I Michelangelo returned to Florence in the spring of 1501.

Condivi says that domestic affairs compelled him to leave Rome, and the correspondence with his father makes this not improbable.

He brought a heightened reputation back to his native city.

The Bacchus and the Madonna della Febbre had placed him in advance of any sculptor of his time.

Indeed, in these first years of the sixteenth century he may be said to have been the only Tuscan sculptor of commanding eminence.
Ghiberti, Della Quercia, Brunelleschi, Donatello, all had joined the majority before his birth.