him never again left him. The death of his friend only deepened it, and
the two strange and powerful sonnets which celebrate that death[60] are
a hymn of triumphant faith and love.

When Michelangelo finally left Florence in 1534 and went to settle in
Rome he expected to be at last free and able to discharge his debt to
the memory of Julius II. But no sooner was the new pope elected than he
hastened to attach Michelangelo to himself. He was Paulo III Farnese, "a
choleric man, ambitious, daring, full of intelligence and cunning,
ostentatious, one of the last great popes of the Renaissance and the one
who perhaps did the most to beautify Rome, the great builder among the
popes of the sixteenth century."[61]

He summoned Michelangelo, overwhelmed him with promises, and asked him
to work for him.

Michelangelo wanted to decline, alleging as excuse his old contracts
with the heirs of Julius II, but Paul III was furious and declared that
he would tear up all those contracts and that Michelangelo should work
for him in spite of everything. Michelangelo thought of taking flight to
Urbino or to Genoa to his friend, the bishop of Almeria, but he gave in
as usual, too weak to resist. The pope, who came with ten of his
cardinals to see the statues already completed for the monument of
Julius II, went into ecstasies over them, especially over the Moses, of
which the Cardinal of Mantua said that "that figure alone would be
enough to honour the memory of Pope Julius," and he was even more
determined than before to reserve Michelangelo exclusively for his own
plans.

On September 1, 1535, he appointed him by official letters
architect-in-chief, sculptor and painter to the Apostolic Palace with a
salary for life of twelve hundred golden crowns a year, of which six
hundred were the revenue (uncertain and at once contested) of a
toll-bridge on the Po near Placentia.[62]

Ever since April, 1535, Michelangelo had agreed to work on the Last
Judgment. The idea of completing the decoration of the Sistine Chapel
with that fresco originated with Clement VII, who had already talked to
Michelangelo about it in 1533. At that time the plan also included a
Fall of Lucifer[63] on the entrance wall of the Sistine.

The first thing to be done was to destroy the frescoes of Perugino which
covered the great wall below the altar.[64]

This did not, of course, trouble Michelangelo, who despised Perugino and
called him a "blockhead." He worked on t