s fortune more unjust than his,
His equal or his better ne'er was born._

The influence of Dante over Buonarroti's style of composition
impressed his contemporaries. Benedetto Varchi, in the proemium to a
lecture upon one of Michelangelo's poems, speaks of it as "a most
sublime sonnet, full of that antique purity and Dantesque gravity."
Dante's influence over the great artist's pictorial imagination is
strongly marked in the fresco of the Last Judgment, where Charon's
boat, and Minos with his twisted tail, are borrowed direct from the
_Inferno._ Condivi, moreover, informs us that the statues of the Lives
Contemplative and Active upon the tomb of Julius were suggested by the
Rachel and Leah of the _Purgatorio._ We also know that he filled a
book with drawings illustrative of the "Divine Comedy." By a miserable
accident this most precious volume, while in the possession of Antonio
Montauti, the sculptor, perished at sea on a journey from Livorno to
Rome.

But the strongest proof of Michelangelo's reputation as a learned
student of Dante is given in Donato Giannotti's Dialogue upon the
number of days spent by the poet during his journey through Hell and
Purgatory. Luigi del Riccio, who was a great friend of the sculptor's,
is supposed to have been walking one day toward the Lateran with
Antonio Petreo. Their conversation fell upon Cristoforo Landino's
theory that the time consumed by Dante in this transit was the whole
of the night of Good Friday, together with the following day. While
engaged in this discussion, they met Donato Giannotti taking the air
with Michelangelo. The four friends joined company, and Petreo
observed that it was a singular good fortune to have fallen that
morning upon two such eminent Dante scholars. Donato replied: "With
regard to Messer Michelangelo, you have abundant reason to say that he
is an eminent Dantista, since I am acquainted with no one who
understands him better and has a fuller mastery over his works." It is
not needful to give a detailed account of Buonarroti's Dantesque
criticism, reported in these dialogues, although there are good
grounds for supposing them in part to represent exactly what Giannotti
heard him say. This applies particularly to his able interpretation of
the reason why Dante placed Brutus and Cassius in hell--not as being
the murderers of a tyrant, but as having laid violent hands upon the
sacred majesty of the Empire in the person of Caesar. The narrative of