ad a letter without raising it above
his head." He enjoyed an uncontested glory in this interval of semirepose
which followed his great effort. It is probable that his thoughts were
now concentrated upon the sepulchral monument of his patron, the works
for which he had been forced to postpone. But Leo X had other views. He
was all-powerful in Florence, where, by the aid of Julius and the League
of Cambray, he had reinstated his family in 1512; he now wished to endow
his native city with monuments which, by recalling to the vanquished
citizens of this glorious republic the magnificence of their early
patrons, might help them to forget the institutions they had lost for
the second time. The Church of San Lorenzo, built by Brunelleschi, where
several members of his family were buried, had not been completed; he now
determined to have the facade constructed. Several artists, among others
San Gallo, the two Sanzovino, and Raphael, sent in plans for this
important work, but Michelangelo's was preferred, and in 1515 he went to
Carrara to order the necessary marbles.

Leo did not leave him there long in quiet. Being informed that at
Serrayezza, in the highest part of the mountains of Pietra Santa on
the Florentine territory, there was marble equal in quality to that of
Carrara, he ordered Michelangelo to go to Pietra Santa and work these
quarries. In vain the latter pointed out the enormous expense of opening
them, of cutting roads through the mountains, and making the marshes
passable, besides the inferior quality of the marble. Leo would not
listen. Michelangelo set out, made the roads, raised the marbles,
remained from 1516 to 1521 in this desert, and the four years he passed
there, in the full force of his age and genius, resulted in the transport
of five columns, four of which remained on the seashore, and the fifth of
which lies still useless and buried among the rubbish of the piazza of
San Lorenzo.

Without meaning to contest the debt which the arts owe Leo X, there are
certain reservations that we must make on this score. A man of letters,
of amiable manners, astute, somewhat of a mischief-maker, ever
fluctuating between France and the Emperor, ever on the watch to provide
for his family, and, to redeem these defects, having neither heroism nor
the undoubted though mistaken love that Julius II bore to Italy, his
political career cannot, I think, be defended. He had the merit of being
the patron of Raphael, whose facil