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Updated: May 29, 2025
There is one subject from the life of S. Mark. Two kinds of intonaco are used, one hard and white, the other grey and sandier. The roof is a wagon vault pierced with cross-vaults, but not truly quadripartite, and the caps a curious combination of badly cut foliage and scrolls and round-arched arcading. Iron grilles of 1500 isolate the space within the columns where the sarcophagus stands.
And although he was very old when he returned to Arezzo, and, having ample means, could have done without working, yet, as one who was ever used to working, he knew not how to take repose, and undertook to make for the Company of S. Agnolo in that city certain stories of S. Michael, which he sketched in red on the intonaco of the wall, in that rough fashion wherein the old craftsmen used generally to do it; and in one corner, for a pattern, he wrought and coloured completely a single story, which gave satisfaction enough.
On the arches and on the vaulting he made certain Kings of France, friars and devout followers of S. Francis, and he portrayed them from nature; and likewise many learned men of that Order, and men distinguished for dignity of rank, such as Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes, among whom are portraits from nature, in two medallions on the vaulting, of Pope Nicholas IV and Pope Alexander V. In all these figures, although Lorenzo made their garments grey, he varied them, nevertheless, by reason of the good practice that he had in working, in a manner that they are all different one from the other; some incline to reddish, others to bluish, while some are dark and others lighter, and in short, all are varied and worthy of consideration; and what is more, it is said that he wrought this work with so great facility and readiness, that being called once by the Prior, who was bearing his expenses, to his dinner, at the very moment when he had made the intonaco for a figure and had begun it, he answered: "Pour out the soup.
The pictures of the Greek masters, which were painted on the wood of the abies, or pine of the Mediterranean, likewise, as we are informed by Pliny, owed their destruction not to a change in the colours, not to the alteration of the calcareous ground on which they were painted, but to the decay of the tablets of wood on which the intonaco or stucco was laid.
In a letter to his old pupil, Eastlake, who was secretary to the Fine Arts Commission, he says: 'I appeal to the Royal Commission, to the First Lord, to you the secretary, to Barry the architect, if I ought not to be indulged in my hereditary right to do this, viz., that when the houses are ready, cartoons done, colours mixed, and all at their posts, I shall be allowed, employed or not employed, to take the brush, and dip into the first colour, and put the first touch on the first intonaco.
The carpenters and plasterers Michael Angelo employed would soon learn to perform the more mechanical part of his work, such as laying the intonaco, pricking the cartoons, and grinding colours, and as they could not have inserted into the work any tradition contrary to the new manner of the artist, would be preferred by him to second-rate artist assistants; no doubt, too, the boy he employed in household work would be made to help.
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