but he never sent it to him because of some
discourtesy on the part of the Ferrarese ambassador.

[46] Michelangelo does not name him, undoubtedly so as not to compromise
him.

[47] In entering the chapel of S. Lorenzo the tomb of Giuliano, Duke of
Nemours, (Action) is on the right; and on the left that of Lorenzo, Duke
of Urbino (the Thinker); and opposite the altar, the Virgin nursing the
Child. Each of the two captains is placed in a rectangular niche flanked
by two other niches which are empty. Below each of them on the fluted
cover of a sarcophagus arc two allegorical figures half reclining (Day
and Night--Dawn and Twilight) with their backs turned. The sarcophagi
are designedly much too small; there is hardly room for the figures on
them. No doubt Michelangelo wished to emphasise the impression of heroic
and agonising effort produced by the sight of these athletic forms
turned back upon themselves in involved and constrained portions. The
two tombs were finished in 1531. We know the admirable verses which
Michelangelo wrote on his figure of Night and which undoubtedly date
from a dozen years later, March, 1544. See Frey CIX. pp, 16-17.

[48] At this same time by a savage and instinctive reaction of his
nature against the Christian pessimism by which it was stifled,
Michelangelo executed some works of daring paganism like the painting of
Leda caressed by the Swan (1529-1530) which, originally made for the
Duke of Ferrara, was given by Michelangelo to his pupil Antonio Mini,
who carried it to France, where it is said to have been destroyed about
1643 by Sublet des Noyers because of its licentiousness. A little later
Michelangelo painted for Bart. Bettini a cartoon of Venus caressed by
Love from which Pontormo made a picture now in the Uffizi. Other
drawings full of a grandiose and severe shamelessness are probably of
the same period. To the first months of the siege belongs also the
admirable unfinished statue of the Apollo of the Museo Nazionale which
he made for Baccio Valori in the autumn of 1530.

[49] In the plan of construction (a square crowned by a dome with fluted
pilasters and niches with pediments) Michelangelo was influenced by
Brunelleschi and Vitruvius, whom he was studying at that time. There was
very little ornamentation and the idea of the plan was clear, simple and
abstract. With Michelangelo, architecture is always a frame for his
statues. He even went so far as to write, in 1560, to Cardinal C