VI

During the siege Lodovico Buonarroti passed his time at Pisa.  His little grandson, Lionardo, the sole male heir of the family, was with him.  Born September 25, 1519, the boy was now exactly eleven years old, and by his father’s death in 1528 he had been two years an orphan.  Lionardo was ailing, and the old man wearied to return.  His two sons, Gismondo and Giansimone, had promised to fetch him home when the country should be safe for travelling.  But they delayed; and at last, upon the 30th of September, Lodovico wrote as follows to Michelangelo:  “Some time since I directed a letter to Gismondo, from whom you have probably learned that I am staying here, and, indeed, too long; for the flight of Buonarroto’s pure soul to heaven, and my own need and earnest desire to come home, and Nardo’s state of health, all makes me restless.  The boy has been for some days out of health and pining, and I am anxious about him.”  It is probable that some means were found for escorting them both safely to Settignano.  We hear no more about Lodovico till the period of his death, the date of which has not been ascertained with certainty.

From the autumn of 1530 on to the end of 1533 Michelangelo worked at the Medicean monuments.  His letters are singularly scanty during all this period, but we possess sufficient information from other sources to enable us to reconstruct a portion of his life.  What may be called the chronic malady of his existence, that never-ending worry with the tomb of Julius, assumed an acute form again in the spring of 1531.  The correspondence with Sebastiano del Piombo, which had been interrupted since 1525, now becomes plentiful, and enables us to follow some of the steps which led to the new and solemn contract of May 1532.

It is possible that Michelangelo thought he ought to go to Rome in the beginning of the year.  If we are right in ascribing a letter written by Benvenuto della Volpaia from Rome upon the 18th of January to the year 1531, and not to 1532, he must have already decided on this step.  The document is curious in several respects.  “Yours of the 13th informs me that you want a room.  I shall be delighted if I can be of service to you in this matter; indeed, it is nothing in respect to what I should like to do for you.  I can offer you a chamber or two without the least inconvenience; and you could not confer on me a greater pleasure than by taking up your abode with me in either of the two places which I will now describe.  His Holiness has placed me in the Belvedere, and made me guardian there.  To-morrow my things will be carried thither, for a permanent establishment; and I can place at your disposal a room with a bed and everything you want.  You can even enter by the gate outside the city, which opens into the spiral staircase, and reach your apartment and mine without passing through Rome.  From here I can let you into the palace, for I keep a key at