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Updated: June 3, 2025
His virtue and good fortune overcame all his enemies and exalted his friends. He was born in the year 1389, on the day of the saints Cosmo and Damiano.
The slopes of San Damiano, the sites of Spello, Bevagna, Cannara; Rivo Torto, the hovering dome of the Portiuncula, the desolate uplands that lead to the Carceri; one after another, the scenes and images grotesque or lovely simple or profound of the vast Franciscan story rose into life under his touch, till they generated in those listening the answer of the soul of to-day to the soul of the Poverello.
I think, then, that Michelangelo may have meant to pose these three figures where they are, facing the altar; to raise the Madonna upon a slightly projecting bracket above the level of SS. Damiano and Cosimo, and to paint the wall behind them with a fresco of the Crucifixion.
And in order that there might be no manner of delay in doing this, the Pope sent Michelagnolo back to Florence, and with him Fra Giovanni Angelo de' Servi, who had executed some works in the Belvedere, to the end that he might assist him in carving the marbles and might make some statues, according as he should receive orders from Michelagnolo, who caused him to make a S. Cosimo, which was to stand on one side of the Madonna, with a S. Damiano, allotted to Montelupo, on the other.
He made many works in that place, and likewise in all the other cities of Umbria; and at Assisi, in the lower Church of S. Francesco, he painted the panel of the Chapel of S. Caterina, for the Spanish Cardinal Egidio, and also one in S. Damiano.
Beneath it is a consecrated cell; and in that cell I was called Pietro Damiano. I so devoted myself to the service of God, that with no other sustenance than the juice of the olive, I forgot both heat and cold, happy in heavenly meditation.
Now among other statues that were wanting to the completion of that work, there were lacking a S. Cosimo and a S. Damiano that were to be one on either side of the Madonna, and Michelagnolo gave the S. Damiano to Raffaello da Montelupo to execute, and to the Frate the S. Cosimo, commanding the latter that he should work in the same rooms where he himself had worked and was still working.
Peter Damiano rebukes the luxury and pomp of the modern prelates, and mentions, among their other displays of vanity, the size of their cloaks, "which cover even their steeds, so that two beasts go under one skin." "Namely," says the honest old commentator, "the beast of burden, and the beast who is borne, who in truth is the more beastly of the two.
In the same place he made two doors of bronze in basso-relievo of most exquisite workmanship: on these doors he represented the apostles, martyrs, and confessors, and above these are two shallow niches, in one of which are S. Lorenzo and S. Stefano; in the other, S. Cosimo and S. Damiano." The sacristy, according to Vasari, was the first work proceeded with in the church.
Among these may be mentioned coins and medals of the emperors, with representations upon them of buildings and sculptures in the Forum; a marble stone found at Ancyra, now Angouri in Phrygia, on which is a long inscription regarding the acts and achievements of Augustus, which is of the greatest value in determining the topography of the city; the bas-reliefs on the Arch of Constantine, and on the marble screens of Trajan, recently excavated in the Forum itself, giving a view of its north-western and south-eastern ends; and the remains of the antique marble plan of Rome, now preserved in the Capitoline Museum, originally affixed to the wall of the superb Temple of Rome, and discovered in fragments in 1867 in the garden of the monastery of SS. Cosma e Damiano.
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