at search should be made for
Michelangelo, and adding that when he was found, if he agreed to go on
working at the Medicean monuments, he should be left at liberty and
treated with due courtesy. On hearing news of this, Michelangelo came
forth from his hiding-place, and resumed the statues in the sacristy
of S. Lorenzo, moved thereto more by fear of the Pope than by love for
the Medici." From correspondence carried on between Rome and Florence
during November and December, we learn that his former pension of
fifty crowns a month was renewed, and that Giovan Battista Figiovanni,
a Prior of S. Lorenzo, was appointed the Pope's agent and paymaster.

An incident of some interest in the art-history of Florence is
connected with this return of the Medici, and probably also with
Clement's desire to concentrate Michelangelo's energies upon the
sacristy. So far back as May 10, 1508, Piero Soderini wrote to the
Marquis of Massa-Carrara, begging him to retain a large block of
marble until Michelangelo could come in person and superintend its
rough-hewing for a colossal statue to be placed on the Piazza. After
the death of Leo, the stone was assigned to Baccio Bandinelli; but
Michelangelo, being in favour with the Government at the time of the
expulsion of the Medici, obtained the grant of it. His first
intention, in which Bandinelli followed him, was to execute a Hercules
trampling upon Cacus, which should stand as pendant to his own David.

By a deliberation of the Signory, under date August 22, 1528, we are
informed that the marble had been brought to Florence about three
years earlier, and that Michelangelo now received instructions,
couched in the highest terms of compliment, to proceed with a group of
two figures until its accomplishment. If Vasari can be trusted,
Michelangelo made numerous designs and models for the Cacus, but
afterwards changed his mind, and thought that he would extract from
the block a Samson triumphing over two prostrate Philistines. The
evidence for this change of plan is not absolutely conclusive. The
deliberation of August 22, 1528, indeed left it open to his discretion
whether he should execute a Hercules and Cacus, or any other group of
two figures; and the English nation at South Kensington possesses one
of his noble little wax models for a Hercules. We may perhaps,
therefore, assume that while Bandinelli adhered to the Hercules and
Cacus, Michelangelo finally decided on a Samson. At any rate, the