Michelangelo's daily companions at this hospitable board were such men as Pico della Mirandola, surnamed "the prince of wisdom," Marsilio Ficino, the expounder of Plato, and the poets Luigi Pulci and Angelo Poliziano. It was the latter who suggested the subject of Michelangelo's first important work, a bas-relief, now in the Casa Buonarroti, representing the _Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae_. It is a singularly powerful composition, conceived and carried out with a freedom and originality little short of miraculous in a boy of fifteen. The struggling groups of combatants, instinct with life and energy, the masterful treatment of anatomical problems, and the already profound knowledge of the human frame, reveal the future author of the _Last Judgment_. Michelangelo himself, when at the height of his artistic greatness, used to say that he had never quite fulfilled the splendid promise contained in this youthful work of his. Apart from its intrinsic merit, this bas-relief is interesting as illustrating Michelangelo's complete independence from the school and methods of Donatello. His bold and original genius had sought inspiration directly from the antique, and the _Battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae_ might easily be taken for a fragment from some Roman sarcophagus. In view of these very pronounced characteristics, it is difficult to understand why another bas-relief, also in the Casa Buonarroti, representing a seated Madonna with the Infant Jesus, and chiefly notable for its almost servile imitation of Donatello's manner, should be ascribed by most critics to this same period. Indeed, the execution and design of this _Madonna and Child_ are so inferior as to render it a work of extremely doubtful authenticity. Although he applied himself principally to the study of sculpture, Michelangelo continued to devote many hours every day to drawing, and, like most young artists of his age, he drew and studied assiduously in the Brancacci Chapel of the Church of the Carmine, containing the famous frescoes of Masaccio and his followers. Conscious of his own superiority, Michelangelo was, it appears, in the habit of frankly criticizing the work of his fellow-students in the Brancacci Chapel, and one of these, named Piero Torrigiani, a brutal and proud fellow, got so angry one day that he hit Michelangelo a formidable blow on the nose, breaking the cartilage and disfiguring his critic for life. For this act of temper Torrigiani was banished from Florence, but it is pleasant to know that Michelangelo successfully interceded with Lorenzo on behalf of the man who had assaulted him.