, he turned his back to the group, and went
his way. Lionardo remained standing there, red in the face for the
reproach cast at him; and Michelangelo, not satisfied, but wanting to
sting him to the quick, added: 'And those Milanese capons believed in
your ability to do it!'"

We can only take anecdotes for what they are worth, and that may
perhaps be considered slight when they are anonymous. This anecdote,
however, in the original Florentine diction, although it betrays a
partiality for Lionardo, bears the aspect of truth to fact. Moreover,
even Michelangelo's admirers are bound to acknowledge that he had a
rasping tongue, and was not incapable of showing his bad temper by
rudeness. From the period of his boyhood, when Torrigiano smashed his
nose, down to the last years of his life in Rome, when he abused his
nephew Lionardo and hurt the feelings of his best and oldest friends,
he discovered signs of a highly nervous and fretful temperament. It
must be admitted that the dominant qualities of nobility and
generosity in his nature were alloyed by suspicion bordering on
littleness, and by petulant yieldings to the irritation of the moment
which are incompatible with the calm of an Olympian genius.

CHAPTER V

I

While Michelangelo was living and working at Florence, Bramante had
full opportunity to poison the Pope's mind in Rome. It is commonly
believed, on the faith of a sentence in Condivi, that Bramante, when
he dissuaded Julius from building the tomb in his own lifetime,
suggested the painting of the Sistine Chapel. We are told that he
proposed Michelangelo for this work, hoping his genius would be
hampered by a task for which he was not fitted. There are many
improbabilities in this story; not the least being our certainty that
the fame of the Cartoon must have reached Bramante before
Michelangelo's arrival in the first months of 1505. But the Cartoon
did not prove that Buonarroti was a practical wall-painter or
colourist; and we have reason to believe that Julius had himself
conceived the notion of intrusting the Sistine to his sculptor. A good
friend of Michelangelo, Pietro Rosselli, wrote this letter on the
subject, May 6, 1506: "Last Saturday evening, when the Pope was at
supper, I showed him some designs which Bramante and I had to test;
so, after supper, when I had displayed them, he called for Bramante,
and said: 'San Gallo is going to Florence to-morrow, and will bring
Michelangelo back with him.'