Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/392

340 and of the baneful influence which his example exerted on contemporary art, Michelangelo has left the world a vision of radiant and glorious humanity which, alone among the creations of modern times, is worthy to rank with the immortal works of Greek sculpture.

On the 6th of March, 1475, Michelangelo Buonarroti was born at the castle of Caprese, in the mountains above Arezzo, between the valleys of the Arno and the Tiber, close to St. Francis's favourite sanctuary of La Vernia, which Dante describes as "Quel crudo sasso intra Tevere ed Arno." His father, Lodovico, belonged to a good old Florentine family which claimed descent from the Count of Canossa, and held the honourable office of Podestà of Caprese at the time of his son's birth. When his term of office expired, he returned to Florence with his young wife, Francesca, and his infant son was left to be nursed in the family of a stone-cutter of Settignano. "Giorgio," the great master once said to Vasari, "if there is anything good in me, it comes from the pure air of your Arezzo hills where I was born, and perhaps also from the milk of my nurse with which I sucked in the chisels and hammers with which I used to carve my figures."

As soon as he was old enough to leave his nurse the boy was sent to school in Florence, but showed little taste for learning and spent his time in drawing. In vain his father, who looked on painting as an inferior profession, punished him for neglecting his studies. One day, Francesco Granacci, a young apprentice in Ghirlandajo's shop, with whom he had made friends, showed his master a drawing which the