CHAPTER V

OLD AGE AND DEATH

(1547-1564)

Michelangelo cared no longer for his own glory. He thought only of the glory of God, and art had become to him merely a means of service. He wrote, "I understand now how great is the mistake, the passionate delusion in which I made of art an idol and a king."

L'affectuosa fantasia, Che l'arte mi fece idol'e monarca, Conosco or ben, com'era d'error carca....[85]

His soul "had turned to that divine love which welcomes us with arms outspread upon the cross."

L'anima, volta a quell'amor divino C'aperse a prender noi 'n croce le braccia.

He wished to consecrate all that remained of his life to the task of building for his God the temple of temples, St. Peter's.

By a pontifical letter of Paul III, dated January 1, 1547, and renewed by Julius III in 1552 he had been appointed governor and architect of St. Peter's with full power to carry on the construction. He accepted this heavy task as a sacred duty, and refused to take any pay for it. In 1557 he wrote to his nephew Lionardo, "many people believe, as I do myself, that I have been placed at this post by God. I will not leave it because I am serving for the love of God and put all my hope in Him."[86]

He at once found himself in trouble with the party of San Gallo. They had always been his enemies and it must be acknowledged that he had done his best to deserve their hostility.

When Raphael was directing the work on St. Peter's, Antonio da San Gallo had been his assistant, and he therefore belonged to the party opposed to Michelangelo. In 1537 San Gallo became architect-in-chief, succeeding Baldassare Peruzzi, and he abandoned, as Raphael had done, Bramante's great design for the main construction. Michelangelo, on the contrary, went back to that plan, for whatever rancour he might feel against Bramante personally, his genius bowed before that of the great architect. He wrote in 1555 to Bartolommeo Ammanati, "It can not be denied that in architecture Bramante was greater than any other man since classic times. He conceived the first design for St. Peter's, simple, clear and free from all confusion, and whoever like San Gallo has turned aside from this plan has turned aside from the truth."

Before the disagreement over St. Peter's, Michelangelo had twice come into sharp conflict with San Gallo over the fortifications of the Borgo and the completion of the Farnese palace.

Paul III wished to reconstruct and complete the fortifications of Rome which had been destroyed in 1527. San Gallo had been engaged on them since 1534, but the work had only been actively pushed since 1542. In February, 1545, meetings were held under the presidency of Pier Luigi Farnese in the Castle of St. Angelo to discuss the subject of the fortifications of the Borgo, and to these Michelangelo was summoned. He expressed opinions absolutely opposed to those of San Gallo and enumerated the faults already committed in the works. Hot words were exchanged, and the pope was obliged to command both men to be silent. Soon after this affair Michelangelo made a new design for the fortifications involving the destruction of San Gallo's work, and this was accepted.[87]

Michelangelo added to this defeat another more bitter still. San Gallo had built the Farnese palace up to the second story, but his plans for the third story and the cornice did not please the pope, who turned them over to Michelangelo to be mercilessly criticised. A competition was opened in 1546 for the cornice in which Perino del Vaga, Sebastiano del Piombo, Vasari and Michelangelo took part. Michelangelo's design was accepted, and when San Gallo died from this humiliation in October, 1546, the direction of the work on the palace passed at once into his hands. Michelangelo set aside the original plan entirely and built the third story on the court on the Corinthian order. He also built the beautiful cornice, so broad and fine in conception, in which he had possibly the assistance of Vignole or Guglielmo della Porta. Even San Gallo's death did not disarm Michelangelo, who searched relentlessly for the malpractices committed under his predecessor in the work on St. Peter's and who raged against the guilty with a violence which Vasari still echoes when he says, "Michelangelo delivered St. Peter's from thieves and bandits."

It is easy to imagine what hatred these proceedings awakened in San Gallo's party, supported by all the contractors and foremen whose faults Michelangelo had denounced and prosecuted. The members of the committee of administration themselves were accomplices.[88]

A coalition was formed against him which had for its chief Nanni di Baccio Bigio, the rascally architect whom Vasari accuses of having stolen Michelangelo's plans even before this trouble. From the very beginning of Michelangelo's direction at St. Peter's Nanni spread the rumour that he knew nothing of architecture, that his model was childish, that he squandered the money and hid himself to work at night for fear that his blunders would be seen. It was also rumoured that the cornice of the Farnese palace was in danger of falling. Michelangelo was exasperated. "Who are these rogues, these triple scoundrels," he wrote to the committee of administration, "who, after they had spread lies about my work on the Farnese palace, lied still more in the report that they sent to the committee of St. Peter's?"

