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Rome Again Michelangelo was called to Rome by the new Pope, Julius II, in March 1505, being commissioned to make his tomb. In April he went to Florence, on his way to Carrara, to choose the marble for the statues. Julius and Michelangelo had the same fiery temperament and, even admiring each other, they were soon at loggerheads, but were nearly always reconciled after. The tomb was not ready by the time the pope died in 1513 and Michelangelo found himself caught between two fires, as he was pressed by successive popes to abandon the project for the tomb at the same time as he was under pressure from the heirs of Julius to fulfil the commission. The initial project which included forty statues was reduced in a new contract, drawn in 1513, between the sculptor and the heirs. Under this contract the Moses, which is the major figure on the extant tomb, was prepared as a subsidiary figure. Two others, the Slaves in the Louvre, were made under this contract but were subsequently abandoned. A third contract (1516) was later followed by a fourth (1532), and a fifth and a final sixth one in 1542. The terms of the latter gave us the present miserably mutilated version of the original conception which was carried out by Michelangelo’s assistants, under the Master’s supervision, in S. Pietro in Vincoli (Julius's titular church) in 1545. Michelangelo was 70 and had spent almost forty years working on the tomb. He returned to Florence, taking up again the cartoons for the fresco in Council Hall in Florence and also executed a Madonna and Child for Bartolomeo Pitti, now at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, in Florence. Also in this year Angelo Doni commissioned a painting of the Holy Family, now known as the Doni Tondo and which is now housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The quarrel between pope and sculptor over, the latter executed a colossal bronze statue of the Pope as an admonition to the recently conquered Bologna. There were problems when the bronze was being cast, but the statue was eventually set up, to the fury of the Bolognese, who saw it as an affront, interpreting the pope’s hand raised in blessing as being more raised in threat. The statue was eventually destroyed by the enraged citizens in 1511. The body was melted and made into a column, while the head survived for a time, but was subsequently lost. Having returned to Florence to a family which was expecting his magnificence, he was given the news his uncle had died bankrupt. Both Michelangelo and his father renounced all claim to any inheritance. He was commissioned a statue of Hercules and Caucus which was to be placed in Piazza Signoria, beside the statue of David. Michelangelo soon completed a model, which is now in the Casa Buonarroti. A piece of marble was set aside in the hope the pope would allow Michelangelo to work also for Florence on this statue. Eventually a Hercules was finished and sold to an admirer, who had it transferred to Fontainebleau. This version is now lost and the statue which now stands in the place originally assigned for it in Piazza Signoria is by Baccio Bandinelli, who used the marble originally set aside for Michelangelo. |