[290] That Michael Angelo was contemptuous to brother artists, is proved by what Torrigiani said to Cellini: "Aveva per usanza di uccellare tutti quelli che dissegnavano." He called Perugino _goffo_, told Francia's son that his father made handsomer men by night than by day, and cast in Lionardo's teeth that he could not finish the equestrian statue of the Duke of Milan. It is therefore not improbable that when, according to the legend, he corrected a drawing of Ghirlandajo's, he may have said things unendurable to the elder painter. [291] Engraved in outline in Harford's _Illustrations of the Genius of Michael Angelo Buonarroti_, Colnaghi, 1857. [292] This group, placed in S. Peter's, was made for the French Cardinal de Saint Denys. It should be said that the first work of Michael Angelo in Rome was the "Bacchus" now in the Florentine Bargello, executed for Jacopo Gallo, a Roman gentleman. [293] Pitti approved of the form of government represented by Soderini. Machiavelli despised the want of decision that made him quit Florence, and the euêtheia of the man. Hence their curiously conflicting phrases. [294] See the chapter entitled "Della Malitia e pessíme Conditioni del Tyranno," in Savonarola's "Tractato circa el reggimento e governo della Citta di Firenze composto ad instantia delli excelsi Signori al tempo di Giuliano Salviati, Gonfaloniere di Justitia." A more terrible picture has never been drawn by any analyst of human vice and cruelty and weakness. [295] Guasti's edition of the _Rime_, p. 26. [296] He defends himself thus in a letter to Lodovico Buonarroti: "Del caso dei Medici io non ò mai parlato contra di loro cosa nessuna, se non in quel modo che s' è parlato generalmente per ogn' uomo, come fu del caso di Prato; che se le pietre avessin saputo parlare, n' avrebbono parlato." [297] It seems clear from the correspondence in the Archivio Buonarroti, recently published, that when Michael Angelo fled from Florence to Venice in 1529, he did so under the pressure of no ignoble panic, but because his life was threatened by a traitor, acting possibly at the secret instance of Malatesta Baglioni. See Heath Wilson, pp. 326-330. [298] See Guasti, p. 4. [299] Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 251.