CHAPTER V

THE COLOSSAL BRONZE FOR THE FACADE OF SAN PETRONIO

XXXII. So he arrived at Bologna one morning, and going to San Petronio to hear mass,(39) behold, the grooms of the Pope, who recognised him and conducted him to his Holiness, who was at table in the Palazzo de' Sedici. When he saw Michael Angelo in his presence, Julius, with an angry look, said to him, "_You ought to have come to us, and you have waited for us to come to you_." Meaning to say, that his Holiness being come to Bologna, a place much nearer to Florence than Rome is, it was as if he (the Pope) had come to him. Michael Angelo with a loud voice and on his knees craved pardon, pleading that he had not erred maliciously but through indignation, for he could not bear to be hunted away as he had been. The Pope kept his head lowered and replied nothing, to all appearances much troubled, when a certain monsignore, sent by the Cardinal Soderini to excuse and intercede for Michael Angelo, broke in, saying: "_Your Holiness, do not remember his fault, for he has erred through ignorance; these painters in things outside their art are all like this._" The Pope indignantly replied: "_You __abuse him, whilst we say nothing; you are the ignorant one, and he is not the culprit; take yourself off in an evil hour._" But as he was not going, he was, as Michael Angelo used to tell, hustled out of the room with blows by the servants of the Pope. Thus the Pope having spent his fury on the bishop, called Michael Angelo closer to him, and pardoned him, ordering him not to leave Bologna until another commission had been given to him. Nor was he long before he sent for him and said that he wished Michael Angelo to make a great portrait statue of him in bronze, which he wished to place on the front of the Church of San Petronio. And he left a thousand ducats in the bank of Messer Antommaria da Lignano to carry out the work when he departed for Rome. It is true that before he left Michael Angelo had already modelled it in clay, but he was doubtful as to what the statue should hold in the left hand, the right was raised as if giving a benediction. He asked the Pope, who had come to see the statue, if it pleased him that he should be made holding a book. "_What! a book?_" he replied, "_a sword! As for me, I am no scholar._" And jesting about the right hand, which was in vigorous action, he said, smiling the while, to Michael Angelo, "_Does this statue of yours give a blessing or a curse?_" Michael Angelo replied to him: "_It threatens this people, Holy Father, lest they be foolish._" But, as I have said, Pope Julius returned to Rome and Michael Angelo remained behind at Bologna, and spent sixteen months in completing the statue and erecting it where the Pope had directed. Afterwards, on the return of the Bentivogli to Bologna, this statue was thrown to earth in the fury of the populace and destroyed. Its height was more than three times that of life.