at
in truth there is no peace to be found save in the woods. I have
nothing more to tell you. I am glad that you are well and happy, and I
commend myself to you."

Michelagnolo used to work almost every day, as a pastime, at that
block with the four figures of which we have already spoken; which
block he broke into pieces at this time for these reasons, either
because it was hard and full of emery, and the chisel often struck
sparks from it, or it may have been that the judgment of the man was
so great that he was never content with anything that he did. A proof
that this is true is that there are few finished statues to be seen
out of all that he executed in the prime of his manhood, and that
those completely finished were executed by him in his youth, such as
the Bacchus, the Pieta in S. Maria della Febbre, the Giant of
Florence, and the Christ of the Minerva, which it would not be
possible to increase or diminish by as little as a grain of millet
without spoiling them; and the others, with the exception of the Dukes
Giuliano and Lorenzo, Night, Dawn, and Moses, with the other two, the
whole number of these statues not amounting in all to eleven, the
others, I say, were all left unfinished, and, moreover, they are many,
Michelagnolo having been wont to say that if he had had to satisfy
himself in what he did, he would have sent out few, nay, not one. For
he had gone so far with his art and judgment, that, when he had laid
bare a figure and had perceived in it the slightest degree of error,
he would set it aside and run to lay his hand on another block of
marble, trusting that the same would not happen to the new block; and
he often said that this was the reason that he gave for having
executed so few statues and pictures. This Pieta, when it was broken,
he presented to Francesco Bandini. Now at this time Tiberio Calcagni,
a Florentine sculptor, had become much the friend of Michelagnolo by
means of Francesco Bandini and Messer Donato Giannotti; and being one
day in Michelagnolo's house, where there was the Pieta, all broken,
after a long conversation he asked him for what reason he had broken
it up and destroyed labours so marvellous, and he answered that the
reason was the importunity of his servant Urbino, who kept urging him
every day to finish it, besides which, among other things, a piece of
one of the elbows of the Madonna had been broken off, and even before
that he had taken an aversion to it, and had had man