[Footnote 29:  Susan and Joanna Horner’s Walks in Florence, vol. i. p. 125.]

It mattered nothing to Michelangelo that he had so poor a subject for a statue.  It is supposed that he made no attempt at correct portraiture in the figure.  The insignificant Lorenzo was transformed by the magic of his genius into a hero.

He wears a suit of Roman armor, in accordance with his career as a general in the wars with the Duke of Urbino, whose title he took.  His helmet is pulled well forward over the brow, the head is bent, the cheek rests upon the left hand, the elbow supported on a casket placed on the knee.  With finger laid thoughtfully upon the lips, he is thinking intently.  The right hand rests, palm out, against the knee in a characteristic position of inaction.

[Illustration:  LORENZO DE’ MEDICI. Church of S. Lorenzo, Florence.]

His mood is not that of a dreamer lost to his present surroundings.  Rather he seems to be keenly aware of what is going on; his meditations have to do with the present.  It is as if, having given an order, he awaits its execution, his mind still intent upon his purposes, satisfied with his decision, and calmly expectant of its success.  His affair is one of serious importance; no trifling matter absorbs the thought of this grave man.  “A king sits in this attitude when, in the midst of his army, he orders the execution of some judicial act, like the destruction of a city.  Frederic Barbarossa must have appeared thus when he caused Milan to be ploughed up."[30]

[Footnote 30:  Taine, Travels in Italy.]

The lack of resemblance in the statue to the original duke Lorenzo made it for a long time doubtful whether it was intended to be his tomb.  The Florentines, in their poetic way, fell into the habit of calling it Il Pensiero, that is, Thought, or Meditation, sometimes Il Pensieroso, The Thinker.  These are, after all, the best names for the statue, which is allegorical rather than historical in its intention.  The great English poet Milton has written a poem, which is like a companion piece to the statue, fitting it as words sometimes fit music.  It begins in this way, in words which Il Pensieroso himself might speak:—­

    “Hence, vain deluding Joys,
    The brood of Folly, without father bred! 
    How little you bested,
    Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys! 
    Dwell in some idle brain,
    And fancies fond with gaudy shape possess,
    As thick and numberless
    As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,
    Or likest hovering dreams,
    The fickle pensioners of Morpheus’ train. 
    But hail! thou Goddess sage and holy,
    Hail, divinest Melancholy!”

Lorenzo’s statue stands in a niche above the sarcophagus, or stone coffin, in which his body was laid.  On the top of the sarcophagus are two reclining figures called Dawn and Twilight.  The tomb itself is in a chapel, or sacristy, called the New Sacristy (to distinguish it from one still older), in the Church of S. Lorenzo, Florence.  The entire sacristy is devoted to the memory of the Medici family, who had for several generations been benefactors of this church.