Alinari Photo.]
BUST OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI (S. CROCE, FLORENCE).
There is a story of Michael Angelo's first attempt in marble when he was about fifteen—a copy of an antique mask of an old laughing faun: he treated this with a spirit and vivacity of his own, and Lorenzo de Medici was struck by its cleverness; but he said, "Thou shouldst have remembered that old folks do not retain all their teeth: some of them are always wanting." The young sculptor at once struck one or two out, giving the mask a more grotesque expression.
On this evidence of cleverness Lorenzo took entire charge of Michael Angelo. With the marks of princely favour, however, he was destined to carry another mark, not so agreeable, ever after, owing to, as some say, the jealousy of Torregiano, a fellow pupil, who in a quarrel struck him, some accounts say with his fist, some with a mallet, and so gave him the broken nose which is characteristic of the portraits of Michael Angelo. Torregiano in consequence suffered banishment from Florence. In his own account of the affray to Benvenuto Cellini he declares the provocation came from Michael Angelo. The favour and protection of Lorenzo did not last long, as in his eighteenth year Michael Angelo lost his patron by death.
It was Lorenzo's son Piero who set him one wintry day to make a statue out of the snow—rather a wasteful proceeding for a Michael Angelo, though, as the late Mr. Walter Pater has said, there is a certain reminiscence of the feeling of the snow statue in the suggestive and half-finished figures of the tombs of the Medici.
A. Braun & Co. Photo.]
MICHAEL ANGELO. "THE CREATION OF MAN" (CEILING, SISTINE CHAPEL).
With the fall of the Medici family and their exile from Florence, Michael Angelo, as one of their retainers, had to fly also, and took refuge in Bologna, where he pursued his work as a sculptor. At the age of twenty-two he produced the "Pietà" in marble, now in St. Peter's at Rome.