Some authorities believe that the statue usually called Lorenzo was
intended for Giuliano. Michael Angelo himself, when remonstrated with
because the portraits were not correct likenesses, replied that he "did
not suppose people a hundred years later would care much how the dukes
looked!"
Under this statue are Dawn and Twilight. Ruskin calls these, with Night
and Day, "Four ineffable types, not of darkness nor of day--not of
morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the
twilight and the dawn, of the souls of men."
Day is a gigantic figure of a man; Night, of a woman in a profound
sleep, with her foot resting on a thick bundle of poppy-heads. When this
statue was exhibited for the first time, Giovanni Batista Strozzi wrote
a verse, and attached it to the marble:--
"Carved by an Angel, in this marble white
Sweetly reposing, lo, the Goddess Night!
Calmly she sleeps, and so must living be:
Awake her gently; she will speak to thee."
To which Michael Angelo wrote the following reply:--
"Grateful is sleep, whilst wrong and shame survive
More grateful still in senseless stone to live;
Gladly both sight and hearing I forego;
Oh, then, awake me not. Hush--whisper low."
Of Day, Mrs. Oliphant says, in her "Makers of Florence," "Bursting
herculean from his strong prison, half heroic, nothing known of him but
the great brow and resolute eyes, and those vast limbs, which were not
yet free from the cohesion of the marble, though alive with such strain
of action."
Twilight is the strong figure of a man. Dawn, or Morning, Grimm
considers "the most beautiful of all. She is lying outstretched on the
gently sloping side of the lid of the sarcophagus. Not, however,
resting, but as if, still in sleep, she had moved towards us; so that,
while the upper part of the back is still reclining, the lower part is
turned to us. She is lying on her right side; the leg next us, only
feebly bent at the knee is stretching itself out; the other is half
drawn up, and with the knee bent out, as if it was stepping forward and
seeking for sure footing. An entire symphony of Beethoven lies in this
statue."
In 1534, the same year in which the Medici statues were finished,
Michael Angelo's father died, at the age of ninety. The artist gave him
a costly burial, and wrote a pathetic poem in his memory. The beloved
brother, Buonarotto, had died in Michael Angelo's arms. His young mother
had died years before when he went to Rome, scarcely more than a boy.
"Already had I wept and sighed so much,
I thought all grief forever at an end,
Exhaled in sighs, shed forth in bitter tears.
* * * * *
For thee, my brother, and for him who was
Of thee and me the parent, love inspires
A grief unspeakable to vex and sting.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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