It was not the glory of the Medici he wrought, but his own sorrow and wrath. The same thing happened here as with the tomb of Julius II. Michelangelo did not have the force to refuse a task unworthy of him: his genius was heroic, his will not so at all. He accepted the order, he even outlined a program whose sychophantic affectation arouses a feeling of sadness and of pity for the humiliation of so great a man, forced to lie. A note in his own hand at the Casa Buonarroti explains one of the monuments in the following way.
"Day and Night talk together and say: In our rapid flight we have brought Duke Giuliano to death. It is therefore just that he should avenge himself. His vengeance, now that we have killed him, is to snatch away the light from us; by closing his eyes, he has closed ours, which will no longer illumine the earth. What would he have done with us if he had remained alive?"
Is not that insipid interpretation the veil of prudence which he wrapped about his rebel spirit? How much of this is really left in the work? Who can find it there? Who thinks only of the Medici before this tragic expression of a lonely and despairing soul? The burning and mighty spirit of the Sistine breathes again, and austere forms rise from the shade. Yet here everything is sadder; a funereal silence reigns. It is no longer the tragic struggle of the Son of Man. It is the void which weighs on these giants who groan and complain and on those two sombre, pondering heroes. The superb imperfection of some of these colossal figures, from which the sculptor has only torn aside with his chisel part of the veil of marble that covers them, adds still more to the impression of mysterious terror expressed by these classic divinities, half released from chaos and soon to exhaust themselves in a vain struggle against the forces of destruction. Action, resigned and powerless, turns his head aside. At his feet Day in fierce contempt for all things, shows for a moment over his shoulder, his face wrapped in clouds. He turns his back on life and plunges into passionate isolation. Night, overcome by leaden sleep and burning with fever, sinks into the midst of a stifling nightmare, like a stone into a gulf.