Michelangelo’s position in the house was that of an honoured guest or adopted son.  Lorenzo not only allowed him five ducats a month by way of pocket-money, together with clothes befitting his station, but he also, says Condivi, “appointed him a good room in the palace, together with all the conveniences he desired, treating him in every respect, as also at his table, precisely like one of his own sons.  It was the custom of this household, where men of the noblest birth and highest public rank assembled round the daily board, for the guests to take their places next the master in the order of their arrival; those who were present at the beginning of the meal sat, each according to his degree, next the Magnificent, not moving afterwards for any one who might appear.  So it happened that Michelangelo found himself frequently seated above Lorenzo’s children and other persons of great consequence, with whom that house continually flourished and abounded.  All these illustrious men paid him particular attention, and encouraged him in the honourable art which he had chosen.  But the chief to do so was the Magnificent himself, who sent for him oftentimes in a day, in order that he might show him jewels, cornelians, medals, and such-like objects of great rarity, as knowing him to be of excellent parts and judgment in these things.”  It does not appear that Michelangelo had any duties to perform or services to render.  Probably his patron employed him upon some useful work of the kind suggested by Condivi.  But the main business of his life in the Casa Medici was to make himself a valiant sculptor, who in after years should confer lustre on the city of the lily and her Medicean masters.  What he produced during this period seems to have become his own property, for two pieces of statuary, presently to be described, remained in the possession of his family, and now form a part of the collection in the Casa Buonarroti.

VI

Angelo Poliziano, who was certainly the chief scholar of his age in the new learning, and no less certainly one of its truest poets in the vulgar language, lived as tutor to Lorenzo’s children in the palace of the Medici at Florence.  Benozzo Gozzoli introduced his portrait, together with the portraits of his noble pupils, in a fresco of the Pisan Campo Santo.  This prince of humanists recommended Michelangelo to treat in bas-relief an antique fable, involving the strife of young heroes for some woman’s person.  Probably he was also able to point out classical examples by which the boyish sculptor might be guided in the undertaking.  The subject made enormous demands upon his knowledge of the nude.  Adult and youthful figures, in attitudes of vehement attack and resistance, had to be modelled; and the conditions of the myth required that one at least of them should be brought into harmony with equine forms.  Michelangelo wrestled vigorously with these difficulties.  He produced a work which, though