ample," and deeply furrowed: "the temples projected much beyond
the ears"; his eyes were "small rather than large," of a dark
(some said horn) color and peered, piercingly, from under heavy
brows. The flattened nose was the result of a blow from a rival
apprentice. He evidently looked the part, though for such
mental powers one of his colossal statues would seem a more
fitting mold.

Michelangelo experienced some illnesses, all but two of them of
minor moment. In 1531 he "became alarmingly ill, and the Pope
ordered him to quit most of his work and to take better care of
his health." That the illness was a storm merely of the surface
is evidenced sufficiently in that his fresco of the "Last
Judgment," probably the most famous single picture in the
world, was begun years later and completed in his sixty-sixth
year. In the work of this epoch there is more than ever the
evidence of a pouring forth of energy amounting almost to what
the critics call violence--to terribleness of action. It was
not until the age of seventy that an illness which seemed to
mark any weakening of his bodily powers came upon him. At
seventy-five, symptoms of calculus (a disease common in that
day at fifty) appeared, but, though naturally pessimistic, he
writes, "In all other respects I am pretty much as I was at
thirty years." He improved under careful medical treatment, but
the illness and his age were sufficient to cause him to "think
of putting his spiritual and temporal affairs in better order
than he had hitherto done."

He wielded the brush and the chisel with consummate skill in
his seventy-fifth year. With the later loss of cunning his