In what concerns you, I have done all I could to promote your interests and honour, not having earlier perceived that you never conferred a benefit on any one, and that, beginning with myself, to expect kindness from you, would be the same as wanting water not to wet.  I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth.”  How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us.  In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up—­probably through a frank apology on Sansovino’s part.  When Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for the sepulchral monument to be erected for himself and his wife, he suggested that Sansovino should execute the work, proving thus by acts how undeserved the latter’s hasty words had been.

The Church of S. Lorenzo exists now just as it was before the scheme for its facade occurred to Leo.  Not the smallest part of that scheme was carried into effect, and large masses of the marbles quarried for the edifice lay wasted on the Tyrrhene sea-shore.  We do not even know what design Michelangelo adopted.  A model may be seen in the Accademia at Florence ascribed to Baccio d’Agnolo, and there is a drawing of a facade in the Uffizi attributed, to Michelangelo, both of which have been supposed to have some connection with S. Lorenzo.  It is hardly possible, however, that Buonarroti’s competitors could have been beaten from the field by things so spiritless and ugly.  A pen-and-ink drawing at the Museo Buonarroti possesses greater merit, find may perhaps have been a first rough sketch for the facade.  It is not drawn to scale or worked out in the manner of practical architects; but the sketch exhibits features which we know to have existed in Buonarroti’s plan—­masses of sculpture, with extensive bas-reliefs in bronze.  In form the facade would not have corresponded to Brunelleschi’s building.  That, however, signified nothing to Italian architects, who were satisfied when the frontispiece to a church or palace agreeably masked what lay behind it.  As a frame for sculpture, the design might have served its purpose, though there are large spaces difficult to account for; and spiteful folk were surely justified in remarking to the Pope that no one life sufficed for the performance of the whole.

Nothing testifies more plainly to the ascendancy which this strange man acquired over the imagination of his contemporaries, while yet comparatively young, than the fact that Michelangelo had to relinquish work for which he was pre-eminently fitted (the tomb of Julius) for work to which his previous studies and his special inclinations in no-wise called him.  He undertook the facade of S. Lorenzo reluctantly, with tears in his eyes and dolour in his bosom, at the Pope Medusa’s bidding.  He was compelled to recommence art at a point which hitherto possessed