That was the end of the chapel of the Medici. It was never
completed.[49] What we know of it to-day is only a very far-away
suggestion of what he had dreamed. Barely the lifeless skeleton of the
architectural decoration is left. Michelangelo had only made (partially)
seven statues--Lorenzo da Urbino, Giuliano de Nemours, the four
allegorical figures and the Madonna--and he had barely begun some of the
others which were planned; he had abandoned to Raffaelo da Montelupo and
Giovanni Montorsoli the figures of S. Cosmo and S. Damien for the tomb
of Lorenzo the Magnificent and to Tribolo the figures for the tomb of
Giuliano the brother of Lorenzo, which were to represent the Earth
crowned with cypress, her head bowed, weeping, and Heaven with lifted
arms, radiant with joy. When these statues were ready to be placed no
one knew where they should go. Vasari inquired in vain of Michelangelo
in 1562 what statues he had intended for the empty niches beside the
captains, above the doors and in the pavilions at the corners and "what
sort of painting he had planned for the walls." Evidently the Medici
Chapel, so bare and cold to-day, was to have had a complete decoration
of painting and sculpture of which it is impossible for us to form any
idea.
Almost the same thing is true of the Laurentian Library. Michelangelo
never took any interest in it except in 1525-1526, when the pope wanted
him to write about it almost every week. When he left Florence he had
only completed the construction of the vestibule and the ceiling of the
chief structure. The staircase had not been begun. When the Grand Duke
Cosmo wished to have it finished by Tribolo in 1558 no model of
Michelangelo's could be found. Vasari begged him to say what his plan
had been and Michelangelo answered that he would tell him willingly if
he could remember it, but he had only a vague idea, as if in a dream, of
a certain staircase, but he did not think it could be the one he had
planned, because it was absurd.[50]
He had so completely given up all these undertakings that he had wiped
them from his memory, or rather his memory had disappeared with them.
"Memory and mind have gone on ahead," he wrote, "to wait for me in the
other world."
CHAPTER IV
VITTORIA COLONNA
(1535-1547)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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