had overlived the
greatness of his country, and saw Italy in ruins. Yet he was destined to
survive another thirty years, another lifetime of Masaccio or Raphael, and
to witness still worse days. When we call Michael Angelo the interpreter
of the burden and the pain of the Renaissance, we must remember this long
weary old age, during which in solitude and silence he watched the
extinction of Florence, the institution of the Inquisition, and the
abasement of the Italian spirit beneath the tyranny of Spain. His sonnets,
written chiefly in this latter period of life, turn often on the thought
of death. His love of art yields to religious hope and fear, and he
bemoans a youth and manhood spent in vanity. Once when he injured his leg
by a fall from the scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel, he refused
assistance, shut himself up at home, and lay waiting for deliverance in
death. His life was only saved by the forcible interference of friends.

In 1534 a new Eurystheus arose for our Hercules. The Cardinal Alessandro
Farnese, a fox by nature and infamous through his indulgence for a vicious
bastard, was made Pope under the name of Paul III.[325] Michael Angelo had
shed lustre on the reigns of three Popes, his predecessors. For thirty
years the Farnese had watched him with greedy eyes. After Julius, Leo, and
Clement, the time was now come for the heroic craftsman to serve Paul. The
Pope found him at work in his _bottega_ on the tomb of Julius; for the
"tragedy of the mausoleum" still dragged on. The statue of Moses was
finished. "That," said Paul, "is enough for one Pope. Give me your
contract with the Duke of Urbino; I will tear it. Have I waited all these
years; and now that I am Pope at last, shall I not have you for myself? I
want you in the Sistine Chapel." Accordingly Michael Angelo, who had
already made cartoons for the "Last Judgment" in the life of Clement, once
more laid aside the chisel and took up the brush. For eight years, between
1534 and 1542, he laboured at the fresco above the high altar of the
chapel, devoting his terrible genius to a subject worthy of the times in
which he lived. Since he had first listened while a youth to the
prophecies of Savonarola, the woes announced in that apocalypse had all
come true. Italy had been scourged, Rome sacked, the Church chastised.
And yet the world had not grown wiser; vice was on the increase, virtue
grew more rare.[326] It was impossible after the experience of the
immediat