And he has gone from here without leaving me any
orders. I have written him a letter. I do not know what will
follow. I should have come to you immediately on the receipt of
your last, but if I left without permission I doubt the Pope would
be angry, and I should lose all that I ought to have.
Nevertheless, let me know immediately if Buonarroto should still
be very bad, because if you think I ought to come I will ride post
and be with you in two days, for men are worth more than money.
Let me know at once, for I am very anxious.
"On the 7th day of September.
"Your MICHAEL ANGELO, Sculptor, in Rome."(117)
The following note tells of the end of the work:
"I have finished the Chapel which I painted. The Pope is very well
satisfied, but other things do not happen as I wished. Lay blame on the
times, which are unfavourable to art." It is a note by Michael Angelo in
the Buonarroto manuscripts of the British Museum, but undated. It is
probably of October 1512, and marks the close of this period of enormous
work. The decoration of the Sistine Chapel now consisted, firstly, on the
flat of the vault, of Michael Angelo's history of the Creation and the
Fall of Man, of the Punishment of the Flood, and the Second Entry of Sin
into the World; secondly, on the pendentives, of the Prophets and Sibyls
proclaiming the coming of a Redeemer; and thirdly, of the Ancestors of
Christ, filling the arches of the windows and the arches on the two end
walls.
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