and full and complete.
The later work may be different, but it is not better.

When this group was unveiled in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-eight it was the
sensation of the year. Old and young, rich and poor, learned and
unlearned, flocked to see it, and the impression it made was most
profound. If the Catholic Church has figured on the influence of statuary
and painting on the superstitious, as has been tauntingly said, she has
reckoned well. The story of steadfast love and loyalty is masterly told
in that first great work of Michelangelo. The artist himself often
mingled with the crowds that surrounded his speaking marble, and the
people who knelt before it assured him by their reverence that his hand
had wrought well. And once he heard two able doctors disputing as to who
the artist was. They were lavish in their praise, and one insisted that
the work was done by the great sculptor at Bologna, and he named the
master who had befriended Michelangelo. The artist stood by and heard the
argument put forth that no mere youth could conceive such a work, much
less execute it.

That night he stole into the church and by the wan light of a lantern
carved his name deep on the girdle of the Virgin, and there do we read it
today. The pride of the artist, however, afterward took another turn, for
he never thereafter placed his name on a piece. "My work is unlike any
other--no lover of the beautiful can mistake it," he proudly said.

He worked away with untiring industry and the Church paid him well. But
many of his pieces have been carried from Rome, and as they were not
signed and scores of imitations sprang up, it can not always be
determined now what is his work and what not. He toiled alone, and
allowed no 'prentice hand to use the chisel, and unlike the sculptors of
our day, did not work from a clay model, but fell upon the block direct.
"I caught sight of Michelangelo at work, but could not approach for the
shower of chips," writes a visitor at Rome in the year Fifteen Hundred
One.

* * * * *

Perfect peace is what Michelangelo expected to find in the palace of the
Pope. Later he came to know that life is unrest, and its passage at best
a zigzag course, that only straightens to a direct line when viewed
across the years. If a man does better work than his fellows he must pay
the penalty. Personality is an offense.

In Rome there was a small army of painters and sculptors, each eager and
anx