y to the house two hours
after night-fall, and presented them to Michael Angelo. He refused, and
said he did not want them. The man answered: "Sir, they have almost broken
my back carrying them all this long way from the bridge, and I will not
carry them home again. There is a heap of mud opposite your door, thick
and firm enough to hold them upright. Here then will I set them all up,
and light them." When Michael Angelo heard this he gave way: "Lay them
down; I do not mean you to play pranks at my house door." Vasari tells
another anecdote about the Deposition. Pope Julius III. sent him late one
evening to Michael Angelo's house for a certain drawing. The aged master
came down with a lantern, and, hearing what was wanted, told Urbino to
look for the design. Meanwhile, Vasari turned his attention to one of the
legs of the Christ, which Michael Angelo had been altering. In order to
prevent his seeing it Michael Angelo let the light fall, and they remained
in darkness. He then called for another light, and stepped forth from the
screen of planks behind which he worked, saying: "I am so old that
oftentimes Death plucks me by the cape to go with him, and one day this
body of mine will fall like the lantern, and the light of life will be put
out."

"If life gives us pleasure we ought not to expect displeasure from death,
seeing it is made by the hand of the same master," was a favourite
reflection of Michael Angelo's upon mortality. This Deposition was never
completed, flaws appeared in the marble, and perhaps whilst working in the
imperfect light Michael Angelo's impatient chisel cut too deep. He began
to break up the work, but luckily his servant Antonio, successor to
Urbino, begged the fragments from his master. Francesco Bandini, a
Florentine exile settled in Rome, wished for a work by the master, and,
with Michael Angelo's consent, bought it from Antonio for two hundred
crowns. It was patched up, but apparently not worked upon, and remained in
the garden of Bandini's heir at Monte Cavallo. It was afterwards taken to
Florence and was finally placed in the Duomo in 1722 by the Grand Duke
Cosimo III., where it may now be seen behind the high altar, well-placed,
so that the great cross of the altar looks like the tree from which the
body has just been lowered. So well does the line of the cross behind cut
the group that we cannot help imagining that the artist intended some such
erection to have been placed behind his figure