Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/35

MICHAEL ANGELO ai«  rupted by events which threw all Italy into commotion. Rome was taken and sacked by the Constable de Bourbon in 1527. The Medici were once more ex- pelled from Florence ; and Michael Angelo, in the midst of these strange vicis- situdes, was employed by the republic to fortify his native city against his former patrons. Great as an engineer, as in every other department of art and science, he defended Florence for nine months. At length the city was given up by treachery, and, fearing the vengeance of the conquerors, Michael Angelo fled and concealed himself ; but Clement VII. was too sensible of his merit to allow him to remain long in disgrace and exile. He was pardoned, and continued ever afterward in high favor with the pope, who employed him on the sculptures in the chapel of San Lorenzo during the remainder of his pontificate. In the year 1531 he had completed the statues of "Night and Morning," and Clement, who heard of his incessant labors, sent him a brief commanding him, on pain of excommunication, to take care of his health, and not to accept of any other work but that which his Holiness had assigned him. Clement VII. was succeeded by Pope Paul III., of the Farnese family, in 1534. This pope, though nearly seventy when he was elected, was as anxious to immortalize his name by great undertakings as any of his predecessors had been. His first wish was to complete the decoration of the interior of the Sistine Chapel, left unfinished by Julius II. and Leo X. He summoned Michael An- gelo, who endeavored to excuse himself, pleading other engagements ; but the pope would listen to no excuses which interfered with his sovereign power to dissolve all other obligations ; and thus the artist found himself, after an interval of twenty years, most reluctantly forced to abandon sculpture for painting ; and, as Vasari expresses it, he consented to serve Pope Paul only because he could not do otherwise. The same Pope Paul III. had in the meantime constructed a beautiful chapel, which was called after his name the chapel Paolina, and dedicated to St Peter and St. Paul. Michael Angelo was called upon to design the decorations. He painted on one side the " Conversion of St. Paul," and on the other the " Crucifixion of St. Peter," which were completed in 1549. But these fine paint- ings — of which existing old engravings give a better idea than the blackened and faded remains of the original frescos — were from the first ill-disposed as to the locality, and badly lighted, and at present they excite little interest compared with the more famous works in the Sistine. With the frescos in the Pauline Chapel ends Michael Angelo's career as a painter. Fie had been appointed chief architect of St. Peter's, in 1547, by Paul III. He was then in his seventy-second year, and during the remainder of his life, a period of sixteen years, we find him wholly devoted to architecture. His vast and daring genius finding ample scope in the completion of St. Peter's, he has left behind him in his capacity of architect yet greater marvels than he has achieved as painter and sculptor. Who that has seen the cupola of St. Peter's soaring into the skies, but will think almost with awe of the universal and ma- jestic intellect of the man who reared it ?