ABSTRACT
Michelangelo's greatest sculptural ensemble is not the tomb of Julius II, which limped to its miserable completion in the 1540s, but the decoration of the so-called New Sacristy of San Lorenzo, more properly the Medici funerary chapel. Medici funerary chapel. Brunelleschi had built a sacristy off the left transept of the church whose elegance of proportion and clarity of form make it an Early Renaissance jewel. In May of 1519 the idea was broached to build Medici tombs in a new pendant to this sacristy on the other side, and in November of that year demolition began on the site. During his last Florentine sojourn Michelangelo also produced another statue for the Julius tomb, the Victory. Victory is Michelangelo's clearest statement in statuary of an ideal that became basic for artists whom we call Mannerists - the beautiful serpentine figure, existing for its own sake, exercising its limbs from purely esthetic motives, pyramidally composed with flame-like proportions.
