The pension allotted to him by the
Pope, however rich it might be, was not enough for him; he tried to make
money out of the works, building the walls of bad materials, which,
notwithstanding their greatness and width, are not very firm or solid. As
is manifest to every one in the works of Saint Peter's, the Corridore di
Belvedere, the Convents di San Pietro ad Vincula, and other fabrics built
by him, it has been necessary to put new foundations and to strengthen all
of them by props and buttresses, like buildings about to fall. Now because
he had no doubt that Michael Angelo knew these errors of his, he always
sought to remove him from Rome, or, at least, to deprive him of the favour
of the Pope, and of the glory and usefulness that he might have acquired
by his industry. He succeeded in the matter of the tomb. There is no doubt
that if he had been allowed to finish it, according to his first
design,(36) having so large a field in which to show his worth, no other
artist, however celebrated (be it said without envy), could have wrested
from him the high place he would have held. Those parts which he did
finish show what the rest would have been like. The two slaves were done
for this work: those who have seen them declare that no such worthy
statues were ever carved.
XXVI. And to give some idea of it, I say briefly that this tomb was to
have had four faces, two of eighteen braccia, that served for the flanks,
so that it was to be a square and a half in plan.
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