. He appears to be about seven years old, and the Bacchus
eighteen.(25) The said Messer Iacopo desired also that he would carve him
a little Cupid.(26) Both of these works may still be seen in the house of
Messer Giuliano and Messer Paolo Galli, courteous and worthy gentlemen,
with whom Michael Angelo has always retained a real and cordial
friendship.

XX. A little afterwards, at the request of the Cardinal de San Dionigi
(called the Cardinal Rovano), he carved from a block of marble that
marvellous statue of our Lady, which is now in the church of the Madonna
della Febbre;(27) although at first it was placed in the chapel of the
King of France in the Church of Santa Petronilla, near to the Sacristy of
Saint Peter's, formerly, according to some, a temple of Mars; this church
was destroyed by Bramante for the sake of his design for the new Saint
Peter's. The Madonna is seated on the stone upon which the Cross was
erected, with her dead son on her lap. He is of so great and so rare a
beauty, that no one beholds it but is moved to pity. A figure truly worthy
of the Humanity which belonged to the Son of God, and to such a Mother;
nevertheless, some there be who complain that the Mother is too young
compared to the Son. One day as I was talking to Michael Angelo of this
objection, "_Do you not know_," he said, "_that chaste women retain their
fresh looks much longer than those who are not chaste? How much more,
therefore, a virgin in whom not even the least unchaste desire ever arose?
And I tell you, moreover, that such freshness and flower of youth besides
being maintained in her by natural causes, it may possibly be that it was
ordained by the Divine Power to prove to the world the virginity and
perpetual purity of the Mother. It was not necessary in the Son; but
rather the contrary; wishing to show that the Son of God took upon himself
a true human body subject to all the ills of man, excepting only sin; he
did not allow the divine in him to hold back the human, but let it run its
course and obey its laws, as was proved in His appointed time. Do not
wonder then that I have, for all these reasons, made the most Holy Virgin,
Mother of God, a great deal younger in comparison with her Son than she is
usually represented. To the Son I have allotted His full age_."
Considerations worthy of any theologian, wonderful perhaps in any one
else, but not in Michael Angelo, whom God and Nature have formed not only
for his unique craftsm