"Twilight" in S. Lorenzo: it is clear that in the former
Michael Angelo painted what he would have been well pleased to carve. A
sculptor's genius was needed for the modelling of those many figures; it
was, moreover, not a painter's part to deal thus drily with colour.

[319] The Laurentian Library, however, was built in 1524.

[320] See Gotti, pp. 150, 155, 158, 159, for the correspondence which
passed upon the subject, and the various alterations in the plan. As in
the case of all Michael Angelo's works, except the Sistine, only a small
portion of the original project was executed.

[321] Cosimo de' Medici found it impossible to induce him to return to
Florence. See B. Cellini's Life, p. 436, for his way of receiving the
Duke's overtures.

[322] See above, Chapter II, Michael Angelo.

[323] Vasari names the gloomy statue, called by the Italians _Il
Penseroso_, "Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino," the sprightly one, "Giuliano, Duke
of Nemours;" and this contemporary tradition has been recently confirmed
by an inspection of the Penseroso's tomb (see a letter to the _Academy_,
March 13, 1875, by Mr. Charles Heath Wilson). Grimm, in his _Life of
Michael Angelo_, gave plausible aesthetic reasons why we should reverse
the nomenclature; but the discovery of two bodies beneath the Penseroso,
almost certainly those of Lorenzo and his supposed son Alessandro,
justifies Vasari. Neither of these statues can be accepted as a portrait.

[324] The "Bacchus" of the Bargello, the "David," the "Christ," of the
Minerva, the "Duke of Nemours," and the almost finished "Night," might
also be mentioned. His chalk drawings of the "Bersaglieri," the "Infant
Bacchanals," the "Fall of Phaethon," and the "Punishment of Tityos," now
in the Royal Collection at Windsor, prove that even in old age Michael
Angelo carried delicacy of execution as a draughtsman to a point not
surpassed even by Lionardo. Few frescoes, again, were ever finished with
more conscientious elaboration than those of the Sistine vault.

[325] See Varchi, at the end of the _Storia Fiorentina_, for episodes in
the life of Pier Luigi Farnese, and Cellini for a popular estimate of the
Cardinal, his father.

[326] This extract from Cesare Balbo's _Pensieri sulla Storia d' Italia_,
Le Monnier, 1858, p. 57, may help to explain the situation: "E se
lasciando gli uomini e i nomi grandi de' governanti, noi venissimo a
quella storia, troppo sovente negletta, dei piccoli, dei piu, dei
govern