Why he did so was not known; but some surmised that he wanted to keep certain pieces of it by him for his own use; some, that he wished to deprive young men of its advantages in study; some, that he was moved by affection for Lionardo da Vinci, who suffered much in reputation by this design; some, perhaps with sharper intuition, believed that the hatred he bore to Michelangelo inspired him to commit the act.  The loss of the Cartoon to the city was no slight one, and Baccio deserved the blame he got, for everybody called him envious and spiteful.”  This second version stands in glaring contradiction to the first, both as regards the date and the place where the Cartoon was destroyed.  It does not, I think, deserve credence, for Cellini, who was a boy of twelve in 1512, could hardly have drawn from it before that date; and if Bandinelli was so notorious for his malignant vandalism as Vasari asserts, it is most improbable that Cellini, while speaking of the Cartoon in connection with Torrigiano, should not have taken the opportunity to cast a stone at the man whom he detested more than any one in Florence.  Moreover, if Bandinelli had wanted to destroy the Cartoon for any of the reasons above assigned to him, he would not have dispersed fragments to be treasured up with reverence.  At the close of this tedious summary I ought to add that Condivi expressly states:  “I do not know by what ill-fortune it subsequently came to ruin.”  He adds, however, that many of the pieces were found about in various places, and that all of them were preserved like sacred objects.  We have, then, every reason to believe that the story told in Vasari’s first edition is the literal truth.  Copyists and engravers used their opportunity, when the palace of the Medici was thrown into disorder by the severe illness of the Duke of Nemours, to take away portions of Michelangelo’s Cartoon for their own use in 1516.

Of the Cartoon and its great reputation, Cellini gives us this account:  “Michelangelo portrayed a number of foot-soldiers, who, the season being summer, had gone to bathe in the Arno.  He drew them at the very moment the alarm is sounded, and the men all naked run to arms; so splendid is their action, that nothing survives of ancient or of modern art, which touches the same lofty point of excellence; and, as I have already said, the design of the great Lionardo was itself most admirably beautiful.  These two Cartoons stood, one in the palace of the Medici, the other in the hall of the Pope.  So long as they remained intact, they were the school of the world.  Though the divine Michelangelo in later life finished that great chapel of Pope Julius (the Sistine), he never rose halfway to the same pitch of power; his genius never afterwards attained to the force of those first studies.”  Allowing for some exaggeration due to enthusiasm for things enjoyed in early youth, this is a very remarkable statement.  Cellini knew the frescoes of the Sistine well, yet he maintains that they were inferior in power and beauty to the Battle of Pisa.  It seems hardly credible; but, if we believe it, the legend of Michelangelo’s being unable to execute his own designs for the vault of that chapel falls to the ground.