m in my second
childhood, I have sought to act accordingly. By your letter I see the
love that you bear me, and you may take it as certain that I would
be glad to lay these feeble bones of mine beside those of my father,
as you beg me to do; but by departing from here I would be the cause
of the utter ruin of the fabric of S. Pietro, which would be a great
disgrace and a very grievous sin. However, when it is so firmly
established that it can never be changed, I hope to do all that you
ask me, if it be not a sin to keep in anxious expectation certain
gluttons that await my immediate departure."

With this letter was the following sonnet, also written in his own
hand:

Giunto e gia 'l corso della vita mia
Con tempestoso mar' per fragil barca
Al comun porto, ov'a render' si varca
Conto e ragion' d'ogni opra trista e pia.
Onde l'affetuosa fantasia,
Che l'arte mi fece idolo e monarca,
Conosco or' ben' quant'era d'error' carca,
E quel ch'a mal suo grado ognun' desia.
Gli amorosi pensier' gia vani e lieti
Che sien'or', s'a due morti mi avvicino?
D'una so certo, e l'altra mi minaccia.
Ne pinger' ne scolpir' sia piu che quieti
L'anima volta a quello Amor Divino
Ch'aperse a prender' noi in Croce le braccia.

Whereby it was evident that he was drawing towards God, abandoning the
cares of art on account of the persecution of his malignant
fellow-craftsmen, and also through the fault of certain overseers of
the fabric, who would have liked, as he used to say, to dip their
hands in the chest. By order of Duke Cosimo, a reply was written to
Michelagnolo by Vasari in a letter of few words, exhorting him to
repatriate himself, with a sonnet corresponding in the rhymes.
Michelagnolo would willingly have left Rome, but he was so weary and
aged, that although, as will be told below, he was determined to go
back, while the spirit was willing the flesh was weak, and that kept
him in Rome. It happened in June of the year 1557, he having made a
model for the vault that was to cover the apse, which was being built
of travertine in the Chapel of the King, that, from his not being
able to go there as he had been wont, an error arose, in that the
capomaestro took the measurements over the whole body of the vault
with one single centre, whereas there should have been a great number;
and Michelagnolo, as the friend and confidant of Vasari, sent him
designs by his own hand,