Michelangelo II. [antikvár]

It was Julius II who encouraged, sometimes to the point of excess, Michelangelo's love for grandeur. This authoritarian and ambitious Pope was the embodiment of impetuous action. He wanted his pontificate to be worthy of being immortalised and he asked Michelangelo to translate his conception of a glorious religion into a really magnificent mausoleum. From that point, the idea of the Pope's tomb became almost an obsession with the sculptor. We know the basic design of the preliminary project from Condivi. The monument v/as to have four sides and two storeys, with eight statues above and symbols of Julius II's victories below. Michelangelo spent eight months selecting blocks of marble at Carrara and it was then, according to Condivi, that the idea must have come to him of carving a gigantic statue out of the living rock, which pilots could see from afar. Then he looked for an imposing setting that would be worthy of the monument and he thought at first of St Peter's in Rome, but soon afterwards Julius II let Bramante persuade him that it was not exactly a good omen to have