Among stories relating to craftsmen, these are perhaps worth gleaning.
While he was working on the termini for the tomb of Julius, he gave
directions to a certain stone-cutter: "Remove such and such parts here
to-day, smooth out in this place, and polish up in that." In the
course of time, without being aware of it, the man found that he had
produced a statue, and stared astonished at his own performance.
Michelangelo asked, "What do you think of it?" "I think it very good,"
he answered, "and I owe you a deep debt of gratitude." "Why do you say
that?" "Because you have caused me to discover in myself a talent
which I did not know that I possessed."--A certain citizen, who wanted
a mortar, went to a sculptor and asked him to make one. The fellow,
suspecting some practical joke, pointed out Buonarroti's house, and
said that if he wanted mortars, a man lived there whose trade it was
to make them. The customer accordingly addressed himself to
Michelangelo, who, in his turn suspecting a trick, asked who had sent
him. When he knew the sculptor's name, he promised to carve the
mortar, on the condition that it should be paid for at the sculptor's
valuation. This was settled, and the mortar turned out a miracle of
arabesques and masks and grotesque inventions, wonderfully wrought and
polished. In due course of time the mortar was taken to the envious
and suspicious sculptor, who stood dumbfounded before it, and told the
customer that there was nothing left but to carry this masterpiece of
carving back to him who fashioned it, and order a plain article for
himself.--At Modena he inspected the terra-cotta groups by Antonio
Begarelli, enthusiastically crying out, "If this clay could become
marble, woe to antique statuary."--A Florentine citizen once saw him
gazing at Donatello's statue of S. Mark upon the outer wall of
Orsanmichele. On being asked what he thought of it, Michelangelo
replied, "I never saw a figure which so thoroughly represents a man of
probity; if S. Mark was really like that, we have every reason to
believe everything which he has said." To the S. George in the same
place he is reported to have given the word of command, "March!"--Some
one showed him a set of medals by Alessandro Cesari, upon which he
exclaimed, "The death hour of art has struck; nothing more perfect can
be seen than these."--Before Titian's portrait of Duke Alfonso di
Ferrara he observed that he had not thought art could perform so much,
addin