Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/394

342 tion. He was one of the joyous company who met on summer evenings in the Piazza where Pulci recited his verses, or Tuscan maidens sang Lorenzo's songs. And he accompanied Poliziano and Pico to hear Savonarola's sermons, and was as deeply moved as they were by the Frate's fiery eloquence. His own brother Leonardo joined the Dominican Order, and became a friar of San Marco, where he died in 1510. Michelangelo himself, writing from Rome in 1497, thanks another of his brothers for telling him of the acts of the saintly Fra Girolamo, of whom all Rome is talking. Here, indeed, he adds, people call him a pestilent heretic, but only let him come and preach in Rome, and they will canonise him ere long! Years afterwards we find Michelangelo still counting himself among his followers, and saying that he must employ a certain artist, or his friends, the piagnoni, will never forgive him. During his residence in the Medici Palace the young artist carved a bas-relief of the Battle of the Centaurs, at Poliziano's suggestion, on a block of marble given him by Lorenzo, who praised his work warmly, and presented him with a violet mantle and a monthly allowance of five florins. This fine composition which has all the fire and originality of youthful genius, was kept by Michelangelo to his dying day, and is still in the Casa Buonarroti, together with an early Madonna in Donatello's style. But these happy days ended all too soon.

In April, 1492, Lorenzo de' Medici died at Careggi, and Michelangelo, deprived of his powerful patron, returned to his father's house, and devoted himself to the study of anatomy. The Prior of S. Spirito