diant with joy. When these statues were ready to be placed no
one knew where they should go. Vasari inquired in vain of Michelangelo
in 1562 what statues he had intended for the empty niches beside the
captains, above the doors and in the pavilions at the corners and "what
sort of painting he had planned for the walls." Evidently the Medici
Chapel, so bare and cold to-day, was to have had a complete decoration
of painting and sculpture of which it is impossible for us to form any
idea.

Almost the same thing is true of the Laurentian Library. Michelangelo
never took any interest in it except in 1525-1526, when the pope wanted
him to write about it almost every week. When he left Florence he had
only completed the construction of the vestibule and the ceiling of the
chief structure. The staircase had not been begun. When the Grand Duke
Cosmo wished to have it finished by Tribolo in 1558 no model of
Michelangelo's could be found. Vasari begged him to say what his plan
had been and Michelangelo answered that he would tell him willingly if
he could remember it, but he had only a vague idea, as if in a dream, of
a certain staircase, but he did not think it could be the one he had
planned, because it was absurd.[50]

He had so completely given up all these undertakings that he had wiped
them from his memory, or rather his memory had disappeared with them.

"Memory and mind have gone on ahead," he wrote, "to wait for me in the
other world."

CHAPTER IV

VITTORIA COLONNA

(1535-1547)

Michelangelo, worn out and discouraged, returned definitely to Rome on
September 23, 1534, and there he remained until his death. He was in a
condition of great mental unrest, his heart hungry for love. This was
the period of those strange violent and mystical passions for beautiful
young men like Gherardo Perini, Febo di Poggio and, most loved of all
and most worthily so, Tommaso dei Cavalieri. These attachments, about
which most historians have preferred to be silent, were an almost
religious delirium of love for the divinity of beauty and hold an
important place in the work of Michelangelo. It is to their inspiration
that most of his love-poems are due. For a long time this was either not
known or a stupid and unfortunate attempt was made to conceal it. Even
in 1623 Michelangelo's grandnephew in his first edition of the "Rime"
did not dare publish the poems to Tommaso dei Cavalieri with their real
titles, but dedicated them to