The difficulty as to scale that caused a doubt as to their being intended for the Tomb does not really disprove it; for Michael Angelo was never very particular as to the comparative size of the figures in his monuments, and the many alterations of his schemes for the Tomb make it possible for them to have been worked in somehow.

It is very probable that when he was at Florence, and after some of the more threatening letters of the executors, he set savagely to work upon some blocks ready to his hand, with the idea of having them conveyed to Rome afterwards.

They belong to about the time of the siege of Florence, and are more suggestive of his method of work, and of his thoughts in the presence of the stone, than any other of his statues.

If they were removed from their ugly surroundings and placed, say, in the Tribuna of David in the Belle Arti at Florence instead of the plaster casts that represent the master in his own city, they, with the other fragments, such as the Saint Matthew, the Apollo, the Victory, and the other works in the Bargello, would make a gallery of his art even worthy of Michael Angelo.

Failing such a possibility, they might, at least, be placed under the Loggia dei Lanzi, away from the repulsive grotesque of stucco and stalactite that grins at them in the grotto.