While in Rome, Michelangelo kept up an active correspondence with Messer Lodovico, who, it appears, found himself in great financial straits at this time. Being a most dutiful and affectionate son, the young sculptor sent every available scudo of his money to succour his father and his three younger brothers, namely Buonarroto, born in 1477, whom he placed in the Arte della Seta; Giovan Simone, born in 1479, who led a vagabond life and was a source of continual trouble, and Sigismondo, born in 1481, who became a soldier. The letters which Michelangelo, in the midst of his artistic labours, found time to write home, full of tender solicitude and good advice and invariably containing a remittance, give us a touching insight into the beautiful and disinterested character which lay hidden underneath his stern and decidedly unattractive exterior. He lived not only very economically, but penuriously, in order the better to help his family, and it appears that his health suffered not a little from these privations. His father heard of it, and wrote a letter, dated December 19th, 1500, in which these passages occur: "Economy is good, but above all do not be penurious; live moderately and do not stint yourself, and avoid hardships, because in your art, if you fall ill (which God forbid), you are a lost man. Above all things, never wash; have yourself rubbed down, but never wash!" When Michelangelo returned to Florence in the spring of 1501, the fame of the great works which he had accomplished in Rome had already preceded him, and he was generally admitted to be the first sculptor of the day. Commissions came pouring in upon him, including one from Cardinal Francesco Piccolomini, who afterwards became Pope Pius III., for fifteen statues of saints to adorn the Piccolomini Chapel in the Duomo of Siena. But he completely neglected this work in order to devote himself with characteristic ardour to a more congenial task, that of carving a colossal statue of David out of a huge block of marble which had been previously spoiled by an inferior artist and abandoned as useless in the Opera del Duomo. Surmounting the enormous technical difficulties which he had to contend with, Michelangelo succeeded, after nearly two years of hard work, in evolving from the crippled block of marble one of the greatest masterpieces of modern art.