of incapacity and lying, and had him dismissed.[1] This was in September 1563, four months before his death. Thus, up to the end of his days, he had to struggle against jealousy and hatred.
Do not let us pity him. He well knew how to defend himself. Even when dying he was able, single-handed, as he formerly said to his brother Giovan Simone, "to tear in pieces ten thousand such men."
Apart from his great work at St. Peter's, other architectural projects occupied him during the closing years of his life—the Capitol,[2] the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli,[3] the staircase of the "Laurcnziana" of Florence,[4] the Porta Pia, and especially the Church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini—the last of his great plans, and which, like the others, came to nothing.
The Florentines had begged him to build them a national church in Rome: Duke Cosimo himself had written him a flattering letter on the subject; and Michael Angelo, supported by his love for Florence, undertook the work with juvenile enthusiasm.[5] He told his compatriots "that if they carried out his plan they would have a building such as neither the Romans nor the Greeks had ever equalled; words," says Vasari, "such as never left his mouth either before or afterwards,
- ↑ All the same, Nanni, on the day after Michael Angelo's death, begged Duke Cosimo to give him Michael Angelo's post at St. Peter's.
- ↑ Michael Angelo lived to see the construction of only the stair-cases and the square. The buildings of the Capitol were not completed until the seventeenth century.
- ↑ Nothing now remains of Michael Angelo's Church. It was entirely rebuilt in the eighteenth century.
- ↑ Michael Angelo's model was executed in stone, and not in wood, as he had wished.
- ↑ In 1559-1560.
