Michael Angelo was packed off
to Carrara for marble as soon as his design was approved. There is a
contract signed by him and two shipowners of Lavagna, dated November 18,
1505. Thirty-four cartloads of marble were then ready for shipment,
together with two blocked-out figures. He probably left Carrara soon
afterwards, returning to Rome by way of Florence. The only authoritative
account of the original project of the Tomb is that of Condivi; Vasari's
account was not published until his second edition in 1558. The
architectural drawings, said to be designs for this Tomb, are of doubtful
authenticity; most of them are certainly not by Michael Angelo. We must
therefore study Condivi, who probably got the details from Michael Angelo
himself, though he, too, must have had great difficulty in recalling the
ideas of forty-eight years ago.(85) The plans for the new church of St.
Peter's, the largest church in Christendom, were altered to embrace this
huge monument, but a transept of the little church of San Pietro in
Vincoli gave ample space for the final scheme, when it was set up in 1545.
The only statues we know belonging to it by Michael Angelo are the Moses
and the two bound Slaves in the Louvre; the other six statues in San
Pietro in Vincoli were finished by assistants. The unfinished marble
figures so unworthily housed in the stupid rock-work grotto of the Boboli
Gardens, Florence, may have been for the Tomb, although their measurements
do not agree with the Slaves of the Louvre.
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