The second group of distinguished craftsmen--Verocchio, Luca della Robbia, Rossellino, Da Maiano, Civitali, Desiderio da Settignano--expired at the commencement of the century.

It seemed as though a gap in the ranks of plastic artists had purposely been made for the entrance of a predominant and tyrannous personality.

Jacopo Tatti, called Sansovino, was the only man who might have disputed the place of preeminence with Michelangelo, and Sansovino chose Venice for the theatre of his life-labours.

In these circumstances, it is not singular that commissions speedily began to overtax the busy sculptor's power of execution.

I do not mean to assert that the Italians, in the year 1501, were conscious of Michelangelo's unrivalled qualities, or sensitive to the corresponding limitations which rendered these qualities eventually baneful to the evolution of the arts; but they could not help feeling that in this young man of twenty-six they possessed a first-rate craftsman, and one who had no peer among contemporaries.
The first order of this year came from the Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini, who was afterwards elected Pope in 1503, and who died after reigning three weeks with the title of Pius III.