It is worth observing that only the first of these letters, written shortly after the event, and intended for the Pope’s ear, contains a hint of Michelangelo’s dread of personal violence if he remained in Rome.  His words seem to point at poison or the dagger.  Cellini’s autobiography yields sufficient proof that such fears were not unjustified by practical experience; and Bramante, though he preferred to work by treachery of tongue, may have commanded the services of assassins, uomini arditi e facinorosi, as they were somewhat euphemistically called.  At any rate, it is clear that Michelangelo’s precipitate departure and vehement refusal to return were occasioned by more pungent motives than the Pope’s frigidity.  This has to be noticed, because we learn from several incidents of the same kind in the master’s life that he was constitutionally subject to sudden fancies and fears of imminent danger to his person from an enemy.  He had already quitted Bologna in haste from dread of assassination or maltreatment at the hands of native sculptors.

VI

The negotiations which passed between the Pope and the Signory of Florence about what may be called the extradition of Michelangelo form a curious episode in his biography, throwing into powerful relief the importance he had already acquired among the princes of Italy.  I propose to leave these for the commencement of my next chapter, and to conclude the present with an account of his occupations during the summer months at Florence.

Signor Gotti says that he passed three months away from Julius in his native city.  Considering that he arrived before the end of April, and reached Bologna at the end of November 1506, we have the right to estimate this residence at about seven months.  A letter written to him from Rome on the 4th of August shows that he had not then left Florence upon any intermediate journey of importance.  Therefore there is every reason to suppose that he enjoyed a period of half a year of leisure, which he devoted to finishing his Cartoon for the Battle of Pisa.

It had been commenced, as we have seen, in a workshop at the Spedale dei Tintori.  When he went to Bologna in the autumn, it was left, exposed presumably to public view, in the Sala del Papa at S. Maria Novella.  It had therefore been completed; but it does not appear that Michelangelo had commenced his fresco in the Sala del Gran Consiglio.

Lionardo began to paint his Battle of the Standard in March 1505.  The work advanced rapidly; but the method he adopted, which consisted in applying oil colours to a fat composition laid thickly on the wall, caused the ruin of his picture.  He is said to have wished to reproduce the encaustic process of the ancients, and lighted fires to harden the surface of the fresco.  This melted the wax in the lower portions of the paste, and made the colours run.  At any rate, no traces of the painting now remain in the Sala del Gran Consiglio, the walls of which are covered by the mechanical and frigid brush-work of Vasari.  It has even been suggested that Vasari knew more about the disappearance of his predecessor’s masterpiece than he has chosen to relate.  Lionardo’s Cartoon has also disappeared, and we know the Battle of Anghiari only by Edelinck’s engraving from a drawing of Rubens, and by some doubtful sketches.