The difficulty as to scale that
caused a doubt as to their being intended for the Tomb does not really
disprove it; for Michael Angelo was never very particular as to the
comparative size of the figures in his monuments, and the many alterations
of his schemes for the Tomb make it possible for them to have been worked
in somehow. It is very probable that when he was at Florence, and after
some of the more threatening letters of the executors, he set savagely to
work upon some blocks ready to his hand, with the idea of having them
conveyed to Rome afterwards. They belong to about the time of the siege of
Florence, and are more suggestive of his method of work, and of his
thoughts in the presence of the stone, than any other of his statues. If
they were removed from their ugly surroundings and placed, say, in the
Tribuna of David in the Belle Arti at Florence instead of the plaster
casts that represent the master in his own city, they, with the other
fragments, such as the Saint Matthew, the Apollo, the Victory, and the
other works in the Bargello, would make a gallery of his art even worthy
of Michael Angelo. Failing such a possibility, they might, at least, be
placed under the Loggia dei Lanzi, away from the repulsive grotesque of
stucco and stalactite that grins at them in the grotto. If something must
be left as a companion to the ugly thing, plaster casts would be quite
good enough.
The Victory, of the Bargello, was said by Vasari to have been designed for
the Tomb, but it may just as well have been intended for an angel
overcoming a demon, part of the ruined scheme for the facade of San
Lorenzo.
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