But Michelangelo condescended to no realistic portraiture in the statues of the Dukes, and he also meant undoubtedly to treat the phases of time which rule man's daily life upon the planet as symbols for far-reaching thoughts connected with our destiny.

These monumental figures are not men, not women, but vague and potent allegories of our mortal fate.

They remain as he left them, except that parts of Giuliano's statue, especially the hands, seem to have been worked over by an assistant.

The same is true of the Madonna, which will ever be regarded, in her imperfectly finished state, as one of the finest of his sculptural conceptions.

To Montelupo belongs the execution of S.
Damiano, and to Montorsoli that of S.Cosimo.Vasari says that Tribolo was commissioned by Michelangelo to carve statues of Earth weeping for the loss of Giuliano, and Heaven rejoicing over his spirit.