The committee, instead of defending him, joined in the chorus of his calumniators. They sent a protest to the pope because, they said, he kept them entirely ignorant of his plans, which he showed to no one, while he destroyed the work of his predecessor. They wished to be freed from any responsibility for such proceedings, especially for "the destruction which had been and continued to be so great that all who witnessed it were greatly disturbed."

They succeeded in bringing about in 1551 a meeting at St. Peter's under the presidency of the pope, where all the builders and foremen, supported by the Cardinals Salviati and Marcello Cervini (the future pope, Marcellus II), testified against Michelangelo. Vasari describes the scene for us. At this time Michelangelo had already finished the main apse with the three chapels and the three windows above them, but no one knew yet how he would vault the church, and all agreed in prophesying that the lighting would be insufficient. Michelangelo, when he was questioned by Cardinal Cervini, explained that besides the three windows already built there would be three more in the vault, which was to be built of travertine. "You never told us anything about that," said the cardinal. "I am not obliged to tell your lordships or anyone else what I intend to do," replied Michelangelo; "your business is to take charge of the expenses and to see that no one steals. The building is my affair." He then turned to the pope and said, "Holy Father, you see what my pay is. If the miseries I endure do not help my soul it is all time and trouble lost."

The pope, who loved him, placed his hands on his shoulders and said: "You gain for both your soul and your body. Have no fear."[89]

Without the favour of the pope he could not have held out for a moment against the enmity which his haughty and contemptuous ways roused against him. Therefore when Paul III died and Marcellus II succeeded him (April 9, 1555) Michelangelo was on the point of leaving Rome, but by the twenty-third of May Marcellus had died and Paul IV took his place. Michelangelo, again sure of the highest protection, went on with his fight. He would have thought himself dishonoured and would have feared for his salvation if he had given up the work. "Against my will," he wrote in 1555, "I was entrusted with this task, and for eight years I have exhausted myself in vain in the midst of all kinds of trouble and weariness. Now that the construction is so far advanced that I can begin to vault the dome, to leave Rome would be to ruin the whole work, a great shame to me and for my soul a great sin."[90]

In 1557 Cosmo de' Medici begged him to come back to Florence "where honour and rest awaited him," but he answered firmly, "I can not leave here until I have carried the construction of St. Peter's so far that my plan can not be changed or destroyed and there will no longer be any possibility for thieves to begin their work again, as these scoundrels are only waiting for a chance to do. This is my resolve."

That same year his friends, who were afraid that he would carry his great designs with him into the grave, for none of them were written down, urged and besought until they succeeded in persuading him to execute a model in wood of the dome of St. Peter's.[91] He was still working on this in 1560.

The building went on, but not without many difficulties. It was necessary in 1557 to rebuild almost the entire vault of the Chapel of the King of France because Michelangelo had been ill and unable to watch the work closely enough.

The attacks on him began again with fresh vigour at each mistake, and some of his best friends, like Cardinal Carpi, joined in them. Michelangelo heard from Francesco Bandini that the cardinal said everywhere that the work on St. Peter's could not be worse managed. Much hurt, he wrote to him at once that, "although he felt sure that the work was going on well, he feared that possibly his own enthusiasm and his age had blinded him and were, without his knowing it, a source of harm and danger to the building." In consequence he begged that they "would be so kind as to relieve him of the load which he had carried without pay for seventeen years under the orders of the popes." He offered his resignation. "A greater favour than its acceptance," he said, "could not be accorded him."[92]

His resignation was not accepted, and Pius IV in a pontifical letter gave him full powers and forbade that his plans should be set aside.

But Nanni di Baccio Bigio, indefatigable in his hate, moved heaven and earth to drive him away. In 1562 Nanni appealed to Cosmo de' Medici for his aid in securing the appointment of architect of St. Peter's. Cosmo answered that he would do nothing about it while Michelangelo lived.

In 1563 the struggle became a tragic one. The head of the work at St. Peter's, Cesare de Casteldurante, was stabbed, and Pier Luigi Gaeta, Michelangelo's friend and one of his best aids, was thrown into prison on a false accusation of theft. Michelangelo responded to this by appointing Gaeta in Cesare's place. The committee of administration dismissed Gaeta and put Nanni in his place, and Michelangelo, beside himself with rage, no longer went to St. Peter's. His enemies did not lose this chance to spread the report that he was no longer willing to take charge of the building, and Michelangelo denied this in vain. The committee nominated a successor, and this successor was of course Nanni. Nanni cut loose at once from his master and began to give orders, for he thought that the old man of eighty-eight, weary at last of the struggle, would be forced either to submit or to resign. He did not know his antagonist. Michelangelo went at once to the pope and told him that if justice was not done he would leave Rome and go to Florence. The pope called the committee together and the members accused Michelangelo of having committed errors which endangered the whole building. Michelangelo asked for an investigation and summoned Nanni to show the mistakes of which he accused him. Nanni could show nothing but his own bad faith, and was dismissed in disgrace.[93]

This did not prevent Nanni from sending, five months later, just after the death of Michelangelo, a letter by the Florentine ambassador to Cosmo de' Medici, asking again to be appointed his successor.

Until his last hour Michelangelo met with this fierce opposition over the work on St. Peter's, but his faith and his fighting spirit found in this only another reason for persevering.

While Michelangelo had taken Bramante's design for the church and rested on his authority, he had in the course of construction introduced many important modifications into the plan, and stamped the whole monument with the imprint of his own grandiose and heavy genius.

He kept the Greek cross with equal arms and four apses, at the same time hiding the apse of the façade in a rectangular mass against which he wished to put a portico with four gigantic columns. He suppressed the salient angles and the towers which should have risen at the extremities of the four arms of the cross. The beautiful clean-cut lines of the curved ends of these arms, which in Bramante's plan stretched out in the form of a semicircular tribune, were smothered in a massive, vigorous envelope which gave the construction the effect of a fortified bastion.

The most beautiful part of the work was the famous dome, where the influence of Brunelleschi combined with the conception of Bramante. Michelangelo said once while he was working on S. Lorenzo in Florence that "it was possible to do differently from Brunelleschi, but not to do better."

He did not fail to remember the masterly dome of S. Maria de Fiore, for as soon as he was appointed to St. Peter's he had the exact measures of this dome from the lantern to the ground, and also the height sent to him. The dimensions that he chose for St. Peter's seem to have been inspired by them.[94]

Bramante in his design as shown by Burckhardt and de Geymueller[95] gave the principal importance to a circular colonnade crowned by statues on which the dome seemed to rest. Michelangelo concentrated his attention on the dome itself, subordinating, as ever, grace and harmony to majesty and force. He accentuated the buttresses of the drum with pairs of columns and raised the outer dome of the cupola, whose beautiful curve possesses an impetuous quality which recalls, with less passion and more freedom, the huge octagonal dome of Brunelleschi, crouching on its base like a beast ready to spring.[96] The lofty serenity of the dome of St. Peter's is almost unique in the work of Michelangelo. He had lived so long with the thoughts of Raphael and Bramante that at last their smile was reflected in his work.[97]

Besides this great masterpiece other architectural works filled the end of his life--the rebuilding of the Capitol, the Porta Pia, S. Maria degli Angeli and S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini.

It was in 1548 that Michelangelo presided over the erection of the statue of Marcus Aurelius in the square before the Capitol, but his first sketch for the palaces were no earlier than 1546, and when he died the buildings were far from finished.

He never saw the stairway or the colonnades. An engraving of Pérac's executed in 1559 after Michelangelo's own drawings, "ex ipso exemplari Michaelis Bonaroti," and reproduced in the _Speculum Romanie Magnificentiæ_ of Lafreri, show exactly what his plan was and take from him all blame for the incoherencies and vulgarities put into the execution after his death. The beautiful double staircase of the Senatorial Palace and the fountain with the river gods is all his own; but he had meant to put a colonnade crowned by pilasters at the top of the stairway, the windows of the upper story should have been higher and the campanile crenellated.[98] The Porta Pia was at the end of a long street which ran from the Monte Cavallo.[99] Michelangelo made three designs for it in 1561, of which Pius IV chose the most reasonable, according to Vasari. This was more to the credit of the pope than the artist, for the plan which was carried out shows, with a few remnants of massive and imperious power, a complete lack of good taste.

