the antique, is
given by Condivi.(69) It was the cause of Michael Angelo's first visit to
Rome. As soon as he reached the Eternal City he set to work at his
sculpture, as the purchase of a piece of marble mentioned in his letter to
Pier Francesco de' Medici, sent to Florence under cover to Sandro
Botticelli,(70) indicates. During the whole of this very important visit
he worked in marble. We have, however, one record of a cartoon by him for
a Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata, to be painted by a certain barber;
but that is all. He studied the works of antique art and imitated the
finish and softness of the Hellenic style: marbles of debased Greek
workmanship abound to this day in the Roman collections. Messer Jacopo
Gallo, a Roman gentleman and a banker, commissioned a Bacchus, now in the
Bargello at Florence, and a Cupid, said to be the statue now in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. Condivi records these
commissions.(71) This Bacchus is the least dignified work that Michael
Angelo ever executed. Perhaps, like a young artist struggling to get on,
he listened too much to the wishes and suggestions of his intelligent
patron. The finish and the truth to nature of the unpleasant youth are
exquisite. The folds of the skin and the softness of the flesh are
perfectly rendered, but the work is repulsive, save for the mischievous
little Satyr who steals the grapes; he seems to take us out into the open
air, and away from the fumes of the wine shop. Condivi calls the second
statue a Cupid,(72) but Springer points out(73) that Ulisse Aldovrandi,
who saw the statue in Messer Gallo's house at Rome, talks of an Apollo
quite naked, with a quiver at his side and an urn at his feet. The work,
Cupid or Apollo, at Kensington, is not so finely finished as the other
statues of this first Roman period; the head is like a copy of the head of
the David, the division between the pectoral muscles is weak, and their
attachments to the breast-bone are round, regular, and without
distinction, very different from either the naturalism of the Bacchus, the
delicate truth of the Pieta, or the dignified abstraction of the David,
done very shortly afterwards. This work at Kensington was discovered some
fifty years ago in the cellars of the Gualfonda (Rucellai) Gardens by
Professor Miliarini and the sculptor Santarelli. The left arm was broken,
the right hand damaged, and the hair unfinished, as may be seen to-day;
Santarelli restored t