not succeed. The Pope was inflexible, and
Michelangelo began the ceiling on May 10, 1508, the most prodigious
monument perhaps that ever sprang from the human mind.

Julius had ordered Bramante to construct the necessary scaffoldings,
but the latter did it in so inefficient a manner that Michelangelo
was obliged to dispense with his assistance, and construct the whole
machinery himself. He had sent for some of his fellow-students from
Florence, not, as Vasari, by some strange aberration, states, because
he was ignorant of fresco-painting, since all the artists of the time
understood it, and the pupil of Ghirlandajo had himself practised it, but
because his fellow-students had had more experience in it, and he
wished to be helped in a work of this importance. He was, however, so
dissatisfied with their work that he effaced all that they did, and,
without any assistance, if we are to believe his biographer, even
grinding his own colors, he shut himself up in the chapel, beginning
at dawn, quitting at nightfall, often sleeping in his clothes on the
scaffolding, allowing himself but a slight repast at the end of the day,
and letting no one see the works he had begun.

Hardly had he set to work when unforeseen difficulties presented
themselves, which were on the point of making him relinquish the whole
thing. The colors, while still fresh, were covered with a mist, the cause
of which he was unable to discover. Utterly discouraged, he went to the
Pope and said: "I forewarned your holiness that painting was not my art;
all I have done is lost, and, if you do not believe me, order someone to
come and see it." Julius sent San Gallo, who saw that the accident was
caused by the quality of the time, and that Michelangelo had made his
plaster too wet. Buonarroti, after this, proceeded with the utmost ardor,
and in the space of twenty months, without further accident, finished the
first half.

The mystery with which Michelangelo surrounded himself keenly excited
public curiosity. In spite of the painter's objection, Julius frequently
visited him in the chapel, and notwithstanding his great age ascended the
ladder, Michelangelo extending a hand that he might with safety reach the
platform. He grew impatient; he was eager that all Rome should share
his admiration. It was in vain that Michelangelo objected that all the
machinery would have to be reconstructed, that half the ceiling was
not completed; the Pope would listen to nothing,