WARNING: death mentions

- He was a Florentine by birth

 - He was proud of his family

 - He was an aristocrat in spirit

 - He would sacrifice himself for his family ("he would sell himself as a slave")

 - He hated his brothers and nephew but respected them as representatives of his "race"

 - He hated himself, but he loved his works, so he worked without rest

 - He wanted to do everything himself

 - Although he had money, he lived like a poor man

 - He was constantly ill from impossibility

 - He had a contagious disease of pessimism from his father who constantly had attacks of persecution madness

 - He didn't trust anyone

 - He lived in a state of melancholy and madness

 - He was lonely - he hated and was hated, he loved and was not loved

 - They admired and feared him

 - He never had peace

 - He was lonely even with himself

 - He had a weak character and lack of will

 - He was indecisive about everything

 - He could never complete his works

 - He was weak - he was afraid of everyone

 - He had panic attacks and because of that he would run from place to place

- He spent most of his life in Florence

"He is afraid. He is deathly ashamed of his fear. He despises himself. He is sick with self-loathing. He wants to die. He believes he will die. But he cannot die. There's that enraged force of life in him which is reborn everyday to suffer even more. — If only he could get out of the work! But he was denied of it. He cannot give up working. He works. He must. Is he working? He is busy, carried away by the cyclone of his raging conflicted passions like some kind of Dante's cursed man. How he had to suffer!

He was of medium height, broad shoulders, strong, muscular build. His body was distorted by his work, he walked with his head down, his shoulders swollen and his belly protruding. The portrait of Francisco da Holland shows us such a person: standing, in profile, dressed in black with a Roman mantle over his shoulders: a cap on his head, and over it a felt hat, drawn low over his eyes. He had a round skull, a square body, above the eyes ridged and wrinkled. His hair was black, sparse, shaggy and curly. The eyes were small, sad and sharp, had a rye color: variable and sprinkled with yellowish and bluish freckles. The nose, broad and straight, with a hump in the middle, was dented by the blow of Torigiani's fist. Deep wrinkles furrowed the face from the nostrils to the edges of the lips. The mouth was tender: the lower lip protruded a little. Thin fringes and a beard like a faun's, forked, thinning and four to five inches long, framed inflamed cheeks with protruding cheekbones.

As an overall impression of the physiognomy: sorrow and uneasiness prevail. A typical face from the age of Torquat Thas, timid, gnawed by doubts, His mournful eyes awake and seek pity.

Let's not be stingy with him. Let's give him that love that he longed for all his life, but which was denied him. He knew the greatest troubles that can befall a person. He saw his homeland subjugated, he saw how Italy had been left to the barbarians for centuries. He saw how freedom dies. He saw the ones he loved disappear one after another. He saw how all the lights of art went out one by one.

He was left alone, the last one, in the falling night. And, on the verge of death, when he looked behind him, he did not even have the consolation of being able to say to himself that he had done all that he had to do, all that he could do. His life seemed lost to him, he was without joy in vain. In vain he sacrificed it to the idol of art.

The terribly great work to which he condemned himself during his ninety years of life, without a single day of rest, without a single day of real life, did not even serve him to complete a single one of his great plans. Not a single one of his great works of those he cared most about was completed. The irony of fate was that this sculptor managed to finish only his paintings, which he did against his will. Of his great works which brought him alternately so much proud hope and so much torture, some were destroyed during his lifetime; others failed miserably and became miserable caricatures of his ideas.

Sculptor Ghiberti tells in his "Commentaries" the story of a poor German goldsmith in the service of the Prince of Anjou "who was equal to the ancient sculptors of Greece" and who, at the end of his life, saw his work being destroyed to which he had devoted his entire life. And when they saw that all his efforts were in vain, he threw himself on his knees and cried: "God, lord of heaven and earth, who creates everything, don't let me wander anymore and follow others but you! Have mercy on me!" And he immediately distributed everything he had to the poor, retired to a monastery and died there...

Like the poor German goldsmith, Michelangelo, reaching the end of his life, bitterly observed his life, lived in vain, his vain efforts, his unfinished, destroyed, imperfect works, then he renounced everything. The pride of the Renaissance, the magnificent pride of the free soul and the ruler of the universe, was replaced by that divine love which, in order to embrace us, spreads its arms over the cross. The creative cry of the ode of joy did not bend. Until the last breath, it was an ode to Pain, an ode to Death that frees. He was completely defeated.

Such was one of the conquerors of the world. We who rejoice in the deeds of his genius do so as we rejoice in the victories of our ancestors: we no longer think of the blood shed.

 I wanted to show that blood in front of everyone's eyes, I wanted to wave the red flag of a hero over the heads of all of us."