'You ought at least to touch it up with gold,' replied the Pope; and Michelangelo, with that familiarity he used toward his Holiness, said carelessly: 'I have not observed that men wore gold.' The Pope rejoined: 'It will look poor.' Buonarroti added: 'Those who are painted there were poor men.' So the matter turned into pleasantry, and the frescoes have remained in their present state." Condivi goes on to state that Michelangelo received 3000 ducats for all his expenses, and that he spent as much as twenty or twenty-five ducats on colours alone.

Upon the difficult question of the moneys earned by the great artist in his life-work, I shall have to speak hereafter, though I doubt whether any really satisfactory account can now be given of them.
VIII Michelangelo's letters to his family in Florence throw a light at once vivid and painful over the circumstances of his life during these years of sustained creative energy.

He was uncomfortable in his bachelor's home, and always in difficulties with his servants.

"I am living here in discontent, not thoroughly well, and undergoing great fatigue, without money, and with no one to look after me." Again, when one of his brothers proposed to visit him in Rome, he writes: "I hear that Gismondo means to come hither on his affairs.

Tell him not to count on me for anything; not because I do not love him as a brother, but because I am not in the position to assist him.