He also worked in 1560-1561 at the transformation of the great hall in the baths of Diocletian into the church of S. Maria degli Angeli, but it is almost impossible to judge this now, for his work was entirely changed and disfigured in 1746 by Vanvitelli.

He was no more fortunate with the Church of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini at Rome, which was another of his great projects, undertaken with enthusiasm and ending in nothing. S. Giovanni had been begun under Leo X by Jacopo Sansovino. Antonio da San Gallo had worked on it later and had made a model of the church, and then the construction had been abandoned. In 1550, at the suggestion of Bindo Altoviti, Michelangelo determined to consecrate himself to this work and had almost persuaded Julius III, but the money was lacking.[100] In 1559 the Florentines took up the idea again and decided to put a church of a new plan on the old foundations, and their procurators, Francesco Bandini, Uberto Ubaldini and Tommaso de' Bardi, asked Michelangelo to take charge of it in spite of his duties at St. Peter's. Cosmo de' Medici himself wrote a most flattering letter begging him to accept, and Michelangelo answered the duke that he "considered his wish an order" and had already shown the Florentine deputies several drawings, of which they had chosen the one which he considered the best.[101] "I am sorry," he added, "to be now so old and so little alive that I can not do all I would or all that is my duty to your lordship and the people. Nevertheless I will make the effort by directing everything from my house to accomplish what your lordship desires."[102]

In spite of his age he began with the same enthusiasm with which he had undertaken the unlucky façade of S. Lorenzo. He told the commission that if they carried out his plans "neither the Greeks nor the Romans would have done anything like it." "Words," says Vasari, "of a kind that never came from the mouth of Michelangelo before or after, for he was extremely modest."

The Florentines accepted his plans without change and gave the execution of them to Tiberio Calcagni.

"Michelangelo," says Vasari, "explained his project to Tiberio so that he could make a clear and accurate drawing of it. He gave him the profiles of the interior and exterior and made him a model in wax. Tiberio in ten days finished a model two feet high, and as it pleased all the people another model was made in wood which is now in the Consulate. It is a work of such rare art that there never was seen a church so beautiful, so rich and with such variety of fancy." The building was commenced and five thousand crowns spent; then the money gave out and the work stopped, to Michelangelo's most profound disappointment. Not only was the church not built, but the model disappeared with all the plans. This was the last artistic disappointment of his life.[103]

He could no longer paint, but he still continued to work at his sculpture from a sort of physical need. Vasari says that "his genius and strength could not live without creation." He attacked a block of marble to cut from it four figures larger than life, of which one was a dead Christ.[104] He did this to amuse himself and to pass the time, and because he said that work with a chisel kept him in health. He worked at night[105] and slept very little, and had made himself a helmet of cardboard to hold a lighted candle on his head so that with both hands free he could light what he was doing. Even at that age he cut the marble with such impetuosity and vigour that it seemed to fly in pieces. He broke off in one blow great fragments four or five inches thick and left a line so pure that if he had gone a hair's breadth further he would have risked ruining the whole. This did happen to many of his works, which remained merely blocked out like the figures in the Boboli grotto, or half finished like the Madonna of the Medici chapel, or destroyed, as all but happened to the admirable Descent from the Cross in the cathedral at Florence.

"He would break a work in pieces," says Vasari, "either because the block was hard and full of flaws and sparks shot out from under the chisel, or because the uncompromising judgment of this man was never contented with anything that he did, which is easily proved by the fact that so few of the works of his maturity are complete; the only finished ones dated from his youth."

The Florentine sculptor Tiberio Calcagni, who was a friend as well as his assistant at S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, found the debris of a Pietà one day, and asked why he had destroyed "so admirable a work." Michelangelo told him that it was partly the fault of his servant Urbino, who urged him every day to finish it, when he was already annoyed by a flaw in the marble so that he had lost patience and had broken it. He would have destroyed it entirely but that his servant Antonio "had begged for what remained." Tiberio bought the marble from Antonio for two hundred gold crowns and asked Michelangelo's permission to finish it for their mutual friend Francesco Bandini. Michelangelo was entirely willing, and the group was restored by Tiberio, who completed several parts of it, but Bandini, Michelangelo and Tiberio all died and it was never finished.[106]

It is all the more moving for that reason. In the half-shadow behind the high altar in Florence it stirs one with indescribable emotion. Perhaps no other work of Michelangelo is so human or speaks so directly to the soul. "From heart to heart," as Beethoven wrote at the end of his mass in D. It is the expression of those long nights when he was alone face to face with his sorrow and spoke only to himself. He represents himself in the form of an old man, in a monk's cowl, bending with infinite sadness and tenderness to support the sinking body of the dead Christ.

