figure, evidently from a picture by Pesellino; the
other, two standing figures, that might be after Ghirlandaio. The
draperies have been specially studied. Another pen-drawing, in the Louvre,
is a careful study from Giotto's fresco of the Resurrection of St. John in
the Cappella Peruzzi at Santa Croce.

A gloom was cast over all Italy by the death of Lorenzo de' Medici on
April 8, 1492. Michael Angelo lost his best friend and returned to his
father's house; here he worked upon a statue of Hercules that stood in the
Strozzi Palace until the siege of Florence in 1530, when Giovanni Battista
della Palla bought it and sent it into France as a present to the French
King. It is lost.

In the year 1495, whilst living with Aldovrandi at Bologna, as Condivi
tells us, Michael Angelo, for the sum of thirty ducats, completed the
drapery of a San Petronio, begun by Nicolo di Bari on the arca or shrine
of San Domenico, and carved the very beautiful and highly finished
statuette of an angel holding a candlestick, still to be seen there.(68)

When Michael Angelo returned to Florence a government had been established
by Savonarola. No doubt, like all the other citizens, the master listened
to the voice of the preacher, but we have no evidence that he was
particularly influenced by his teaching, though many of his biographers
would have us believe that Savonarola made him Protestant, Lutheran, or
what not, according to the sect of the biographer. Michael Angelo loved
the sermons of the eloquent Frate as works of art; no doubt, if the
prophets of the Sistine could speak, they would preach with the voice of
Savonarola.

Michael Angelo set to work and carved a San Giovannino for Lorenzo di Pier
Francesco, a cousin of the exiled Medici. The Berlin Museum acquired, in
1880, a marble statue of a young St. John, which had been placed in the
palace of the Counts Gualandi Rosselmini, at Pisa, in 1817, and was
rediscovered there in 1874. It is supposed to be this San Giovannino by
Michael Angelo, though it has nothing of the large quality of Michael
Angelo's work. Donatello has been suggested as the author, but it has
still less of the square planes and ascetic character of the great Donato.
It is a charming, almost a cloying statue. St. John seems to find his
honeycomb distinctly sweet.

CHAPTER II

THE BACCHUS, AND THE MADONNA DELLA PIETA OF SAINT PETER'S

The story of a Cupid, carved and coloured in imitation of