ding. Perhaps he remembered the
elaborate drawing he once made of Ghirlandajo's assistants at work
upon the ladders and wooden platforms at S. Maria Novella.

Knowing that he should need helpers in so great an undertaking, and
also mistrusting his own ability to work in fresco, he now engaged
several excellent Florentine painters. Among these, says Vasari, were
his friends Francesco Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini, Bastiano da
San Gallo surnamed Aristotele, Angelo di Donnino, Jacopo di Sandro,
and Jacopo surnamed l'Indaco. Vasari is probably accurate in his
statement here; for we shall see that Michelangelo, in his _Ricordi_,
makes mention of five assistants, two of whom are proved by other
documents to have been Granacci and Indaco. We also possess two
letters from Granacci which show that Bugiardini, San Gallo, Angelo di
Donnino, and Jacopo l'Indaco were engaged in July. The second of
Granacci's letters refers to certain disputes and hagglings with the
artists. This may have brought Michelangelo to Florence, for he was
there upon the 11th of August 1508, as appears from the following deed
of renunciation: "In the year of our Lord 1508, on the 11th day of
August, Michelangelo, son of Lodovico di Lionardo di Buonarrota,
repudiated the inheritance of his uncle Francesco by an instrument
drawn up by the hand of Ser Giovanni di Guasparre da Montevarchi,
notary of Florence, on the 27th of July 1508." When the assistants
arrived at Rome is not certain. It must, however, have been after the
end of July. The extracts from Michelangelo's notebooks show that he
had already sketched an agreement as to wages several weeks before. "I
record how on this day, the 10th of May 1508, I, Michelangelo,
sculptor, have received from the Holiness of our Lord Pope Julius II.
500 ducats of the Camera, the which were paid me by Messer Carlino,
chamberlain, and Messer Carlo degli Albizzi, on account of the
painting of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, on which I begin to work
to-day, under the conditions and contracts set forth in a document
written by his Most Reverend Lordship of Pavia, and signed by my hand.

"For the painter-assistants who are to come from Florence, who will be
five in number, twenty gold ducats of the Camera apiece, on this
condition; that is to say, that when they are here and are working in
harmony with me, the twenty ducats shall be reckoned to each man's
salary; the said salary to begin upon the day they leave Florence