In this piece of stone hardly blocked out smoulders deep sorrow and an agony of pain. But what great love is in that suffering, in the scarcely modelled face of the mother with closed eyes and parted lips, and in the tender movement of the hand which rests on the naked breast of her son, whose head has sunk against her shoulder. How much Michelangelo has softened since his early work, how far this feeling is from the implacable heroism of his youth, how far it is indeed from the lovely Pietà of St. Peter's, where serene beauty rises above the sorrow. Here he suffers and abandons himself to the suffering. What matters a lack of proportion and an uncertain composition?[107] The work is unique in its intimacy. It is his whole soul laid bare.

Michelangelo never lacked illustrious friends. From the time of his early youth, when he talked in the gardens of San Marco with Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano, he was always in close touch with the best among the nobles and princes, prelates and poets and artists of Italy.[108] He had a peculiarly close friendship with Francesco Berni and Sebastiano del Piombo[109] under Clement VII and with Luigi del Riccio, Donato Giannotti and Benedetto Varchi[110] under Paul III, and at the close of his life he was surrounded by the pious worship of pupils and admirers like Benvenuto Cellini, Bronzino, Daniele da Volterra, Leone Leoni, Vasari and his biographer, almost his hagiographer, Condivi, whose book begins with these words:

"Since the hour when our Lord God by special mercy judged me worthy to not only see Michelangelo, which I could hardly have dared to hope for, but to enjoy his affection, his conversation and his confidence--grateful for such a great blessing, I have made all possible effort not only to collect and write down the instructions which he gave me on art, but all his words, actions and habits and all things in his life which seemed to me worthy of praise, admiration or emulation. This I do to pay back a little of the infinite obligation which I owe to him no less than to be useful to others by giving them the example of such a man."[111]

The artists were not the only ones who looked upon Michelangelo as a supernatural being, for princes bowed before his fame and his great virtue as Vasari calls it. Cosmo de' Medici, who tried in vain to recall him to Florence, even offering to make him a senator,[112] treated Michelangelo as an equal, Cosmo's son Don Francesco received him with even greater respect (in October, 1561), his cap in his hand, "showing a reverence without limit for so extraordinary a man."

In spite of all this adulation, or perhaps because of it, he had as little intercourse as possible with the world. Popes and princes, men of letters and artists, held but small place in his life, except a few favourite pupils like Vasari, for whom he showed a fatherly affection, especially in his last years, when, growing more feeble day by day, he grew more demonstrative.

"I have been to see my great Michelangelo," Vasari wrote to Cosmo in 1560. "He did not expect me and showed as much feeling as a father who has recovered a lost son. He threw his arms around my neck and kissed me a thousand times, crying with pleasure" (lacrymando per dolcezza).[113]

But the best of his heart was kept for his kin and for a few humble friends. Of his two remaining brothers, Giovan Simone died in 1548, and Gismondo, with whom he had never had much intercourse, in 1555. He turned to Lionardo and Francesca, the children of his favourite brother Buonarroto, for the family affection which he could not do without. He charged himself with the education of Lionardo, who was nine years old at his father's death, and the long correspondence between them which has been preserved shows how seriously he took his responsibility as guardian. The children grew up and after they had married he found himself even more lonely than before.[114]

In his own house he had assistants who were devoted to him, but of no great ability. "He had trouble with those in his service," says Vasari, "for he never chanced to find men who could imitate him well." Pietro Urbano de Pistoia was intelligent, but would take no trouble; Antonio Mini was willing, but not intelligent; and Ascanio della Ripa Transone tried hard, but never succeeded in doing anything. It is possible that he deliberately chose mediocre assistants in order to have docile tools instead of collaborators, which indeed would have been quite legitimate; but Condivi says that it is not true that he refused to teach them, but, on the contrary, he did so willingly. "I myself am the proof of that, for he opened the secrets of his heart to me. The trouble was that he met with pupils that had no ability, or with able ones who were not persevering and who after a few months of his teaching thought themselves already masters. And though he took a great deal of trouble to help them he did not want to have this known, for he loved rather to do good than to seem to do it."

