failed, to
my loss and also to his own, seeing he gets so much blame that he
dares not lift his head up in Bologna." The second casting must have
taken place about the 8th of July; for on the 10th Michelangelo writes
that it is done, but the clay is too hot for the result to be
reported, and Bernardino left yesterday. When the statue was
uncovered, he was able to reassure his brother: "My affair might have
turned out much better, and also much worse. At all events, the whole
is there, so far as I can see; for it is not yet quite disengaged. I
shall want, I think, some months to work it up with file and hammer,
because it has come out rough. Well, well, there is much to thank God
for; as I said, it might have been worse." On making further
discoveries, he finds that the cast is far less bad than he expected;
but the labour of cleaning it with polishing tools proved longer and
more irksome than he expected: "I am exceedingly anxious to get away
home, for here I pass my life in huge discomfort and with extreme
fatigue. I work night and day, do nothing else; and the labour I am
forced to undergo is such, that if I had to begin the whole thing over
again, I do not think I could survive it. Indeed, the undertaking has
been one of enormous difficulty; and if it had been in the hand of
another man, we should have fared but ill with it. However, I believe
that the prayers of some one have sustained and kept me in health,
because all Bologna thought I should never bring it to a proper end."
We can see that Michelangelo was not unpleased with the result; and
the statue must have been finished soon after the New Year. However,
he could not leave Bologna. On the 18th of February 1508 he writes to
Buonarroto that he is kicking his heels, having received orders from
the Pope to stay until the bronze was placed. Three days later--that
is, upon the 21st of February--the Pope's portrait was hoisted to its
pedestal above the great central door of S. Petronio.

It remained there rather less than three years. When the Papal Legate
fled from Bologna in 1511, and the party of the Bentivogli gained the
upper hand, they threw the mighty mass of sculptured bronze, which had
cost its maker so much trouble, to the ground. That happened on the
30th of December. The Bentivogli sent it to the Duke Alfonso d'Este of
Ferrara, who was a famous engineer and gunsmith. He kept the head
intact, but cast a huge cannon out of part of the material, which took