ingle plan. He clearly intended at some time
to range the Medicean statues in pairs, and studied several types of
curve for their sepulchral urns. The feature common to all of them is
a niche, of door or window shape, with a powerfully indented
architrave. Reminiscences of the design for the tomb of Julius are not
infrequent; and it may be remarked, as throwing a side-light upon that
irrecoverable project of his earlier manhood, that the figures posed
upon the various spaces of architecture differ in their scale. Two
belonging to this series are of especial interest, since we learn from
them how he thought of introducing the rivers at the basement of the
composition. It seems that he hesitated long about the employment of
circular spaces in the framework of the marble panelling. These were
finally rejected. One of the finest and most comprehensive of the
drawings I am now describing contains a rough draft of a curved
sarcophagus, with an allegorical figure reclining upon it, indicating
the first conception of the Dawn. Another, blurred and indistinct,
with clumsy architectural environment, exhibits two of these
allegories, arranged much as we now see them at S. Lorenzo. A
river-god, recumbent beneath the feet of a female statue, carries the
eye down to the ground, and enables us to comprehend how these
subordinate figures were wrought into the complex harmony of flowing
lines he had imagined. The seventh study differs in conception from
the rest; it stands alone. There are four handlings of what begins
like a huge portal, and is gradually elaborated into an architectural
scheme containing three great niches for statuary. It is powerful and
simple in design, governed by semicircular arches--a feature which is
absent from the rest.

All these drawings are indubitably by the hand of Michelangelo, and
must be reckoned among his first free efforts to construct a working
plan. The Albertina Collection at Vienna yields us an elaborate design
for the sacristy, which appears to have been worked up from some of
the rougher sketches. It is executed in pen, shaded with bistre, and
belongs to what I have ventured to describe as office work. It may
have been prepared for the inspection of Leo and the Cardinal. Here we
have the sarcophagi in pairs, recumbent figures stretched upon a
shallow curve inverted, colossal orders of a bastard Ionic type, a
great central niche framing a seated Madonna, two male figures in side
niches, suggest