mbers of the Medicean
family. Here Leo came on the first Sunday in Advent to offer up
prayers, and the Pope is said to have wept upon his father's tomb. It
may possibly have been on this occasion that he adopted the scheme so
fatal to the happiness of the great sculptor. Condivi clearly did not
know what led to Michelangelo's employment on the facade of S.
Lorenzo, and Vasari's account of the transaction is involved. Both,
however, assert that he was wounded, even to tears, at having to
abandon the monument of Julius, and that he prayed in vain to be
relieved of the new and uncongenial task.

IV

Leo at first intended to divide the work between several masters,
giving Buonarroti the general direction of the whole. He ordered
Giuliano da San Gallo, Raffaello da Urbino, Baccio d'Agnolo, Andrea
and Jacopo Sansovino to prepare plans. While these were in progress,
Michelangelo also thought that he would try his hand at a design. As
ill-luck ruled, Leo preferred his sketch to all the rest. Vasari adds
that his unwillingness to be associated with any other artist in the
undertaking, and his refusal to follow the plans of an architect,
prevented the work from being executed, and caused the men selected by
Leo to return in desperation to their ordinary pursuits. There may be
truth in the report; for it is certain that, after Michelangelo had
been forced to leave the tomb of Julius and to take part in the
facade, he must have claimed to be sole master of the business. The
one thing we know about his mode of operation is, that he brooked no
rival near him, mistrusted collaborators, and found it difficult to
co-operate even with the drudges whom he hired at monthly wages.

Light is thrown upon these dissensions between Michelangelo and his
proposed assistants by a letter which Jacopo Sansovino wrote to him at
Carrara, on the 30th of June 1517. He betrays his animus at the
commencement by praising Baccio Bandinelli, to mention whom in the
same breath with Buonarroti was an insult. Then he proceeds: "The
Pope, the Cardinal, and Jacopo Salviati are men who when they say yes,
it is a written contract, inasmuch as they are true to their word, and
not what you pretend them to be. You measure them with your own rod;
for neither contracts nor plighted troth avail with you, who are
always saying nay and yea, according as you think it profitable. I
must inform you, too, that the Pope promised me the sculptures, and so
did Salviati; and