two, he again went there, this
time on the accession of Giovanni dei Medici, in 1513, to the Papal
chair. Knowing the luxurious nature of the new Pope, and remembering the
intense passion of his father Lorenzo for art and letters, to Rome
flocked poets and painters, sculptors and architects, from every part of
Italy, in the hope of work or of reward, and among them came Signorelli,
with reasonable expectation of employment, and notice from the son of
his old patron and friend.[23] Like his predecessor, however, Leo X.
preferred the more modern school of Raffaelle and his pupils, and Luca
had to return disappointed to Cortona. In connection with the visit
exists a curious document, which has smirched too long the honour of the
painter. It is the famous letter of Michelangelo, preserved among the
Buonarotti archives, in which he makes a complaint to the Capitano of
Cortona, that Signorelli, sick with the ingratitude of the Medici "for
the love of whom he would have had his head cut off," had borrowed of
him eighty _juli_ with which to return to Cortona; that on application
for the money, Luca declared it to have been already repaid, so that now
he--Michelangelo--sees no other way of obtaining his own but by
application to the Capitano for justice.[24] This is the gist of the
letter; we have to use our own knowledge of the character of the two men
to decipher the mystery, since no other document confirms or denies the
accusation. The reasonable explanation seems to be that some delay,
probably on the road, in the transmission of the money, irritated the
notoriously impatient temper of Michelangelo. Signorelli's character,
from all we know of it, seems to have been most upright and generous.
"Such was the goodness of his nature, that he never lent himself to
things that were not just and righteous," says Vasari,[25] and that he
should have been guilty of so petty a crime towards a friend, is not for
a moment to be believed. Moreover, his will, re-made in the following
year, proves him to have been in prosperous circumstances, while the
fact that he continued to hold his appointments, and to receive fresh
and even more honourable ones, testifies to the respect in which he was
held by his fellow-citizens. In pleasant contrast with Michelangelo's
accusation are the glimpses we have of his stately old age, through
Vasari. "And at last," he writes, "having completed works for nearly
all the princes of Italy, and being now old, he