scholar of him. There were, however, many studios in
the neighborhood of the school, and many artists at work in them, and
the boy would neglect his studies to haunt the places where he might
see how grown men drew and painted.

Watching the artists, young Michael Angelo soon formed a lasting
friendship with a boy of great talent a few years older than himself, by
name Francesco Granacci. This boy was a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandajo, a
very great painter. The more Michael Angelo saw Granacci and his work in
the studio the more he longed for a chance to study painting. He could
think of nothing else; he begged his father and uncles to let him be an
artist instead of a merchant or a scholar. But the father and uncles,
coming from a long line of successful merchants, treated the boy's
requests with scorn.

Michael Angelo was determined to be an artist, however, and finally,
though with the greatest reluctance, his father signed a contract with
Ghirlandajo by which the boy was to study drawing and painting in his
studio and do whatever other work the master might desire. The master
was to pay the boy six gold florins for the first year's work, eight for
the second, and ten for the third.

The young Buonarotti found plenty of work to be done in his master's
studio. Besides the regular day's work he was constantly painting
sketches of his own, and trying his hand at a dozen different things.
His eye and hand were most surprisingly true. Time and again the master
or some of the older students, coming across the boy at work, would be
held spellbound by his skill.

One day when the men had left work the boy drew a picture of the
scaffolding on which they had been standing and sketched in portraits of
the men so perfectly that when his master found the drawing he cried to
a friend in amazement, "The boy understands this better than I do
myself!"

There was little in the world about him that this boy failed to see. He
soon painted his first real picture, choosing a subject that was popular
in those days, the temptation of St. Antony. All kinds of queer animals
figured in the picture, and that he might get the colors of their
shining backs and scales just right he spent days in the market eagerly
studying the fish there for sale. Again the master was amazed at his
pupil's work, and now for the first time began to feel a certain envy of
him.

This feeling rapidly increased. The scholars were often given some of
Ghirlandajo's