Bramante, the Pope's architect, did in truth fail to construct the proper scaffolding, whether through inability or jealousy. Michael Angelo designed a superior system of his own, which became a model for future architects in similar constructions.
See chapters vi. vii. and viii. of Mr. Charles Heath Wilson's admirable Life of Michel Angelo. Aurelio Gotti's Vita di Michel Agnolo, and Anton Springer's Michael Agnolo in Rome, deserve to be consulted on this passage in the painter's biography.
The conditions under which Michael Angelo worked, without a trained band of pupils, must have struck contemporaries, accustomed to Raphael's crowds of assistants, with a wonder that justified Vasari's emphatic language of exaggeration as to his single-handed labour.