tion in the
legend, it is certain that a correspondence took place between the Pope
and the Gonfalonier of Florence, to bring about his return. See Heath
Wilson, pp. 79-87, and the letter to Giuliano di San Gallo in Milanesi's
Archivio Buonarroti, p. 377. Michael Angelo appears to have had some
reason to fear assassination in Rome.

[312] See Michael Angelo's letters to Giovan Francesco Fattucci, and his
family. Gotti, pp. 55-65.

[313] See the sonnet to Giovanni da Pistoja:--

La mia pittura morta
Difendi orma', Giovanni, e 'l mio onore,
Non sendo in loco bon, ne io pittore.

[314] According to the first plan, Michael Angelo bargained with the Pope
for twelve Apostles in the lunettes, and another part to be filled with
ornament in the usual manner--"dodici Apostoli nelle lunette, e 'l resto
un certo partimento ripieno d' adornamenti come si usa." Michael Angelo,
after making designs for this commission, told the Pope he thought the
roof would look poor, because the Apostles were poor folk--"perche furon
poveri anche loro." He then began his cartoons for the vault as it now
exists. See the letter to Ser Giovan Francesco Fattucci, in the _Archivio
Buonarroti_, Milanesi, pp. 426-427. This seems to be the foundation for
an old story of the Pope's complaining that the Sistine roof looked poor
without gilding, and Michael Angelo's reply that the Biblical personages
depicted there were but poor people.

[315] 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.

[316] 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.

[317] 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.

[318] In speaking of the Sistine I have treated Michael Angelo as a
sculptor, and it was a sculptor who designed those frescoes. _Ne io
pittore_ is his own phrase. Compare an autotype of "Adam" in the Sistine
with one of