l figures
on the tombs and the two seated Medici are from his hand. Of the two
finished or practically finished tombs--to my mind as finished as they
should be--that of Lorenzo is the finer. The presentment of Lorenzo in
armour brooding and planning is more splendid than that of Giuliano;
while the old man, whose head anticipates everything that is considered
most original in Rodin's work, is among the best of Michelangelo's
statuary. Much speculation has been indulged in as to the meaning
of the symbolism of these tombs, and having no theory of my own to
offer, I am glad to borrow Mr. Gerald S. Davies' summary from his
monograph on Michelangelo. The figure of Giuliano typifies energy
and leadership in repose; while the man on his tomb typifies Day and
the woman Night, or the man Action and the woman the sleep and rest
that produce Action. The figure of Lorenzo typifies Contemplation,
the woman Dawn, and the man Twilight, the states which lie between
light and darkness, action and rest. What Michelangelo--who owed
nothing to any Medici save only Lorenzo the Magnificent and had seen
the best years of his life frittered away in the service of them and
other proud princes--may also have intended we shall never know; but
he was a saturnine man with a long memory, and he might easily have
made the tombs a vehicle for criticism. One would not have another
touch of the chisel on either of the symbolical male figures.

Although a tomb to Lorenzo the Magnificent by Michelangelo would
surely have been a wonderful thing, there is something startling and
arresting in the circumstance that he has none at all from any hand,
but lies here unrecorded. His grandfather, in the church itself,
rests beneath a plain slab, which aimed so consciously at modesty
as thereby to achieve special distinction: Lorenzo, leaving no such
directions, has nothing, while in the same room are monuments to
two common-place descendants to thrill the soul. The disparity is in
itself monumental. That Michelangelo's Madonna and Child are on the
slab which covers the dust of Lorenzo and his brother is a chance. The
saints on either side are S. Cosimo and S. Damian, the patron saints
of old Cosimo de' Medici, and are by Michelangelo's assistants. The
Madonna was intended for the altar of the sacristy. Into this work the
sculptor put much of his melancholy and, one feels, disappointment. The
face of the Madonna is already sad and hopeless; but the Child is
perhap