It seems that Michael Angelo’s flight from Rome in 1506 was due not only to his disappointment about the tomb, but also to his fear lest Julius should give him uncongenial work to do.  Bramante, if we may believe the old story, had whispered that it was ill-omened for a man to build his own sepulchre, and that it would be well to employ the sculptor’s genius upon the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Accordingly, on his return to Rome in 1508, this new task was allotted him.  In vain did Michael Angelo remind his master of the months wasted in the quarries of Carrara; in vain he pointed to his designs for the monument, and pleaded that he was not a painter by profession.[313] Julius had made up his mind that he should paint the Sistine.  Was not the cartoon at Florence a sufficient proof that he could do this if he chose, and had he not learned the art of fresco in the bottega of his master Ghirlandajo?  Whatever his original reluctance may have been, it was speedily overcome; and the cartoons for the ceiling, projected with the unity belonging to a single great conception, were ready by the summer of 1508.[314]

The difficulty of his new task aroused the artist’s energy.  If we could accept the legend, whereby contemporaries expressed their admiration for this Titanic labour, we should have to believe the impossible—­that Michael Angelo ground his own colours, prepared his own plaster, and completed with his own hand the whole work, after having first conquered the obstacles of scaffolding and vault-painting by machines of his own invention,[315] and that only twenty months were devoted to the execution of a series of paintings almost unequalled in their delicacy, and surpassed by few single masterpieces in extent.  What may be called the mythus of the Sistine Chapel has at last been finally disproved, partly by the personal observations of Mr. Heath Wilson, and partly by the publication of Michael Angelo’s correspondence.[316] Though some uncertainty remains as to the exact dates of the commencement and completion of the vault, we now know that Michael Angelo continued painting it at intervals during four successive years; and though we are not accurately informed about his helpers, we no longer can doubt that able craftsmen yielded him assistance.  On May 10, 1508, he signed a receipt for five hundred ducats advanced by Julius for the necessary expenses of the undertaking; and on the next day he paid ten ducats to a mason for rough plastering and surface-finishing applied to the vault.  There is good reason to believe that he began his painting during the autumn of 1508.  On November 1, 1509, a certain portion was uncovered to the public; and before the end of the year 1512 the whole was completed.  Thus, though the legend of Vasari and Condivi has been stripped of the miraculous by careful observation and keen-sighted criticism, enough remains to justify the sense of wonder that expressed itself in their exaggerated statements.