that he said something of the sort, and Bramante was certainly no good friend to Michelangelo.  A manoeuvring and managing individual, entirely unscrupulous in his choice of means, condescending to flattery and lies, he strove to stand as patron between the Pope and subordinate craftsmen.  Michelangelo had come to Rome under San Gallo’s influence, and Bramante had just succeeded in winning the commission to rebuild S. Peter’s over his rival’s head.  It was important for him to break up San Gallo’s party, among whom the sincere and uncompromising Michelangelo threatened to be very formidable.  The jealousy which he felt for the man was envenomed by a fear lest he should speak the truth about his own dishonesty.  To discredit Michelangelo with the Pope, and, if possible, to drive him out of Rome, was therefore Bramante’s interest:  more particularly as his own nephew, Raffaello da Urbino, had now made up his mind to join him there.  We shall see that he succeeded in expelling both San Gallo and Buonarroti during the course of 1506, and that in their absence he reigned, together with Raffaello, almost alone in the art-circles of the Eternal City.

I see no reason, therefore, to discredit the story told by Condivi and Vasari regarding the Pope’s growing want of interest in his tomb.  Michelangelo himself, writing from Rome in 1542, thirty-six years after these events, says that “all the dissensions between Pope Julius and me arose from the envy of Bramante and Raffaello da Urbino, and this was the cause of my not finishing the tomb in his lifetime.  They wanted to ruin me.  Raffaello indeed had good reason; for all he had of art he owed to me.”  But, while we are justified in attributing much to Bramante’s intrigues, it must be remembered that the Pope at this time was absorbed in his plans for conquering Bologna.  Overwhelmed with business and anxious about money, he could not have had much leisure to converse with sculptors.

Michelangelo was still in Rome at the end of January.  On the 31st of that month he wrote to his father, complaining that the marbles did not arrive quickly enough, and that he had to keep Julius in good humour with promises.  At the same time he begged Lodovico to pack up all his drawings, and to send them, well secured against bad weather, by the hand of a carrier.  It is obvious that he had no thoughts of leaving Rome, and that the Pope was still eager about the monument.  Early in the spring he assisted at the discovery of the Laocoon.  Francesco, the son of Giuliano da San Gallo, describes how Michelangelo was almost always at his father’s house; and coming there one day, he went, at the architect’s invitation, down to the ruins of the Palace of Titus.  “We set off, all three together; I on my father’s shoulders.  When we descended into the place where the statue lay, my father exclaimed at once, ’That is the Laocoon, of which Pliny speaks.’  The opening was enlarged, so that it could be taken out; and after we had sufficiently admired it, we went home to breakfast.”  Julius bought the marble for 500 crowns, and had it placed in the Belvedere of the Vatican.  Scholars praised it in Latin lines of greater or lesser merit, Sadoleto writing even a fine poem; and Michelangelo is said, but without trustworthy authority, to have assisted in its restoration.