imagination and youth gave them up in favour of an attempt at breadth and power which were not for him. Filippino Lippi renounced his serious simplicity for pedantic dilettanteism and affected gestures. Instead of being the first in the second rank Lorenzo di Credi, Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, Raffaellino del Garbo and Piero di Cosimo preferred to be the last of the first rank. The same rivalry which had brought about the competition between Michelangelo and Lionardo in the Council Hall appears again in a series of works which belong to this Florentine period (1501-1505). These are representations of the "Holy Family" in which Michelangelo attempts to solve the same problem of composition as Lionardo and Fra Bartolommeo in placing the figures in a circle. Such are the two circular bas-reliefs, the Madonna and Child of the Museo Nazionale made for Taddeo Taddei and the Holy Family of the Academy of Fine Arts in London made for Bartolommeo Pitti. Chief of them all is the great picture in distemper of the Holy Family of the Uffizi painted for Agnolo Doni--a heroic work filled with the lofty serene life of Olympus and the Parthenon. The painting is the most carefully executed of all Michelangelo's. The colouring, blue, rose, orange and golden brown, has an effect that is rather inharmonious, but young and fresh. The aerial perspective is mediocre and the composition shows as usual Michelangelo's supreme contempt for the sentiment of the subject. He has filled the background with graceful nude figures simply because he considered them to be beautiful--"per mostrare maggiormente l'arte sua essere grandissima," says Vasari, and except for the type of face used for St. Joseph there is nothing religious about the group of the Holy Family. The impression is religious, nevertheless, through its grace, sweetness and proud strength. We feel that Michelangelo desired to contrast the puritan and virile sobriety of this work with the voluptuous languor of the art of Lionardo. The calm Madonna of Bruges belongs also to this period. This was bought in 1506 by two Flemish merchants, John and Alexander Mouscron, who placed it in their chapel where Dürer had already seen it during his travels in Belgium in 1521. CHAPTER II MICHELANGELO AND JULIUS II (1505-1513)