fled from him: he it was who kept it at a distance, and, had he liked, a triumphal life could have been his. To Italy he was the incarnation of its genius. At the end of his career, the last survivor of the great Renaissance, he personified it—he alone was a whole century of glory. Artists were not the only people who regarded him as a supernatural being.[1] Princes bowed before him. Francis I. and Catherine de' Medici rendered him homage.[2] Cosimo de' Medici wished to make him a senator;[3] and when he came to Rome[4] treated him as an equal, made him sit by his side, and conversed with him confidentially. Cosimo's son, Don Francesco de' Medici, received him with berretta in hand, "showing a boundless respect for so rare a man."[5] They honoured "his great virtue"[6] no less than his genius. His old age was surrounded by as much glory as that of Goethe or Hugo. But he was a man of another metal. He had neither the
- ↑ Condivi begins his "Life of Michael Angelo" as follows: "Since the hour when the Lord God, by His all-powerful Grace, judged me worthy not only of seeing Michael Angelo Buonarroti, the unique painter and sculptor—a privilege which I should hardly have dared to hope for—but of enjoying his conversations, affection, and confidence, I undertook, in recognition of such a favour, to collect together everything in his life which appeared to me to be worthy of praise and admiration, in order that the example of such a man might be useful to others."
- ↑ Francis I. in 1546; Catherine de' Medici in 1559. She wrote to him from Blois, "knowing, like the whole world, how superior he was to any one else of this century," to beg him to sculpture an equestrian statue of Henry II., or, at least, to make a drawing of it (November 14, 1559).
- ↑ In 1552, Michael Angelo did not reply, at which the Duke was hurt. When Benvenuto Cellini spoke about it to Michael Angelo he received a sarcastic reply.
- ↑ In November 1560.
- ↑ In October 1561.
- ↑ Vasari (on the subject of the reception which Cosimo gave Michael Angelo).
