thirteen years he was apprenticed to
Ghirlandajo. Lorenzo the Magnificent was then ruling Florence, and he
had made a collection of antique models in his palace and gardens, and
constituted it an academy for young artists. In this academy Michael
Angelo developed a strong bias for sculpture, and won the direct
patronage of the Medici.

To this period of his life belong two characteristic anecdotes. In a
struggle with a fellow-student, Michael Angelo received a blow from a
mallet in his face, which, breaking bone and cartilage, lent to his nose
the rugged bend,

'The bar of Michael Angelo.'

An ill-advised member of the Medician house, while entertaining a party
of guests during a snowstorm, sent out the indignant artist to make a
snow man within sight of the palace windows. These anecdotes bear
indirectly on the ruling qualities of Michael Angelo--qualities so
integral that they are wrought into his marble and painted on his
canvas--proud independence and energy.

Before going farther I wish to guard against a common misapprehension of
Michael Angelo--that he was a haughty, arrogant man, absolutely narrow
in his half-idolatrous, half-human worship of art. Michael Angelo was
severe in place of being sweet; he was impatient of contradiction; he
was careless and scornful of ceremony; and in his very wrath at flattery
and hypocrisy, he was liable to sin against his own honesty and
sincerity. But he was a man with a lofty sense of duty and a profound
reverence for God. He was, unlike Lionardo, consistently simple, frugal,
and temperate, throughout his long life. If he held up a high standard
to others, and enforced it on them with hardness, he held up a higher
standard to himself, and enforced it on himself more hardly still. He
was a thoroughly unworldly man, and actions which had their root in
unworldliness have been ascribed unjustly to a kind of Lucifer pride.
Greed, and the meanness of greed, were unknown to him. He worked for the
last ten years of his life (under no less than five different Popes) at
his designs for St Peter's, steadfastly refusing pay for the work,
saying that he did it for the honour of God and his own honour. He made
many enemies and suffered from their enmity, but I cannot learn that,
except in one instance, he was guilty of dealing an unworthy blow at
his opponents. He was generous to his scholars, and without jealousy of
them, suffering them to use his designs for their own purposes. He