Two days after Michelangelo arrives in Rome, Pope Clement dies. The local citizens are overjoyed and celebrate his death because they hold him responsible for the sack of Rome by the armies of the Holy Roman Empire. Clement, however, had been a childhood friend of Michelangelo and his death severs the last tie that the artist had to the long gone days of his adolescence in the home of Lorenzo de' Medici.
The Pope's death also brings the Duke of Urbino to Michelangelo's door. The Duke insists that Michelangelo complete the contract for Julius' tomb that was signed in 1516. The artist thinks that he will now be able to complete the contract, but the election of Alessandro Farnese to the papacy as Pope Paul III, changes those plans. Farnese had been educated by.....
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