assert, in the house of a trusty friend.  The Senator Filippo Buonarroti, who diligently collected traditions about his illustrious ancestor, believed that his real place of retreat was the bell-tower of S. Nicolo, beyond the Arno.  “When Clement’s fury abated,” says Condivi, “he wrote to Florence ordering that search should be made for Michelangelo, and adding that when he was found, if he agreed to go on working at the Medicean monuments, he should be left at liberty and treated with due courtesy.  On hearing news of this, Michelangelo came forth from his hiding-place, and resumed the statues in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo, moved thereto more by fear of the Pope than by love for the Medici.”  From correspondence carried on between Rome and Florence during November and December, we learn that his former pension of fifty crowns a month was renewed, and that Giovan Battista Figiovanni, a Prior of S. Lorenzo, was appointed the Pope’s agent and paymaster.

An incident of some interest in the art-history of Florence is connected with this return of the Medici, and probably also with Clement’s desire to concentrate Michelangelo’s energies upon the sacristy.  So far back as May 10, 1508, Piero Soderini wrote to the Marquis of Massa-Carrara, begging him to retain a large block of marble until Michelangelo could come in person and superintend its rough-hewing for a colossal statue to be placed on the Piazza.  After the death of Leo, the stone was assigned to Baccio Bandinelli; but Michelangelo, being in favour with the Government at the time of the expulsion of the Medici, obtained the grant of it.  His first intention, in which Bandinelli followed him, was to execute a Hercules trampling upon Cacus, which should stand as pendant to his own David.

By a deliberation of the Signory, under date August 22, 1528, we are informed that the marble had been brought to Florence about three years earlier, and that Michelangelo now received instructions, couched in the highest terms of compliment, to proceed with a group of two figures until its accomplishment.  If Vasari can be trusted, Michelangelo made numerous designs and models for the Cacus, but afterwards changed his mind, and thought that he would extract from the block a Samson triumphing over two prostrate Philistines.  The evidence for this change of plan is not absolutely conclusive.  The deliberation of August 22, 1528, indeed left it open to his discretion whether he should execute a Hercules and Cacus, or any other group of two figures; and the English nation at South Kensington possesses one of his noble little wax models for a Hercules.  We may perhaps, therefore, assume that while Bandinelli adhered to the Hercules and Cacus, Michelangelo finally decided on a Samson.  At any rate, the block was restored in 1530 to Bandinelli, who produced the misbegotten group which still deforms the Florentine Piazza.