scenical effect, subordinating construction to decoration, seeking
ever back toward opportunities for sculpture or for fresco, and
occasionally (as in the cupola of S. Peter's) hitting upon a thought
beyond the reach of inferior minds.

The paradox implied in this diversion of our hero from the path he
ought to have pursued may be explained in three ways. First, he had
already come to be regarded as a man of unique ability, from whom
everything could be demanded. Next, it was usual for the masters of
the Renaissance, from Leo Battista Alberti down to Raffaello da Urbino
and Lionardo da Vinci, to undertake all kinds of technical work
intrusted to their care by patrons. Finally, Michelangelo, though he
knew that sculpture was his goddess, and never neglected her first
claim upon his genius, felt in him that burning ambition for
greatness, that desire to wrestle with all forms of beauty and all
depths of science, which tempted him to transcend the limits of a
single art and try his powers in neighbour regions. He was a man born
to aim at all, to dare all, to embrace all, to leave his personality
deep-trenched on all the provinces of art he chose to traverse.

V

The whole of 1516 and 1517 elapsed before Leo's plans regarding S.
Lorenzo took a definite shape. Yet we cannot help imagining that when
Michelangelo cancelled his first contract with the executors of
Julius, and adopted a reduced plan for the monument, he was acting
under Papal pressure. This was done at Rome in July, and much against
the will of both parties. Still it does not appear that any one
contemplated the abandonment of the scheme; for Buonarroti bound
himself to perform his new contract within the space of nine years,
and to engage "in no work of great importance which should interfere
with its fulfilment." He spent a large part of the year 1516 at
Carrara, quarrying marbles, and even hired the house of a certain
Francesco Pelliccia in that town. On the 1st of November he signed an
agreement with the same Pelliccia involving the purchase of a vast
amount of marble, whereby the said Pelliccia undertook to bring down
four statues of 4-1/2 cubits each and fifteen of 4-1/4 cubits from the
quarries where they were being rough-hewn. It was the custom to block
out columns, statues, &c., on the spot where the stone had been
excavated, in order, probably, to save weight when hauling. Thus the
blocks arrived at the sea-shore with rudely adumbrated outlines