He seems to have paid no heed to classic precedent, and to have taken no pains to adapt the parts to the structural purpose of the building.

It was enough for him to create a wholly novel framework for the modern miracle of sculpture it enshrines, attending to such rules of composition as determine light and shade, and seeking by the slightness of mouldings and pilasters to enhance the terrible and massive forms that brood above the Medicean tombs.

The result is a product of picturesque and plastic art, as true to the Michaelangelesque spirit as the Temple of the Wingless Victory to that of Pheidias.

But where Michael Angelo achieved a triumph of boldness, lesser natures were betrayed into bizarrerie; and this chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose simplicity, proved a stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to despise propriety and violate the laws of structure.

The same may be said with even greater truth of the Laurentian Library and its staircase.