We have reason to believe that, after all, the frescoes of the Sistine were not finished in their details.  “It is true,” continues Condivi, “that I have heard him say he was not suffered to complete the work according to his wish.  The Pope, in his impatience, asked him one day when he would be ready with the Chapel, and he answered:  ’When I shall be able.’  To which his Holiness replied in a rage:  ’You want to make me hurl you from that scaffold!’ Michelangelo heard and remembered, muttering:  ‘That you shall not do to me.’  So he went straightway, and had the scaffolding taken down.  The frescoes were exposed to view on All Saints’ day, to the great satisfaction of the Pope, who went that day to service there, while all Rome flocked together to admire them.  What Michelangelo felt forced to leave undone was the retouching of certain parts with ultramarine upon dry ground, and also some gilding, to give the whole a richer effect.  Giulio, when his heat cooled down, wanted Michelangelo to make these last additions; but he, considering the trouble it would be to build up all that scaffolding afresh, observed that what was missing mattered little.  ’You ought at least to touch it up with gold,’ replied the Pope; and Michelangelo, with that familiarity he used toward his Holiness, said carelessly:  ’I have not observed that men wore gold.’  The Pope rejoined:  ‘It will look poor.’  Buonarroti added:  ‘Those who are painted there were poor men.’  So the matter turned into pleasantry, and the frescoes have remained in their present state.”  Condivi goes on to state that Michelangelo received 3000 ducats for all his expenses, and that he spent as much as twenty or twenty-five ducats on colours alone.  Upon the difficult question of the moneys earned by the great artist in his life-work, I shall have to speak hereafter, though I doubt whether any really satisfactory account can now be given of them.

VIII

Michelangelo’s letters to his family in Florence throw a light at once vivid and painful over the circumstances of his life during these years of sustained creative energy.  He was uncomfortable in his bachelor’s home, and always in difficulties with his servants.  “I am living here in discontent, not thoroughly well, and undergoing great fatigue, without money, and with no one to look after me.”  Again, when one of his brothers proposed to visit him in Rome, he writes:  “I hear that Gismondo means to come hither on his affairs.  Tell him not to count on me for anything; not because I do not love him as a brother, but because I am not in the position to assist him.  I am bound to care for myself first, and I cannot provide myself with necessaries.  I live here in great distress and the utmost bodily fatigue, have no friends, and seek none.  I have not even time enough to eat what I require.  Therefore let no additional burdens be put upon me, for I could not bear another ounce.”