Before resuming the narrative of Michelangelo’s art-work at this period, I must refer to the correspondence which passed between him and King Francis I. The King wrote an epistle in the spring of 1546, requesting some fine monument from the illustrious master’s hand.  Michelangelo replied upon the 26th of April, in language of simple and respectful dignity, fine, as coming from an aged artist to a monarch on the eve of death:—­

“Sacred Majesty,—­I know not which is greater, the favour, or the astonishment it stirs in me, that your Majesty should have deigned to write to a man of my sort, and still more to ask him for things of his which are all unworthy of the name of your Majesty.  But be they what they may, I beg your Majesty to know that for a long while since I have desired to serve you; but not having had an opportunity, owing to your not being in Italy, I have been unable to do so.  Now I am old, and have been occupied these many months with the affairs of Pope Paul.  But if some space of time is still granted to me after these engagements, I will do my utmost to fulfil the desire which, as I have said above, has long inspired me:  that is, to make for your Majesty one work in marble, one in bronze, and one in painting.  And if death prevents my carrying out this wish, should it be possible to make statues or pictures in the other world, I shall not fail to do so there, where there is no more growing old.  And I pray God that He grant your Majesty a long and a happy life.”

Francis died in 1547; and we do not know that any of Michelangelo’s works passed directly into his hands, with the exception of the Leda, purchased through the agency of Luigi Alamanni, and the two Captives, presented by Ruberto Strozzi.

III

The absorbing tasks imposed upon Buonarroti’s energies by Paul III., which are mentioned in this epistle to the French king, were not merely the frescoes of the Cappella Paolina, but also various architectural and engineering schemes of some importance.  It is clear, I think, that at this period of his hale old age, Michelangelo preferred to use what still survived in him of vigour and creative genius for things requiring calculation, or the exercise of meditative fancy.  The time had gone by when he could wield the brush and chisel with effective force.  He was tired of expressing his sense of beauty and the deep thoughts of his brain in sculptured marble or on frescoed surfaces.  He had exhausted the human form as a symbol of artistic utterance.  But the extraordinary richness of his vein enabled him still to deal with abstract mathematical proportions in the art of building, and with rhythms in the art of writing.  His best work, both as architect and poet, belongs to the period when he had lost power as sculptor and painter.  This fact is psychologically interesting.  Up to the age of seventy, he had been working in the plastic and the concrete.  The language he had