Show STUDENT LIFE ered to be one of bis most perfect works This period was fruitful of results and from now cn no man’s name stood higher in general esteem Ilis first great commission came from Pope Julius in the form oi a mausoleum by which the ambitious pontiff hoped to keep his memory fresh in the minds of the people This tomb if Michael Angelo had been allowed to realize his conceptions would have been the grandest monument: of sculpture in the world Of this colossal scheme however only one drawing remains — the gigantic sculptured Moses and the bound captives When he he first received the commission went to Carara and spent eight months there selecting marbles for the work When he returned he found that enemies had been poisoning the pope’s mind against the plan Brannante the architect and Angelo’s sworn enemy had said that it was for a man to build his own sepulchre and that it would be well to use the artist’s abilities upon the ceiling of a Sistine thinking that as Angelo was avowedly a sculptor only painting would lead to his downfall In vain did Angelo point to his designs to the months spent in the quarries to the mables which had arrived in trying to persuade the pope from The abandoning the mausoleum Moses and captives which were a part of the scheme comprising at least forty figures remained in his workshop for as many years For ill-ome- 37 forty years he cherished the hope that he might still be able to carry out a modification of the plan claiming it would have been better had he learned to make sulphur matches in his youth than to have learned the desolating artist's trade “My youth has been lost bound hand and foot to this tomb” Every day I am stoned as though I had crucified Christ” he exclaimed The figure of Moses however will always stand as one of the grandest and most exalted conceptions hewn in marble “The Moses” said Paul III “is enough for one pope” It is one of the most serene of all Angelo’s works There is a reserved dignity and strength in it with a suggestion of the terrible which is found in so much of his work It is the representative leader possessing those qualities which are found in every great leader in any age The spirit of the work seems to breathe a majestic calmness and repose with a feeling also that the man is ready at any moment to‘ rise and lead a persecuted people out of bondage In 1508 the great project of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was laid before Angelo by Pope Julius The artist at first protested claiming that he was a sculptor by trade and that painting was not in his line His reluctance was speedily overcome however and the cartoons produced It was completed in four years the actual work taking only about twenty months When we realize that it contained 1 |