all who had seen
it, wished him to finish it; but, since it would have been too long a
labour for Michelagnolo to rebuild the scaffolding, it was left as it
was. His Holiness, often seeing Michelagnolo, would say to him that
the chapel should be enriched with colours and gold, since it looked
poor. And Michelagnolo would answer familiarly, "Holy Father, in those
times men did not bedeck themselves with gold, and those that are
painted there were never very rich, but rather holy men, on which
account they despised riches."

For this work Michelagnolo was paid by the Pope three thousand crowns
on several occasions, of which he had to spend twenty-five on colours.
The work was executed with very great discomfort to himself, from his
having to labour with his face upwards, which so impaired his sight
that for a time, which was not less than several months, he was not
able to read letters or look at drawings save with his head backwards.
And to this I can bear witness, having painted five vaulted chambers
in the great apartments in the Palace of Duke Cosimo, when, if I had
not made a chair on which I could rest my head and lie down at my
work, I would never have finished it; even so, it has so ruined my
sight and injured my head, that I still feel the effects, and I am
astonished that Michelagnolo endured all that discomfort so well. But
in truth, becoming more and more kindled every day by his fervour in
the work, and encouraged by the proficience and improvement that he
made, he felt no fatigue and cared nothing for discomfort.

[Illustration: THE CREATION OF ADAM

(_After the fresco by =Michelagnolo=. Rome: The Vatican, Sistine
Chapel_)

_Anderson_]

The distribution of this work is contrived with six pendentives on
either side, with one in the centre of the walls at the foot and at
the head, and on these he painted Sibyls and Prophets, six braccia in
height; in the centre of the vault the history of the world from the
Creation down to the Deluge and the Drunkenness of Noah, and in the
lunettes all the Genealogy of Christ. In these compartments he used no
rule of perspectives in foreshortening, nor is there any fixed point
of view, but he accommodated the compartments to the figures rather
than the figures to the compartments, being satisfied to execute those
figures, both the nude and the draped, with the perfection of design,
so that another such work has never been and never can be done, and it
is scarcely poss