arried out. He then hired it on a lease, but on June 15, 1508, the lease
of the house was transferred to Sigismondo Martelli. The St. Matthew, now
in the courtyard of the Accademia delle Belle Arti, in Florence, is the
only work we know of resulting from this commission. The apostle is just
emerging from the marble, and shows us Michael Angelo's method of work.
Vasari says: "At this time he also began a statue in marble of San Matteo
in the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, which, though but roughly hewn,
shows his perfections, and teaches sculptors how to carve figures from the
stone without maiming them, always gaining ground by cutting away the
waste stone, and being able to draw back or alter in case of need." The
deep chisel marks in the stone are sometimes as much as four inches long,
and their directions indicate that Michael Angelo worked equally well with
either hand, a fact confirmed by Raffaello de Montelupo in his
"Autobiographie."(83) "Here I may mention that I am in the habit of
drawing with my left hand, and that once, at Rome, while I was sketching
the arch of Trajan from the Colosseum, Michael Angelo and Sebastiano del
Piombo, both of whom were naturally left-handed (although they did not
work with the left hand excepting when they wished to use great strength),
stopped to see me, and expressed great wonder."

[Image #8]

THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH THE CHILD SAINT JOHN

THE BARGELLO, FLORENCE
(_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_)

The Florentine love of bas-relief explains to some extent their extreme
devotion to the tondo, or circular shape, in paintings and in sculptures.
According to Vasari, it was at this time that Michael Angelo carved two
tondi: one for Bartolommeo Pitti, now in the Bargello at Florence, and the
other for Taddeo Taddei, now at Burlington House, in the Diploma Gallery
of the Royal Academy, London. It was acquired by Sir George Beaumont, and
is the most valuable work the Academy possesses. If it were in an
out-of-the-way palace in Florence many of us would see it more frequently
than we do now, although we have only to climb a few steps to visit this
glorious work any day we are in Piccadilly. Both of these reliefs
represent the Madonna and Child, with the child St. John. The one in the
Bargello appears to be the earlier; the composition is very beautiful and
simple, and fills the circu