I While Michelangelo was living and working at Florence, Bramante had full opportunity to poison the Pope's mind in Rome.

It is commonly believed, on the faith of a sentence in Condivi, that Bramante, when he dissuaded Julius from building the tomb in his own lifetime, suggested the painting of the Sistine Chapel.

We are told that he proposed Michelangelo for this work, hoping his genius would be hampered by a task for which he was not fitted.

There are many improbabilities in this story; not the least being our certainty that the fame of the Cartoon must have reached Bramante before Michelangelo's arrival in the first months of 1505.

But the Cartoon did not prove that Buonarroti was a practical wall-painter or colourist; and we have reason to believe that Julius had himself conceived the notion of intrusting the Sistine to his sculptor.