That he inherited some landed property at Settignano from his father is certain; and he added several plots of ground to the paternal acres.  He also is said to have bought a farm in Valdichiana (doubtful), and other pieces of land in Tuscany.  He owned a house at Rome, a house and workshop in the Via Mozza at Florence, and he purchased the Casa Buonarroti in Via Ghibellina.  But we have no means of determining the total value of these real assets.

In these circumstances I feel unable to offer any probable opinion regarding the amount of Michelangelo’s professional earnings, or the exact way in which they were acquired.  That he died possessed of a considerable fortune, and that he was able during his lifetime to assist his family with large donations, cannot be disputed.  But how he came to command so much money does not appear.  His frugality, bordering upon penuriousness, impressed contemporaries.  This, considering the length of his life, may account for not contemptible accumulations.

VIII

We have seen that Michelangelo’s contemporaries found fault with several supposed frailties of his nature.  These may be briefly catalogued under the following heads:  A passionate violence of temper (terribilita), expressing itself in hasty acts and words; extreme suspiciousness and irritability; solitary habits, amounting to misanthropy or churlishness; eccentricity and melancholy bordering on madness; personal timidity and avarice; a want of generosity in imparting knowledge, and an undue partiality for handsome persons of his own sex.  His biographers, Condivi and Vasari, thought these charges worthy of serious refutation, which proves that they were current.  They had no difficulty in showing that his alleged misanthropy, melancholy, and madness were only signs of a studious nature absorbed in profound meditations.  They easily refuted the charges of avarice and want of generosity in helping on young artists.  But there remained a great deal in the popular conception which could not be dismissed, and which has recently been corroborated by the publication of his correspondence.  The opinion that Michelangelo was a man of peculiar, and in some respects not altogether healthy nervous temperament, will force itself upon all those who have fairly weighed the evidence of the letters in connection with the events of his life.  It has been developed in a somewhat exaggerated form, of late years, by several psychologists of the new school (Parlagreco and Lombroso in Italy, Nisbet in England), who attempt to prove that Michelangelo was the subject of neurotic disorder.  The most important and serious essay in this direction is a little book of great interest and almost hypercritical acumen published recently at Naples.  Signor Parlagreco lays great stress upon Michelangelo’s insensibility to women, his “strange and contradictory feeling about feminine beauty.”  He seeks to show, what is indeed,