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Girolamo wished the removal of Lorenzo and Giuliano in order that hostility to his plans for adding Forli and Faenza to the territory of Imola, which the Pope had successfully won for him against Lorenzo's opposition, might disappear. The Pope had various political reasons for wishing Lorenzo's and Giuliano's death and bringing Florence, always headstrong and dangerous, to heel.
Chief among the boys was the little group of artists who were studying in Lorenzo's mansion, and chief among these 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.
That bust of Plato had been long used to look down on conviviality of a more transcendental sort, for it had been brought from Lorenzo's villa after his death, when the meetings of the Platonic Academy had been transferred to these gardens.
Not only did good fortune thus smile upon the young artist, but to his great astonishment Lodovico too found that benefits were showered upon him, all for the sake of his famous young son. These years of peace, and calm, steady work had the greatest effect on Michelangelo's work, and he learned much from the clever, brilliant men who thronged Lorenzo's court.
By the time we had examined every nook and corner of this singular edifice, and caught perhaps some small portion of sanctity by sitting in San Lorenzo's chair, dinner was prepared in a neighbouring convent, and the nuns, allured by the sound of our flutes and oboes, peeped out of their cells and showed themselves by dozens at the grate.
The impression produced by Vettori's panegyric is further confirmed by what he says about Lorenzo's disinclination to undertake the Duchy of Urbino. Ibid. See too p. 307. But to return to the early days of Leo's pontificate. Vettori marks his interference in the affairs of Lucca as the first great mistake he made.
He must indeed have felt that to demand and promise this was easier than to carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without absolution. Lorenzo died. It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on the facts above related concerning Lorenzo's death. Kal. But Burlmacchi, Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the Frate's party, agree in the story.
Lorenzo's successor, Piero de' Medici, was a vain, irresolute, and hasty princeling, fond of display, proud of his skill in fencing and football-playing, with too much of the Orsini blood in his hot veins, with too little of the Medicean craft in his weak head.
Young, in the "Night Thoughts," with more quaintness than good taste, compares the sceptic who can remain unmoved in the contemplation of the starry heavens to a salamander unwarmed in the fire: "An undevout astronomer is mad! "O, what a genius must inform the skies! And is Lorenzo's salamander-heart Cold and untouched amid these sacred fires?"
Michael Angelo left the tombs of the Medici unfinished; nor, in spite of Duke Cosimo's earnest entreaties, would he afterwards return to Florence to complete them. Lorenzo's features are but rough-hewn; so is the face of Night. Day seems struggling into shape beneath his mask of rock, and Twilight shows everywhere the tooth-dint of the chisel. To leave unfinished was the fate of Michael Angelo partly too, perhaps, his preference; for he was easily deterred from work. Many of his marbles are only just begun. The two medallion "Madonnas," the "Madonna and Child" in S. Lorenzo, the "Head of Brutus," the "Bound Captives," and the "Piet
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