he phases of
time which rule man's daily life upon the planet as symbols for
far-reaching thoughts connected with our destiny. These monumental
figures are not men, not women, but vague and potent allegories of our
mortal fate. They remain as he left them, except that parts of
Giuliano's statue, especially the hands, seem to have been worked over
by an assistant. The same is true of the Madonna, which will ever be
regarded, in her imperfectly finished state, as one of the finest of
his sculptural conceptions. To Montelupo belongs the execution of S.
Damiano, and to Montorsoli that of S. Cosimo. Vasari says that Tribolo
was commissioned by Michelangelo to carve statues of Earth weeping for
the loss of Giuliano, and Heaven rejoicing over his spirit. The death
of Pope Clement, however, put a stop to these subordinate works,
which, had they been accomplished, might perhaps have shown us how
Buonarroti intended to fill the empty niches on each side of the
Dukes.

When Michelangelo left Florence for good at the end of 1534, his
statues had not been placed; but we have reason to think that the
Dukes and the four allegorical figures were erected in his lifetime.
There is something singular in the maladjustment of the recumbent men
and women to the curves of the sarcophagi, and in the contrast between
the roughness of their bases and the smooth polish of the chests they
rest on. These discrepancies do not, however, offend the eye, and they
may even have been deliberately adopted from a keen sense of what the
Greeks called _asymmetreia_ as an adjunct to effect. It is more
difficult to understand what he proposed to do with the Madonna and
her two attendant saints. Placed as they now are upon a simple ledge,
they strike one as being too near the eye, and out of harmony with the
architectural tone of the building. It is also noticeable that the
saints are more than a head taller than the Dukes, while the Madonna
overtops the saints by more than another head. We are here in a region
of pure conjecture; and if I hazard an opinion, it is only thrown out
as a possible solution of a now impenetrable problem. I think, then,
that Michelangelo may have meant to pose these three figures where
they are, facing the altar; to raise the Madonna upon a slightly
projecting bracket above the level of SS. Damiano and Cosimo, and to
paint the wall behind them with a fresco of the Crucifixion. That he
had no intention of panelling that empty space w