There was a time when I had dirty waifs sleeping on the studio floor. We took in two or three; then others came. Their parents had died in the plague at Santa Maria; I guess it was at Santa Maria. Those were hungry weeks for all of us; yet we somehow managed, managed to feed them, get clothes for them, find homes for them—and kept on working.
Cloux
Copied from my 1504 Florentine notebook:
As soon as we met in the Town Hall there was a big wrangle. Ten or twelve of us, bearded patriarchs and upstarts, were at odds. We must decide where Michelangelo’s David was to be placed. We must situate it where it had shade part of the day, where it was protected from the weather; we must have it mounted on travertine; we must move it carefully; we must see to it...
It was lucky for us that Michelangelo was not around. He would have exploded—and told us off.
We walked around Florence for several hours, fighting the heat (and each other); then, we reached our one and only mutual agreement—to go somewhere and eat.
Later, I went with Francesco to Michelangelo’s studio, and we sat there, the two of us, and talked about his David, sitting on a bench facing his work. We agreed that it equaled any classical masterpiece. It was a little difficult to accept such beauty coming from such a troublemaker.
It required four days for men to move it, by windlass and rollers, to a site alongside the Town Hall: how carefully we worked, the statue suspended in a sling. Sometimes there were thirty of us at the job. A downpour drenched us. As we moved forward over slippery cobbles I thought the figure would topple. Cargadores bellowed. Michelangelo was on hand and beat one of the cargadores with his fists, screaming at the top of his voice.
When we had David in place we arranged a party. All the Florentine artists. Michelangelo was absent.