him.  When he knew the sculptor’s name, he promised to carve the mortar, on the condition that it should be paid for at the sculptor’s valuation.  This was settled, and the mortar turned out a miracle of arabesques and masks and grotesque inventions, wonderfully wrought and polished.  In due course of time the mortar was taken to the envious and suspicious sculptor, who stood dumbfounded before it, and told the customer that there was nothing left but to carry this masterpiece of carving back to him who fashioned it, and order a plain article for himself.—­At Modena he inspected the terra-cotta groups by Antonio Begarelli, enthusiastically crying out, “If this clay could become marble, woe to antique statuary.”—­A Florentine citizen once saw him gazing at Donatello’s statue of S. Mark upon the outer wall of Orsanmichele.  On being asked what he thought of it, Michelangelo replied, “I never saw a figure which so thoroughly represents a man of probity; if S. Mark was really like that, we have every reason to believe everything which he has said.”  To the S. George in the same place he is reported to have given the word of command, “March!”—­Some one showed him a set of medals by Alessandro Cesari, upon which he exclaimed, “The death hour of art has struck; nothing more perfect can be seen than these.”—­Before Titian’s portrait of Duke Alfonso di Ferrara he observed that he had not thought art could perform so much, adding that Titian alone deserved the name of painter.—­He was wont to call Cronaca’s church of S. Francesco al Monte “his lovely peasant girl,” and Ghiberti’s doors in the Florentine Baptistery “the Gates of Paradise.”—­Somebody showed him a boy’s drawings, and excused their imperfection by pleading that he had only just begun to study:  “That is obvious,” he answered.  A similar reply is said to have been made to Vasari, when he excused his own frescoes in the Cancelleria at Rome by saying they had been painted in a few days.—­An artist showed him a Pieta which he had finished:  “Yes, it is indeed a pieta (pitiful object) to see.”—­Ugo da Carpi signed one of his pictures with a legend declaring he had not used a brush on it:  “It would have been better had he done so.”—­Sebastiano del Piombo was ordered to paint a friar in a chapel at S. Pietro a Montorio.  Michelangelo observed, “He will spoil the chapel.”  Asked why, he answered, “When the friars have spoiled the world, which is so large, it surely is an easy thing for them to spoil such a tiny chapel.”—­A sculptor put together a number of figures imitated from the antique, and thought he had surpassed his models.  Michelangelo remarked, “One who walks after another man, never goes in front of him; and one who is not able to do well by his own wit, will not be able to profit by the works of others.”—­A painter produced some notably poor picture, in which only an ox was vigorously drawn:  “Every artist draws his own portrait best,” said Michelangelo.—­He went to see a statue which was in the sculptor’s