the monument,
access was given to a little chamber like a chapel, enclosed within
the monument, in the midst of which was a marble chest, wherein the
corpse of the Pope was meant to be deposited. The whole would have
been executed with stupendous finish. In short, the sepulchre included
more than forty statues, not counting the histories in half-reliefs,
made of bronze, all of them pertinent to the general scheme and
representative of the mighty Pontiff's actions."

Vasari's account differs in some minor details from Condivi's, but it
is of no authoritative value. Not having appeared in the edition of
1550, we may regard it as a _rechauffee_ of Condivi, with the usual
sauce provided by the Aretine's imagination. The only addition I can
discover which throws light upon Condivi's narrative is that the
statues in the niches were meant to represent provinces conquered by
Julius. This is important, because it leads us to conjecture that
Vasari knew a drawing now preserved in the Uffizi, and sought, by its
means, to add something to his predecessor's description. The drawing
will occupy our attention shortly; but it may here be remarked that in
1505, the date of the first project, Julius was only entering upon his
conquests. It would have been a gross act of flattery on the part of
the sculptor, a flying in the face of Nemesis on the part of his
patron, to design a sepulchre anticipating length of life and luck
sufficient for these triumphs.

What then Condivi tells us about the first scheme is, that it was
intended to stand isolated in the tribune of S. Peter's; that it
formed a rectangle of a square and half a square; that the podium was
adorned with statues in niches flanked by projecting dadoes supporting
captive arts, ten in number; that at each corner of the platform above
the podium a seated statue was placed, one of which we may safely
identify with the Moses; and that above this, surmounting the whole
monument by tiers, arose a second mass, culminating in a sarcophagus
supported by two angels. He further adds that the tomb was entered at
its extreme end by a door, which led to a little chamber where lay the
body of the Pope, and that bronze bas-reliefs formed a prominent
feature of the total scheme. He reckons that more than forty statues
would have been required to complete the whole design, although he has
only mentioned twenty-two of the most prominent.

More than this we do not know about the first project. W