forming a base for the
feet, must have been intended to be supported by solid marble, and not to
rest uneasily on air. The sarcophagi are of a greyer marble than the
figures or than the panelling behind them. The architectural ornament
appears to be of three dates: First, the niches and panels of the walls;
second, the sarcophagi and their supports; third, the doors of the chapel
and niches over them. In the first, the grotesque heads in the mouldings
are like the dull grotesques Michael Angelo appears to have designed in
the architecture of the Tomb of Julius and on the armour of the captains
in this chapel. In the second, the four-horned skulls of rams on the sides
of the supports of the sarcophagi are very feeble and poor in design. If
we compare them with the powerful and true drawing of the rams' heads used
in the frame-work of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, we shall see that it
is impossible for Michael Angelo to have designed them, or even let them
pass whilst he was superintending the works. The shell and rope patterns
are even worse and more feeble; they are easily seen to be executed by
different hands. The simple bosses of the base under "Dawn and Evening"
are still unfinished: that would go to prove that Michael Angelo had
designed them and seen them cut as far as they go--not necessarily that he
had seen them in position--and that the academicians, when they did their
best to complete the chapel, rightly decided to leave them as they were.
The base under Day and Night has no bosses; they had not been begun as in
the former case; we may presume the academicians thought it best to have
them flat. These simple bases are the most effective portions of the
architectural scheme of the monument, in character with the allegorical
figures, reminding us of the plinths or seats provided for the Athletes
and the Prophets of the Sistine. Perhaps they were the only portions,
except the figures and the panelling of the walls, seen by Michael Angelo
himself. The supports and lid of the sarcophagi, and the sarcophagus of
Giuliano, are of different marble to the actual receptacle of the body of
Lorenzo, that is under Dawn and Evening. The quiet mouldings of the latter
are much finer and more in character with the walls. The lids are of a
white sugary marble, the mouldings coarse and semicircular in section, and
the volutes and circular endings of the lids are of a perfectly stupid
design. These lids cannot have been seen by M