It will be seen that during the whole course of his long career he acted as the mainstay of his father, and as father to his younger brothers.
The strength and the tenacity of his domestic affections are very remarkable in a man who seems never to have thought of marrying.
"Art," he used to say, "is a sufficiently exacting mistress." Instead of seeking to beget children for his own solace, he devoted himself to the interests of his kinsmen.
The office of Podesta lasted only six months, and at the expiration of this term Lodovico returned to Florence.

He put the infant Michelangelo out to nurse in the village of Settignano, where the Buonarroti Simoni owned a farm.

Most of the people of that district gained their livelihood in the stone-quarries around Settignano and Maiano on the hillside of Fiesole.

Michelangelo's foster-mother was the daughter and the wife of stone-cutters.

"George," said he in after-years to his friend Vasari, "if I possess anything of good in my mental constitution, it comes from my having been born in your keen climate of Arezzo; just as I drew the chisel and the mallet with which I carve statues in together with my nurse's milk." When Michelangelo was of age to go to school, his father put him under a grammarian at Florence named Francesco da Urbino.