in Genoa and Florence the most powerful
nobles were merchants or manufacturers), and others for civil or
diplomatic employments; but the fine arts, as being at that time
productive of little honor or emolument, he held in no esteem, and
treated these tastes of his eldest son sometimes with contempt and
sometimes even with harshness. Michael Angelo, however, had formed
some friendships among the young painters, and particularly with
Francesco Granacci, one of the best pupils of Ghirlandajo; he
contrived to borrow models and drawings, and studied them in secret
with such persevering assiduity and consequent improvement, that
Ghirlandajo, captivated by his genius, undertook to plead his cause to
his father, and at length prevailed over the old man's family pride
and prejudices. At the age of fourteen Michael Angelo was received
into the studio of Ghirlandajo as a regular pupil, and bound to him
for three years; and such was the precocious talent of the boy, that,
instead of being paid for his instruction, Ghirlandajo undertook to
pay the father, Leonardo Buonarroti, for the first, second, and third
years, six, eight, and twelve golden florins, as payment for the
advantage he expected to derive from the labor of the son. Thus was
the vocation of the young artist decided for life.

At that time Lorenzo the Magnificent reigned over Florence. He had
formed in his palace and gardens a collection of antique marbles,
busts, statues, fragments, which he had converted into an academy for
the use of young artists, placing at the head of it as director a
sculptor of some eminence, named Bertoldo. Michael Angelo was one of
the first who, through the recommendation of Ghirlandajo, was received
into this new academy, afterward so famous and so memorable in the
history of art. The young man, then not quite sixteen, had hitherto
occupied himself chiefly in drawing; but now, fired by the beauties he
beheld around him, and by the example and success of a fellow-pupil,
Torregiano, he set himself to model in clay, and at length to copy in
marble what was before him; but, as was natural in a character and
genius so steeped in individuality, his copies became not so much
imitations of form as original embodyings of the leading idea. For
example: his first attempt in marble, when he was about fifteen, was a
copy of an antique mask of an old laughing Faun; he treated this in a
manner so different from the original, and so spirited as to excite
t