of that stipend was sent to the master’s house, he refused to receive' the money. In the same year there happened to Michelagnolo the death of Urbino, his servant, or rather his companion, for such he had become.[1] This man had entered his master’s service at Florence, in the year of the Siege, and after Antonio Mini, his disciple, had gone to France; he was a most zealous servant, and in the twenty-six years of his abode with his master the latter had made him rich, and had loved him so much, that although so old, he had nursed him in his sickness, and slept at night in his clothes beside him, the better to watch for his comforts. When Urbino died, therefore, Vasari wrote to Michelagnolo to console him, and the master replied in these words:—
“My dear Messer Giorgio,—I can but ill write at this time, yet to reply to your letter I will try to say something. You know that Urbino is dead, and herein have I received a great mercy from God, but to my heavy grief and infinite loss.The mercy is this, that whereas in his life he has kept me living, so in his death he has taught me to die, not only without regret, but with the desire to depart. I have had him twenty-six years, have ever found him singularly faithful, and now that I had made him rich, and hoped to have in him the staff and support of my old age, he has disappeared from my sight; nor hg,ve I now left any other hope than that of rejoining him in Paradise. But of this God has given me a foretaste, in the most blessed death that he has died; his own departure did not grieve him, as did the leaving me in this treacherous world, with so many troubles. Truly is the best part of my being gone with him, nor is anything now left me except an infinite sorrow. And herewith I bid you farewell.”
Under Paul IV., Michelagnolo was much employed in many parts of the fortifications of Rome; and for Salustio Peruzzi, to whom that Pontiff had entrusted the construction of the Great Gate of the Castello Sant’ Angelo, now half ruined, as we have related elsewhere, he undertook to distribute the statues required for that work, as well as to see and correct the models of the sculptors. At this time the French army approached Rome, and Michelagnolo, believing
- ↑ In all things not appertaining to art, Michael Angelo permitted himself to be managed entirely by this trusted friend and servant.
