CHAPTER X.

THE NOONDAY SPLENDOR OF FLORENCEMICHAEL ANGELO.

"You speak a name

That always thrills me with a noble sound,
As of a trumpet! Michael Angelo!

A lion all men fear and none can tame;

A man that all men honor, and the model
That all should follow; he consecrates his life
To the sublime ideal of his art."

-Longfellow.

When young Michael Angelo Buonarroti entered the school of painting established by Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, he was received into the household as one of the family by that distinguished personage, whose appellation describes his reign.

What he did, and how he grew to power and fame, were a long story for this space, and the telling of it, an exalted task; but though the greater part of his work and of his life belong to that larger field for his genius, Rome-we may not seize the excuse and picture only that side light of it which is caught in Florence.

Very speedily after his admittance to the new school of art established in the Medician Palace did he receive the disfigurement which he carried through life, a broken nose, done by the mallet in the hands of a fellow-student, enraged at his superiority.

"A block of marble caught the glance
Of Buonarroti's eyes,

Which brightened in their solemn deeps,
Like meteor-lighted skies.

And one who stood beside him listened,
Smiling as he heard;

For 'I will make an angel of it,'
Was the sculptor's word.

And mallet soon and chisel sharp
The stubborn block assailed,
And blow by blow, and pang by pang,
The prisoner unveiled.

A brow was lifted, high and pure,
The waking eyes outshone;
And as the master sharply wrought,
A smile broke through the stone!

Beneath the chisel's edge, the hair
Escaped in floating rings;

And, plume by plume, was slowly freed
The sweep of half-furled wings.

The stately bust and graceful limbs
Their marble fetters shed,

And where the shapeless block had been
An angel stood instead!"

-Anonymous.

An early work in sculpture is the Bacchus in the Uffizi, but his greatest works in Florence are the Sagrestia Nuova and the tombs of the Medici, in San Lorenzo, which were ordered by the Medician pope, Clement VII, in the early sixteenth century. Four tombs with their monuments were ordered by him-one for Giuliano, the brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was killed while at the services in Maria del Fiore, in the uprising of the Pazzi family against the Medici in 1478; one for Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was the father of that other Medician pope, Leo X; one for the Magnificent's third son, Giuliano, and one for the grandson of the Magnificent, Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, who was the father of Catherine de' Medici, afterwards queen of France.

A map of the family relationships would look like this:

Only two of the tombs were completed, or nearly so the one for Giuliano, the son of the Magnificent, and the other for his grandson, Lorenzo, the Duke of Urbino.

Guarding the tombs and beneath the statues are the recumbent figures of Night and Day, and Twilight and Dawn, which have aroused encomiums since their creation.

"Nor then forget that chamber of the Dead,
Where the gigantic shapes of Night and Day,
Turned into stone, rest everlastingly,
Yet still are breathing, and shed round at noon
A two-fold influence-only to be felt-

A light, a darkness, mingled each with each,
Both and yet neither. There, from age to age,
Two ghosts are sitting on their sepulchres.
That is the Duke Lorenzo. Mark him well,
He meditates, his head upon his hand;
What from beneath his helm-like bonnet scowls?
Is it a face, or but an eyeless skull?"

-Rogers.

When the poet Strozzi, who was a friend of Angelo's, wrote this about the figure of Night on the monument:

"La Notte che tu vedi in si' dolci atti
Dormiri, fu da un Angelo scolpita

In questo sasso, e perche' dorme, ha vita;
Destala se nol credi, e parleratti.'