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In May of each year Lorenzo gave a pageant, and the spring in which Michael Angelo came to the palace Lorenzo placed the carnival in charge of the boy's friend, Francesco Granacci. Day by day the boys planned for the great procession. At noon they were free from their teachers, and then they would scatter to the gardens.
VIII. When he got home Michael Angelo carried out the embassy of the Magnificent; his father divining why he was called, with great persuasion from Granacci and others made ready to go: lamenting to himself that his son would be taken away.
This work is rather dingy now, but it is interesting as coming in part from the hand that designed the tabernacle in Or San Michele and the Loggia de' Lanzi. Granacci was a fellow-pupil of Michelangelo both in Lorenzo de' Medici's garden and in Ghirlandaio's workshop, and the bosom friend of that great man all his life.
Now Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Magnificent, desired to encourage the art of sculpture in Florence; he therefore established a museum of antiquities in his garden near San Marco, and made Bertoldo, the pupil of Donatello and the foreman of his workshop, keeper of the collection, with a special commission to aid and instruct the young men who studied there. Lorenzo requested Domenico Ghirlandaio to select from his pupils those he considered the most promising, and send them to work in the garden. Domenico sent Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Francesco Granacci; possibly he was rather glad to get these talented elements of insubordination out of his workshop. Thus it was that Michael Angelo came under the influence of a pupil and foreman of Donatello. Bertoldo must be considered the instructor of Michael Angelo in his beloved art of sculpture, and the most important influence in shaping his genius. Very little is known of the man upon whom this responsibility was placed, but he appears to have been worthy of it. Vasari tells us that Bertoldo "was old and could not work; that he was none the less an able and highly reputed artist, not only because he had most diligently chased and polished the casts in bronze for the pupils of Donatello his master, but also for the numerous casts in bronze of battle-pieces and other little things, which he had executed of his own; there was no one then in Florence more masterly in such work." We have no important work entirely by Bertoldo, but he must have been a considerable artist or he would not have been appointed to his important post by such a wise man as Lorenzo the Magnificent. His share of the work for the pulpits of San Lorenzo was probably much greater than we are accustomed to think. Vasari’s word rinettato had a much wider meaning to him than it has to us, the chasing of a bronze was considered no small part of its quality by the Florentines. Lorenzo Ghiberti’s supposed superiority over his competitors for the doors of San Giovanni was more in his superb finish than in anything else. The pulpits in San Lorenzo have something about them that is between the art of Donatello and the art of Michael Angelo; we may even owe a large part of the composition in some of the stories to Bertoldo. Donatello must have needed a man of judgment and ability to carry out the numerous and important commissions that issued from his workshops in his old age. That Michael Angelo studied the pulpits of San Lorenzo is proved by the numerous motives he took from them in after life; the general aspect of the figures strangely suggests the "terribilit
For instance, we possess a series of receipts by Piero Rosselli, acknowledging several disbursements for the plastering of the roof between May 11 and July 27. We learn from one of these that Granacci was in Rome before June 3; and Michelangelo writes for fine blue colours to a certain Fra Jacopo Gesuato at Florence upon the 13th of May.
For the same spectacle Granacci executed a great quantity of theatrical scenery, as he did both before and afterwards.
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.
With the same intention of forming an academy or school of art, Lorenzo went to Ghirlandajo, and begged him to select from his pupils those whom he considered the most promising. Ghirlandajo accordingly drafted off Francesco Granacci and Michelangelo Buonarroti.
Stating, moreover, that he would never suffer his son to be a stonemason, it was useless for Granacci to explain how great was the difference between a sculptor and a mason.
Neither Raffaellino del Garbo nor Giovanni Michi were employed, but the next letter of Granacci, dated July 24, 1508, mentions Giuliano Buggiardini and Jacopo L’Indaco, who were both tried. Vasari informs us that Granacci, Jacopo di Sandro, and the elder Indaco, Agnolo di Donnino, and Aristotile da Sangallo also accepted work.
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