lofty gates, to whom his native land
Refused to open hers. Yet shall thou know,
Ungrateful city, in thine own despite,
That thou hast fostered best thy Dante's fame;
For virtue, when oppressed, appears more bright.
And brighter, therefore, shall his glory be,
Suffering of all mankind most wrongfully,
Since in the world there lives no greater name."
Venice offered Michael Angelo all possible inducements to remain, and Francis I. of France eagerly besought the artist to live at his court; but his heart was in Florence, and thither he returned, and bravely helped to defend her to the last. When the Medici were again triumphant, and freedom was dead, the artist being too great a man to imprison or kill, he was publicly pardoned by the pope, and went sadly to his work on the monuments in the Medici Chapel of San Lorenzo.
Here he labored day and night, eating little and sleeping less, ill in body and suffering deeply in heart for his beloved Florence; working into the speaking stone his sorrow and his hopes. In 1534 the Medici Chapel was completed, – a massive piece of architecture, executed at an almost fabulous expense. On one side is the tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, with his statue in a sitting posture, holding in his hand the bâton of a general. Beneath him, over the tomb, are the statues Day and Night. Opposite is the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and the father of Catherine de' Medici. It is clad in armor, with a helmet overshadowing the grave features. The Italians call it Il Pensiero ("Thought," or "Meditation").
Hawthorne said of this statue, "No such grandeur and majesty have elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle – the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk… This statue is one of the things which I look at with highest enjoyment, but also with grief and impatience, because I feel that I do not come at all to that which it involves, and that by and by I must go away and leave it forever. How wonderful! To take a block of marble, and convert it wholly into thought, and to do it through all the obstructions and impediments of drapery."
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.
Full ninety times the sun had bathed his face
In the wet ocean, ending his annual round
Ere thou attainedst to the Peace Divine.
There, where (to Him be thanks!) I think thee now,
And hope to see again if my cold heart
Be raised from earthly mire to where thou art.
And if 'twixt sire and son the noblest love
Still grows in Heaven, where every virtue grows,
While giving glory to my heavenly Lord,
I shall rejoice with thee in Heaven's bliss."
Clement was now dead, and Paul III. was in the papal chair. He, like the others, desired that Michael Angelo should do some great work to immortalize his reign. Clement had wished the artist to paint the "Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel, and when Paul urged the carrying-out of this plan, Michael Angelo excused himself on account of the contract with the heirs of Julius II.
"It is now thirty years," cried Paul III., "that I have had this desire; and, now that I am pope, shall I not be able to effect it? Where is the contract, that I may tear it?"
One day he appeared in the studio of the painter, bringing with him eight cardinals, all of whom wished to see the designs for the "Last Judgment."
The artist was still at work on Moses. "This one statue is sufficient to be a worthy monument to Pope Julius," said the cardinal of Mantua. Paul III. refused to release Michael Angelo, and he began work on the Sistine Chapel.
The painting was not completed until nearly eight years had passed. There are three hundred figures and heads in this vast fresco. Says M. F. Sweetser, in his concise and excellent life of Michael Angelo, "About Christ are many renowned saints, – the Madonna, gazing mildly at the blessed and redeemed souls; Adam and Eve, curiously regarding the Judge; and a group of pleading apostles, bearing their emblems. These are surrounded by a vast throng of saints and martyrs, safe in Heaven, all of whom exemplify the saying that 'Michael Angelo nowhere admits, either into heaven or hell, any but the physically powerful.' Below the Judge are four angels blowing trumpets towards the four quarters of the universe, and four others holding the books by which the dead are to be judged. Under these the land and sea are giving up their dead… As a work of art, the Last Judgment was one of the grandest productions of the famous art-century."
Biagio da Cesena, the pope's master of ceremonies, complained that so many naked figures made the painting more appropriate for bath-rooms and stables than for a chapel. What was the surprise of Biagio, when the painting was thrown open to the public,