The intention was to show that all the talents had been taken captive by death, together with Pope Julius, since never would they find another patron to cherish and encourage them as he had done.  Above these figures ran a cornice, giving unity to the whole work.  Upon the flat surface formed by this cornice were to be four large statues, one of which, that is, the Moses, now exists at S. Pietro ad Vincula.  And so, arriving at the summit, the tomb ended in a level space, whereon were two angels who supported a sarcophagus.  One of them appeared to smile, rejoicing that the soul of the Pope had been received among the blessed spirits; the other seemed to weep, as sorrowing that the world had been robbed of such a man.  From one of the ends, that is, by the one which was at the head of the monument, access was given to a little chamber like a chapel, enclosed within the monument, in the midst of which was a marble chest, wherein the corpse of the Pope was meant to be deposited.  The whole would have been executed with stupendous finish.  In short, the sepulchre included more than forty statues, not counting the histories in half-reliefs, made of bronze, all of them pertinent to the general scheme and representative of the mighty Pontiff’s actions.”

Vasari’s account differs in some minor details from Condivi’s, but it is of no authoritative value.  Not having appeared in the edition of 1550, we may regard it as a rechauffee of Condivi, with the usual sauce provided by the Aretine’s imagination.  The only addition I can discover which throws light upon Condivi’s narrative is that the statues in the niches were meant to represent provinces conquered by Julius.  This is important, because it leads us to conjecture that Vasari knew a drawing now preserved in the Uffizi, and sought, by its means, to add something to his predecessor’s description.  The drawing will occupy our attention shortly; but it may here be remarked that in 1505, the date of the first project, Julius was only entering upon his conquests.  It would have been a gross act of flattery on the part of the sculptor, a flying in the face of Nemesis on the part of his patron, to design a sepulchre anticipating length of life and luck sufficient for these triumphs.

What then Condivi tells us about the first scheme is, that it was intended to stand isolated in the tribune of S. Peter’s; that it formed a rectangle of a square and half a square; that the podium was adorned with statues in niches flanked by projecting dadoes supporting captive arts, ten in number; that at each corner of the platform above the podium a seated statue was placed, one of which we may safely identify with the Moses; and that above this, surmounting the whole monument by tiers, arose a second mass, culminating in a sarcophagus supported by two angels.  He further adds that the tomb was entered at its extreme end by a door, which led to a little chamber where lay the body of the Pope, and that bronze bas-reliefs formed a prominent feature of the total scheme.  He reckons that more than forty statues would have been required to complete the whole design, although he has only mentioned twenty-two of the most prominent.