Buggiardini is the only one of the assistants who seems to have reaped any benefit, beyond their wages, from the work they did for the great master.

This trouble with his assistants was not the only difficulty that Michael Angelo had to contend with in the execution of his work.

Vasari says that he shut himself alone in the chapel, without any one to help him even in the grinding of his colours; but, as he adds, that he took great precautions to prevent the workmen informing the public as to what he was doing, we must assume that Vasari was repeating a fable that had grown up about the marvellous work forty years after it was executed, much as we might at this day repeat stories of the making of the Wellington Monument by Alfred Stevens.

The carpenters and plasterers Michael Angelo employed would soon learn to perform the more mechanical part of his work, such as laying the intonaco, pricking the cartoons, and grinding colours, and as they could not have inserted into the work any tradition contrary to the new manner of the artist, would be preferred by him to second-rate artist assistants; no doubt, too, the boy he employed in household work would be made to help.
The trouble he had in his household arrangements before the time of his trusted servant, Urbino, may be illustrated by a letter relating to the boy he got from Florence about this time.

He never would have a woman to work for him in any way.
[Image #21] ATHLETE SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME (_By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence_) "_To_ LODOVICO DI BUONARROTA SIMONI, _in Florence_.
"ROME (_January_ 1510).
"MOST REVERED FATHER,--I answered you about the business of Bernardino, as I wished first to settle the affairs of my household as you know, and so I now reply to you.