ust was begun soon after Michael
Angelo left Florence in 1584, and may indicate Michael Angelo's feelings
towards the tyrant Alessandro de' Medici. We may remember in this
connection that the exiles nicknamed Lorenzino, his murderer, Brutus.

The Duke of Florence, through Vasari,(170) attempted to get at the ideas
of Michael Angelo with regard to the Medici Chapel and the entrance to the
Laurenziana, but the old man had lost and forgotten the plans, if he had
ever made them. The difficulties that beset the Duke and the academicians
in completing the designs, and the meagreness of Michael Angelo's
instructions to them, must give us pause when we attempt to attribute the
faults of these monuments to the master mind. "About the staircase of the
Library, of which so much has been said to me, believe that if I could
remember how I had arranged it I should not need to be begged for
information. There comes into my mind, as in a dream, the image of a
certain staircase, but I do not believe this can be the one I then thought
of, for it seems so stupid. Nevertheless, I will write about it."

Leone Leoni erected the monument of Giangiacomo de' Medici in Milan
Cathedral from a design supplied by Michael Angelo at the request of Pope
Pius IV. It is a fine monument and the bronzes are excellent. In
criticising the design we must remember that Michael Angelo had never seen
the church where it was to be placed, and that Leone was not the man to
hesitate in taking liberties with another's design, good sculptor as he
was, and no doubt Michael Angelo would have approved of a good sculptor
like him making the design fit the workmanship.

[Image #49]

BRUTUS

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)

The old master is supposed to have supplied designs for many other
buildings in Rome, such as the Porta Pia and the Porta del Popolo, but
there is nothing about them to tell us that his genius is in them;
probably slight sketches were handed over to journeymen, who did pretty
much as they liked with them. It was otherwise with the great restoration
of the Baths of Diocletian. Michael Angelo was commissioned by Pius IV. to
convert them into the Christian Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. The
design has been altered by Vansitelli in 1749, and horrible coloured
imitations of clumsy marble altar