uring his lifetime, and the pope gradually fell off in his attentions
to Michael Angelo, and neglected to supply him with the necessary
funds for carrying on the work. On one occasion, Michael Angelo,
finding it difficult to obtain access to the pope, sent a message to
him to this effect, "that henceforth, if his Holiness desired to see
him, he should send to seek him elsewhere;" and the same night,
leaving orders with his servants to dispose of his property, he
departed for Florence. The pope despatched five couriers after him
with threats, persuasions, promises--but in vain. He wrote to the
Gonfaloniere Soderini, then at the head of the government of Florence,
commanding him, on pain of his extreme displeasure, to send Michael
Angelo back to him; but the inflexible artist absolutely refused;
three months were spent in vain negotiations. Soderini, at length,
fearing the pope's anger, prevailed on Michael Angelo to return, and
sent with him his relation, Cardinal Soderini, to make up the quarrel
between the high contending powers.

On his return to Rome, Michael Angelo wished to have resumed his work
on the mausoleum; but the pope had resolved on the completion of the
Sistine Chapel; he commanded Michael Angelo to undertake the
decoration of the vaulted ceiling; and the artist was obliged, though
reluctantly, to obey. At this time the frescos which Raphael and his
pupils were painting in the chambers of the Vatican had excited the
admiration of all Rome. Michael Angelo, who had never exercised
himself in the mechanical part of the art of fresco, invited from
Florence several painters of eminence, to execute his designs under
his own superintendence; but they could not reach the grandeur of his
conceptions, which became enfeebled under their hands, and one
morning, in a mood of impatience, he destroyed all that they had done,
closed the doors of the chapel against them, and would not thenceforth
admit them to his presence. He then shut himself up, and proceeded
with incredible perseverance and energy to accomplish his task alone;
he even prepared his colors with his own hands. He began with the end
toward the door, and in the two compartments first painted (though
not first in the series), the "Deluge," and the "Vineyard of Noah;" he
made the figures too numerous and too small to produce their full
effect from below, a fault which he corrected in those executed
subsequently. When almost half the work was completed, the p