lan was not only accepted, but eventually carried out.
Nevertheless Sangallo, one of the most illustrious professional
architects then alive, could not but have felt deeply wounded by the
treatment he received. It was natural for his followers to exclaim
that Buonarroti had contrived to oust their aged master, and to get a
valuable commission into his own grasp, by the discourteous exercise
of his commanding prestige in the world of art.

In order to be just to Michelangelo, we must remember that he was
always singularly modest in regard to his own performances, and severe
in self-criticism. Neither in his letters nor in his poems does a
single word of self-complacency escape his pen. He sincerely felt
himself to be an unprofitable servant: that was part of his
constitutional depression. We know, too, that he allowed strong
temporary feelings to control his utterance. The cruel criticism of
Sangallo may therefore have been quite devoid of malice; and if it was
as well founded as the criticism of that builder's plan for S.
Peter's, then Michelangelo stands acquitted. Sangallo's model exists;
it is so large that you can walk inside it, and compare your own
impressions with the following judgment:--

"It cannot be denied that Bramante's talent as an architect was equal
to that of any one from the times of the ancients until now. He laid
the first plan of S. Peter, not confused, but clear and simple, full
of light and detached from surrounding buildings, so that it
interfered with no part of the palace. It was considered a very fine
design, and indeed any one can see now that it is so. All the
architects who departed from Bramante's scheme, as Sangallo has done,
have departed from the truth; and those who have unprejudiced eyes can
observe this in his model. Sangallo's ring of chapels takes light from
the interior as Bramante planned it; and not only this, but he has
provided no other means of lighting, and there are so many
hiding-places, above and below, all dark, which lend themselves to
innumerable knaveries, that the church would become a secret den for
harbouring bandits, false coiners, for debauching nuns, and doing all
sorts of rascality; and when it was shut up at night, twenty-five men
would be needed to search the building for rogues hidden there, and it
would be difficult enough to find them. There is, besides, another
inconvenience: the interior circle of buildings added to Bramante's
plan would necessitate t