Michael Angelo, on account of his great age, was
unable or unwilling to assist in the work. The present sarcophagi cannot
have been intended to hold the allegorical figures in the way they do, for
the under surfaces of the statues do not fit the top of the mouldings, and
certainly the rough stones that project over them, forming a base for the
feet, must have been intended to be supported by solid marble, and not to
rest uneasily on air. The sarcophagi are of a greyer marble than the
figures or than the panelling behind them. The architectural ornament
appears to be of three dates: First, the niches and panels of the walls;
second, the sarcophagi and their supports; third, the doors of the chapel
and niches over them. In the first, the grotesque heads in the mouldings
are like the dull grotesques Michael Angelo appears to have designed in
the architecture of the Tomb of Julius and on the armour of the captains
in this chapel. In the second, the four-horned skulls of rams on the sides
of the supports of the sarcophagi are very feeble and poor in design. If
we compare them with the powerful and true drawing of the rams' heads used
in the frame-work of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, we shall see that it
is impossible for Michael Angelo to have designed them, or even let them
pass whilst he was superintending the works. The shell and rope patterns
are even worse and more feeble; they are easily seen to be executed by
different hands. The simple bosses of the base under "Dawn and Evening"
are still unfinished: that would go to prove that Michael Angelo had
designed them and seen them cut as far as they go--not necessarily that he
had seen them in position--and that the academicians, when they did their
best to complete the chapel, rightly decided to leave them as they were.
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