Only two of the Grand Dukes have their statues--Ferdinand I and Cosimo II--and the Medici no longer exist in the Florentine memory; and yet the quiet brick floor is having all this money squandered on it to superimpose costly marbles which cannot matter to anybody.
Michelangelo's chapel, called the New Sacristy, was begun for Leo X and finished for Giulio de' Medici, illegitimate son of the murdered Giuliano and afterwards Pope Clement VII.

Brunelleschi's design for the Old Sacristy was followed but made more severe.

This, one would feel to be the very home of dead princes even if there were no statues.

The only colours are the white of the walls and the brown of the pillars and windows; the dome was to have been painted, but it fortunately escaped.
The contrast between Michelangelo's dome and Brunelleschi's is complete--Brunelleschi's so suave and gentle in its rise, with its grey lines to help the eye, and this soaring so boldly to its lantern, with its rigid device of dwindling squares.

The odd thing is that with these two domes to teach him better the designer of the Chapel of the Princes should have indulged in such floridity.
Such is the force of the architecture in the sacristy that one is profoundly conscious of being in melancholy's most perfect home; and the building is so much a part of Michelangelo's life and it contains such marvels from his hand that I choose it as a place to tell his story.