invitation of the new signory, occupied himself for a while with designs for a group of Hercules and Cacus, and another of Samson
