They show him, in one sense, at his highest and his best, not only as a man of tender feeling, but also as a mighty draughtsman.

Their incompleteness testifies to something pathetic--the humility of the imperious man before a theme he found to be beyond the reach of human faculty.
The tone, the _Stimmung_, of these designs corresponds so exactly to the sonnets of the same late period, that I feel impelled at this point to make his poetry take up the tale.

But, as I cannot bring the cloud of witnesses of all those drawings into this small book, so am I unwilling to load its pages with poems which may be found elsewhere.
Those who care to learn the heart of Michelangelo, when he felt near to God and face to face with death, will easily find access to the originals.
Concerning the Deposition from the Cross, which now stands behind the high altar of the Florentine Duomo, Condivi writes as follows: "At the present time he has in hand a work in marble, which he carries on for his pleasure, as being one who, teeming with conceptions, must needs give birth each day to some of them.

It is a group of four figures larger than life.

A Christ taken from the cross, sustained in death by his Mother, who is represented in an attitude of marvellous pathos, leaning up against the corpse with breast, with arms, and lifted knee.
Nicodemus from above assists her, standing erect and firmly planted, propping the dead Christ with a sturdy effort; while one of the Maries, on the left side, though plunged in sorrow, does all she can to assist the afflicted Mother, failing under the attempt to raise her Son.