Rafael Sabatini

“ Michelangelo was out of employment. Casting about him, he lent an ear to the tales of the great opportunities afforded by the papal court under the prodigal and lavish Borgia pontiff, and of the great interest in art that was being quickened in Rome by the excavations which were daily bringing treasures of antiquity to light.
Lured by these stories, Buonarroti set out for the eternal city, armed with a letter of introduction from Piero de’ Medici to Cardinal Sforza-Riario, who was widely famed as a dilettante, a collector, and a patron of the arts. ”

“ The Cardinal smiled a little and sighed. “You realize that from Florence—the Florence of Lorenzo de’ Medici—to curial Rome it is a far cry in matters of art; that what there may be accounted masterly, is here often considered elementary, especially in these days when the antiquities that are being brought to light are serving us as a school for the education of our sense of beauty.”
Michelangelo’s lips writhed in a sneer, despite himself. ”

“ Of the younger men the only one in whom he admitted possibilities was Leonardo da Vinci; but he confessed to grave misgivings; he doubted if the young man’s talents would mature along commendable lines; he feared that he might succumb to work for profit, and thereby damn himself eternally as an artist.
NAUSEATED, Michelangelo fled the gallery and the palace, and began to ask himself should he not flee Rome as well, cursing the evil hour in which he had entered this city of self-sufficient fools. ”

“ An approving purr commended the subtlety of Messer Gianluca’s sarcasm.
“I’ll endeavor to be plain. This thing is beautiful, but as a woman is beautiful rather than a man. It is of an exceeding smoothness. The delineation of the anatomy is too vague. The face is perfect; too perfect for significance; a man with so lovely a countenance may be a beast, or a fool, or both; he can hardly be aught else. Is that what the sculptor intended? I doubt it. The limbs lack vigor; almost they lack shape; they are a woman’s limbs.” ”

“ Observing this, the Cardinal began to assume that the young man’s arrogance was being properly humbled.
“You are silent, my friend,” he said at last.
“I am listening to your Magnificence,” answered Michelangelo, striving to exclude the irony from his voice.
“Oh, and something more. Confess that you stand abashed before such works as these. You realize that there is no man living today capable of producing any single piece that adorns this gallery.” ”

“ Baldassare deliberately and generously pronounced. “I do not know a sculptor working now who could do better. And that is much to say, particularly to so young a man. But if I buy”—he spread his hands, and looked up pathetically—“where shall I find me a buyer in my turn?”
It seemed to Michelangelo a foolish question.
“Surely among your patrons there will be some who know good work and desire to possess it. How else could you live and drive your trade?”
The little dealer answered him by a cackle of sardonic laughter. ”

“ Such great contemporaries as Pinturicchio and Verrocchio were tolerantly commended, which is to say that they were damned with faint praise; others as great were contemptuously dismissed—especially the prosperous ones, prosperity being in the eyes of Messer Gianluca the seal of worthlessness. ”

“ At its sting, a faint color crept into the gaunt cheeks of the victim, a young man of not more than three and twenty, tall and vigorous, whose face, though bony and rugged, was yet hand some in a rough masterful way. ”

“ It is the most perfect and ample collection in Rome and probably in the world. To behold it is an education in art, my friend. Come.”
Familiarly he took the young man by the arm, and conducted him to a door at the opposite end of the room, where an usher waited. The man opened the door, and they passed out into a long gallery lighted along its length by tall windows that opened upon the inner courtyard of the palace. Facing these windows stood ranged along the gallery from end to end the treasures of sculpture which the Cardinal had assembled at the price of several princely fortunes. ”

“ All the demand in Rome is for antiquities. There is no beauty save in antiquities. To live, therefore, it was necessary that I should supply antiquities. And I supplied them. There are dyes and salts that in a few days will act upon marble as would mother earth in the course of centuries. The Cupid’s missing bow I broke off when the modeling was completed. Does your Magnificence still doubt? Then look at this.” He tilted the clay figure and pointed to an inscription on the base—a single word in Greek characters. ”

“ Michelangelo laughed, no whit abashed.
“The imposture that was necessary to make you dilettanti believe that at least one artist lives who may measure himself against antiquity, who need not fear comparison with Phidias. It was Phidias your Magnificence named, I think. No sculptor since Phidias, you said, could have fashioned so beautiful a thing. ”

“ But not by Baldassare. By your own excessive predilection for the old to the contempt of the new.” Then Michelangelo paused, and meeting the venomous glance of the prelate’s eyes he continued gently in another tone: “Yet there is no need to publish abroad your error and expose you to the ridicule of the world. Considering the merit of the work, it is not extraordinary that your Magnificence should have been deceived. ”