renders the attribution almost certain.  However, we have only two authentic records of the work among the documents at our disposal.  Condivi, describing the period of Michelangelo’s residence in Florence (1501-1504), says:  “He also cast in bronze a Madonna with the Infant Christ, which certain Flemish merchants of the house of Mouscron, a most noble family in their own land, bought for two hundred ducats, and sent to Flanders.”  A letter addressed under date August 4, 1506, by Giovanni Balducci in Rome to Michelangelo at Florence, proves that some statue which was destined for Flanders remained among the sculptor’s property at Florence.  Balducci uses the feminine gender in writing about this work, which justifies us in thinking that it may have been a Madonna.  He says that he has found a trustworthy agent to convey it to Viareggio, and to ship it thence to Bruges, where it will be delivered into the hands of the heir of John and Alexander Mouscron and Co., “as being their property.”  This statue, in all probability, is the “Madonna in marble” about which Michelangelo wrote to his father from Rome on the 31st of January 1507, and which he begged his father to keep hidden in their dwelling.  It is difficult to reconcile Condivi’s statement with Balducci’s letter.  The former says that the Madonna bought by the Mouscron family was cast in bronze at Florence.  The Madonna in the Mouscron Chapel at Notre Dame is a marble.  I think we may assume that the Bruges Madonna is the piece which Michelangelo executed for the Mouscron brothers, and that Condivi was wrong in believing it to have been cast in bronze.  That the statue was sent some time after the order had been given, appears from the fact that Balducci consigned it to the heir of John and Alexander, “as being their property;” but it cannot be certain at what exact date it was begun and finished.

IX

While Michelangelo was acquiring immediate celebrity and immortal fame by these three statues, so different in kind and hitherto unrivalled in artistic excellence, his family lived somewhat wretchedly at Florence.  Lodovico had lost his small post at the Customs after the expulsion of the Medici; and three sons, younger than the sculptor, were now growing up.  Buonarroto, born in 1477, had been put to the cloth-trade, and was serving under the Strozzi in their warehouse at the Porta Rossa.  Giovan-Simone, two years younger (he was born in 1479), after leading a vagabond life for some while, joined Buonarroto in a cloth-business provided for them by Michelangelo.  He was a worthless fellow, and gave his eldest brother much trouble.  Sigismondo, born in 1481, took to soldiering; but at the age of forty he settled down upon the paternal farm at Settignano, and annoyed his brother by sinking into the condition of a common peasant.