Meanwhile, Leo, wishing to compromise matters, offered Sebastiano the great hall in the lower apartments of the Borgias, where Alexander VI.

used to live, and where Pinturicchio painted--rooms shut up in pious horror by Julius when he came to occupy the palace of his hated and abominable predecessor.
Sebastiano's reliance upon Michelangelo, and his calculation that the way to get possession of the coveted commission would depend on the latter's consenting to supply him with designs, emerge in the following passage: "The Cardinal told me that he was ordered by the Pope to offer me the lower hall.

I replied that I could accept nothing without your permission, or until your answer came, which is not to hand at the date of writing.

I added that, unless I were engaged to Michelangelo, even if the Pope commanded me to paint that hall, I would not do so, because I do not think myself inferior to Raffaello's 'prentices, especially after the Pope, with his own mouth, had offered me half of the upper hall; and anyhow, I do not regard it as creditable to myself to paint the cellars, and they to have the gilded chambers.

I said they had better be allowed to go on painting.