will tell me I am a crazy old man to write sonnets -- but since many people say that I have become gaga, I have to live up to my reputation. I can feel through your letter the affection you feel for me. Yes, I would like to move my old bones next to those of my father, as you beseech me to do. But if I left Rome, I would feel guilty of dooming Saint Peter's to failure, and that would be a great shame and a deadly sin. When enough of the construction is done and nothing can be changed to it any more, I hope to follow your advice -- when it is no longer important to frustrate the appetites of those who hope that I will leave soon." The Rondanini PietaMentioned by Vasari in his first edition in 1550, it was therefore begun before that date. According to Blaise de Vigenre, a French traveler, who saw Michelangelo work on this statue that very year, the sculptor (who was in his seventies and not very robust) chipped off more splinters from a very hard lump of marble, than three young stone-cutters in triple the time. He attacked the stone with such fiery energy that one expected to see the block shattered to pieces. With one blow he sent chips three to four fingers thick flying into the air, and penetrated to a point indicated by a drilling with such precision that he might have destroyed the whole stone, had he cut slightly deeper into it. Thanks to Condivi, we know for sure that he was still working on this group in 1553. In his second edition, Vasari reports: "At this time (1556), Michelangelo was working at it almost every day: it was like a hobby for him. He ended up breaking the block, probably because the latter was full of impurities and so hard that sparks flew from under his chisel; perhaps also because his self-criticism was so ruthless that he was never satisfied with what he had done. Indeed, to tell the truth, he rarely completed the works of his old age when he had reached the peak of maturity in his creative power. The only co...
