t and noble mother, to
Lodovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, a descendant, so it is said,
of the most noble and most ancient family of the Counts of Canossa. To
that Lodovico, I say, who was in that year Podesta of the township of
Chiusi and Caprese, near the Sasso della Vernia, where S. Francis
received the Stigmata, in the Diocese of Arezzo, a son was born on the
6th of March, a Sunday, about the eighth hour of the night, to which
son he gave the name Michelagnolo, because, inspired by some influence
from above, and giving it no more thought, he wished to suggest that
he was something celestial and divine beyond the use of mortals, as
was afterwards seen from the figures of his horoscope, he having had
Mercury and Venus in the second house of Jupiter, with happy augury,
which showed that from the art of his brain and of his hand there
would be seen to issue forth works marvellous and stupendous. Having
finished his office as Podesta, Lodovico returned to Florence and
settled in the village of Settignano, at a distance of three miles
from the city, where he had a farm that had belonged to his
forefathers; which place abounds with stone and is all full of
quarries of grey-stone, which is constantly being worked by
stone-cutters and sculptors, who for the most part are born in the
place. Michelagnolo was put out to nurse by Lodovico in that village
with the wife of a stone-cutter: wherefore the same Michelagnolo,
discoursing once with Vasari, said to him jestingly, "Giorgio, if I
have anything of the good in my brain, it has come from my being born
in the pure air of your country of Arezzo, even as I also sucked in
with my nurse's milk the chisels and hammer with which I make my
figures." In time Lodovico's family increased, and, being in poor
circumstances, with slender revenues, he set about apprenticing his
sons to the Guilds of Silk and Wool. Michelagnolo, who by that time
was well grown, was placed to be schooled in grammar with Maestro
Francesco da Urbino; but, since his genius drew him to delight in
design, all the time that he could snatch he would spend in drawing in
secret, being scolded for this by his father and his other elders, and
at times beaten, they perchance considering that to give attention to
that art, which was not known by them, was a mean thing and not worthy
of their ancient house.

At this time Michelagnolo had formed a friendship with Francesco
Granacci, who, likewise a lad, had placed hims