The case is different with a superb engraving by Giulio Bonasoni, a profile in a circle, dated 1546, and giving Buonarroti’s age as seventy-two.  This shows the man in fuller vigour than the portraits we have hitherto been dealing with.  From other prints which bear the signature of Bonasoni, we see that he was interested in faithfully reproducing Michelangelo’s work.  What the relations between the two men were remains uncertain, but Bonasoni may have had opportunities of studying the master’s person.  At any rate, as a product of the burin, this profile is comparable for fidelity and veracity with Leoni’s model, and is executed in the same medallion spirit.

So far, then, as I have yet pursued the analysis of Michelangelo’s portraits, I take Bonasoni’s engraving to be decisive for Michelangelo’s appearance at the age of seventy; Leoni’s model as of equal or of greater value at the age of eighty; Venusti’s and Da Volterra’s paintings as of some importance for this later period; while I leave the attribution of minor easel-pictures to Del Conte or to Bugiardini open.

It remains to speak of that “full relief in bronze made by Daniele da Volterra,” which Vasari mentions among the four genuine portraits of Buonarroti.  From the context we should gather that this head was executed during the lifetime of Michelangelo, and the conclusion is supported by the fact that only a few pages later on Vasari mentions two other busts modelled after his death.  Describing the catafalque erected to his honour in S. Lorenzo, he says that the pyramid which crowned the structure exhibited within two ovals (one turned toward the chief door, and the other toward the high altar) “the head of Michelangelo in relief, taken from nature, and very excellently carried out by Santi Buglioni.”  The words ritratta dal naturale do not, I think, necessarily imply that it was modelled from the life.  Owing to the circumstances under which Michelangelo’s obsequies were prepared, there was not time to finish it in bronze of stone; it may therefore have been one of those Florentine terra-cotta effigies which artists elaborated from a cast taken after death.  That there existed such a cast is proved by what we know about the monument designed by Vasari in S. Croce.  “One of the statues was assigned to Battista Lorenzi, an able sculptor, together with the head of Michelangelo.”  We learn from another source that this bust in marble “was taken from the mask cast after his death.”

The custom of taking plaster casts from the faces of the illustrious dead, in order to perpetuate their features, was so universal in Italy, that it could hardly have been omitted in the case of Michelangelo.  The question now arises whether the bronze head ascribed by Vasari to Daniele da Volterra was executed during Michelangelo’s lifetime or after his decease, and whether we possess it.  There are eight heads of this species known to students of Michelangelo, which correspond so nicely in their measurements and