and he reprimanded him paternally for accepting
these orders. "When anyone asks you for a painting," he said, "you
should fasten a brush to your foot, make four strokes and say, 'The
picture is done.'" He promised also to arrange Michelangelo's
difficulties with the heirs of Julius II.

On April 29, 1532, by his mediation a fourth contract was agreed upon
between the representative of the heir to Julius II, the Duke of Urbino,
Francesco Maria della Rovere and Michelangelo. Michelangelo promised to
make a new model of the tomb, to deliver the six statues already begun
and still unfinished, as well as everything else that was ready; to
complete it in the course of three years at S. Pietro in Vinculi and to
pay all the expenses as well as two thousand ducats in compensation for
the sums which he had already received. The pope gave him permission to
come for two months every year to Rome for this work. Michelangelo was
agreeing to the ruin of the greatest undertaking of his life and he had
besides to pay so much that he was forced to sell houses and goods.

Like the plans for Julius II, the plans for the Medici collapsed.
Clement VII died on September 28, 1538. Michelangelo was at that time
away from Florence and he never went back there. Duke Alessandro de'
Medici hated him, and only his fear of the pope prevented the tyrant
from assassinating him. Michelangelo therefore left Florence (where his
brother Buonarroto died in January, 1534) just after he had lost his
father, Lodovico, in June of that same year. Nothing bound him any
longer to his own country, and he was never to see it again.

[Illustration: DECORATIVE FIGURE

Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512).]

That was the end of the chapel of the Medici. It was never
completed.[49] What we know of it to-day is only a very far-away
suggestion of what he had dreamed. Barely the lifeless skeleton of the
architectural decoration is left. Michelangelo had only made (partially)
seven statues--Lorenzo da Urbino, Giuliano de Nemours, the four
allegorical figures and the Madonna--and he had barely begun some of the
others which were planned; he had abandoned to Raffaelo da Montelupo and
Giovanni Montorsoli the figures of S. Cosmo and S. Damien for the tomb
of Lorenzo the Magnificent and to Tribolo the figures for the tomb of
Giuliano the brother of Lorenzo, which were to represent the Earth
crowned with cypress, her head bowed, weeping, and Heaven with lifted
arms, ra