It was in the gardens of the Medici at San Marco, where Lorenzo the Magnificent had collected many antique statues and decorative sculptures, that Michelangelo finally discovered his real artistic vocation, and here he would spend many hours every day, assimilating the Hellenic spirit which emanated from the masterpieces before him. Lorenzo's principal object in establishing a museum of antique sculpture at San Marco had been to raise Florentine sculpture from the state of comparative neglect into which it had fallen since the death of Donatello. He therefore appointed one Bertoldo, who had been foreman of Donatello's workshop, keeper of the collection, with a special commission to encourage and instruct the young men who studied there. But there was evidently a great lack of students, for Lorenzo had recourse to Domenico Ghirlandajo, requesting him to select from his pupils those he considered the most promising, and send them to work in the garden of San Marco. Domenico, nothing loth to get rid of his two most ambitious apprentices, selected Francesco Granacci and Michelangelo, and it was thus that the latter came under the influence of Donatello's school. Of Bertoldo, who must be considered Michelangelo's first instructor in the art of sculpture, and who doubtless had a great share in shaping his genius, very little is known beyond Vasari's statement that "although he was old and could not work, he was none the less an able and highly reputed artist." The magnificent pulpits of San Lorenzo, begun by Donatello and completed by Bertoldo, amply suffice to confirm Vasari's eulogistic estimate. Under such a master Michelangelo made rapid progress, and by his first attempt at sculpture, a mask of a grinning Faun, attracted the attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who took the keenest interest in the art school which he had founded. So struck was Lorenzo with the boy's genius, that he prevailed upon Messer Lodovico, not without the greatest difficulty, to entrust the talented young sculptor to his care. Vasari tells us that "he gave Michelangelo a good room in his own house with all that he needed, treating him like a son, with a seat at his table, which was frequented every day by noblemen and men of great importance." [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF MICHELANGELO.]