A design
by Michael Angelo at Oxford is for part of these alterations. Another
commission Clement desired Michael Angelo to undertake was of a curiously
absurd character. Fattucci wrote to say that the Pope wished a colossal
statue to be erected on the piazza of San Lorenzo, opposite the Stufa
Palace. The giant was to top the roof of the Medician Palace, with its
face turned in that direction and its back to the house of Luigi della
Stufa. Being so huge it would have to be constructed of separate pieces
fitted together. This project, evidently intended as a truly Florentine
insult to the house of Stufa, did not please Michael Angelo, and his
letter, of October 1525, in reply is an instance of his heavy, elephantine
humour:--
[Image #37]
LORENZO DE MEDICI, DUKE OF URBINO
THE NEW SACRISTY, SAN LORENZO, FLORENCE
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)
"_To my dear friend_ MESSERE GIOVAN FRANCESCO, _priest of Saint
Mary of the Flower of Florence, in Rome._
"MESSER GIOVAN FRANCESCO,--If I had as much strength as I have had
pleasure from your last letter, I should expect to carry out, and
that quickly, all the things you write to me about, but as I have
not I will do what I can.
"About the colossus of forty braccia, of which you tell me, that
is to go, or rather to be erected, at the corner of the loggia of
the Medician garden, opposite the corner of Messer Luigi della
Stufa, I have thought of it not a little, as you told me, and it
seems to me that it would not do in that corner, for it would take
up too much of the roadway; but in the other corner, where the
barber's shop is, it would turn out much better according to my
way of thinking, because it has the piazza in front of it and
would not be so much in the way; and perhaps as they would not
allow the shop to be removed, for love of the income from it, I
have been thinking that the said figure might be in a sitting
position, and the seat high, the said work to be hollow within, as
is right when working in pieces, so that the barber's shop would
come underneath, and the rent would not be lost.
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