These three powers practically brought into being all that is greatest in Italian art. From our sculptor’s association with them we can understand the influences which were spurring Angelo’s few compeers and his many inferiors to their greatest efforts. THE FLORENTINE PERIOD Like many another scholar and artist, Michael Angelo entered the household of Lorenzo de Medici, the merchant-despot of Florence, as a boy. Until his patron’s death he fared like a scion of the family. While it would have been impossible for an impressionable youth to grow up without imbibing something of the spirit of the place, Angelo never thoroughly absorbed the influence of the Medicean court. The time was too short. Before he was twenty it was a thing of the past. But for some years the memory of these joy-days persisted, and it was under their inspiration that the earliest of Angelo’s great works were produced. Of these, the “David,” begun in 1501 and finished in 1503, stands out pre-eminently as embodying the humanist creed. But the statue of the great loose-limbed youth has an even more vital interest. Nothing could more happily illustrate the relation a great Renaissance artist bore to his countrymen than the circumstances attending the carving of the “David.” It was commissioned by the State of Florence. The first contract signed by the sculptor and the representative of the town sets forth that “the worthy master, Michael Angelo, son of Lodovico Buonarroti, Citizen of Florence, has been chosen to fashion, complete, and perfectly finish the male statue, already rough-hewn and called ‘The Giant,’ 13 feet 6 inches high, now existing in the workshop of the Cathedral, badly blocked out aforetime by Master Agostino di Duccio of Florence.” In other words, Angelo’s “David”—one of the masterpieces of the world—was cut from a great block of marble that had been so maltreated by an earlier worker that no artist of rank could be found to risk his reputation in finishing it. This alone would be sufficient proof of the immense technical skill of this youth of twenty-six. In addition, Michael Angelo did not even model a full-sized clay figure. He worked with no guidance except a few drawings and wax models some eighteen inches high. His remuneration for this was fixed at £2 6_s._ a month—workmen, scaffolding, &c., being supplied. “When the said statue is finished,” continues the contract, “the consuls and operai shall estimate whether he deserve a larger recompense, and this shall be left to their consciences.”