whole of a large scheme, but that he proceeded from point to point,
trusting to slight sketches and personal supervision of the work.
Thus, when Vasari wrote to him from Rome about the staircase of the
library, he expressed a perfect readiness to help, but could only
remember its construction in a kind of dream. We may safely assume,
then, that he had not sufficient material to communicate; plans
definite enough in general scope and detailed incident to give a true
conception of his whole idea were lacking.

VIII

Passing to aesthetical considerations, I am forced to resume here what
I published many years ago about the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo, as it now
exists. Repeated visits to that shrine have only renewed former
impressions, which will not bear to be reproduced in other language,
and would lose some of their freshness by the stylistic effort. No
other course remains then but to quote from my own writings, indorsing
them with such weight as my signature may have acquired since they
were first given to the world.

"The sacristy may be looked on either as the masterpiece of a sculptor
who required fit setting for his statues, or of an architect who
designed statues to enhance the structure he had planned. Both arts
are used with equal ease, nor has the genius of Michelangelo dealt
more masterfully with the human frame than with the forms of Roman
architecture in this chapel. He seems to have paid no heed to classic
precedent, and to have taken no pains to adapt the parts to the
structural purpose of the building. It was enough for him to create a
wholly novel framework for the modern miracle of sculpture it
enshrines, attending to such rules of composition as determine light
and shade, and seeking by the relief of mouldings and pilasters to
enhance the terrible and massive forms that brood above the Medicean
tombs. The result is a product of picturesque and plastic art as true
to the Michelangelesque spirit as the Temple of the Wingless Victory
to that of Pheidias. But where Michelangelo achieved a triumph of
boldness, lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie; and this
chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose simplicity, proved a
stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to
despise propriety and violate the laws of structure.

"We may assume then that the colossal statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo
were studied with a view to their light and shadow as much as to their
form; and this is