The first guardian nominated was Buonarroti's favourite servant Urbino.
Vasari, after describing these frescoes in some detail, but without his customary enthusiasm, goes on to observe: "Michelangelo attended only, as I have elsewhere said, to the perfection of art.

There are no landscapes, nor trees, nor houses; nor again do we find in his work that variety of movement and prettiness which may be noticed in the pictures of other men.

He always neglected such decoration, being unwilling to lower his lofty genius to these details." This is indeed true of the arid desert of the Pauline frescoes.

Then he adds: "They were his last productions in painting.

He was seventy-five years old when he carried them to completion; and, as he informed me, he did so with great effort and fatigue--painting, after a certain age, and especially fresco-painting, not being in truth fit work for old men." The first of two acute illnesses, which showed that Michelangelo's constitution was beginning to give way, happened in the summer of 1544.