On the following day, February 19, Averardo Serristori, the Florentine envoy in Rome, sent a despatch to the Duke, informing him of Michelangelo’s decease:  “This morning, according to an arrangement I had made, the Governor sent to take an inventory of all the articles found in his house.  These were few, and very few drawings.  However, what was there they duly registered.  The most important object was a box sealed with several seals, which the Governor ordered to be opened in the presence of Messer Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Maestro Daniele da Volterra, who had been sent for by Michelangelo before his death.  Some seven or eight thousand crowns were found in it, which have now been deposited with the Ubaldini bankers.  This was the command issued by the Governor, and those whom it concerns will have to go there to get the money.  The people of the house will be examined as to whether anything has been carried away from it.  This is not supposed to have been the case.  As far as drawings are concerned, they say that he burned what he had by him before he died.  What there is shall be handed over to his nephew when he comes, and this your Excellency can inform him.”

The objects of art discovered in Michelangelo’s house were a blocked-out statue of S. Peter, an unfinished Christ with another figure, and a statuette of Christ with the cross, resembling the Cristo Risorto of S. Maria Sopra Minerva.  Ten original drawings were also catalogued, one of which (a Pieta) belonged to Tommaso dei Cavalieri; another (an Epiphany) was given to the notary, while the rest came into the possession of Lionardo Buonarroti.  The cash-box, which had been sealed by Tommaso dei Cavalieri and Diomede Leoni, was handed over to the Ubaldini, and from them it passed to Lionardo Buonarroti at the end of February.

II

Lionardo travelled by post to Rome, but did not arrive until three days after his uncle’s death.  He began at once to take measures for the transport of Michelangelo’s remains to Florence, according to the wish of the old man, frequently expressed and solemnly repeated two days before his death.  The corpse had been deposited in the Church of the SS.  Apostoli, where the funeral was celebrated with becoming pomp by all the Florentines in Rome, and by artists of every degree.  The Romans had come to regard Buonarroti as one of themselves, and, when the report went abroad that he had expressed a wish to be buried in Florence, they refused to believe it, and began to project a decent monument to his memory in the Church of the SS.  Apostoli.  In order to secure his object, Lionardo was obliged to steal the body away, and to despatch it under the guise of mercantile goods to the custom-house of Florence.  Vasari wrote to him from that city upon the 10th of March, informing him that the packing-case had duly arrived, and had been left under seals until his, Lionardo’s, arrival at the custom-house.