For convenience of reference the chapters in the two parts are divided so as to cover the same periods of time in the life of the master.
Count Alessandro da Canossa acknowledged relationship to Michael Angelo in a letter, dated October 4, 1520 (Gotti, i. 4), addressing the master as "honoured kinsman," but the relationship cannot now be proved. The ancestors of Michael Angelo have been traced to one Bernardo who died before the year 1228, and they played their part as citizens of Florence, no mean city, for more than two hundred years—a noble pedigree even for Michael Angelo.
A paid magistrate or mayor, generally from a neighbouring town or country and not a citizen of the place where he was on duty.
Caprese is made up of scattered hamlets and farmhouses near Arezzo, upon the watershed between the Tiber and the Arno.
Upon March 6, 1475, according to our present reckoning, Lodovico wrote in his note-book:
"I record that on this day, March 6, 1474, a male child was born to me. I gave him the name of Michael Angelo, and he was born on a Monday morning four or five hours before daybreak, and he was born while I was Podestà of Caprese, and he was born at Caprese; and the godfathers were those I have named below. He was baptized on the eighth of the same month in the Church of San Giovanni at Caprese." Then follow the godfathers; there are ten of them.
Maestro Francesco only taught Michael Angelo to read and write in the vulgar tongue, for his pupil complained in after life that he knew no Latin; this was not Francesco's fault, for his pupil soon followed his friend's—another Francesco—influence and neglected literature for the art that made him famous.
Ghirlandaio, born 1449, died 1494.
Martin Schongauer, born at Colmar about 1450, died 1488.
When Michael Angelo was thirteen years old Lodovico gave in to his wishes and apprenticed him to Domenico Ghirlandajo (he was called Ghirlandajo because as a goldsmith he had made garlands of golden leaves for the brows of the Florentine ladies) upon the unusual terms set forth in the following minute from Domenico's ledger under the date 1488: