that the latter would receive him very kindly. Michelangelo, then,
partly in anger at having been cheated, and partly moved by the
gentleman's account of Rome as the widest field for an artist to
display his talents, went with him, and lodged in his house, near the
palace of the Cardinal." S. Giorgio compelled Messer Baldassare to
refund the 200 ducats, and to take the Cupid back. But Michelangelo
got nothing beyond his original price; and both Condivi and Vasari
blame the Cardinal for having been a dull and unsympathetic patron to
the young artist of genius he had brought from Florence. Still the
whole transaction was of vast importance, because it launched him for
the first time upon Rome, where he was destined to spend the larger
part of his long life, and to serve a succession of Pontiffs in their
most ambitious undertakings.

Before passing to the events of his sojourn at Rome, I will wind up
the story of the Cupid. It passed first into the hands of Cesare
Borgia, who presented it to Guidobaldo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.
On the 30th of June 1502, the Marchioness of Mantua wrote a letter to
the Cardinal of Este, saying that she should very much like to place
this piece, together with an antique statuette of Venus, both of which
had belonged to her brother-in-law, the Duke of Urbino, in her own
collection. Apparently they had just become the property of Cesare
Borgia, when he took and sacked the town of Urbino upon the 20th of
June in that year. Cesare Borgia seems to have complied immediately
with her wishes; for in a second letter, dated July 22, 1502, she
described the Cupid as "without a peer among the works of modern
times."


IV