Michelangelo’s Bacchus, an early work, is opposite.  It is a remarkable proof of his extraordinary range that the same little room should contain the David, the Madonna, the Brutus, and the Bacchus.  In David one can believe, as I have said, as the young serious stalwart of the Book of Kings.  The Madonna, although perhaps a shade too intellectual—­or at any rate more intellectual and commanding than the other great artists have accustomed us to think of her—­has a sweet gravity and power and almost domestic tenderness.  The Brutus is powerful and modern and realistic; while Bacchus is steeped in the Greek spirit, and the little faun hiding behind him is the very essence of mischief.  Add to these the fluid vigour of the unfinished relief of the Martyrdom of S. Andrew, No. 126, and you have five examples of human accomplishment that would be enough without the other Florentine evidences at all—­the Medici chapel tombs and the Duomo Pieta.

The inscription under the Brutus says:  “While the sculptor was carving the statue of Brutus in marble, he thought of the crime and held his hand”; and the theory is that Michelangelo was at work upon this head at Rome when, in 1537, Lorenzino de’ Medici, who claimed to be a modern Brutus, murdered Alessandro de’ Medici.  But it might easily have been that the sculptor was concerned only with Brutus the friend of Caesar and revolted at his crime.  The circumstance that the head is unfinished matters nothing.  Once seen it can never be forgotten.

Although Michelangelo is, as always, the dominator, this room has other possessions to make it a resort of visitors.  At the end is a fireplace from the Casa Borgherini, by Benedetto da Rovezzano, which probably has not an equal, although the pietra serena of which it is made is a horrid hue; and on the walls are fragments of the tomb of S. Giovanni Gualberto at Vallombrosa, designed by the same artist but never finished.  Benedetto (1474-1556) has a peculiar interest to the English in having come to England in 1524 at the bidding of Cardinal Wolsey to design a tomb for that proud prelate.  On Wolsey’s disgrace, Henry VIII decided that the tomb should be continued for his own bones; but the sculptor died first and it was unfinished.  Later Charles I cast envious eyes upon it and wished to lie within it; but circumstances deprived him too of the honour.  Finally, after having been despoiled of certain bronze additions, the sarcophagus was used for the remains of Nelson, which it now holds, in St. Paul’s crypt.  The Borgherini fireplace is a miracle of exquisite work, everything having received thought, the delicate traceries on the pillars not less than the frieze.  The fireplace is in perfect condition, not one head having been knocked off, but the Gualberto reliefs are badly damaged, yet full of life.  The angel under the saint’s bier in No. 104 almost moves.

In this room look also at the beautiful blades of barley on the pillars in the corner close to Brutus, and the lovely frieze by an unknown hand above Michelangelo’s Martyrdom of S. Andrew, and the carving upon the two niches for statues on either side of the door.