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Updated: July 13, 2025
Torrigiano lives in history for this act alone, thus proving that there are more ways than one to gain immortality. Angelo was proud, self-centered, independent, and he sometimes lashed the critics into a buzzing, bluebottle fury by his sarcastic speech. "He affronted polite society, conformed to no one's dictates, lived like an ascetic and worked like a packmule," says a contemporary.
A contract was signed on June 5, by which Michelangelo agreed to complete these figures within the space of three years. One of them, a S. Francis, had been already begun by Piero Torrigiano; and this, we have some reason to believe, was finished by the master's hand.
In the centre of the chapel is the tomb of the founder, Henry VII., and his wife, Elizabeth of York, and on the grille and the gates are the family badges. The tomb of Henry's mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, is in the south aisle; and the effigies of herself, her son and his wife, are fine specimens of the skill of the famous Italian sculptor Torrigiano.
He held himself aloof from his fellow-pupils, and one day, in a quarrel with Piètro Torrigiano, the latter gave Angelo a blow and crushed his nose so badly that he was disfigured for life. Torrigiano was banished for this offence and went to England; he ended his life in a Spanish prison. In the spring of 1492 Lorenzo de Medici died.
But this was never put into execution, because Torrigiano himself was plunged thereby into such melancholy, that, remaining many days without eating, and thus becoming very weak, little by little he put an end to his own life; and in this way, by denying himself his food, he avoided the shame into which he would perchance have fallen, for it was believed that he had been condemned to death.
It does not, I think, deserve credence, for Cellini, who was a boy of twelve in 1512, could hardly have drawn from it before that date; and if Bandinelli was so notorious for his malignant vandalism as Vasari asserts, it is most improbable that Cellini, while speaking of the Cartoon in connection with Torrigiano, should not have taken the opportunity to cast a stone at the man whom he detested more than any one in Florence.
This coming under the inspection of the Goldsmiths' Company of Florence, I acquired the reputation of the most expert young man in the trade. About this time there came to Florence a sculptor named Torrigiano, who had just returned from England, where he had resided for several years.
Wherefore, moved by bitter envy, Torrigiano was always seeking to affront him, both in word and deed; and one day, having come to blows, Torrigiano struck Michelagnolo so hard on the nose with his fist, that he broke it, insomuch that Michelagnolo had his nose flattened for the rest of his life.
This matter becoming known to Lorenzo, he was so enraged that Torrigiano, if he had not fled from Florence, would have suffered some heavy punishment. Having therefore made his way to Rome, where Alexander VI was then pressing on the work of the Borgia Tower, Torrigiano executed in it a great quantity of stucco-work, in company with other masters.
The front view of the forehead is square, the nose a little flattened, not naturally, but because when he was a boy, one Torrigiano, a brutal and proud fellow, with a blow almost broke the cartilage, so that Michael Angelo was carried home as one dead; for this Torrigiano was banished from Florence, and he came to a bad end.
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