you were an infidel, than, being a believer, thus to sap the faith of others.  Up to the present time the splendour of such audacious marvels hath not gone unpunished; for their very superexcellence is the death of your good name.  Restore them to repute by turning the indecent parts of the damned to flames, and those of the blessed to sunbeams; or imitate the modesty of Florence, who hides your David’s shame beneath some gilded leaves.  And yet that statue is exposed upon a public square, not in a consecrated chapel.

“As I wish that God may pardon you, I do not write this out of any resentment for the things I begged of you.  In truth, if you had sent me what you promised, you would only have been doing what you ought to have desired most eagerly to do in your own interest; for this act of courtesy would silence the envious tongues which say that only certain Gerards and Thomases dispose of them.

“Well, if the treasure bequeathed you by Pope Julius, in order that you might deposit his ashes in an urn of your own carving, was not enough to make you keep your plighted word, what can I expect from you?  It is not your ingratitude, your avarice, great painter, but the grace and merit of the Supreme Shepherd, which decide his fame.  God wills that Julius should live renowned for ever in a simple tomb, inurned in his own merits, and not in some proud monument dependent on your genius.  Meantime, your failure to discharge your obligations is reckoned to you as an act of thieving.

“Our souls need the tranquil emotions of piety more than the lively impressions of plastic art.  May God, then, inspire his Holiness Paul with the same thoughts as he instilled into Gregory of blessed memory, who rather chose to despoil Rome of the proud statues of the Pagan deities than to let their magnificence deprive the humbler images of the saints of the devotion of the people.

“Lastly, when you set about composing your picture of the universe and hell and heaven, if you had steeped your heart with those suggestions of glory, of honour, and of terror proper to the theme which I sketched out and offered to you in the letter I wrote you and the whole world reads, I venture to assert that not only would nature and all kind influences cease to regret the illustrious talents they endowed you with, and which to-day render you, by virtue of your art, an image of the marvellous:  but Providence, who sees all things, would herself continue to watch over such a masterpiece, so long as order lasts in her government of the hemispheres.

“Your servant,
“The Aretine.

“Now that I have blown off some of the rage I feel against you for the cruelty you used to my devotion, and have taught you to see that, while you may be divine, I am not made of water, I bid you tear up this letter, for I have done the like, and do not forget that I am one to whose epistles kings and emperors reply.

“To the great Michelangelo Buonarroti in Rome.”