ABSTRACT
Pope Clement VII had realized how the unfinished tomb worried Michelangelo, and urged him to complete it, saying it would make him twenty-five years younger. In April of 1532, after Michelangelo had made a quick trip to Rome, a fourth contract was drawn up for a wall tomb in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, and the Pope was to allow him some two months each year to do the work. The thirties Michelangelo was troubled with the spectre of the unfinished tomb of Julius II. From Clement's death in 1534 until the end of 1541, when The Last Judgement was finally finished, no serious work on the tomb could be undertaken, since Paul III insisted that Michelangelo work only for him. In the course of working on the tomb, in early summer of 1544, Michelangelo became seriously ill and was nursed by his friend Luigi del Riccio, the agent of Roberto Strozzi, in the Strozzi palace.