His letters show what fatherly patience he had with these poor creatures. He forgave them any folly if they only showed a little good will and affection.

The one that he cared for the most was Francesco d'Amadore, called Urbino, the son of Guido di Colonello de Castel Durante, who was in his service from 1530 and had worked on the tomb of Julius II. Michelangelo was worried about what would become of Urbino after his own death, and one day, says Vasari, he asked him, "What will you do when I die?" When Urbino answered, "I will have to serve some other master," Michelangelo said, "Poor fellow, I am going to cure your poverty," and gave him two thousand crowns on the spot, "a gift such as only emperors and popes bestow."

It was Urbino who died first in 1555, and the day after Michelangelo wrote to his nephew Lionardo: "I must tell you that Urbino died yesterday at ten o'clock. He has left me so sad and troubled because of the love I had for him that it would have been easier to have died with him. He was a worthy man, loyal and faithful. Since he has gone I do not seem to be alive and I can not recover my peace of mind."[115]

Lionardo and his wife Cassandra, anxious on account of his great grief, went to Rome and found him much weakened. But he drew new energy from the charge which Urbino had left him in the guardianship of his sons, one of whom was his godson and bore his name. He wrote to Cornelia, Urbino's wife, that he would like to take the little Michelangelo to live with him. He showed him more affection than even the children of his nephew, and had him taught all that Urbino had wished him to learn.[116]

He showed the most touching affection for his old servants, and also for those of his family whom he had taken in after his father's death, and for the workmen who had helped him at Carrara and in the Sistine Chapel.

His enemies accused him of avarice,[117] but Vasari answers the charge with indignation and a list of his royal gifts to all his friends: "To Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri, to Messer Bindo Altoviti, and Fra Bastiano (del Piombo) drawings of great value. To Antonio Mini all the drawings, cartoons and models in wax and clay and the painting of Leda; to Gherardo Perini some divinely beautiful heads drawn in pencil which passed later into the hands of Don Francesco, Prince of Florence, who rightly esteemed them among his treasures; to Bartolommeo Bettini a cartoon of Venus with Cupid kissing her, a divine work now in possession of his heirs in Florence; to the Marchese del Vasto a cartoon of the _noli me tangere_, a beautiful work from which Pontormo made a painting as he did from the Venus and Cupid; to Roberto Strozzi the two Slaves in marble; to his servant Antonio and to Francesco Bandini the Pietà in marble which he broke. I do not understand how a man can be called avaricious who gives away such works of art worth many thousands of crowns."

His generosity was not limited to his friends, for he gave much to the poor, especially the disreputable poor. He particularly remembered poor young girls and dowered them secretly, taking care that they should never know the name of their benefactor.

He was always ailing in health, and several times very near death, particularly in 1544, when he was nursed by his friend Riccio in the house of the Strozzi, and in his later years he suffered cruelly from gout and stone. His indomitable nervous energy supported him, and at eighty-five he inspected the works of St. Peter's on horseback. In spite of a severe attack of gout in August, 1561, he would let no one take care of him and he still lived alone. His nephew Lionardo was least of all allowed to interfere with these arrangements, for Michelangelo attributed his anxiety to an interest in his inheritance and did not hesitate to tell him so.

Both the Duke of Tuscany and the pope were anxious about the plans and drawings of his public works, which Michelangelo kept in his own house, for fear that they might be stolen after his death. So in June, 1563, at the instigation of Vasari, who saw that Michelangelo was failing rapidly, Cosmo de' Medici secretly directed his ambassador, Averado Serristori, to keep a strict watch on the domestic life of Michelangelo and on everyone who came to his house. In case of his sudden death an inventory was to be taken of all his possessions, drawings, cartoons, models, silver, etc., and a watch to be kept that nothing was taken in the first confusion. All that had to do with the construction of St. Peter's or the sacristy or the Laurentian library was to be put carefully aside.

Weakened as he was, Michelangelo still worked. Since 1562 he had hardly written at all himself, and Daniele da Volterra did most of his correspondence, but he never relinquished his chisel. On February 12, 1564, he spent the whole day standing at work on his Pietà, and on the fourteenth, although he was seized with fever, he rode out on horseback into the country in the rain, and would not consent to stay in his bed until the sixteenth.

