The architect and sculptor was coveted by every pope and prince in Italy.  Still there remained a discord between his political instincts, however prudently and privately indulged, and his sense of personal loyalty to the family at whose board he sat in youth, and to whom he owed his advancement in life.  Accordingly, we shall find that, though the Duke of Tuscany made advances to win him back to Florence, Michelangelo always preferred to live and die on neutral ground in Rome.  Like the wise man that he was, he seems to have felt through these troublous times that his own duty, the service laid on him by God and nature, was to keep his force and mental faculties for art; obliging old patrons in all kindly offices, suppressing republican aspirations—­in one word, “sticking to his last,” and steering clear of shoals on which the main raft of his life might founder.

From this digression, which was needful to explain his attitude toward Florence and part of his psychology, I return to the incidents of Michelangelo’s illness at Rome in 1544.  Lionardo, having news of his uncle’s danger, came post-haste to Rome.  This was his simple duty, as a loving relative.  But the old man, rendered suspicious by previous transactions with his family, did not take the action in its proper light.  We have a letter, indorsed by Lionardo in Rome as received upon the 11th of July, to this effect:  “Lionardo, I have been ill; and you, at the instance of Ser Giovan Francesco (probably Fattucci), have come to make me dead, and to see what I have left.  Is there not enough of mine at Florence to content you?  You cannot deny that you are the image of your father, who turned me out of my own house in Florence.  Know that I have made a will of such tenor that you need not trouble your head about what I possess at Rome.  Go then with God, and do not present yourself before me; and do not write to me again, and act like the priest in the fable.”

The correspondence between uncle and nephew during the next months proves that this furious letter wrought no diminution of mutual regard and affection.  Before the end of the year he must have recovered, for we find him writing to Del Riccio:  “I am well again now, and hope to live yet some years, seeing that God has placed my health under the care of Maestro Baccio Rontini and the trebbian wine of the Ulivieri.”  This letter is referred to January 1545, and on the 9th of that month he dictated a letter to his friend Del Riccio, in which he tells Lionardo Buonarroti:  “I do not feel well, and cannot write.  Nevertheless I have recovered from my illness, and suffer no pain now.”  We have reason to think that Michelangelo fell gravely ill again toward the close of 1545.  News came to Florence that he was dying; and Lionardo, not intimidated by his experience on the last occasion, set out to visit him.  His ricordo of the journey was as follows:  “I note how on the 15th of January 1545 (Flor. style, i.e. 1546) I went to Rome by post to see Michelangelo, who was ill, and returned to-day, the 26th.”