ant to accept the commission, to finish the decoration of the
Sistine Chapel; and Michael Angelo painted on the wall, at the upper
end, his painting, 'The Last Judgment.' The picture is forty-seven feet
high by forty-three wide, and it occupied the painter eight years. It
was during its progress that Michael Angelo entered on his friendship
with Vittoria Colonna.

For the chapel called the Paolina or Pauline Chapel Michael Angelo also
painted less-known frescoes, but from that time he devoted his life to
St Peter's. He had said that he would take the old Pantheon and 'suspend
it in air,' and he did what he said, though he did not live to see the
great cathedral completed. His sovereign, the Grand Duke of Florence,
endeavoured in vain with magnificent offers to lure the painter back to
his native city. Michael Angelo protested that to leave Rome then would
be 'a sin and a shame, and the ruin of the greatest religious monument
in Christian Europe.' Michael Angelo, like Lionardo, did not marry; he
died at Rome in 1563, in his eighty-ninth year.

His nephew and principal heir,[8] by the orders of the Grand Duke of
Florence, and it is believed according to Michael Angelo's own wish,
removed the painter's body to Florence, where it was buried with all
honours in the church of Santa Croce there.

The traits which recall Michael Angelo personally to us, are the
prominent arch of the nose, the shaggy brows, the tangled beard, the
gaunt grandeur of a figure like that of one of his prophets.

While Michael Angelo lived, one Pope rose on his approach, and seated
the painter on his right hand, and another Pope declined to sit down in
his painter's presence; but the reason given for the last condescension,
is that the Pope feared that the painter would follow his example. And
if the Grand Duke Cosmo uncovered before Michael Angelo, and stood hat
in hand while speaking to him, we may have the explanation in another
assertion, that 'sovereigns asked Michael Angelo to put on his cap,
because the painter would do it unasked.'

The solitary instance in which Michael Angelo is represented as taking
an unfair advantage of an antagonist, is in connection with the
painter's rivalry in his art with Raphael. Michael Angelo undervalued
the genius of Raphael, and was disgusted by what the older man
considered the immoderate admiration bestowed on the younger. A
favourite pupil of Michael Angelo's was Sebastian Del Piombo, who being
a Venetia