during slumber, and any excessive amount of sleep deranges his stomach.  While he was in full vigour, he generally went to bed with his clothes on, even to the tall boots, which he has always worn, because of a chronic tendency to cramp, as well as for other reasons.  At certain seasons he has kept these boots on for such a length of time, that when he drew them off the skin came away together with the leather, like that of a sloughing snake.  He was never stingy of cash, nor did he accumulate money, being content with just enough to keep him decently; wherefore, though innumerable lords and rich folk have made him splendid offers for some specimen of his craft, he rarely complied, and then, for the most part, more out of kindness and friendship than with any expectation of gain.”  In spite of all this, or rather because of his temperance in food and sleep and sexual pleasure, together with his manual industry, he preserved excellent health into old age.

I have thought it worth while to introduce this general review of Michelangelo’s habits, without omitting some details which may seem repulsive to the modern reader, at an early period of his biography, because we ought to carry with us through the vicissitudes of his long career and many labours an accurate conception of our hero’s personality.  For this reason it may not be unprofitable to repeat what Condivi says about his physical appearance in the last years of his life.  “Michelangelo is of a good complexion; more muscular and bony than fat or fleshy in his person:  healthy above all things, as well by reason of his natural constitution as of the exercise he takes, and habitual continence in food and sexual indulgence.  Nevertheless, he was a weakly child, and has suffered two illnesses in manhood.  His countenance always showed a good and wholesome colour.  Of stature he is as follows:  height middling; broad in the shoulders; the rest of the body somewhat slender in proportion.  The shape of his face is oval, the space above the ears being one sixth higher than a semicircle.  Consequently the temples project beyond the ears, and the ears beyond the cheeks, and these beyond the rest; so that the skull, in relation to the whole head, must be called large.  The forehead, seen in front, is square; the nose, a little flattened—­not by nature, but because, when he was a young boy, Torrigiano de’ Torrigiani, a brutal and insolent fellow, smashed in the cartilage with his fist.  Michelangelo was carried home half dead on this occasion; and Torrigiano, having been exiled from Florence for his violence, came to a bad end.  The nose, however, being what it is, bears a proper proportion to the forehead and the rest of the face.  The lips are thin, but the lower is slightly thicker than the upper; so that, seen in profile, it projects a little.  The chin is well in harmony with the features I have described.  The forehead, in a side-view, almost hangs over the nose; and this looks hardly less than broken, were