On the eighteenth of February he died in full consciousness, with Daniele da Volterra and his faithful friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri beside him.

Giunto è già 'l corso della vita mia Con tempestoso mar per fragil barca Al comus porto....[118]

Cosmo de' Medici was at once notified by his ambassador, and the next day the governor of Rome made an inventory of Michelangelo's property in the presence of Pier Luigi Gaeta and Cavalieri. There was much less than had been expected, for he had burned almost all his drawings. They found a chest containing seven or eight thousand crowns and a trunk closed and sealed and full of papers, and also three statues, the unfinished Pietà,[119] a figure of Saint Peter just begun, and a little unfinished figure of Christ bearing the cross in the style of that in the Minerva, and yet different. There were besides ten cartoons as follows:

1. The plan of St. Peter's.

2. The façade of a palace(a small cartoon).

3. A window of St. Peter's.

4. The old plan for St. Peter's, after a drawing of San Gallo's.

5. Three sketches of little figures.

6. Windows.

7. A Pietà, merely sketched. A composition of nine figures.

8. Three large figures and two _putti_.

9. Large figure (a study of an apostle for the figure of Saint Peter).

10. Farewell of Christ to his mother, drawn for Cardinal Morone.[120]

This last drawing was given to Cavalieri as Michelangelo had wished. The rest went to Lionardo, who reached Rome three days after his uncle's death, and who acquired also some little sketches which Michelangelo had given to Michele Alberti and Jacopo del Duca--an annunciation and a prayer at Gethsemane. These show how much the thought of the gospel filled Michelangelo's mind.[121]

On February 19th Michelangelo's body was carried by the brotherhood to which he belonged, the Confratelli di S. Giovanni Pecolla, to the church of the SS. Apostoli for the funeral mass. The pope had meant to have the body placed in St. Peter's, but Michelangelo had expressed a desire to return to Florence dead, as he could not do so living,[122] and Lionardo was determined to carry out his last wishes in accordance with the orders of Cosmo de' Medici, who promised to erect a statue to him in the Florentine cathedral. The Romans would not allow the body to be taken away, so it was necessary to wrap it secretly in a roll of cloth and to send it to Florence on the twenty-ninth as merchandise.

Thus did Michelangelo return to his country on March 10, 1564. The next day the artists of Florence carried his body by torchlight to the church of Santa Croce. The crowd was so great that they could hardly force their way through the church. In the sacristy Vincenzo Borghini, Director of the Florentine Academy of Painters, had the coffin opened. The body was intact and Michelangelo seemed asleep. He was dressed in black velvet, a felt hat on his head, and on his feet boots and spurs, just as while living he had had the habit of sleeping, dressed and ready to rise and take up his work.[123]

The Academy of Florence had been preparing since March 2d for the solemn obsequies. Varchi was given the funeral oration, Bronzino, Vasari, Cellini and Ammanati the artistic arrangements. On the 14th of July, 1564, in the church of S. Lorenzo, a triumphant memorial service was held in the presence of a hundred artists and an innumerable crowd of people.[124]

Between the two side doors arose a huge catafalque. Daniele da Volterra had wanted to use for the tomb the fine Victory and other sculptures of the Via Mozza, but this most reverent and appropriate idea for the glorification of the master was not accepted.[125] Instead, a huge arrangement, disproportionate and swollen, was erected, a real tower of Babel to which each sculptor of Florence brought his stone. It was undoubtedly, however, a fine thought to associate all the world of artists in a supreme homage to the man whom Italy considered the incarnation of her genius and the God himself of art.[126] The result of these combined efforts was only to prove more strikingly the contrast between the man who was dead and the men who claimed the right to succeed him. This agglomeration of sculpture recalls also that bitter saying of Michelangelo shortly before his end that "art and death do not go well together."

"L'arte e la morte non va bene insieme."

From 1564 to 1572 Vasari raised in Santa Croce, at the expense of Lionardo Buonarroti, and with the collaboration of Borghini, Valerio Cioli and Battista Lorenzi, the monument to Michelangelo. Thode has proved that the so-called tomb of Michelangelo in the SS. Apostoli in Rome has nothing whatever to do with him. It is really the monument of a professor of medicine, Ferdinando Eustacio, and the false attribution dates only from 1823.