FOOTNOTES: 

[289] See Vasari, vol. xii. p. 333, and Gotti’s Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, vol. i. p. 4, for a discussion of this claim, and for a letter written by Alessandro Count of Canossa, in 1520, to the artist.

[290] That Michael Angelo was contemptuous to brother artists, is proved by what Torrigiani said to Cellini:  “Aveva per usanza di uccellare tutti quelli che dissegnavano.”  He called Perugino goffo, told Francia’s son that his father made handsomer men by night than by day, and cast in Lionardo’s teeth that he could not finish the equestrian statue of the Duke of Milan.  It is therefore not improbable that when, according to the legend, he corrected a drawing of Ghirlandajo’s, he may have said things unendurable to the elder painter.

[291] Engraved in outline in Harford’s Illustrations of the Genius of Michael Angelo Buonarroti, Colnaghi, 1857.

[292] This group, placed in S. Peter’s, was made for the French Cardinal de Saint Denys.  It should be said that the first work of Michael Angelo in Rome was the “Bacchus” now in the Florentine Bargello, executed for Jacopo Gallo, a Roman gentleman.

[293] Pitti approved of the form of government represented by Soderini.  Machiavelli despised the want of decision that made him quit Florence, and the euetheia of the man.  Hence their curiously conflicting phrases.

[294] See the chapter entitled “Della Malitia e pessime Conditioni del Tyranno,” in Savonarola’s “Tractato circa el reggimento e governo della Citta di Firenze composto ad instantia delli excelsi Signori al tempo di Giuliano Salviati, Gonfaloniere di Justitia.”  A more terrible picture has never been drawn by any analyst of human vice and cruelty and weakness.

[295] Guasti’s edition of the Rime, p. 26.

[296] He defends himself thus in a letter to Lodovico Buonarroti:  “Del caso dei Medici io non o mai parlato contra di loro cosa nessuna, se non in quel modo che s’ e parlato generalmente per ogn’ uomo, come fu del caso di Prato; che se le pietre avessin saputo parlare, n’ avrebbono parlato.”

[297] It seems clear from the correspondence in the Archivio Buonarroti, recently published, that when Michael Angelo fled from Florence to Venice in 1529, he did so under the pressure of no ignoble panic, but because his life was threatened by a traitor, acting possibly at the secret instance of Malatesta Baglioni.  See Heath Wilson, pp. 326-330.

[298] See Guasti, p. 4.

[299] Vol.  I., Age of the Despots, p. 251.