After making due allowance for Vasari’s too notorious inaccuracies, deliberate misstatements, and random jumpings at conclusions, we have the right to accept him here as a first-rate authority.  He was living at this time in close intimacy with Buonarroti, enjoyed his confidence, plumed himself upon their friendship, and had no reason to distort truth, which must have been accessible to one in his position.  He says, then:  “At this time the Cavaliere Leoni made a very lively portrait of Michelangelo upon a medal, and to meet his wishes, modelled on the reverse a blind man led by a dog, with this legend round the rim:  DOCEBO INIQUOS VIAS TUAS, ET IMPII AD TE CONVERTENTUR.  It pleased Michelangelo so much that he gave him a wax model of a Hercules throttling Antaeus, by his own hand, together with some drawings.  Of Michelangelo there exist no other portraits, except two in painting—­one by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte; and one in bronze, in full relief, made by Daniele da Volterra:  these, and Leoni’s medal, from which (in the plural) many copies have been made, and a great number of them have been seen by me in several parts of Italy and abroad.”

Leoni’s medal, on the obverse, shows the old artist’s head in profile, with strong lines of drapery rising to the neck and gathering around the shoulders.  It carries this legend:  MICHELANGELUS BUONARROTUS, FLO.  R.A.E.T.S.  ANN. 88, and is signed LEO.  Leoni then assumed that Michelangelo was eighty-eight years of age when he cast the die.  But if this was done in 1560, the age he had then attained was eighty-five.  We possess a letter from Leoni in Milan to Buonarroti in Rome, dated March 14, 1561.  In it he says:  “I am sending to your lordship, by the favour of Lord Carlo Visconti, a great man in this city, and beloved by his Holiness, four medals of your portrait:  two in silver, and two in bronze.  I should have done so earlier but for my occupation with the monument (of Medeghino), and for the certainty I feel that you will excuse my tardiness, if not a sin of ingratitude in me.  The one enclosed within the little box has been worked up to the finest polish.  I beg you to accept and keep this for the love of me.  With the other three you will do as you think best.  I say this because ambition has prompted me to send copies into Spain and Flanders, as I have also done to Rome and other places.  I call it ambition, forasmuch as I have gained an overplus of benefits by acquiring the good-will of your lordship, whom I esteem so highly.  Have I not received in little less than three months two letters written to me by you, divine man; and couched not in terms fit for a servant of good heart and will, but for one beloved as a son?  I pray you to go on loving me, and when occasion serves, to favour me; and to Signer Tomao dei Cavalieri say that I shall never be unmindful of him.”