In time he found boughs with fresh leaves and berries floating on the sea, and caught the odor of spices from the west. Then he knew he was nearing that magic land of riches sailors dreamt of, and thought he had found the shortest passage to the East Indies and Cathay. That would have been a wonderful discovery, but the one he was actually making was infinitely greater. Instead of a new sea passage he was reaching a new continent, and adding a hemisphere to the known world. Such was the result of the dreams and ambitions of the boy born and bred in the old seaport of Genoa. II Michael Angelo The Boy of the Medici Gardens: 1475-1564 The Italian city of Florence was entering on the Golden Age of its history toward the end of the fifteenth century. Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, was head of the house of Medici, and first citizen of the proud Republic. He was himself an artist, a poet, and a philosopher; he loved the beautiful things of life, and had gathered about him a little court of men of genius. Florence at that time was also a great business city, and among the prominent merchant families was that of the Buonarotti. Ludovico Buonarotti had several sons, and he had named his second child Michael Angelo, and had planned that he should follow him in trade. Fortunately for the world, however, the boy had a will of his own. Even while he was still in charge of a nurse, and was just beginning to learn to use his hands, he would draw simple pictures and paint them whenever he had the chance. His father had little use for a painter, and sent the boy to the grammar school of Francesco d'Urbino, in Florence, thinking to make a scholar of him. There were, however, many studios in the neighborhood of the school, and many artists at work in them, and the boy would neglect his studies to haunt the places where he might see how grown men drew and painted. Watching the artists, young Michael Angelo soon formed a lasting friendship with a boy of great talent a few years older than himself, by name Francesco Granacci. This boy was a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandajo, a very great painter. The more Michael Angelo saw Granacci and his work in the studio the more he longed for a chance to study painting. He could think of nothing else; he begged his father and uncles to let him be an artist instead of a merchant or a scholar. But the father and uncles, coming from a long line of successful merchants, treated the boy's requests with scorn. Michael Angelo was determined to be an artist, however, and finally, though with the greatest reluctance, his father signed a contract with Ghirlandajo by which the boy was to study drawing and painting in his studio and do whatever other work the master might desire. The master was to pay the boy six gold florins for the first year's work, eight for the second, and ten for the third.