Correspondence was carried on during this year regarding the library at S. Lorenzo; and though I do not mean to treat at length about that building in this chapter, I cannot omit an autograph postscript added by Clement to one of his secretary’s missives:  “Thou knowest that Popes have no long lives; and we cannot yearn more than we do to behold the chapel with the tombs of our kinsmen, or at any rate to hear that it is finished.  Likewise, as regards the library.  Wherefore we recommend both to thy diligence.  Meantime we will betake us (as thou saidst erewhile) to a wholesome patience, praying God that He may put it into thy heart to push the whole forward together.  Fear not that either work to do or rewards shall fail thee while we live.  Farewell, with the blessing of God and ours.—­Julius.” [Julius was the Pope’s baptismal name.—­ED.]

Michelangelo began the library in 1526, as appears from his Ricordi. Still the work went on slowly, not through his negligence, but, as we have seen, from the Pope’s preoccupation with graver matters.  He had a great many workmen in his service at this period, and employed celebrated masters in their crafts, as Tasso and Carota for wood-carving, Battista del Cinque and Ciapino for carpentry, upon the various fittings of the library.  All these details he is said to have designed; and it is certain that he was considered responsible for their solidity and handsome appearance.  Sebastiano, for instance, wrote to him about the benches:  “Our Lord wishes that the whole work should be of carved walnut.  He does not mind spending three florins more; for that is a trifle, if they are Cosimesque in style, I mean resemble the work done for the magnificent Cosimo.”  Michelangelo could not have been the solitary worker of legend and tradition.  The nature of his present occupations rendered this impossible.  For the completion of his architectural works he needed a band of able coadjutors.  Thus in 1526 Giovanni da Udine came from Rome to decorate the vault of the sacristy with frescoed arabesques.  His work was nearly terminated in 1533, when some question arose about painting the inside of the lantern.  Sebastiano, apparently in good faith, made the following burlesque suggestion:  “For myself, I think that the Ganymede would go there very well; one could put an aureole about him, and turn him into a S. John of the Apocalypse when he is being caught up into the heavens.”  The whole of one side of the Italian Renaissance, its so-called neo-paganism, is contained in this remark.

While still occupied with thoughts about S. Lorenzo, Clement ordered Michelangelo to make a receptacle for the precious vessels and reliques collected by Lorenzo the Magnificent.  It was first intended to place this chest, in the form of a ciborium, above the high altar, and to sustain it on four columns.  Eventually, the Pope resolved that it should be a sacrarium, or cabinet for holy things, and that this should stand above the middle entrance door to the church.  The chest was finished, and its contents remained there until the reign of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, when they were removed to the chapel next the old sacristy.