lf, was an allegory cold,
abstruse and courtier-like, as we must admit the subjects of his
undertakings very often were. His nature was timid and lacked
independence, but fortunately the force of his passionate feeling
carried everything before it. Vainly did he bind himself to lifeless and
commonplace programs, vainly attempt to force himself to glorify the
established order and the powers that be. At the very first step he took
all false pretenses fell away and a furious cry of revolt against the
baseness of the world and the bondage of life broke forth. So the
statues of this monument which was to express with stale flattery that
"all the virtues were prisoners of death now that the pope was dead"
became, unconsciously perhaps to their creator, hymns of heroic scorn
and expressions of moral grandeur crushed by force yet rising
unconquered.

But the peculiar quality of these figures compared with the work which
was to follow is that they preserve in all their passionate agony a
balance and a certain melancholy serenity which the artist of the tombs
of the Medici no longer possessed.[34]

In that serene and fruitful period, while the excitement of his work in
the Sistine Chapel quieted little by little, like the calming of a
stormy sea, Michelangelo seems to have accepted only one other
commission, that for the Christ of the Minerva which came from three
Romans, Bernardo Cencio, Mario Scapucci and Metello Varj. Yet beginning
with the summer of 1515 his letters show that he feared and foresaw the
interruption of his work.

"I must make a great effort this summer," he writes on June 16 to his
brother Buonarroto, "to bring my work rapidly to an end, for I think
that I shall soon have to enter the service of the pope."

The new pope, Leo X (Giovanni Medici), at first left Michelangelo
entirely free. He was so anxious to gain the hearts of his former
adversaries that he took very good care not to seem to put any obstacle
in the way of the glorification of his predecessor. He soon found,
however, that the tomb absorbed Michelangelo's energies completely and
he decided to draw him away from it in order to devote him to the
service of his own house. He planned to build the facade of S. Lorenzo,
the church of the Medici in Florence. Several artists, Baccio d'Agnolo,
Antonio da San Gallo, Andrea and Jacopo Sansovino and Raphael himself
brought their plans to him during his stay in Florence in November and
December, 1515. Bu