These statues were executed by Michel Angelo, with various and annoying interruptions, when he was more than fifty-five years of age, and while he was in ill-health and very much overworked. Indeed, such was his condition of health at this time that it gave great anxiety to his friends, and Giovanni Battista Mini, writing to his friend Bartolommeo Valori on the 29th of September, 1531, says: “Michel Angelo has fallen off in flesh, and the other day with Buggiardini and Antonio Mini we had a private talk about him, and we came to the conclusion that he will not live long unless things are remedied. He works very hard, eats little and that little is bad, sleeps not at all, and for a month past his sight has been weak, and he has pains in the head and vertigo, and, in fine, his head is affected and so is his heart, but there is a cure for each, for he is healthy.” He was so besieged on all sides with commissions, and particularly by the Duke of Urbino, that the Pope at last issued a brief, ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to do no work except on these monuments,—and thus he was enabled to command his time and to carry on these great works to the condition in which they now are, though he never was able completely to finish them. Of the same race with them are the wonderful frescoes of the sibyls and prophets and Biblical figures and Titans that live on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And these are as amazing as, perhaps even more amazing in their way than, the sculpture of the Medicean Chapel. He was but thirty-four years of age when, at the instigation of Bramante, he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II. to decorate the ceiling. It is unpleasant to think that Bramante, in urging this step upon the Pope, was animated with little good-will to Michel Angelo. From all accounts it would seem he was jealous of his growing fame, and deemed that in undertaking this colossal work failure would be inevitable. Michel Angelo had indeed worked in his youth under Ghirlandajo, but had soon abandoned his studio and devoted himself to sculpture; and though he had painted some few labored pictures and produced the famous designs for the great hall of the municipality at Florence, in competition with his famous rival Leonardo da Vinci, yet these cartoons had never been executed by him, and his fame was chiefly, if not solely, as a sculptor. Michel Angelo himself, though strongly urged to this undertaking by the Pope, was extremely averse to it, and at first refused, declaring that “painting was not his profession.” The Pope, however, was persistent, and Michel was forced at last to yield, and to accept the commission. He then immediately began to prepare his cartoons, and, ignorant and doubtful of his own powers, summoned to his assistance several artists in Florence, to learn more properly from them the method of painting in fresco. Not satisfied with their work on the ceiling, he suddenly closed the doors upon them, sent them away,