treasures--bas-reliefs, vases, coins, engraved stones, paintings by
the best contemporary masters, statues in bronze and marble by
Verocchio and Donatello. Its library contained the costliest
manuscripts, collected from all quarters of Europe and the Levant. The
guests who assembled in its halls were leaders in that intellectual
movement which was destined to spread a new type of culture far and
wide over the globe. The young sculptor sat at the same board as
Marsilio Ficino, interpreter of Plato; Pico della Mirandola, the
phoenix of Oriental erudition; Angelo Poliziano, the unrivalled
humanist and melodious Italian poet; Luigi Pulci, the humorous
inventor of burlesque romance--with artists, scholars, students
innumerable, all in their own departments capable of satisfying a
youth's curiosity, by explaining to him the particular virtues of
books discussed, or of antique works of art inspected. During those
halcyon years, before the invasion of Charles VIII., it seemed as
though the peace of Italy might last unbroken. No one foresaw the
apocalyptic vials of wrath which were about to be poured forth upon
her plains and cities through the next half-century. Rarely, at any
period of the world's history, perhaps only in Athens between the
Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, has culture, in the highest and
best sense of that word, prospered more intelligently and pacifically
than it did in the Florence of Lorenzo, through the co-operation and
mutual zeal of men of eminence, inspired by common enthusiasms, and
labouring in diverse though cognate fields of study and production.

Michelangelo's position in the house was that of an honoured guest or
adopted son. Lorenzo not only allowed him five ducats a month by way
of pocket-money, together with clothes befitting his station, but he
also, says Condivi, "appointed him a good room in the palace, together
with all the conveniences he desired, treating him in every respect,