DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61542#0399
1564] THE STATUE OF DAVID 345
Although he was always liberal to others, Michel-
angelo’s own habits were singularly frugal. “ Ascanio,”
he often remarked to his friend and biographer Condivi,
“ rich as I may have been, I have always lived like a
poor man.” He dined off a crust of bread which he
ate in the midst of his labours, and slept little,
generally going to bed in his clothes and high boots,
and often sharing his room, and even his bed, with
his assistants. A poet and a dreamer by nature,
he devoted his spare moments to the study of
Dante and Petrarch’s poetry and the composition
of sonnets, and his love of solitude, and irritable and
suspicious temper, made him shrink from the society
of others. Unlike Raphael, he formed no school,
and never confided the execution of his designs to
assistants. But to the few scholars such as Vasari,
Sebastian del Piombo or Daniele da Volterra, who
attached themselves to his person, his kindness and
generosity were unbounded, and both his letters and
sonnets reveal the depth of love and tenderness
in his heart.
On his return to Florence, Michelangelo received
an important commission from the Board of Works
of the Duomo, who charged him to make a colossal
statue out of a block of marble which had been spoilt
by an inferior sculptor some years before. From this
mis-shapen block, Michelangelo now carved his giant
David, and on the 25th of January, 1504, eighteen
leading Florentine masters met to choose a site for
the new colossus. Sandro Botticelli and Cosimo
Rosselli recommended the Piazza of the Duomo,
Leonardo and the architect San Gallo were strongly
of opinion that the statue should be placed in the
Although he was always liberal to others, Michel-
angelo’s own habits were singularly frugal. “ Ascanio,”
he often remarked to his friend and biographer Condivi,
“ rich as I may have been, I have always lived like a
poor man.” He dined off a crust of bread which he
ate in the midst of his labours, and slept little,
generally going to bed in his clothes and high boots,
and often sharing his room, and even his bed, with
his assistants. A poet and a dreamer by nature,
he devoted his spare moments to the study of
Dante and Petrarch’s poetry and the composition
of sonnets, and his love of solitude, and irritable and
suspicious temper, made him shrink from the society
of others. Unlike Raphael, he formed no school,
and never confided the execution of his designs to
assistants. But to the few scholars such as Vasari,
Sebastian del Piombo or Daniele da Volterra, who
attached themselves to his person, his kindness and
generosity were unbounded, and both his letters and
sonnets reveal the depth of love and tenderness
in his heart.
On his return to Florence, Michelangelo received
an important commission from the Board of Works
of the Duomo, who charged him to make a colossal
statue out of a block of marble which had been spoilt
by an inferior sculptor some years before. From this
mis-shapen block, Michelangelo now carved his giant
David, and on the 25th of January, 1504, eighteen
leading Florentine masters met to choose a site for
the new colossus. Sandro Botticelli and Cosimo
Rosselli recommended the Piazza of the Duomo,
Leonardo and the architect San Gallo were strongly
of opinion that the statue should be placed in the