If it is true, as Vasari asserts, that Michelangelo quitted Ghirlandajo in 1489, and if Condivi is right in saying that he only lived in the Casa Medici for about two years before the death of Lorenzo, April 1492, then he must have spent some twelve months working in the gardens at San Marco before the Faun’s mask called attention to his talents.  His whole connection with Lorenzo, from the spring of 1489 to the spring of 1492, lasted three years; and, since he was born in March 1475, the space of his life covered by this patronage extended from the commencement of his fifteenth to the commencement of his eighteenth year.

These three years were decisive for the development of his mental faculties and special artistic genius.  It is not necessary to enlarge here upon Lorenzo de’ Medici’s merits and demerits, either as the ruler of Florence or as the central figure in the history of the Italian Renaissance.  These have supplied stock topics for discussion by all writers who have devoted their attention to that period of culture.  Still we must remember that Michelangelo enjoyed singular privileges under the roof of one who was not only great as diplomatist and politician, and princely in his patronage, but was also a man of original genius in literature, of fine taste in criticism, and of civil urbanity in manners.  The palace of the Medici formed a museum, at that period unique, considering the number and value of its art treasures—­bas-reliefs, vases, coins, engraved stones, paintings by the best contemporary masters, statues in bronze and marble by Verocchio and Donatello.  Its library contained the costliest manuscripts, collected from all quarters of Europe and the Levant.  The guests who assembled in its halls were leaders in that intellectual movement which was destined to spread a new type of culture far and wide over the globe.  The young sculptor sat at the same board as Marsilio Ficino, interpreter of Plato; Pico della Mirandola, the phoenix of Oriental erudition; Angelo Poliziano, the unrivalled humanist and melodious Italian poet; Luigi Pulci, the humorous inventor of burlesque romance—­with artists, scholars, students innumerable, all in their own departments capable of satisfying a youth’s curiosity, by explaining to him the particular virtues of books discussed, or of antique works of art inspected.  During those halcyon years, before the invasion of Charles VIII., it seemed as though the peace of Italy might last unbroken.  No one foresaw the apocalyptic vials of wrath which were about to be poured forth upon her plains and cities through the next half-century.  Rarely, at any period of the world’s history, perhaps only in Athens between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, has culture, in the highest and best sense of that word, prospered more intelligently and pacifically than it did in the Florence of Lorenzo, through the co-operation and mutual zeal of men of eminence, inspired by common enthusiasms, and labouring in diverse though cognate fields of study and production.