o the new grandeur of design.
It could but end in one way. The clause prepared beforehand by Michael
Angelo in the contracts came into effect, and they had to be sent away,
with plenty of grumbling on their part, no doubt. Michael Angelo was too
exacting in the perfection of his taste to allow any work short of the
absolute ideal he had imagined. Unlike Raphael, who was working in the
neighbouring stanze, and who was contented to pass, and some would have us
believe to execute, ill-turned foreshortenings and false drawing, so long
as his general effect was preserved and the work done in reasonable time.
Perhaps his gentle and sunlike genius could not bear to use harsh words
and shut the door against the mediocre men with whom he was surrounded.
Michael Angelo could brook no imperfection of whatever kind, so that he
destroyed all that his assistants had done and shut himself up alone in
the chapel. He was the only man who could do the work to his satisfaction;
so he did it, alone and unaided, as to the actual painting, and produced a
work unequalled in perfection since Phidias worked in Athens.

The dismissal of his assistants appears to have begun about the New Year
1509. It is hinted at in this letter:--

"DEAREST FATHER,--I have to-day received one of yours. When I read
it I was sufficiently displeased. I doubt that you are more timid
and fearful than you need be. I should like you to tell me what
you imagine they can do to you, that is, if it should come to the
worst. I have no more to say. It grieves me that you should be in
such fear, so I comfort you by advising you to be well prepared
against their power, with good advice, and then think no more
about it; for if they took away all you have in the world you
should not lack means to be comfortable as long as I was there.
Therefore be of good cheer. I am still in a great quandary, for it
is now a year since I received a groat from the Pope, and I do not
ask for it, for my work does not go forward in such a fashion as
to deserve it, as it seems to me. And this is because of the
difficulty of the work, and also that it is not my profession. And
so I lose my time fruitlessly. God help me. If you are in need of
money go to the Spedalingo(108) and make him give you anything up
to fifteen ducats, and let me know what remains. Jacopo,(109) the
painter whom I brought here, has just left, and as he