41/89 Nearly four months were expended on this miniature. The labour was lost, for not a vestige of it now remains. Near the end of December he despatched his servant, Pietro Urbano, with the finished work to Rome. On the 29th of that month, Urbano writes that he exposed the model in Messer Buoninsegni's apartment, and that the Pope and Cardinal were very well pleased with it. Buoninsegni wrote to the same effect, adding, however, that folk said it could never be finished in the sculptor's lifetime, and suggesting that Michelangelo should hire assistants from Milan, where he, Buoninsegni, had seen excellent stonework in progress at the Duomo. |