Michelangelo’s doings at Serravezza can be traced with some accuracy during the summers of 1518 and 1519.  An important letter to Buonarroto, dated April 2, 1518, proves that the execution of the road had not yet been decided on.  He is impatient to hear whether the Wool Corporation has voted the necessary funds and appointed him to engineer it.  “With regard to the construction of the road here, please tell Jacopo Salviati that I shall carry out his wishes, and he will not be betrayed by me.  I do not look after any interests of my own in this matter, but seek to serve my patrons and my country.  If I begged the Pope and Cardinal to give me full control over the business, it was that I might be able to conduct it to those places where the best marbles are.  Nobody here knows anything about them.  I did not ask for the commission in order to make money; nothing of the sort is in my head.”  This proves conclusively that much which has been written about the waste of Michelangelo’s abilities on things a lesser man might have accomplished is merely sentimental.  On the contrary, he was even accused of begging for the contract from a desire to profit by it.  In another letter, of April 18, the decision of the Wool Corporation was still anxiously expected.  Michelangelo gets impatient.  “I shall mount my horse, and go to find the Pope and Cardinal, tell them how it is with me, leave the business here, and return to Carrara.  The folk there pray for my return as one is wont to pray to Christ.”  Then he complains of the worthlessness and disloyalty of the stone-hewers he brought from Florence, and winds up with an angry postscript:  “Oh, cursed a thousand times the day and hour when I left Carrara!  This is the cause of my utter ruin.  But I shall go back there soon.  Nowadays it is a sin to do one’s duty.”  On the 22nd of April the Wool Corporation assigned to Michelangelo a contract for the quarries, leaving him free to act as he thought best.  Complaints follow about his workmen.  One passage is curious:  “Sandro, he too has gone away from here.  He stopped several months with a mule and a little mule in grand style, doing nothing but fish and make love.  He cost me a hundred ducats to no purpose; has left a certain quantity of marble, giving me the right to take the blocks that suit my purpose.  However, I cannot find among them what is worth twenty-five ducats, the whole being a jumble of rascally work.  Either maliciously or through ignorance, he has treated me very ill.”

Upon the 17th April 1517, Michelangelo had bought a piece of ground in Via Mozza, now Via S. Zanobi, at Florence, from the Chapter of S. Maria del Fiore, in order to build a workshop there.  He wished, about the time of the last letter quoted, to get an additional lot of land, in order to have larger space at his command for the finishing of marbles.  The negotiations went on through the summer of 1518, and on the 24th of November he records that the purchase was completed.  Premises adapted to the sculptor’s purpose were erected, which remained in Michelangelo’s possession until the close of his life.