Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/395

1564] allowed him to dissect dead bodies in a room of his convent, and in return for his kindness, Michelangelo carved a life-size crucifix in wood for his chapel. Before long, however, Lorenzo's son, Piero, sent for the sculptor one winter's day, to model a colossal snow-man, and he once more took up his abode in his old quarters. Little as Piero resembled his father, he was glad to avail himself of Michelangelo's advice in the purchase of cameos and gems, and was fond of saying that he valued him almost as highly as one of his Spanish grooms, who could run as fast as a horse at full gallop. Whether this patronage was not to Michelangelo's taste, or whether he foresaw the storm that was about to burst, he left Florence a few weeks before Piero was expelled, and spent some time in Bologna, where he carved the lovely kneeling angel on Niccolo Pisano's Arca di S. Domenico. There he saw Jacopo della Quercia's bas-reliefs of the story of Creation, on the doors of San Petronio, and was profoundly impressed, as the Sistine frescoes show, by their grand and massive types.

On his return to Florence, he found a new patron in Botticelli's friend, Lorenzo di Pierofrancesco de' Medici, at whose suggestion he made a sleeping Cupid, which was taken to Rome by a dealer, and sold as an antique to the Cardinal di San Giorgio. The dealer's fraud was discovered, but Michelangelo's Cupid became famous, and after passing from the palace of Urbino into the hands of Cæsar Borgia, eventually found a home in Isabella d'Este's Studio at Mantua. Michelangelo himself received an invitation from the Cardinal di San Giorgio, and spent the