Both Sebastiano del Piombo and Giorgio Vasari were appreciated by Michelangelo for their lively parts and genial humour.  The latter has told an anecdote which illustrates the old man’s eccentricity.  He was wont to wear a cardboard hat at night, into which he stuck a candle, and then worked by its light upon his statue of the Pieta.  Vasari observing this habit, wished to do him a kindness by sending him 40 lbs. of candles made of goat’s fat, knowing that they gutter less than ordinary dips of tallow.  His servant carried them politely to the house two hours after nightfall, and presented them to Michelangelo.  He refused, and said he did not want them.  The man answered, “Sir, they have almost broken my arms carrying them all this long way from the bridge, nor will I take them home again.  There is a heap of mud opposite your door, thick and firm enough to hold them upright.  Here then will I set them all up, and light them.”  When Michelangelo heard this, he gave way:  “Lay them down; I do not mean you to play pranks at my house-door.”  Varsari tells another anecdote about the Pieta.  Pope Julius III. sent him late one evening to Michelangelo’s house for some drawing.  The old man came down with a lantern, and hearing what was wanted, told Urbino to look for the cartoon.  Meanwhile, Vasari turned his attention to one of the legs of Christ, which Michelangelo had been trying to alter.  In order to prevent his seeing, Michelangelo let the lamp fall, and they remained in darkness.  He then called for a light, and stepped forth from the enclosure of planks behind which he worked.  As he did so, he remarked, “I am so old that Death oftentimes plucks me by the cape to go with him, and one day this body of mine will fall like the lantern, and the light of life will be put out.”  Of death he used to say, that “if life gives us pleasure, we ought not to expect displeasure from death, seeing as it is made by the hand of the same master.”

Among stories relating to craftsmen, these are perhaps worth gleaning.  While he was working on the termini for the tomb of Julius, he gave directions to a certain stone-cutter:  “Remove such and such parts here to-day, smooth out in this place, and polish up in that.”  In the course of time, without being aware of it, the man found that he had produced a statue, and stared astonished at his own performance.  Michelangelo asked, “What do you think of it?” “I think it very good,” he answered, “and I owe you a deep debt of gratitude.”  “Why do you say that?” “Because you have caused me to discover in myself a talent which I did not know that I possessed.”—­A certain citizen, who wanted a mortar, went to a sculptor and asked him to make one.  The fellow, suspecting some practical joke, pointed out Buonarroti’s house, and said that if he wanted mortars, a man lived there whose trade it was to make them.  The customer accordingly addressed himself to Michelangelo, who, in his turn suspecting a trick, asked who had sent