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A few days after this encounter Michael Angelo was ordered to cast a bronze statue of Julius for the frontispiece of S. Petronio. The sculptor objected that brass-foundry was not his affair. "Never mind," said Julius; "get to work, and we will cast your statue till it comes out perfect." Michael Angelo did as he was bid, and the statue was set up in 1508 above the great door of the church.
It stood alone, and was reserved for its original purpose of keeping the bells. The windows, for a reason very natural in Italy, where there is rather too much than too little sunlight, were curtailed; and instead of the multiplied bays and clustered columns of a northern Gothic aisle, the nave of so vast a church as S. Petronio at Bologna is measured by six arches raised on simple piers.
Petronio, taking his sister's part, joined Fastidio, and the unlucky Battipaglia was dragged outside and treated to a generous dose of blows and fisticuffs, which was not exactly the thing to console him for a lost engagement. Soon afterwards, Petronio brought me Therese's letter. She was ruining the duke, getting rich accordingly, and waiting for me in Naples.
Michael Angelo must have spent his spare time in studying the bas-reliefs by Jacopo della Quercia upon the façade of San Petronio, for he used many of the motives in his next great work, the Sistine vault. When the wax model of the statue of Pope Julius was ready, Michael Angelo sent to Florence for the ordnance founder to the Republic, Maestro dal Ponte, of Milan, to cast it for him.
"You are welcome to the ride," said the good fellow, "but I would advise you not to get on the mule till we are outside the city, and to pass through the gate on foot as if you were one of the drivers." It was exactly what I wanted. Petronio accompanied me as far as the gate, where I gave him a substantial proof of my gratitude.
Petronio came with the coffee which he poured out, and I sent some to the mother, who never left her room. Petronio was a true male harlot by taste and by profession. The species is not scare in Italy, where the offence is not regarded with the wild and ferocious intolerance of England and Spain.
With this will be a letter to go to the Cardinal of Pavia, in which I reply to him about it all, so that he cannot complain. So put it in a cover and direct it to Giuliano da San Gallo on my part, and desire him to deliver it with his own hand. On February 21, 1508, the statue of Pope Julius II. was hoisted on to its pedestal above the great central door of San Petronio.
Such churches are common enough in Italy, where pointed architecture never developed its true character of complexity and richness, but was doomed to the vast vacuity exemplified in S. Petronio of Bologna.
I went to her room, and congratulated her upon her children. She thanked me for the present I had given to Petronio, and began to make me the confidant of her distress. "The manager of the theatre," she said, "is a miser who has given us only fifty Roman crowns for the whole carnival. We have spent them for our living, and, to return to Bologna, we shall have to walk and beg our way."
My mother advised me to continue to give myself out as a castrato, in the hope of being able to take me to Rome. I agreed to do so, for I did not feel sufficient energy to decide upon any other plan. In the meantime she accepted an offer for the Ancona Theatre, and Petronio took the part of first female dancer; in this way we played the comedy of 'The World Turned Upside Down.
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