Michael Angelo was but seventeen years old when Poliziano advised him to attempt an original work, and gave him the marble for a relief of the contest between Hercules and the Centaurs. This work surprised every one, and is still preserved in the collection of the Buonarroti family. In the year 1492 he also made a relief of the Madonna Suckling the Child Jesus, which is also in the same place. In the same year Lorenzo de' Medici died, and Michael Angelo, full of grief, went to his father's house and arranged a studio there. After a time Piero de Medici invited him to come back to the palace, and he went; but it was no more the same place as formerly, and he was unhappy there. Soon political troubles drove the Medici from power, and in 1494, in the midst of the confusion, Michael Angelo escaped to Venice. There he made friends with Gian Francesco Aldovrandi of Bologna, and was persuaded by that nobleman to accompany him to his own city. [Illustration: FIG. 104.--MICHAEL ANGELO'S ANGEL. _Bologna._] While at Bologna he executed an angel holding a candelabra, which is one of the most lovely and pleasing things he ever made (Fig. 104). When he received the commission to ornament the sarcophagus which contained the remains of San Domenico in the Church of San Petronio, the Bolognese artists were so angry at being thus set aside for a stranger, and a youth of twenty, that they threatened vengeance on him, and he returned to Florence. It was at this time that he executed a Cupid, which was the means of leading him to Rome. The story is that when he had the statue completed Lorenzo de' Medici, a relative of his first patron, advised him to give it the appearance of an antique marble, and added that he would then sell it in Rome and get a good price for it. Michael Angelo consented to this plan, and in the end he received thirty ducats for the work. The secret of its origin was not kept, and the cardinal who had bought it sent an agent to Florence to find out the truth about it. This agent pretended to be in search of a sculptor; and when he saw Michael Angelo he asked him what works he had done. When he mentioned a Sleeping Cupid, and the agent asked questions, the young sculptor found that the cardinal had paid two hundred ducats for it, and that he had been greatly deceived when attempting to deceive others. Michael Angelo consented to go to Rome with this man, who promised to receive him into his own house, and assured him that he would be fully occupied in the Eternal City. The oldest writing by the hand of Michael Angelo is the letter which he wrote to Lorenzo telling him of his arrival in Rome; when this was written he was twenty-one years old. The first work which he did after he reached Rome was the "Drunken Bacchus," now in the Uffizi Gallery; it shows a great knowledge of anatomy in one so young, and the expression of drunkenness is given in the most natural manner. [Illustration: FIG. 105.--PIETA. _By Michael Angelo._]