ke buildings about to fall. Now because
he had no doubt that Michael Angelo knew these errors of his, he always
sought to remove him from Rome, or, at least, to deprive him of the favour
of the Pope, and of the glory and usefulness that he might have acquired
by his industry. He succeeded in the matter of the tomb. There is no doubt
that if he had been allowed to finish it, according to his first
design,(36) having so large a field in which to show his worth, no other
artist, however celebrated (be it said without envy), could have wrested
from him the high place he would have held. Those parts which he did
finish show what the rest would have been like. The two slaves were done
for this work: those who have seen them declare that no such worthy
statues were ever carved.

XXVI. And to give some idea of it, I say briefly that this tomb was to
have had four faces, two of eighteen braccia, that served for the flanks,
so that it was to be a square and a half in plan. All round about the
outside were niches for statues, and between niche and niche terminal
figures; to these were bound other statues, like prisoners, upon certain
square plinths, rising from the ground and projecting from the monument.
They represented the liberal arts, as Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture, each with her symbol so that they could easily be
recognised; denoting by this that, like Pope Julius, all the virtues were
the prisoners of Death, because they would never find such favour and
nourishment as he gave them. Above these ran the cornice that tied all the
work together. On its plane were four great statues; one of these, the
Moses, may be seen in San Piero and Vincula. It shall be spoken of in its
proper place. So the work mounted upward until it ended in a plane. Upon
it were two angels who supported an arc; one appeared to be smiling as
though he rejoiced that the soul of the Pope had been received amongst the
blessed spirits, the other wept, as if sad that the world had been
deprived of such a man. Above one end was the entrance to the sepulchre in
a small chamber, built like a temple; in the middle was a marble
sarcophagus, where the body of the Pope was to be buried; everything
worked out with marvellous art. Briefly, more than forty statues went to
the whole work, not counting the subjects in mezzo rilievo to be cast in
bronze, all appropriate in their stories and proclaiming the acts of this
great Pontiff.

XXVII. Having seen this de