to his convent
he began what promised to be a wonderful artistic career; but he only
lived four years more, and the amount of his work was so small that his
pictures are now rare. His madonnas, saints, and angels are holy in their
effect; his representations of architecture are grand, and while his works
are not strong or powerful, they give much pleasure to those who see them.

MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI was born at the Castle of Caprese in 1475. His
father, who was of a noble family of Florence, was then governor of
Caprese and Chiusi, and, when the Buonarroti household returned to
Florence, the little Angelo was left with his nurse on one of his father's
estates at Settignano. The father and husband of his nurse were
stone-masons, and thus in infancy the future artist was in the midst of
blocks of stone and marble and the implements which he later used with so
much skill. For many years rude sketches were shown upon the walls of the
nurse's house made by her baby charge, and he afterward said that he
imbibed a love for marble with his earliest food.

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI.]

At the proper age Angelo was taken to Florence and placed in school; but
he spent his time mostly in drawing, and having made the acquaintance of
Francesco Granacci, at that time a pupil with Ghirlandajo, he borrowed
from him designs and materials by which to carry on his beloved pursuits.
Michael Angelo's desire to become an artist was violently opposed by his
father and his uncles, for they desired him to be a silk and woollen
merchant, and sustain the commercial reputation of the family. But so
determined was he that finally his father yielded, and in 1488 placed him
in the studio of Ghirlandajo. Here the boy of thirteen worked with great
diligence; he learned how to prepare colors and to lay the groundwork of
frescoes, and he was set to copy drawings. Very soon he wearied of this,
and began to make original designs after his own ideas. At one time he
corrected a drawing of his master's: when he saw this, sixty years later,
he said, "I almost think that I knew more of art in my youth than I do in
my old age."

When Michael Angelo went to Ghirlandajo, that master was employed on the
restoration of the choir of Santa Maria Novella, so that the boy came at
once into the midst of important work. One day he drew a picture of the
scaffolding and all that belonged to it, with the painters at work
thereon: w