when he was annoying me, I got more angry than usual, and, clenching
my fist, I gave him such a blow on the nose that I felt bone and
cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles; and this mark of
mine he will carry with him to the grave." The portraits of
Michelangelo prove that Torrigiano's boast was not a vain one. They
show a nose broken in the bridge. But Torrigiano, for this act of
violence, came to be regarded by the youth of Florence with aversion,
as one who had laid sacrilegious hands upon the sacred ark. Cellini
himself would have wiped out the insult with blood. Still Cellini knew
that personal violence was not in the line of Michelangelo's
character; for Michelangelo, according to his friend and best
biographer, Condivi, was by nature, "as is usual with men of sedentary
and contemplative habits, rather timorous than otherwise, except when
he is roused by righteous anger to resent unjust injuries or wrongs
done to himself or others, in which case he plucks up more spirit than
those who are esteemed brave; but, for the rest, he is most patient
and enduring." Cellini, then, knowing the quality of Michelangelo's
temper, and respecting him as a deity of art, adds to his report of
Torrigiano's conversation: "These words begat in me such hatred of the
man, since I was always gazing at the masterpieces of the divine
Michelangelo, that, although I felt a wish to go with him to England,
I now could never bear the sight of him."


VIII

The years Michelangelo spent in the Casa Medici were probably the
blithest and most joyous of his lifetime. The men of wit and learning
who surrounded the Magnificent were not remarkable for piety or moral
austerity. Lorenzo himself found it politically useful "to occupy the