This ghost-story bears a remarkable resemblance to what Clarendon relates concerning the apparition of Sir George Villiers.  Wishing to warn his son, the Duke of Buckingham, of his coming murder at the hand of Lieutenant Felton, he did not appear to the Duke himself, but to an old man-servant of the family; upon which behaviour of Sir George’s ghost the same criticism has been passed as on that of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Michelangelo and his two friends travelled across the Apennines to Bologna, and thence to Venice, where they stopped a few days.  Want of money, or perhaps of work there drove them back upon the road to Florence.  When they reached Bologna on the return journey, a curious accident happened to the party.  The master of the city, Giovanni Bentivoglio, had recently decreed that every foreigner, on entering the gates, should be marked with a seal of red wax upon his thumb.  The three Florentines omitted to obey this regulation, and were taken to the office of the Customs, where they were fined fifty Bolognese pounds.  Michelangelo did not possess enough to pay this fine; but it so happened that a Bolognese nobleman called Gianfrancesco Aldovrandi was there, who, hearing that Buonarroti was a sculptor, caused the men to be released.  Upon his urgent invitation, Michelangelo went to this gentleman’s house, after taking leave of his two friends and giving them all the money in his pocket.  With Messer Aldovrandi he remained more than a year, much honoured by his new patron, who took great delight in his genius; “and every evening he made Michelangelo read aloud to him out of Dante or Petrarch, and sometimes Boccaccio, until he went to sleep.”  He also worked upon the tomb of San Domenico during this first residence at Bologna.  Originally designed and carried forward by Niccolo Pisano, this elaborate specimen of mediaeval sculpture remained in some points imperfect.  There was a San Petronio whose drapery, begun by Niccolo da Bari, was unfinished.  To this statue Michelangelo put the last touches; and he also carved a kneeling angel with a candelabrum, the workmanship of which surpasses in delicacy of execution all the other figures on the tomb.

III

Michelangelo left Bologna hastily.  It is said that a sculptor who had expected to be employed upon the arca of S. Domenic threatened to do him some mischief if he stayed and took the bread out of the mouths of native craftsmen.  He returned to Florence some time in 1495.  The city was now quiet again, under the rule of Savonarola.  Its burghers, in obedience to the friar’s preaching, began to assume that air of pietistic sobriety which contrasted strangely with the gay licentiousness encouraged by their former master.  Though the reigning branch of the Medici remained in exile, their distant cousins, who were descended from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo, Pater Patriae, kept their place in the republic.