The monument of Julius had at last been completed, and placed in the
Church of San Pietro in Vincola. In 1546, Antonio di San Gallo, the
director of the building of St. Peter's, died, and Michael Angelo was
commissioned to carry forward the work. Fortunately Vittoria lived to
see this honor conferred upon him.
He was now seventy-one years old. For the remaining eighteen years of
his life, he devoted himself to this great labor, without compensation.
When Paul III., with Cardinal Marcello, summoned Michael Angelo to talk
over some alleged defects, the aged artist boldly replied to the
cardinal, "I am not nor will I consent to be obliged to tell, to your
eminence or any one else, what I ought or wish to do. Your office is to
bring money and guard it from thieves, and the designing of the building
is left to me." Then he said to the pope, "Holy Father, you see what I
gain; if these fatigues which I endure do not benefit my soul, I lose
both time and labor." The pope, who loved him, placed his hands on his
shoulders, saying, "You benefit both soul and body: do not doubt."
When asked if the new dome would not surpass that of the Duomo of
Florence, by Brunelleschi, he said, "It will be more grand, but not more
beautiful."
Michael Angelo lived very simply in Rome, though he had amassed a large
property, most of which he left to his nephew Leonardo, to whom and his
family he was tenderly attached. When this nephew was married, the
sculptor wrote him "not to care about a great dowry, but that you should
look to a healthy mind, a healthy body, good blood, and good education,
and what sort of family it is.... Above all, seek the counsel of God,
for it is a great step."
Michael Angelo was devotedly attached to Urbino, who had been his
servant for twenty-six years, and who loved him so much, says Vasari,
"that he had nursed him in sickness, and slept at night in his clothes
beside him, the better to watch for his comforts." One day the artist
said to him, "When I die, what wilt thou do?"--"Serve some one else,"
was the reply. "Thou poor creature, I must save thee from that," said
the sculptor, and immediately gave him two thousand crowns.
At Urbino's death, when his master was about eighty, Michael Angelo
wrote Vasari, in deep grief, of his "infinite loss." "Nor have I now
left any other hope than that of rejoining him in Paradise. But of this
God has given me a foretaste, in the most blessed death that he has
died; his own departure did not grieve him, as did the leaving me in
this treacherous world, with so many troubles. Truly is the best part of
my being gone with him, nor is anything now left me except an infinite
sorrow."
The artist was again and again urged to return to Florence, by the
reigning dukes, but he replied, "You must see by my handwriting that I
touch the twenty-fourth hour, and no thought is now born in my mind in
which death is not mixed."
He was implored on every side to carve statues and paint pictures. He
promised Francis I. of France a work in marble, in bronze, and in
painting. "Should death interrupt this desire," said Michael Angelo,
"then, if it be possible to sculpture or paint in the other world, I
shall not fail to do so, where no one becomes old."
He furnished plans for several Roman gates which Pius IV., who succeeded
Paul IV., wished to rebuild, and made designs for various other
buildings and public squares. He erected the Church of St. Mary of the
Angels, amid the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian. "Nothing exists in
architecture," says Mr. Heath Wilson, "which exceeds the plan of this
church in beauty and variety of form. The general proportions are so
harmonious, the lines of the plan so gracefully disposed, the form of
the whole so original, that, without looking at the elevations, the eye
is delighted by the evidence on all sides of the imagination, taste, and
skill shown by the venerable architect in this superb work."
The great sculptor never ceased to work or to study. When old he drew a
picture representing himself as an aged man in a cart, with these words
underneath: _Ancora impara_ (still learning). He painted but two
portraits, one of Vittoria Colonna, and one of young Tommaso dei
Cavalieri, whom he tenderly loved. To this youth, whom Varchi, the
Florentine professor and court scholar, declared to be the most
attractive young man he had ever known, Michael Angelo wrote this
beautiful sonnet:--
"Through thee I catch a gleam of tender glow,
Which with my own eyes I had failed to see;
And walking onward step by step with thee,
The once oppressing burdens lighter grow.
With thee, my grovelling thoughts I heavenward raise,
Borne upward by thy bold, aspiring wing;
I follow where thou wilt,--a helpless thing,
Cold in the sun, and warm in winter days.
My will, my friend, rests only upon thine;
Thy heart must every thought of mine supply;
My mind expression finds in thee alone.
Thus like the moonlight's silver ray I shine:
We only see her beams on the far sky,
When the sun's fiery rays are o'er her thrown."
His last work was a group of the Virgin and the dead Christ, which he
intended should be placed on an altar over his own tomb; but it was left
unfinished from a flaw in the marble, and is now in the cathedral in
Florence. Vasari found the aged artist working at it late at night, when
he had arisen from his bed because he could not sleep. A tallow candle
was placed in his pasteboard cap, so as to leave his hands free for
work. Once, as they were looking at the statue, Michael Angelo suffered
the lantern which he held in his hand to fall, and they were left in
darkness. He remarked, "I am so old that Death often pulls me by the
cape, and bids me go with him; some day I shall fall myself, like this
lamp, and the light of life will be extinguished."
To the last Michael Angelo was always learning. He used often to visit
the Vatican to study the Torso Belvedere, which he declared had been of
the greatest benefit to him.
In 1563-64 he was elected vice-president of the Florentine Academy of
Fine Arts. That winter his strength failed rapidly, though all was done
for him that love and honor could possibly do, for he had many devoted
friends among all classes, and was constantly aiding artists and others.
He did not fear death, for he said, "If life be a pleasure, since death
also is sent by the hand of the same master, neither should that
displease us."
Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the 18th of February,
1564, the same month in which Vittoria died, the great man passed away,
in the ninetieth year of his age. Daniele da Volterra, Condivi, and
Cavalieri stood by his bedside. His last words to them were, "I give my
soul to God, my body to the earth, and my worldly possessions to my
nearest of kin."
The pope and the Romans were determined to keep the dead Michael Angelo
in Rome; but his wish had been to lie in Florence. The body, therefore,
was conveyed to the latter city, disguised as a bale of merchandise, and
buried in Santa Croce, on Sunday night, March 12th, the Tuscan artists
following with their lighted torches, accompanied by thousands of
citizens. In the month of July a grand memorial service was held, in the
Church of San Lorenzo, for the illustrious dead, paintings and statuary
surrounding a catafalque fifty-four feet high.
After thirty years of voluntary exile, the melancholy, solitary,
great-souled man lay in his native Florence. He had loved liberty and
uprightness. He had been ambitious, and devoted to his masterly work,
with the will-power and intensity which belong to genius. He had allowed
no obstacles to stand in his path,--neither lack of money nor jealousy
of artists. He had faith in himself. He spoke sometimes too plainly, but
almost always justly. Cold and unapproachable though he was, children
loved him, and for them he would stop and make sketches on the street.
He had the fearlessness of one who rightly counts manhood above all
titles. He was too noble to be trifling, or petty, or self-indulgent.
Great in sculpture, painting, poetry, architecture, engineering,
character, he has left an imperishable name. Taine says, "There are four
men in the world of art and of literature exalted above all others, and
to such a degree as to seem to belong to another race; namely, Dante,
Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michael Angelo."