The year 1549 is marked by an exchange of civilities between Michelangelo and Benedetto Varchi.  The learned man of letters and minute historiographer of Florence probably enjoyed our great sculptor’s society in former years:  recently they had been brought into closer relations at Rome.  Varchi, who was interested in critical and academical problems, started the question whether sculpture or painting could justly claim a priority in the plastic arts.  He conceived the very modern idea of collecting opinions from practical craftsmen, instituting, in fact, what would now be called a “Symposium” upon the subject.  A good number of the answers to his query have been preserved, and among them is a letter from Michelangelo.  It contains the following passage, which proves in how deep a sense Buonarroti was by temperament and predilection a sculptor:  “My opinion is that all painting is the better the nearer it approaches to relief, and relief is the worse in proportion as it inclines to painting.  And so I have been wont to think that sculpture is the lamp of painting, and that the difference between them might be likened to the difference between the sun and moon.  Now that I have read your essay, in which you maintain that, philosophically speaking, things which fulfil the same purpose are essentially the same, I have altered my view.  Therefore I say that, if greater judgment and difficulty, impediment and labour, in the handling of material do not constitute higher nobility, then painting and sculpture form one art.  This being granted, it follows that no painter should underrate sculpture, and no sculptor should make light of painting.  By sculpture I understand an art which operates by taking away superfluous material; by painting, one that attains its result by laying on.  It is enough that both emanate from the same human intelligence, and consequently sculpture and painting ought to live in amity together, without these lengthy disputations.  More time is wasted in talking about the problem than would go to the making of figures in both species.  The man who wrote that painting was superior to sculpture, if he understood the other things he says no better, might be called a writer below the level of my maid-servant.  There are infinite points not yet expressed which might be brought out regarding these arts; but, as I have said, they want too much time; and of time I have but little, being not only old, but almost numbered with the dead.  Therefore, I pray you to have me excused.  I recommend myself to you, and thank you to the best of my ability for the too great honour you have done me, which is more than I deserve.”

Varchi printed this letter in a volume which he published at Florence in 1549, and reissued through another firm in 1590.  It contained the treatise alluded to above, and also a commentary upon one of Michelangelo’s sonnets, “Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto.”  The book was duly sent to Michelangelo by the favour of a noble Florentine gentleman, Luca Martini.  He responded to the present in a letter which deserves here to be recited.  It is an eminent example of the urbanity observed by him in the interchange of these and similar courtesies:—­