Accordingly, I reckon that I shall have to remain here not less than a year; and so much time I beg the Duke to allow me for the love of Christ and S.Peter, so that I may not come home to Florence with a pricking conscience, but a mind easy about Rome." The model took about a year to make.

It was executed by a French master named Jean.
All this while Michelangelo's enemies, headed by Nanni di Baccio Bigio, continued to calumniate and backbite.

In the end they poisoned the mind of his old friend the Cardinal of Carpi.

We gather this from a haughty letter written on the 13th of February 1560: "Messer Francesco Bandini informed me yesterday that your most illustrious and reverend lordship told him that the building of S.Peter's could not possibly go on worse than it is doing.

This has grieved me deeply, partly because you have not been informed of the truth, and also because I, as my duty is, desire more than all men living that it should proceed well.