The skill of the drawing and foreshortening is masterly as ever, but he does not appear to have referred to nature for the forms; and even Michael Angelo without nature became stale.

Vasari says, after describing the frescoes without his customary enthusiasm, "They were his last productions in painting.

He was seventy-five years old when he carried them to completion; and, as he informed me, he did so with great effort and fatigue--painting, after a certain age, and especially fresco painting, not being in truth fit work for old men." In the spring of 1546 Francis I.of France wrote to Michael Angelo asking for some fine monument by his hand, and copies of the Pieta della Febbre, now in St.Peter's, and of the Christ holding the Cross, in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, for his chapel.

A draft of Michael Angelo's reply runs:-- [Image #47] THE CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL THE CHAPEL OF POPE PAUL (_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_) _To the most Christian King of France._( 157) "SACRED MAJESTY,--I do not know which is the greater, the grace or the wonder at it, that your Majesty should have deigned to write to a man like me, and still more to ask him for things of his, unworthy even of the name of your Majesty; but, whatever they are, let your Majesty understand that for a long time I have desired to serve you in them; but, not having had the opportunity, because you have not been in Italy where my work is, I have not been able to do it.

Now I am old, and have been occupied these many months with the work for Pope Paul.