RENAISSANCE AND MANNEHISM C. I42O-£. l6OO
It may seem odd to us that the Farnese family should have gone to
Michelangelo the sculptor to complete their palace after San Gallo's
death. But it must be remembered that Giotto, Bramante and
Raphael were painters, and that Brunelleschi was a goldsmith. All
the same, the story of how Michelangelo became an architect is
worth telling, because it is equally characteristic of him and his age.
He had as a boy been apprenticed to a painter, until, when Lorenzo
the Magnificent had discovered him, given him lodgings in his
palace and drawn him into his private circle, he was sent to learn in
a freer, less mediaeval way the art of sculpture from Lorenzo's
favourite sculptor, Bertoldo. His fame rested on sculpture. His huge
David, the symbol of the civic pride of Renaissance Florence, he
began at the age of twenty-six. A few years later Julius II commis-
sioned him to prepare plans for an enormous tomb which the Pope
wanted to erect for himself during his lifetime. Michelangelo re-
garded it as his magnum opus. The first scheme provided for more
than forty life-size or over life-size figures. The famous Moses is one
of them. Architecture gf course was also involved, though only as an
accompaniment. However, when Julius had decided to rebuild St.
Peter's to Bramante's design, he lost interest in the tomb and forced
upon Michelangelo the task of painting the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel instead. Michelangelo never forgave Bramante for having,
as he suspected, caused this change of mind. So for nearly five years
—as he worked without an assistant—he had to stick to painting.
Then he returned to the tomb of Pope Julius, and perhaps in con-
nection with conceptions that had passed through his mind when
thinking of how architecturally to relate large figures with the wall
against which they were going to stand, he began to take an interest
in the plans of the Medici family to complete their church of S.
Lorenzo in Florence by at last adding a facade. The church was
Brunelleschi's work. Michelangelo in 1516 designed a facade two
stories high, with two orders and ample accommodation for sculp-
ture. The commission was given to him, and for several years he
worked in the quarries—* work he loved. Then however, in 1520,
the Medicis found too many difficulties in the transport of the marble
and cancelled the contract. But they made at once another <5ne with
Michelangelo for the erection of a family chapel or mausoleum by
S. Lorenzo. This was in fact begun in 1521 and completed, though
less ambitiously than originally planned, in 1534, The Medici Chapel
is thus Michelangelo's first architectural work, and the work, it must
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