studio, waiting to be exposed before the public.  The man bustled about altering the lights, in order to show his work off to the best advantage:  “Do not take this trouble; what really matters will be the light of the piazza;” meaning that the people in the long-run decide what is good or bad in art.—­Accused of want of spirit in his rivalry with Nanni di Baccio Bigio, he retorted, “Men who fight with folk of little worth win nothing.”—­A priest who was a friend of his said, “It is a pity that you never married, for you might have had many children, and would have left them all the profit and honour of your labours.”  Michelangelo answered, “I have only too much of a wife in this art of mine.  She has always kept me struggling on.  My children will be the works I leave behind me.  Even though they are worth naught, yet I shall live awhile in them.  Woe to Lorenzo Ghiberti if he had not made the gates of S. Giovanni!  His children and grandchildren have sold and squandered the substance that he left.  The gates are still in their places.”

VII

This would be an appropriate place to estimate Michelangelo’s professional gains in detail, to describe the properties he acquired in lands and houses, and to give an account of his total fortune.  We are, however, not in the position to do this accurately.  We only know the prices paid for a few of his minor works.  He received, for instance, thirty ducats for the Sleeping Cupid, and 450 ducats for the Pieta of S. Peter’s.  He contracted with Cardinal Piccolomini to furnish fifteen statues for 500 ducats.  In all of these cases the costs of marble, workmen, workshop, fell on him.  He contracted with Florence to execute the David in two years, at a salary of six golden florins per month, together with a further sum when the work was finished.  It appears that 400 florins in all (including salary) were finally adjudged to him.  In these cases all incidental expenses had been paid by his employers.  He contracted with the Operai del Duomo to make twelve statues in as many years, receiving two florins a month, and as much as the Operai thought fit to pay him when the whole was done.  Here too he was relieved from incidental expenses.  For the statue of Christ at S. Maria sopra Minerva he was paid 200 crowns.

These are a few of the most trustworthy items we possess, and they are rendered very worthless by the impossibility of reducing ducats, florins, and crowns to current values.  With regard to the bronze statue of Julius II. at Bologna, Michelangelo tells us that he received in advance 1000 ducats, and when he ended his work there remained only 4-1/2 ducats to the good.  In this case, as in most of his great operations, he entered at the commencement into a contract with his patron, sending in an estimate of what he thought it would be worth his while to do the work for.  The Italian is “pigliare a cottimo;” and in all of his dealings with successive Popes Michelangelo