anship, but also capable of any, the most divine,
conceptions, as may be seen not only in this but in very many of his
arguments and writings. He may have been twenty-four or twenty-five years
old when he finished this work. He gained great fame and reputation by it,
so that already, in the opinion of the world, not only did he greatly
surpass all others of the time and of the times before, but also he
challenged the ancients themselves.

CHAPTER III

THE DAVID AND THE CARTOON OF PISA

XXI. These works being finished, he had to return to Florence for family
affairs; he stayed there long enough to carve the statue called by all men
the Giant, which is placed to this day by the door of the Palazzo della
Signoria at the end of the balustrade.(28) The thing happened in this
wise. The Operai(29) of Santa Maria del Fiore possessed a piece of marble
nine braccia high, which had been brought from Carrara by an artist(30)
who was not so wise as he ought to have been, as it appeared. Because to
transport the marble with greater convenience and less labour, he had
roughed it out on the quay itself in such a clumsy way, however, that
neither he nor any one else had the courage to put their hands to the
block to carve a statue out of it, either of the full size of the marble
or even one very much less. As they were not able to get anything out of
this piece of marble likely to be any good, it seemed to Andrea del Monte
a San Savino, that he might obtain the block, and he asked them to make
him a present of it, promising that by joining certain pieces on to it he
would carve a figure from it; but the Operai, before disposing of it, sent
for Michael Angelo, and told him the wish and offer of Andrea, and, having
heard his opinion that he could get something good out of it, in the end
they offered it to him. Michael Angelo accepted it, and extracted the
above-mentioned statue without adding any other piece at all, so exactly
to size that the old surface of the outsides of the marble may be seen on
the top of the head and in the base. He has left the same roughnesses in
other of his works, as that statue for the tomb of Pope Julius II., which
represents Contemplative Life. This is the custom of great masters, lords
of their art. But in the Giant it is more wonderful than ever, because,
besides not adding any pieces, he amended the faults of the roughing out,
an impossible or, at least, a most difficult thin