great Julius. His first desire was to complete the
decoration of the Sistine Chapel, so that the entire interior should
match the magnificence of the ceiling, and to the task he summoned
Michelangelo.

The great artist hesitated. The ceiling was his supreme work as a
painter, and he knew down deep in his heart that he could not hope to
surpass it, and the risk of not equaling it was too great for him to run.
The matter was too delicately personal to explain--only an artist could
understand.

Michelangelo made excuses to the Pope and declared he had forgotten how
to use a brush, that his eyesight was bad, and that the only thing he
could do was to carve.

But Paul was not to be turned aside, and reluctantly Michelangelo went
back to the Sistine, that he had left over twenty years before.

Then it was that he painted "The Last Judgment" on the wall of the upper
end of the chapel. Hamerton calls this the grandest picture ever
executed, at the same time acknowledging its faults in taste. But it must
be explained that the design was the conception of Julius, endorsed by
Pope Paul, and it surely mirrors the spiritual qualities (or lack of
them) in these men better than any biography possibly could.

The merciful Redeemer is shown as a muscular athlete, full of anger and
the spirit of revenge--proud, haughty, fierce. The condemned are ranged
before him--a confused mass of naked figures, suspended in all attitudes
of agony and terrible foreboding. The "saved" are ranged on one side, and
do not seem to be of much better intellectual and spiritual quality than
the damned; very naturally they are quite pleased to think that it is the
others who are damned, and not they. The entire conception reveals that
masterly ability to portray the human figure in every attitude of fear or
passion. A hundred years after the picture was painted, some dignitary
took it into his head that portions of the work were too "daring"; and a
painter was set at work robing the figures. His fussy attempts are quite
apparent.

Michelangelo's next work was to decorate the Paolina Chapel. As in his
last work on the Sistine, he was constantly interrupted and advised and
criticized. As he worked, cardinals, bishops and young artists watched
and suggested, but still the "Conversion of Saint Paul" and the
"Crucifixion of Saint Peter," in the Paolina, must ever rank as masterly
art.

The frescoes in the Paolina Chapel occupied seven years and ended the
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