It is sad to see this poor great man trying so hard to understand the absurd whims of his Mæcenas that he ends by almost becoming interested in them. "I have thought about the Colossus," he writes to Fattucci in the autumn of 1525; "I have indeed thought a great deal about it. It seems to me that it would not be well placed outside the Medici gardens because it would take up too much room in the street. A better place, I think, would be where the barber's shop is. There it would not be so much in the way. As for the expenses of expropriation, I think to reduce them we could make the figure seated, and as it could be hollow, the shop could be placed inside so the rent would not be lost. It seems to me a good idea to put in the hand of the Colossus a horn of abundance, and this could be hollow and would serve as a chimney. The head could also be made use of, I should think, for the poultryman, my very good friend who lives on the square, said to me secretly that it would make a wonderful dovecote. I have another and still better idea--but in that case the statue must be made very much larger, which would not be impossible, for towers are made with stone--and that is that the head should serve as a bell-tower to S. Lorenzo, which now has none. By placing the bell so that the sound would come out of the mouth it would seem as if the giant cried for mercy, especially on holidays when they use the big bells." Michelangelo had constant trouble with his workmen, and to these worries and his pangs of conscience were added domestic difficulties which never ceased to embitter his life. During the period of the Sistine frescoes it was his relations with his brothers that gave him most trouble, for they tried to make use of him and he had to watch them sharply. Then it was his father whom he adored with almost religious reverence and who undoubtedly loved him, but who, irritable like himself, and peevish and suspicious, picked unfair quarrels and spread odious calumnies about him. In the midst of all these difficulties the work did not progress at all. A letter of June, 1526, says that one statue of a captain had been begun, as well as four allegories and the Madonna, but as a matter of fact not one of these was ready in 1527. As for the Library and the Medici Chapel they were hardly begun. At this moment the revolution broke out in Florence (April, 1527). [Illustration: JESSE A Figure in the Series of the "Ancestors of Christ." Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512).]