echoes when he says, "Michelangelo delivered St. Peter's from
thieves and bandits."

It is easy to imagine what hatred these proceedings awakened in San
Gallo's party, supported by all the contractors and foremen whose faults
Michelangelo had denounced and prosecuted. The members of the committee
of administration themselves were accomplices.[88]

A coalition was formed against him which had for its chief Nanni di
Baccio Bigio, the rascally architect whom Vasari accuses of having
stolen Michelangelo's plans even before this trouble. From the very
beginning of Michelangelo's direction at St. Peter's Nanni spread the
rumour that he knew nothing of architecture, that his model was
childish, that he squandered the money and hid himself to work at night
for fear that his blunders would be seen. It was also rumoured that the
cornice of the Farnese palace was in danger of falling. Michelangelo
was exasperated. "Who are these rogues, these triple scoundrels," he
wrote to the committee of administration, "who, after they had spread
lies about my work on the Farnese palace, lied still more in the report
that they sent to the committee of St. Peter's?"

The committee, instead of defending him, joined in the chorus of his
calumniators. They sent a protest to the pope because, they said, he
kept them entirely ignorant of his plans, which he showed to no one,
while he destroyed the work of his predecessor. They wished to be freed
from any responsibility for such proceedings, especially for "the
destruction which had been and continued to be so great that all who
witnessed it were greatly disturbed."

They succeeded in bringing about in 1551 a meeting at St. Peter's under
the presidency of the pope, where all the builders and foremen,
supported by the Cardinals Salviati and Marcello Cervini (the future
pope, Marcellus II), testified against Michelangelo. Vasari describes
the scene for us. At this time Michelangelo had already finished the
main apse with the three chapels and the three windows above them, but
no one knew yet how he would vault the church, and all agreed in
prophesying that the lighting would be insufficient. Michelangelo, when
he was questioned by Cardinal Cervini, explained that besides the three
windows already built there would be three more in the vault, which was
to be built of travertine. "You never told us anything about that," said
the cardinal. "I am not obliged to tell your lordships or anyone else
what