Architects built beautiful buildings something like the old Greek and Roman temples. Sculptors made statues that were almost as beautiful as those of Phidias. People began to take an interest once more in the old Greek writers, whose books were now printed for every one to read. It seemed almost as if Athens in the Age of Pericles had been born again. So that is why people speak of this time as the Renaissance. One of the greatest of these artists of the Renaissance was a man named Michelangelo. But Michelangelo was not just a painter; he was a sculptor, an architect, and a poet as well. Michelangelo thought nothing of spending years working on any statue or painting that he was doing. But when he had finished he had done something that people now go from all over the world to see. Nowadays, sculptors first model a statue in clay and then copy it in stone or cast it in bronze, but Michelangelo did not do this. He cut his figures directly out of the stone, without making a model first. It was as if he saw the figure imprisoned in the stone and then cut away the part that closed the figure in. A large block of marble had been spoiled by another sculptor. Michelangelo saw a figure of David _in_ it, and, setting to work, he cut this young athlete _out_. He made also a statue of Moses sitting down. It is now in a church in Rome, and when you walk up to it it is so lifelike that it seems as if you were in the presence of the prophet Moses himself. The guide tells you that when Michelangelo had finished this statue of Moses he was so thrilled by the figure he had created that, feeling it must come to life, he struck it on the knee with his hammer and commanded as he did so, “Stand Up”! And then the guide shows you a crack in the marble to prove that the story is true! [Illustration: Michelangelo at work.] The pope wanted Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of his own private chapel in Rome. This was called the Sistine Chapel. At first Michelangelo didn’t want to do the painting. He told the pope he was a sculptor and not a painter. But the pope insisted, and Michelangelo at last gave in. Once having agreed to do the work, however, Michelangelo gave himself heart and soul to it. For four years he lived in this room--the Sistine Chapel--and hardly ever left it day or night. Beneath the ceiling, he built himself a platform, and, lying on this scaffold, he would read poetry and the Bible and work “as the spirit moved him.” Locking himself in, he would let no one enter, not even the pope himself. He wanted to be alone and to be left alone. The pope, however, felt that he was a privileged character, and one day, when he found the door left open, he came into the chapel to see how things were getting along. Michelangelo, thereupon, accidentally dropped some of his tools, and they just barely missed hitting the pope on the head. The pope was very angry, but he never returned uninvited again.