His father had intended that his son should go into the silk and woollen business. When he discovered his artistic proclivities, of course he forbade such foolish waste of time and punished the lad severely. It seemed a disgrace that a member of the respectable Buonarroti family should take up so non-lucrative and little-considered occupation as that of a painter on canvas and worker in marble. There was the usual result. Michelangelo could not overcome his native genius, and after some trying scenes his father finally consented to permit him to enter the studio of Domenico Ghirlandajo, who was at the moment the most distinguished painter in Italy. It was not long, moreover, before Angelo was correcting his master's drawing. At first Ghirlandajo was disturbed by this, but he was won inevitably by the distinction of Angelo's work until one day he declared, though altogether Angelo was only a year in his studio, "this young man knows more of art than I do myself." Then he was given a place in the Academy of Lorenzo de' Medici, Ghirlandajo having been asked to nominate two of his best pupils for the Academy and selecting as one Angelo. Surely this selection proved that the teacher was not, as some have said, jealous of the pupil. At Lorenzo's academy Michelangelo came in contact with some of the most distinguished men of Italy of that day. There were Lorenzo's two sons, Giovanni and Giulio, who afterwards became Popes Leo X and Clement VII; Pico della Mirandola, the poet and scholar; Politian, the poet, classicist and philosopher; Ficino, the head of the Platonic academy at Florence of that day, and Bibbiena and Castiglione, the latter subsequently the author of the famous book _"Il Cortigiano."_ The two last-named were Raphael's great friends when a few years later he was studying in Florence. It is not surprising that under these circumstances Angelo became very much interested in antique sculpture, nor that his first independent work was a bas-relief, representing a battle between Hercules {35} and the Centaurs. This is still preserved in the Casa Buonarroti, and with its crowded figures reveals the genius and the assured artistic grasp of the future great sculptor who executed it.