enzo di Rossi; an ascription that would annoy
Michelangelo exceedingly, if it were a mistake, since Rossi was a
pupil of his enemy, the absurd Bandinelli. Mr. W.G. Waters, in his
"Italian Sculptors," considers not only that Michelangelo was the
sculptor, but that the work was intended to form part of the tomb of
Pope Julius. In the second room opposite the main entrance across the
courtyard, we come however to Michelangelo authentic and supreme,
for here are his small David, his Brutus, his Bacchus, and a tondo
of the Madonna and Child.

According to Baedeker the Bacchus and the David revolve. Certainly they
are on revolving stands, but to say that they revolve is to disregard
utterly the character of the Italian official. A catch holds each in
its place, and any effort to release this or to induce the custodian to
release it is equally futile. "Chiuso" (closed), he replies, and that
is final. Useless to explain that the backs of statues can be beautiful
as the front; that one of the triumphs of great statuary is its equal
perfection from every point; that the revolving stand was not made
for a joke but for a serious purpose. "Chiuso," he replies. The museum
custodians of Italy are either like this--jaded figures of apathy--or
they are enthusiasts. To each enthusiast there are ninety-nine of the
other, who either sit in a kind of stupor and watch you with sullen
suspicion, or clear their throats as no gentleman should. The result
is that when one meets the enthusiasts one remembers them. There is
a little dark fellow in the Brera at Milan whose zeal in displaying
the merits of Mantegna's foreshortened Christ is as unforgettable as
a striking piece of character-acting in a theatre. There is a more
reserved but hardly less appreciative official in the Accademia at
Bologna with a genuine if incommunicable passion for Guido Reni. And,
lastly, there is Alfred Branconi, at S. Croce, with his continual and
rapturous "It is faine! It is faine!" but he is a private guide. The
Bargello custodians belong to the other camp.

The fondness of sculptors for David as a subject is due to the fact
that the Florentines, who had spent so much of their time under
tyrants and so much of their blood in resisting them, were captivated
by the idea of this stripling freeing his compatriots from Goliath
and the Philistines. David, as I have said in my remarks on the
Piazza della Signoria, stood to them, with Judith, as a champion of
liberty. He