h 11, to the oratory of the
Assunta, beneath the Church of San Pietro Maggiore. Next day the painters,
sculptors, and architects of the newly-founded Academy, of which Michael
Angelo had been elected Principal after the Duke, met at the church,
intending to bring the body secretly to Santa Croce. They had with them
only an embroidered pall of velvet and a crucifix to place upon the bier.
At night the elder men lighted torches and the younger strove with one
another to bear the coffin. Meantime the curious Florentines found out
that something was going forward, and a great concourse assembled as the
news spread that Michael Angelo was being carried to Santa Croce, and huge
crowds followed the humble procession, lighted by the flaring torches such
as the Misericordia carry to this day. The vast church of Santa Croce was
so crowded that the pall-bearers had difficulty in reaching the sacristy
with their burden. When they at last got there, Don Vincenzo Borghini,
Lieutenant of the Academy, "thinking he would do what was pleasing to
many, and also, as he afterwards confessed, desiring to behold in death
one whom he had never seen in life, or, at any rate, at such an age that
he did not remember it, ordered the coffin to be opened. When this was
done, whereas he and all of us present expected to find the corpse already
corrupted and defaced, inasmuch as Michael Angelo had been dead
twenty-five days and twenty-two in his coffin, lo! we beheld him instead
perfect in all his parts and without any evil odour; indeed, we might have
believed that he was resting in a sweet and very tranquil slumber. Not
only were the features of his face exactly the same as when he was in life
(except that the colour was a little like that of death), none of his
limbs were injured or repulsive; the head and cheeks to the touch felt as
though he had passed away only a few hours before. When the eagerness of
the multitude who crowded round had calmed down a little, the coffin was
deposited in the church, behind the altar of the Cavalcanti."

Those who would read of the gorgeous catafalque of stucco, woodwork, and
painting erected in the Church of San Lorenzo by the Academy, may do so in
the pages of Vasari, and in the book called "Esequie del Divino Michel
Angelo Buonarroti, celebrate in Firenze dall' Academia, &c., Firenze, i
Giunti, 1564," and Varchi's "Orazione Funerali," published by the same
house at the same date. The great artist is dead: let us