To conclude what I have said in this section about Michelangelo’s method of working on the marble, I must confirm what I have stated about his using both left and right hand while chiselling.  Raffaello da Montelupo, who was well acquainted with him personally, informs us of the fact:  “Here I may mention that I am in the habit of drawing with my left hand, and that once, at Rome, while I was sketching the Arch of Trajan from the Colosseum, Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo, both of whom were naturally left-handed (although they did not work with the left hand excepting when they wished to use great strength), stopped to see me, and expressed great wonder, no sculptor or painter ever having done so before me, as far as I know.”

V

If Vasari can be trusted, it was during this residence at Florence, when his hands were so fully occupied, that Michelangelo found time to carve the two tondi, Madonnas in relief enclosed in circular spaces, which we still possess.  One of them, made for Taddeo Taddei, is now at Burlington House, having been acquired by the Royal Academy through the medium of Sir George Beaumont.  This ranks among the best things belonging to that Corporation.  The other, made for Bartolommeo Pitti, will be found in the Palazzo del Bargello at Florence.  Of the two, that of our Royal Academy is the more ambitious in design, combining singular grace and dignity in the Madonna with action playfully suggested in the infant Christ and little S. John.  That of the Bargello is simpler, more tranquil, and more stately.  The one recalls the motive of the Bruges Madonna, the other almost anticipates the Delphic Sibyl.  We might fancifully call them a pair of native pearls or uncut gems, lovely by reason even of their sketchiness.  Whether by intention, as some critics have supposed, or for want of time to finish, as I am inclined to believe, these two reliefs are left in a state of incompleteness which is highly suggestive.  Taking the Royal Academy group first, the absolute roughness of the groundwork supplies an admirable background to the figures, which seem to emerge from it as though the whole of them were there, ready to be disentangled.  The most important portions of the composition—­Madonna’s head and throat, the drapery of her powerful breast, on which the child Christ reclines, and the naked body of the boy—­are wrought to a point which only demands finish.  Yet parts of these two figures remain undetermined.  Christ’s feet are still imprisoned in the clinging marble; His left arm and hand are only indicated, and His right hand is resting on a mass of broken stone, which hides a portion of His mother’s drapery, but leaves the position of her hand uncertain.  The infant S. John, upright upon his feet, balancing the chief group, is hazily subordinate.  The whole of his form looms blurred through the veil of stone, and what his two hands and arms are doing with the hidden