heroic thoughts. It seems as though he had been ashamed to introduce the weaknesses of his heart into them. He confided in poetry alone. It is there, under a rugged envelope, that we must look for the secret of his timid and tender heart:
"Amando, a che son nato? "[1]
On terminating the paintings of the Sistine Chapel, and Julius II. having died,[2] Michael Angelo returned to Florence and resumed work on the project which he had most at heart—the mausoleum of the dead Pope. He undertook by contract to complete it in seven years.[3] For three years he was almost exclusively occupied with this work.[4] During this relatively tranquil period—a period of melancholy and serene maturity when the furious agitation of the Sistine days subsided, like the raging sea which returns to its bed—Michael Angelo produced his most perfect works, those which best display the equihbrium of his passion and will-power—his "Moses,"[5] and the "Slaves" of the Louvre.[6]
- ↑ "I love; why was I born?" ("Poems," cix, 35.) Compare these love poems (in which love and sorrow seem to be synonymous) with the voluptuous enthusiasm of the juvenile and ungraceful sonnets of Raphael, written on the back of his drawings for the "Dispute of the Holy Sacrament."
- ↑ Julius II. died on February 21, 1513, three months and a half after the inauguration of the frescoes of the Sistine.
- ↑ Contract of March 6, 1513. The new project, more important than the first one, included thirty-two large statues.
- ↑ During this time Michael Angelo seems to have accepted but one commission: that for the statue of Christ of S. Maria Sopra Minerva.
- ↑ The "Moses " was to be one of six colossal figures crowning the upper floor of the monument to Julius II. Michael Angelo did not cease working on it until 1545
- ↑ The "Slaves," on which Michael Angelo was working in 1513,
