his ancient birth; and since the Simoni had been indubitably noble for several generations, there was nothing despicable in his desire to raise his kinsfolk to their proper station.  Almost culpably careless in all things that concerned his health and comfort, he spent his earnings for the welfare of his brothers, in order that an honourable posterity might carry on the name he bore, and which he made illustrious.  We may smile at his peevishness in repudiating the title of sculptor after bearing it through so many years of glorious labour; but when he penned the letters I have quoted, he was the supreme artist of Italy, renowned as painter, architect, military engineer; praised as a poet; befriended with the best and greatest of his contemporaries; recognised as unique, not only in the art of sculpture.  If he felt some pride of race, we cannot blame the plain-liver and high-thinker, who, robbing himself of luxuries and necessaries even, enabled his kinsmen to maintain their rank among folk gently born and nobly nurtured.

III

In June 1515 Michelangelo was still working at the tomb of Julius.  But a letter to Buonarroto shows that he was already afraid of being absorbed for other purposes by Leo:  “I am forced to put great strain upon myself this summer in order to complete my undertaking; for I think that I shall soon be obliged to enter the Pope’s service.  For this reason, I have bought some twenty migliaia [measure of weight] of brass to cast certain figures.”  The monument then was so far advanced that, beside having a good number of the marble statues nearly finished, he was on the point of executing the bronze reliefs which filled their interspaces.  We have also reason to believe that the architectural basis forming the foundation of the sepulchre had been brought well forward, since it is mentioned, in the next ensuing contracts.

Just at this point, however, when two or three years of steady labour would have sufficed to terminate this mount of sculptured marble, Leo diverted Michelangelo’s energies from the work, and wasted them in schemes that came to nothing.  When Buonarroti penned that sonnet in which he called the Pope his Medusa, he might well have been thinking of Leo, though the poem ought probably to be referred to the earlier pontificate of Julius.  Certainly the Medici did more than the Delia Rovere to paralyse his power and turn the life within him into stone.  Writing to Sebastiano del Piombo in 1521, Michelangelo shows how fully he was aware of this.  He speaks of “the three years I have lost.”