e Granacci, who was Master of
the Revels, Paolo Tornabuoni, who made a wonderful Apollo, seated on a
golden globe playing upon a lyre, and the dark-browed Michael Angelo,
clad in a tunic, one of the noble youth of early Rome. His father,
Ludovico Buonarotti, and his mother, Francesca, were in the crowd that
watched him pass.

"Yonder he goes," cried the proud mother; "dost see thy son, Ludovico?"
But her husband scowled; he had little use for a son of his who had
rather be painter than merchant.

A year of happiness passed for the boys in the Medici gardens, and then
the skies of Florence darkened. A monk from San Marco named Savonarola
raised his voice to shame the gay people of their extravagance, and his
bitter tongue sought out Lorenzo the Magnificent as chief offender. The
boy Michael Angelo went to hear Savonarola preach, and came away heavy
of mind and heart. He heard the beautiful things of the world assailed
as sinful, and his beloved master called a servant of the Evil One. A
winter of reproach came upon the city, and when it ended, and Lent was
over, darkness fell, for Lorenzo lay dead at his summer home of Careggi,
in 1492--the year when Columbus discovered America.

For a long time Michael Angelo, stunned by his patron's loss, could do
no work, and when at last he found the heart to take up his brush and
palette it was no longer in the great house of the Medici, but in a
little room he had arranged for himself as a studio under his father's
roof.

He was not long left to work there in peace; the three sons of Lorenzo,
boys of nearly his own age, who had been playmates with him in the
gardens, and had studied with him under the same masters, needed his
help. The great Medici had said, long before, that of his three sons one
was good, one clever, and the third a fool. Giulio, now thirteen years
old, was the good one; Giovanni, seventeen years old, already a Prince
Cardinal of the Church, was the clever one, and Piero, the oldest, now
head of the family in Florence, was the fool.

The storm raised by Savonarola was ready to break about Piero de'
Medici's head, and such friends as were still faithful to him he
gathered about him at his house. Michael Angelo, his old playmate, was
among the number, and so he again moved to the palace. For a brief time
they sought to win back the favor of the people by a return to the
old-time magnificence.

With no wise head to guide, the youths were soon in sore straits.