Empire
transferred the wrecks of Greek literature from Constantinople to
Italy. Cosimo built a room to hold them in the Convent of S. Marco,
which Flavio Biondo styled the first library opened for the use of
scholars. Lorenzo the Magnificent enriched the collection with
treasures acquired during his lifetime, buying autographs wherever it
was possible to find them, and causing copies to be made. In the year
1508 the friars of S. Marco sold this inestimable store of literary
documents, in order to discharge the debts contracted by them during
their ill-considered interference in the state affairs of the
Republic. It was purchased for the sum of 2652 ducats by the Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, a second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and
afterwards Pope Leo X. He transferred them to his Roman villa, where
the collection was still further enlarged by all the rarities which a
prince passionate for literature and reckless in expenditure could
there assemble. Leo's cousin and executor, Giulio de' Medici, Pope
Clement VII., fulfilled his last wishes by transferring them to
Florence, and providing the stately receptacle in which they still
repose.

The task assigned to Michelangelo, when he planned the library, was
not so simple as that of the new sacristy. Some correspondence took
place before the west side of the cloister was finally decided on.
What is awkward in the approach to the great staircase must be
ascribed to the difficulty of fitting this building into the old
edifice; and probably, if Michelangelo had carried out the whole work,
a worthier entrance from the piazza into the loggia, and from the
loggia into the vestibule, might have been devised.

II

Vasari, in a well-known passage of his Life of Michelangelo, reports
the general opinion of his age regarding the novelties introduced by
Buonarroti into Italian architecture. The art of building was in a
state of transition. Indeed, it cannot be maintained that the
Italians, after they abandoned the traditions of the Romanesque
manner, advanced with certitude on any line of progress in this art.
Their work, beautiful as it often is, ingenious as it almost always
is, marked invariably by the individuality of the district and the
builder, seems to be tentative, experimental. The principles of the
Pointed Gothic style were never seized or understood by Italian
architects. Even such cathedrals as those of Orvieto and Siena are
splendid monuments of incapacity, when