o answer at once. However, when you know the
cause, you will hold me excused. On the day your letter reached me
I was very sick, and in such a high fever that I was at the point
of death; and verily I should have died if it had not revived me.
Since then, thank God, I have been well. Messer Bartolomei has now
brought me a sonnet by you, which has made it my duty to write.
Some three days since I received my drawing of Phaeton, which is
exceedingly well done. The Pope, the Cardinal de' Medici, and
every one, have seen it. I do not know what made them want to do
so. The Cardinal expressed a wish to inspect all your drawings,
and they pleased him so much that he said he should like to have a
Tityos and Ganymede done in crystal. I could not prevent him from
using the Tityos, and it is now being executed by Master Giovanni.
I struggled hard to save the Ganymede. The other day I went, as
you requested, to Fra Sebastiano. He sends a thousand messages,
but all to pray you to come back.

"Your affectionate,

"THOMAS CAVALIERI."

Messer Tomaso feared the drawings would be damaged in the workshop of the
gem engraver. There are several of these drawings in existence in good
condition, with no marks of the thumbs of workmen about them.

From the letters referring to the last contract about the Tomb of Julius,
we learn that the frescoes in the Cappella Paolina were not begun in
October 1542. Michael Angelo worked at them with slight interruptions for
seven years; they represent the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Martyrdom
of Saint Peter. They are very highly finished in execution and studied in
grace of composition, but frigid, and too evidently the work of an old
man. The skill of the drawing and foreshortening is masterly as ever, but
he does not appear to have referred to nature for the forms; and even
Michael Angelo without nature became stale. Vasari says, after describing
the frescoes without his customary enthusiasm, "They were his last
productions in painting. He was seventy-five years old when he carried
them to completion; and, as he informed me, he did so with great effort
and fatigue--painting, after a certain age, and especially fresco painting,
not being in truth fit work for old men."

In the spring of 1546 Francis I. of France wrote to Michael Angelo asking
for some fine monument by his hand,