ad
of which your Excellency spoke in the very kind letter addressed to me
at your command is the true likeness of Michelangelo Buonarroti, my
old master; and it is of bronze, designed by himself. I keep it here
in Rome, and now present it to your Excellency." Antonio then, in all
probability, obtained one of the Daniele da Volterra bronzes; for it
is wholly incredible that what he writes about its having been made by
Michelangelo should be the truth. Had Michelangelo really modelled his
own portrait and cast it in bronze, we must have heard of this from
other sources. Moreover, the Medicean bust of Michelangelo which is
now placed in the Bargello, and which we believe to have come from
Urbino, belongs indubitably to the series of portraits made from
Daniele da Volterra's model.

To sum up this question of Michelangelo's authentic portraits: I
repeat that Bonasoni's engraving represents him at the age of seventy;
Leoni's wax model and medallions at eighty; the eight bronze heads,
derived from Daniele's model, at the epoch of his death. In painting,
Marco Venusti and Daniele da Volterra helped to establish a
traditional type by two episodical likenesses, the one worked into
Venusti's copy of the Last Judgment (at Naples), the other into
Volterra's original picture of the Assumption (at Trinita de' Monti,
Rome). For the rest, the easel-pictures, which abound, can hardly now
be distributed, by any sane method of criticism, between Bugiardini,
Jacopo del Conte, and Venusti. They must be taken _en masse_, as
contributions to the study of his personality; and, as I have already
said, the oil-painting of the Uffizi may perhaps be ascribed with some
show of probability to Bugiardini.

IV

Michelangelo's correspondence with his nephew Lionardo gives us ample
details concerning his private life and interests in old age. It turns
mainly upon the following topics: investment of money in land near
Florence, the purchase of a mansion in the city, Lionardo's marriage,
his own illnesses, the Duke's invitation, and the project of making a
will, which was never carried out. Much as Michelangelo loved his
nephew, he took frequent occasions of snubbing him. For instance, news
reached Rome that the landed property of a certain Francesco Corboli
was going to be sold. Michelangelo sent to Lionardo requesting him to
make inquiries; and because the latter showed some alacrity in doing
so, his uncle wrote him the following querulous epistle