Night

Of the two Times of the Day reclining on the sarcophagus at Giuliano's feet, Night is certainly the more famous one, for literary as well as artistic reasons, as Vasari's 1550 edition of the Lives already included the quatrain by Giovan Battista di Lorenzo Strozzi called il Vecchio: The sweetly sleeping Night on which you lookhas all the life an angel's hand could give to stone;and thus, because she sleeps, she lives:wake her, if you still doubt it; she will speak - an ode to the statue according to the topos of the illusion of life hidden there - and Michelangelo's proud answer in the name of Night itself: Precious is sleep, better to be of stone,while the oppression and the shame still last;not seeing and not hearing, I am blest;so do not wake me, hush! keep your voice down alluding to the dramatic political situation in Florence and Italy. In light of Michelangelo's lines of poetry, Vasari's comment on the Night is not just a naturalistic one limited to words like "the stillnes