rfectly how to terrorise his
rivals and to make life near him impossible for them. Only a little
while after Michelangelo Giuliano da San Gallo, who was Bramante's last
rival at St. Peter's, also had to flee.

There was, however, still another reason for the sudden departure of
Michelangelo, and though he himself has taken good care to say nothing
about it, I am surprised that the historians have not brought it out
more clearly. Michelangelo fled on the seventeenth of April, 1506. On
the eighteenth of April there took place the solemn ceremony of the
laying of the first stone of St. Peter's. This is the true reason for
his sudden withdrawal; he did not want to be present at the triumph of
his enemy.

He had hardly left before Bramante so arranged matters that he could not
come back. He ruined his work and his fortunes.

"That affair," writes Michelangelo, "caused me a loss of more than a
thousand ducats. When I left Rome there arose a great riot because of
the shame put upon the pope, and almost all the blocks of marble which I
had on the square of St. Peter's were taken from me, especially the
smaller pieces, which made it necessary for me later on to begin the
whole work over again."

Nevertheless Julius II was furious at the revolt of his sculptor and
sent letter after letter to the Signory of Florence where Michelangelo
had betaken himself. The Signory, anxious not to compromise themselves,
tried to persuade Michelangelo to take once more the road to Rome, but
he would do nothing of the kind. He had tranquilly taken up his work on
the cartoon of The Battle, the Twelve Apostles for the cathedral and the
Madonna of Bruges, and he stubbornly persisted in his unwillingness to
return. He proposed his own terms and pretended to be working on the
tomb of Julius II at Florence. When, toward the end of August, 1506,
Julius II went to war with Perugia and Bologna and grew more importunate
in his demands Michelangelo had the idea of expatriating himself. He
thought of going to Turkey, where the Sultan, through the Franciscans,
invited him to come to Constantinople and build a bridge at Pera.[25]

In the end he had to give in, and in the latter part of November, 1506,
he went, much against his will, to Bologna, where Julius II had just
entered the town as a conqueror. There took place that famous interview
when the pope, angry and scolding, divided between the desire of
punishing the rebel and the fear of losing the artist