The old reckoning of the time consumed by Michelangelo in painting the roof of the Sistine, and the traditions concerning his mode of work there, are clearly fabulous.  Condivi says:  “He finished the whole in twenty months, without having any assistance whatsoever, not even of a man to grind his colours.”  From a letter of September 7, 1510, we learn that the scaffolding was going to be put up again, and that he was preparing to work upon the lower portion of the vaulting.  Nearly two years elapse before we hear of it again.  He writes to Buonarroto on the 24th of July 1512:  “I am suffering greater hardships than ever man endured, ill, and with overwhelming labour; still I put up with all in order to reach the desired end.”  Another letter on the 21st of August shows that he expects to complete his work at the end of September; and at last, in October, he writes to his father:  “I have finished the chapel I was painting.  The Pope is very well satisfied.”  On the calculation that he began the first part on May 10, 1508, and finished the whole in October 1512, four years and a half were employed upon the work.  A considerable part of this time was of course taken up with the preparation of Cartoons; and the nature of fresco-painting rendered the winter months not always fit for active labour.  The climate of Rome is not so mild but that wet plaster might often freeze and crack during December, January, and February.  Besides, with all his superhuman energy, Michelangelo could not have painted straight on daily without rest or stop.  It seems, too, that the master was often in need of money, and that he made two journeys to the Pope to beg for supplies.  In the letter to Fattucci he says:  “When the vault was nearly finished, the Pope was again at Bologna; whereupon, I went twice to get the necessary funds, and obtained nothing, and lost all that time until I came back to Rome.  When I reached Rome, I began to make Cartoons—­that is, for the ends and sides of the said chapel, hoping to get money at last and to complete the work.  I never could extract a farthing; and when I complained one day to Messer Bernardo da Bibbiena and to Atalante, representing that I could not stop longer in Rome, and that I should be forced to go away with God’s grace, Messer Bernardo told Atalante he must bear this in mind, for that he wished me to have money, whatever happened.”  When we consider, then, the magnitude of the undertaking, the arduous nature of the preparatory studies, and the waste of time in journeys and through other hindrances, four and a half years are not too long a period for a man working so much alone as Michelangelo was wont to do.