at its conclusion:  “for such is the excellence of your ability, that we shall take no thought of money-value.”  Grimani was Patriarch of Aquileja.  In the same year, 1523, the Genoese entered into negotiations for a colossal statue of Andrea Doria, which they desired to obtain from the hand of Michelangelo.  Its execution must have been seriously contemplated, for the Senate of Genoa banked 300 ducats for the purpose.  We regret that Michelangelo could not carry out a work so congenial to his talent as this ideal portrait of the mighty Signer Capitano would have been; but we may console ourselves by reflecting that even his energies were not equal to all tasks imposed upon him.  The real matter for lamentation is that they suffered so much waste in the service of vacillating Popes.

To the year 1523 belongs, in all probability, the last extant letter which Michelangelo wrote to his father.  Lodovico was dissatisfied with a contract which had been drawn up on the 16th of June in that year, and by which a certain sum of money, belonging to the dowry of his late wife, was settled in reversion upon his eldest son.  Michelangelo explains the tenor of the deed, and then breaks forth into the, following bitter and ironical invective:  “If my life is a nuisance to you, you have found the means of protecting yourself, and will inherit the key of that treasure which you say that I possess.  And you will be acting rightly; for all Florence knows how mighty rich you were, and how I always robbed you, and deserve to be chastised.  Highly will men think of you for this.  Cry out and tell folk all you choose about me, but do not write again, for you prevent my working.  What I have now to do is to make good all you have had from me during the past five-and-twenty years.  I would rather not tell you this, but I cannot help it.  Take care, and be on your guard against those whom it concerns you.  A man dies but once, and does not come back again to patch up things ill done.  You have put off till the death to do this.  May God assist you!”

In another draft of this letter Lodovico is accused of going about the town complaining that he was once a rich man, and that Michelangelo had robbed him.  Still, we must not take this for proved; one of the great artist’s main defects was an irritable suspiciousness, which caused him often to exaggerate slights and to fancy insults.  He may have attached too much weight to the grumblings of an old man, whom at the bottom of his heart he loved dearly.

III

Clement, immediately after his election, resolved on setting Michelangelo at work in earnest on the Sacristy.  At the very beginning of January he also projected the building of the Laurentian Library, and wrote, through his Roman agent, Giovanni Francesco Fattucci, requesting to have two plans furnished, one in the Greek, the other in the Latin style.  Michelangelo replied as follows:  “I gather