ot meet
the claims. This has thrown me into terrible agitation, and makes me
reflect where I should be if the Pope failed me. I could not live a
moment. It is that which made me send the letter alluded to above.
Now, I do not want anything but what the Pope thinks right. I know
that he does not desire my ruin and my disgrace."

He proceeds to notice that the building work at S. Lorenzo is being
carried forward very slowly, and money spent upon it with increasing
parsimony. Still he has his pension and his house; and these imply no
small disbursements. He cannot make out what the Pope's real wishes
are. If he did but know Clement's mind, he would sacrifice everything
to please him. "Only if I could obtain permission to begin something
either here or in Rome, for the tomb of Julius, I should be extremely
glad; for, indeed, I desire to free myself from that obligation more
than to live." The letter closes on a note of sadness: "If I am unable
to write what you will understand, do not be surprised, for I have
lost my wits entirely."

After this we hear nothing more about the tomb in Michelangelo's
correspondence till the year 1531. During the intervening years Italy
was convulsed by the sack of Rome, the siege of Florence, and the
French campaigns in Lombardy and Naples. Matters only began to mend
when Charles V. met Clement at Bologna in 1530, and established the
affairs of the peninsula upon a basis which proved durable. That fatal
lustre (1526-1530) divided the Italy of the Renaissance from the Italy
of modern times with the abruptness of an Alpine watershed. Yet
Michelangelo, aged fifty-one in 1526, was destined to live on another
thirty-eight years, and, after the death of Clement, to witness the
election of five successive Popes. The span of his life was not only
extraordinary in its length, but also in the events it comprehended.
Born in the mediaeval pontificate of Sixtus IV., brought up in the
golden days of Lorenzo de' Medici, he survived the Franco-Spanish
struggle for supremacy, watched the progress of the Reformation, and
only died when a new Church and a new Papacy had been established by
the Tridentine Council amid states sinking into the repose of
decrepitude.

VI

We must return from this digression and resume the events of
Michelangelo's life in 1525.

The first letter to Sebastiano del Piombo is referred to April of that
year. He says that a picture, probably the portrait of Anton Francesco
degl