Julius would not listen to any arguments.  Accordingly, Michelangelo made up his mind to obey the patron whom he nicknamed his Medusa.  Bramante was commissioned to erect the scaffolding, which he did so clumsily, with beams suspended from the vault by huge cables, that Michelangelo asked how the holes in the roof would be stopped up when his painting was finished.  The Pope allowed him to take down Bramante’s machinery, and to raise a scaffold after his own design.  The rope alone which had been used, and now was wasted, enabled a poor carpenter to dower his daughter.  Michelangelo built his own scaffold free from the walls, inventing a method which was afterwards adopted by all architects for vault-building.  Perhaps he remembered the elaborate drawing he once made of Ghirlandajo’s assistants at work upon the ladders and wooden platforms at S. Maria Novella.

Knowing that he should need helpers in so great an undertaking, and also mistrusting his own ability to work in fresco, he now engaged several excellent Florentine painters.  Among these, says Vasari, were his friends Francesco Granacci and Giuliano Bugiardini, Bastiano da San Gallo surnamed Aristotele, Angelo di Donnino, Jacopo di Sandro, and Jacopo surnamed l’Indaco.  Vasari is probably accurate in his statement here; for we shall see that Michelangelo, in his Ricordi, makes mention of five assistants, two of whom are proved by other documents to have been Granacci and Indaco.  We also possess two letters from Granacci which show that Bugiardini, San Gallo, Angelo di Donnino, and Jacopo l’Indaco were engaged in July.  The second of Granacci’s letters refers to certain disputes and hagglings with the artists.  This may have brought Michelangelo to Florence, for he was there upon the 11th of August 1508, as appears from the following deed of renunciation:  “In the year of our Lord 1508, on the 11th day of August, Michelangelo, son of Lodovico di Lionardo di Buonarrota, repudiated the inheritance of his uncle Francesco by an instrument drawn up by the hand of Ser Giovanni di Guasparre da Montevarchi, notary of Florence, on the 27th of July 1508.”  When the assistants arrived at Rome is not certain.  It must, however, have been after the end of July.  The extracts from Michelangelo’s notebooks show that he had already sketched an agreement as to wages several weeks before.  “I record how on this day, the 10th of May 1508, I, Michelangelo, sculptor, have received from the Holiness of our Lord Pope Julius II. 500 ducats of the Camera, the which were paid me by Messer Carlino, chamberlain, and Messer Carlo degli Albizzi, on account of the painting of the vault of the Sistine Chapel, on which I begin to work to-day, under the conditions and contracts set forth in a document written by his Most Reverend Lordship of Pavia, and signed by my hand.

“For the painter-assistants who are to come from Florence, who will be five in number, twenty gold ducats of the Camera apiece, on this condition; that is to say, that when they are here and are working in harmony with me, the twenty ducats shall be reckoned to each man’s salary; the said salary to begin upon the day they leave Florence.  And if they do not agree with me, half of the said money shall be paid them for their travelling expenses, and for their time.”