Nothing can exceed the spirit with which a violent temperament, habitually repressed, but capable of leaping forth like sudden lightning, has been rendered.

We must be grateful to Calcagni for leaving it in its suggestively unfinished state.
II During these same years Michelangelo carried on a correspondence with Ammanati and Vasari about the completion of the Laurentian Library.
His letters illustrate what I have more than once observed regarding his unpractical method of commencing great works, without more than the roughest sketches, intelligible to himself alone, and useless to an ordinary craftsman.

The Florentine artists employed upon the fabric wanted very much to know how he meant to introduce the grand staircase into the vestibule.

Michelangelo had forgotten all about it.

"With regard to the staircase of the library, about which so much has been said to me, you may believe that if I could remember how I had arranged it, I should not need to be begged and prayed for information.