nearing his thirtieth birthday,
returned to Rome and entered upon the second and tragic period of his
life, for he arrived there only to receive the order for the Julius
tomb which poisoned his remaining years, and of which more is said
in the chapter on the Accademia, where we see so many vestiges of it
both in marble and plaster. But I might remark here that this vain
and capricious pontiff, whose pride and indecision robbed the world
of no one can ever say what glorious work from Michelangelo's hand,
is the benevolent-looking old man whose portrait by Raphael is in
the Pitti and Uffizi in colour, in the Corsini Palace in charcoal,
and again in our own National Gallery in colour.

Of Michelangelo at Rome and Carrara, whither he went to superintend
in person the quarrying of the marble that was to be transferred to
life and where he had endless vexations and mortifications, I say
nothing. Enough that the election of his boy friend Giovanni de'
Medici as Pope Leo X in 1513 brought him again to Florence, the Pope
having a strong wish that Michelangelo should complete the facade of
the Medici family church, S. Lorenzo, where we now are. As we know,
the scheme was not carried out, but in 1520 the Pope substituted
another and more attractive one: namely, a chapel to contain the
tombs not only of his father the Magnificent, and his uncle, who had
been murdered in the Duomo many years before, but also his nephew
Piero de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, who had just died, in 1519, and
his younger brother (and Michelangelo's early playmate) Giuliano de'
Medici, Duke of Nemours, who had died in 1516. These were not Medici
of the highest class, but family pride was strong. It is, however,
odd that no memorial of Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, who had been
drowned at the age of twenty-two in 1503, was required; perhaps it
may have been that since it was Piero's folly that had brought the
Medici into such disgrace in 1494, the less thought of him the better.

Michelangelo took fire at once, and again hastened to Carrara to
arrange for marble to be sent to his studio in the Via Mozzi, now the
Via S. Zenobi; while the building stone was brought from Fiesole. Leo
X lived only to know that the great man had begun, the new patron
being Giulio de' Medici, natural son of the murdered Giuliano,
now a cardinal, and soon, in 1523, to become Pope Clement VII. This
Pope showed deep interest in the project, but wished not only to add
tombs of himself