of the chisel alluded to by Vasari, hatched and cross-hatched with right and left handed strokes in the style peculiar to Michelangelo.  The Brutus remains one of the finest specimens of his creative genius.  It must have been conceived and executed in the plenitude of his vigour, probably at the time when Florence fell beneath the yoke of Alessandro de’ Medici, or rather when his murderer Lorenzino gained the name of Brutus from the exiles (1539).  Though Vasari may be right in saying that a Roman intaglio suggested the stamp of face and feature, yet we must regard this Brutus as an ideal portrait, intended to express the artist’s conception of resolution and uncompromising energy in a patriot eager to sacrifice personal feelings and to dare the utmost for his country’s welfare.  Nothing can exceed the spirit with which a violent temperament, habitually repressed, but capable of leaping forth like sudden lightning, has been rendered.  We must be grateful to Calcagni for leaving it in its suggestively unfinished state.

II

During these same years Michelangelo carried on a correspondence with Ammanati and Vasari about the completion of the Laurentian Library.  His letters illustrate what I have more than once observed regarding his unpractical method of commencing great works, without more than the roughest sketches, intelligible to himself alone, and useless to an ordinary craftsman.  The Florentine artists employed upon the fabric wanted very much to know how he meant to introduce the grand staircase into the vestibule.  Michelangelo had forgotten all about it.  “With regard to the staircase of the library, about which so much has been said to me, you may believe that if I could remember how I had arranged it, I should not need to be begged and prayed for information.  There comes into my mind, as in a dream, the image of a certain staircase; but I do not think this can be the one I then designed, for it seems so stupid.  However, I will describe it.”  Later on he sends a little clay model of a staircase, just enough to indicate his general conception, but not to determine details.  He suggests that the work would look better if carried out in walnut.  We have every reason to suppose that the present stone flight of steps is far from being representative of his idea.

He was now too old to do more than furnish drawings when asked to design some monument.  Accordingly, when Pius IV. resolved to erect a tomb in Milan Cathedral to the memory of his brother, Giangiacomo de’ Medici, Marquis of Marignano, commonly called Il Medeghino, he requested Michelangelo to supply the bronze-sculptor Leone Leoni of Menaggio with a design.  This must have been insufficient for the sculptor’s purpose—­a mere hand-sketch not drawn to scale.  The monument, though imposing in general effect, is very defective in its details and proportions.  The architectural scheme has not been comprehended by the sculptor, who enriched it with a great variety of figures, excellently wrought in bronze, and faintly suggesting Michelangelo’s manner.