Vasari, speaking of four rough-hewn Captives, possibly the figures now in a grotto of the Boboli Gardens, says:  They are well adapted for teaching a beginner how to extract statues from the marble without injury to the stone.  The safe method which they illustrate may be described as follows.  You first take a model in wax or some other hard material, and place it lying in a vessel full of water.  The water, by its nature, presents a level surface; so that, if you gradually lift the model, the higher parts are first exposed, while the lower parts remain submerged; and, proceeding thus, the whole round shape at length appears above the water.  Precisely in the same way ought statues to be hewn out from the marble with the chisel; first uncovering the highest surfaces, and proceeding to disclose the lowest.  This method was followed by Michelangelo while blocking out the Captives, and therefore his Excellency the Duke was fain to have them used as models by the students in his Academy.  It need hardly be remarked that the ingenious process of “pointing the marble” by means of the “pointing machine” and “scale-stones,” which is at present universally in use among sculptors, had not been invented in the sixteenth century.

IV

I cannot omit a rather childish story which Vasari tells about the David.  After it had been placed upon its pedestal before the palace, and while the scaffolding was still there, Piero Soderini, who loved and admired Michelangelo, told him that he thought the nose too large.  The sculptor immediately ran up the ladder till he reached a point upon the level of the giant’s shoulder.  He then took his hammer and chisel, and, having concealed some dust of marble in the hollow of his hand, pretended to work off a portion from the surface of the nose.  In reality he left it as he found it; but Soderini, seeing the marble dust fall scattering through the air, thought that his hint had been taken.  When, therefore, Michelangelo called down to him, “Look at it now!” Soderini shouted up in reply, “I am far more pleased with it; you have given life to the statue.”

At this time Piero Soderini, a man of excellent parts and sterling character, though not gifted with that mixture of audacity and cunning which impressed the Renaissance imagination, was Gonfalonier of the Republic.  He had been elected to the supreme magistracy for life, and was practically Doge of Florence.  His friendship proved on more than one occasion of some service to Michelangelo; and while the gigantic David was in progress he gave the sculptor a new commission, the history of which must now engage us.  The Florentine envoys to France had already written in June 1501 from Lyons, saying that Pierre de Rohan, Marechal de Gie, who stood high in favour at the court of Louis XII., greatly desired a copy of the bronze David by Donatello in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio.  He appeared willing to pay for it, but the envoys