Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/252

240 too young, but that is because they fail to perceive the fact that unspotted maidens long preserve the youthfulness of their aspect, while persons afflicted as Christ was do the contrary; the youth of the Madonna, therefore, does but add to the credit of the master.

Michelagnolo now received letters from friends in Florence advising him to return, since he might thus obtain that piece of marble which Pier Soderini, then Gonfaloniere the city, had talked of giving to Leonardo da Vinci, but was now preparing to present to Andrea dal Monte Sansavino, an excellent sculptor who was making many efforts to obtain it. It was difficult to get a statue out of it without the addition of several pieces, and no one, Michaelagnolo excepted, had the courage to attempt it; but he, who had long wished for the block, no sooner arrived in Florence than he made every effort to secure the same. Tliis piece of marble was nine braccia high, and unluckily, a certain Maestro Simone da Fiesole had commenced a colossal figure thereon; but the work had been so grievously injured that the Superintendents had suffered it to remain in the House of Works at Santa Maria del Fiore for many years, without thinking of having it finished, and there it seemed likely to continue.

Michelagnolo measured the mass anew to ascertain what sort of figure he could draw from it, and accommodating himself to the attitude demanded by the injuries which Maestro Simone had inflicted on it, he begged it from the Superintendents and Soderini, by whom it was given to him as a useless thing, they thinking that whatever he might make of it must needs be preferable to the state in which it then lay, and wherein it was totally useless to the fabric. Michelagnolo then made a model in wax, representing a young David, with the sling in his hand, as the ensigns of the Palace, and to intimate that, as he had defended his people and governed justly, so they who were then ruling that city should defend it with courage and govern it uprightly.

He commenced his labours in the House of Works, at Santa Maria del Fiore, where he formed an enclosure of planks and masonry, which surrounded the marble; there he worked perpetually, permitting no one to see him until the figure