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Updated: June 10, 2025
Giovanni Francesco Fattucci was, as we well know, his most intimate friend and trusted counsellor during long and difficult years, when the negotiations with the heirs of Pope Julius were being carried on; yet there exists one letter of unaffected sorrow from this excellent man, under date October 14, 1545, which shows that for some unaccountable reason Michelangelo had suddenly chosen to mistrust him.
Michael Angelo replied to the agent of Clement, Francesco Fattucci, who requested plans for the Laurentian Library: "I understand from your last that his Holiness our Lord wishes that the design for the Library should be by my hand. I have heard nothing and do not know where he wishes it to be built. True, Stefano talked to me about it, but I did not give my mind to it.
Fattucci, on January 13, 1524, rebuked him for this modesty, and wrote that "Jacopo Salviati has given orders that Spina should be instructed to pay you a monthly provision of fifty ducats." A house also was assigned to him at San Lorenzo, rent free, that he might be near his work.
From a hint in the letter of December 24, 1524, to Fattucci, where Michelangelo observes that only he in person would be able to arrange matters, it is possible that we may refer it to the beginning of 1525.
We have a good account by his own hand of what happened when he arrived in Rome, his famous letter to Fattucci, written sixteen years later. "To SER GIOVAN FRANCESCO FATTUCCI, in Rome. "MESSER GIOVAN FRANCESCO,—You ask of me in your letter how my affairs stood with Pope Julius. I tell you that I estimate that I could demand payment and interest on it, to receive money rather than give it.
Writing in January 1524 to his friend Giovanni Francesco Fattucci, he says: "When I had finished paying for the transport of these marbles, and all the money was spent, I furnished the house I had upon the Piazza di S. Pietro with beds and utensils at my own expense, trusting to the commission of the tomb, and sent for workmen from Florence, who are still alive, and paid them in advance out of my own purse.
He still hung suspended between the devil and the deep sea, the importunate Duke of Urbino and the vacillating Pope. Spina, it seems, had been writing with too much heat to Rome, probably urging Clement to bring the difficulties about the tomb to a conclusion. Michelangelo takes the correspondence up again with Fattucci on November 6, 1526.
The heirs of Pope Julius, perceiving that Michelangelo's time and energy were wholly absorbed at S. Lorenzo, began to threaten him with a lawsuit. Clement, wanting apparently to mediate between the litigants, ordered Fattucci to obtain a report from the sculptor, with a full account of how matters stood. This evoked the long and interesting document which has been so often cited.
His successor, Julius III., was also friendly to Michael Angelo, who spoke of him in a letter to his old friend, Giovan Francesco Fattucci, at Florence. "To MESSER GIOVAN FRANCESCO FATTUCCI, priest of Santa Maria del Fiore, My most dear friend at Florence.
The fact is confirmed by a letter written to Fattucci in 1523: "About two years have elapsed since I returned from Carrara, whither I had gone to purchase marbles for the tombs of the Cardinal."
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