Furnished with letters to the Duke, and with special missives from the Signory and the Ten to their envoy, Galeotto Giugni, Michelangelo left Florence for Ferrara after the 28th of July, and reached it on the and of August.  He refused, as Giugni writes with some regret, to abandon his inn, but was personally conducted with great honour by the Duke all round the walls and fortresses of Ferrara.  On what day he quitted that city, and whither he went immediately after his departure, is uncertain.  The Ten wrote to Giugni on the 8th of August, saying that his presence was urgently required at Florence, since the work of fortification was going on apace, “a multitude of men being employed, and no respect being paid to feast-days and holidays.”  It would also seem that, toward the close of the month, he was expected at Arezzo, in order to survey and make suggestions on the defences of the city.

These points are not insignificant, since we possess a Ricordo by Michelangelo, written upon an unfinished letter bearing the date “Venice, September 10,” which has been taken to imply that he had been resident in Venice fourteen days—­that is, from the 28th of August.  None of his contemporaries or biographers mention a visit to Venice at the end of August 1529.  It has, therefore, been conjectured that he went there after leaving Ferrara, but that his mission was one of a very secret nature.  This seems inconsistent with the impatient desire expressed by the War Office for his return to Florence after the 8th of August.  Allowing for exchange of letters and rate of travelling, Michelangelo could not have reached home much before the 15th.  It is also inconsistent with the fact that he was expected in Arezzo at the beginning of September.  I shall have to return later on to the Ricordo in question, which has an important bearing on the next and most dramatic episode in his biography.

III

Michelangelo must certainly have been at Florence soon after the middle of September.  One of those strange panics to which he was constitutionally subject, and which impelled him to act upon a suddenly aroused instinct, came now to interrupt his work at S. Miniato, and sent him forth into outlawry.  It was upon the 21st of September that he fled from Florence, under circumstances which have given considerable difficulty to his biographers.  I am obliged to disentangle the motives and to set forth the details of this escapade, so far as it is possible for criticism to connect them into a coherent narrative.  With this object in view, I will begin by translating what Condivi says upon the subject.