s is almost the
most interesting, and it is probably the most genuine contemporary
record which we possess regarding Michelangelo's appearance in the
body. I may therefore take it as my basis for inquiring into the
relative value of the many portraits said to have been modelled,
painted, or sketched from the hero in his lifetime. So far as I am
hitherto aware, no claim has been put in for the authenticity of any
likeness, except Bonasoni's engraving, anterior to the date we have
arrived at. While making this statement, I pass over the prostrate old
man in the Victory, and the Nicodemus of the Florentine Pieta, both of
which, with more or less reason, have been accepted as efforts after
self-portraiture.

After making due allowance for Vasari's too notorious inaccuracies,
deliberate misstatements, and random jumpings at conclusions, we have
the right to accept him here as a first-rate authority. He was living
at this time in close intimacy with Buonarroti, enjoyed his
confidence, plumed himself upon their friendship, and had no reason to
distort truth, which must have been accessible to one in his position.
He says, then: "At this time the Cavaliere Leoni made a very lively
portrait of Michelangelo upon a medal, and to meet his wishes,
modelled on the reverse a blind man led by a dog, with this legend
round the rim: DOCEBO INIQUOS VIAS TUAS, ET IMPII AD TE CONVERTENTUR.
It pleased Michelangelo so much that he gave him a wax model of a
Hercules throttling Antaeus, by his own hand, together with some
drawings. Of Michelangelo there exist no other portraits, except two
in painting--one by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte; and one
in bronze, in full relief, made by Daniele da Volterra: these, and
Leoni's medal, from which (in the plural) many copies have been made,
and a great number of them have been seen by me in several parts of
Italy and abroad."

Leoni's medal, on the obverse, shows the old artist's head in profile,
with strong lines of drapery rising to the neck and gathering around
the shoulders. It carries this legend: MICHELANGELUS BUONARROTUS, FLO.
R.A.E.T.S. ANN. 88, and is signed LEO. Leoni then assumed that
Michelangelo was eighty-eight years of age when he cast the die. But
if this was done in 1560, the age he had then attained was
eighty-five. We possess a letter from Leoni in Milan to Buonarroti in
Rome, dated March 14, 1561. In it he says: "I am sending to your
lordship, by the favour of Lord Car